Mouthing Off

Want to see the greatest picture of figs ever? Don’t they look as cute as penguins headed out to sea? The shot is from Tana Butler’s blog, I Heart Farms. I heart her blog. Butler lives near Santa Cruz, CA and has been blogging for 2 years now about her favorite farms in California and across the country. She posts the most extraordinary photographs of their food and their farmers, and her writing sings such praises it’s impossible not to catch on to her enthusiasm.  When I complimented her recently on her refreshing non-snarkiness – particularly for a blog – she laughed. “I can be plenty snarky, but I try to put on a good game face.” She does more than that. Through her blog she’s been able to serve as a matchmaker, as she puts it, between farmers, chefs and writers like Suvir Saran and Russ Parsons. She’s done the website for Saran’s new farm; during Parson’s recent tour to promote the must-read How to Pick A Peach, Butler had the delight of introducing the food writer to a vegetable he’d never met: the tender-stemmed broccoli. “It’s kind of like boneless broccoli,” she says. “Just like the regular kind but you can eat the whole thing, stems and all.” They tried it while visiting Lindencroft Farms, a “miracle” of a place, she says, where farmer Linda Butler turned a 1-acre sand quarry into "the most productive, blossoming place you’ve ever seen.” Just check out their sunflowers.

In June we launch a new series, Food & Wine Across America, in which we celebrate the amazing food to be found in every corner of America. (To nominate your favorite food town, check out our new site.) I had the good luck to go to Burlington, Vermont. With all the new restaurants to write up, there wasn’t room to mention Burlington’s fantastic farms. But The Intervale is worth knowing. How many other cities can claim more than 350 acres of small farms right on the north side of town? Founded in 1986 when Will Rapp, owner of the neighboring gardening-supply center, decided to clean up the trash dumping ground the area had become, the Intervale has evolved into a sophisticated farm-incubation project, providing new farmers with equipment, mentoring and even financial-planning tips to run a successful growing operation. Farmers like Spencer and Mara Welton, only in their thirties, are turning a profit on just one acre—in their case, selling baby veggies from their Half Pint Farm to Burlington chefs. There’s even talk of harnessing the steam from the next-door wood-fired power plant, to run greenhouses during Burlington’s frigid winters. When you are next in town, rent a bicycle and explore the back trails between the farmettes; if it’s still summer, many of the farms offer U-pick produce for sale.