What i’ve been up to: sourcing

Hello!

It's been a few months since we all thought Tarrytown Local would be open. Turns out building a restaurant/grocery/bakery/mill is pretty complicated! I figured I'd share a few things I've been working on and thinking about. This won't be an exhaustive report on our sourcing habits, but hopefully it'll give you a glimpse into one of the things that makes Tarrytown Local special.

If you've explored the website, you've probably gathered that we use ingredients and products you won't find in most restaurants, grocery stores, or bakeries. Sourcing is the crux of the food at Tarrytown Local. Finding our ingredients and products, learning as much as I can about them and getting to know the people behind them, is one of my favorite parts of this job (though I CANNOT wait to start cooking again).

Sometimes sourcing it’s frustrating. I'll spend weeks chasing an ingredient only to realize I can't find anyone producing it in a way that aligns with our values. Sometimes I'm uncomfortable with how a farm is run or how the land or animals are cared for, so I have to keep looking.

Other times I (or often Katrina) stumble across hidden gems. Like Greenwich Tea Burners, one of roughly seventeen real tea farms in the United States, growing Camellia sinensis outdoors in New Jersey. Or Carrie at Willow Pond Farm, who spent an afternoon last week showing me how she milks and cares for her sheep, sheep dairy being something I'd honestly never given much thought to before. It's unfortunately uncommon in the U.S but delicious, nutritious, and more easily digestible than cow dairy. Or the weeks I spent visiting wineries, walking vineyards, and drinking wine with the people who made it. I have many, many examples of such hidden gems, and am excited to bring them to Tarrytown Local. 

It’s eye-opening work, and the deeper I go, the more fascinating food becomes. Farming, ecology, supply chains, human ingenuity, it's all inseparable. 

When I'm looking for ingredients or partner farms, there are three core ideas at the center of every decision: personal, planetary, and community health. The beautiful thing is that these ideas are very intertwined. A farm is able to produce exceptionally nutritious vegetables because its soil is healthy and its farming practices work with nature rather than against it. By purchasing from these farms close to home, we minimize our carbon impact, while also supporting local jobs, local economies, and a healthier regional food system. And exceptionally nutritious vegetables tend to taste incredible. Finding a partner farm is so rewarding - everybody wins and the food tastes great. 

One thing I'm especially excited about is creating growth opportunities for small farms with great agricultural practices. Right now, that mostly means finding farms that want to expand but don't have optimal market opportunities. We hope to make those opportunities at Tarrytown Local, and create mutually beneficial relationships.

Small animal farms are a great example. A farmer raising ten pigs may have more pork than they can sell directly to consumers, but not enough to reliably supply a restaurant. Restaurants require a shocking amount of volume and consistency, and consumers often only want small, familiar cuts of meat. Expanding takes infrastructure and years of planning.Slaughter dates often need to be booked close to a year in advance. It's easy for small farms to plateau  between a rock and a hard place -  with too much product to sell directly to consumers, but not enough to take on wholesale clients.

My plan is to build a network of many small farms instead of relying on a handful of large ones. No single farm has to meet all of our needs, or even any existing needs. One farm might have beautiful large roasts. Another may only have steaks. Another may need help moving a freezer full of ground beef. As we learn how much meat, produce, grain, and dairy we use, we'll plan with these farms,  and hope to give them more confidence to invest in growth. In turn Tarrytown Local gets  the ingredients we want, produced how we want, while  simultaneously supporting and uplifting our partner farms.

I'm also drawn to producers who are trying something new. Wine is a great example, though I worry (a bit) about being controversial. Growing fruit in New York is difficult. Most vineyards and orchards rely on at least some chemical intervention, whether they're organic, sustainable, or conventional. The New York Sustainable Winegrowing Program focuses on minimizing and thoughtfully using those inputs rather than eliminating them entirely, and does allow for non-organic intervention.

I've heard plenty of people say the Hudson Valley simply isn't suited to producing great wine, and to forget growing fully organic wine grapes. I’ve come to believe that's false.  especially when it comes to hybrid grapes. These aren't the familiar European vinifera varieties you'll recognize from most wine labels. Many were bred specifically for the Northeast in the last few decades, some by Cornell. They thrive here. 

One of my favorite wine visits was to Wild Arc Farm where I met Todd Cavallo. His vineyard looked unlike anything I'd ever seen: wildflowers, herbs, and every weed weaving through and completely surrounding his grapevines, with huge patches of creeping thyme growing throughout. Todd explained that the thyme has anti-fungal properties (notably the chemical Thymol), and when it's mowed a few times each year, the aromatic compounds become airborne throughout the vineyard.

And while I am excited about hybrids, I should point out that some folks are also making old world wines with incredible agricultural practices in the Hudson Valley, like Michele Callisto who grows organic Italian wine grapes at Rosina’s in Middletown.

I could ramble about grapes for another thousand words, but the point is that I want to support producers willing to experiment and push our regional food system in new directions. People like Carl Batt of Empire Syrup, who produces sugar (an invert-sugar, specifically, in syrup form) from sorghum, a crop that captures carbon while it grows. Seneca Grain & Bean, who grow intercropped lentils, a staple crop that isn't grown at any other New York farm (to my knowledge, if you know someone please introduce me). Ever Growing Family Farm, who figured out which rice varieties thrive in the Hudson Valley using traditional West African growing methods. I want to see more of that kind of food and agriculture in my locale.

I'm getting hungry. That's enough for today. 

If you have any questions or just want to talk about food, don't hesitate to reach out at fox@tarrytownlocal.com. I'm always happy to chat.

—Fox