Day A-Whey to the Vermont Cheesemaker’s Festival

Summer is here, and our thoughts have turned Vermont-ward for our second Day A-Whey trip of the season! We’ll be headed to the shores of Lake Champlain for a visit to Shelburne Farm and the Vermont Cheese Maker’s Festival. For those of you out there with fond memories of sleep-away camp, or those of you (like me) who never went to sleep-away camp but thought it must be SUPER fun, this is the trip for you!

A Day A-Whey: Shelburne Farm and the Vermont Cheese Makers Festival
July 23rd- July 24th 2011
For tickets and more info visit takingrootus.com

VT Cheese Makers Fest
For this Day A-Whey adventure Saxelby Cheesemongers and Taking Root, a new sustainable agri-tourism venture, have planned a fabulous, cheese-filled weekend trip to that land of Green Mountains. We’ll visit Shelburne Farm, help them make a batch of award-winning cheddar, have a delectable farm to table dinner in Burlington, and attend the Third Annual Vermont Cheese Maker’s Festival!!

Our Day A-Whey begins on Saturday, July 23rd. We’ll fly from JFK to Burlington, and head straight to Shelburne Farm for a picnic lunch and an afternoon of cheese making! Shelburne Farm is hands down one of the most gorgeous farms in the country. Built in the mid-1800′s on the shores of Lake Champlain, the rolling green pastures, patches of forest, and opulent barns will leave you pinching yourself. Nat Bacon, one of Shelburne’s master cheese makers, will show us how to cut the curd (and press it too!) as we craft a batch of their delicious Vermont cheddar.

All that cheese making will no doubt leave us a bit peckish! We’ll take our leave from our apprenticeship and head to Burlington to check into our hotel and proceed to dinner at Farm Table. After dinner if weather permits we’ll take a stroll around town and soak up the glory of a high summer evening in Vermont.

Sunday morning, we’ll be treated to a hearty breakfast before heading back to Shelburne Farm for the main event: The Third Annual Vermont Cheese Maker’s Festival! Meet the cheese makers, and sample over 100 different varieties of artisan cheese alongside Vermont-made beers, wines, ciders, and other specialty foods. In addition to all the noshing, there will be home cheese making demos, and seminars on all things fermented, from Vermont-made charcuterie to wine and beer.

We’ll jet back to New York on Sunday night after a fun-filled weekend crash course in cheese!

For tickets ($325 for individuals and $500 for doubles**) and more information, visit takingrootus.com or email leah@takingrootus.com. Tickets for this event are extremely limited, so please book right away!

**Please note that the ticket price does NOT include airfare to/from Vermont or Saturday night’s dinner. Ticket price includes hotel, ground transportation in Vermont, cheese making at Shelburne Farm, all other meals, and tickets to the Cheese Makers Festival.

Guests will be responsible for booking their own airfare. The recommended flights are as follows:

Saturday, July 23rd:
Jet Blue flight #56 (departs JFK 9:30am arrives Burlington 10:42am)

Sunday, July 24th:
Jet Blue flight #59 (departs Burlington 7:20pm arrives JFK 8:44pm)

Here’s to a fantastic Day A-Whey to the Vermont Cheese Makers Festival!

Foundation and Innovation: Every Moment is New

In graduate school, after long days of study, my favorite way to unwind was to read cookbooks, online recipes, and magazines devoted to cooking. Cooking made me feel creative. Immersed in an intangible world of research and chapters, I found solace in the tactile act of creating something from beginning to finish. Cookbooks themselves allowed me access to centuries of training and inspired both classic meals and innovations. Each attempt in the kitchen from Jaimie Oliver’s roasted lamb chops, to Mark Bittman’s lemon cake or Emeril’s gnocci, was an attempt to build on the foundations of masters. And with their help, I could work my way through dishes that were modern or ageless, but endlessly different.

One evening in 2006, lost in the world of Food and Wine, I heard, for the first time, about a restaurant in Chicago called Alinea, and the chef there, Grant Achatz. Alinea had been open for just one year, and while I had been writing my thesis, a 32 year old Achatz had quietly taken the culinary world by storm with his modern stance on cooking and dining as experience. Butterscotch ribbons carefully wrapped around a single piece of bacon suspended by a metal device of Achatz’s design. Truffle ravioli exploded as it hit each diner’s tongue. Pillows of dough were inflated with the scent of lavender that would subtly flavor the food without overpowering it. Where were all these experiences coming from?Achatz and his staff masterfully wove countless components together- the culinary traditions, the flatware, the architecture, the design and countless other details — to make one single dish.

How many influences must come together to create a moment?

Curiously baffled and lightly embarrassed, I sent my first piece of fan mail:

Dear Chef Achatz,

I have never tasted your food, but I am a big time admirer of the way that you are transforming cuisine and perhaps even culture. I am an academic, still in the beginning stages of my career and my research. I am working on a series of essays that look at personal experiences (like eating at your restaurant) as singular expressions but global accounts. In other words understanding all of the things that have come together (globally and locally) to create one dish that you serve. It would be a dream to interview you and understand your food and how you create it as a single moment of expression and experience that emerges from countless influences. I think that you might be interested….Any chance?

At the time I was still trying to figure out my academic career, how I planned to use the skills, training, and ways of thinking that I had learned through my own countless hours of reading, thinking, training and debate. But perhaps even more than that I was seeking the creative spirit that Achatz had captured and harnessed.

The letter landed me a warm response, an invitation to meet Achatz at his restaurant, a chance to ask him some of my questions. I immediately booked a ticket to from Ithaca to Chicago and spent the next week devouring a stack of books about becoming a chef, the history of the restaurant, the domestication of animals, and anthropological texts on meals as communitas. I immersed myself completely in a new world of thought. It was easy to get lost in the roots of culinary experiences since so much of what goes into an experience is boundless and untraceable.

******************
The public dining space that ultimately came to be known as a restaurant originated in 18th century Paris. The first proprietor is thought to be a soup vendor who opened his business in 1765 offering restoratives, or what we might think of as consommes. After some time, he expanded the menu to include stews. Before this time the only public eating houses were taverns and inns.The die was cast. But there was still a long way to go from restaurants in this earliest stage to the culinary artistry at places like Alinea.

Achatz is known for his sophistication, originality, creativity and surprise. A meal at Alinea is said to begin the second that you walk in the door. Many articles take careful time to describe the doorway and it’s effect in putting customers off-balance, a reminder that this experience will be different; not an ordinary week night dinner. Every aspect of the experience—design, smell, texture, taste, ambiance– is carefully designed to enhance the emotional affect one feels from the food. A meal at Alinea has been elevated from the rankings of mere food or sustenance to being hailed as art, sculpture, even a spiritual experience.

Achatz’s innovations are carefully crafted and skillfully built upon a powerful resume of perfected fundamentals. His cooking career began when he was five in the kitchen of his parent’s restaurant where he had to stand on a milk crate to reach the stove top. His single minded pursuit of food led him to an education at Culinary Institute of America and then on to some of the world’s top restaurants including The French Laundry and Trio. Achatz has years of experience in a commercial kitchen. But when I begin to calculate all the hours and training that go into his dishes, I cannot resist including the years of training and work not only of Achatz’s alone, but also the years of his distinguished mentors like chefs Keller and Trotter. In doing so, the decades of experience he brings to the kitchen quickly turn into at least a century of work and accumulated training to perfect and innovate the trade.

How many hours of learning and execution does it take to create one evening at Alinea? This, of course, is a question that could be asked of anything from the Big Bang to a simple home-made meatloaf. But there is something special about a meal at Alinea, something that goes beyond the ordinary. Maybe it is because of the centuries of culinary evolution that come together to create “dinner” are utterly transformed by Achatz. All meals, including Alinea, begin with the discovery and control of fire–one of humans’ earliest discoveries. The use of fire set into motion complex changes in our diet, our history, and the planet. The domestication of animals and the rise of agriculture. We shifted from merely being hungry cave people in search of nourishment into beings that realized that meals were as good a time as any to spark companionship and connection. Dinnertime noises went from grunts of appreciation to sophisticated conversation.
How can you calculate the influences and time that goes into a meal?


*******

Grant himself was delightful. Sitting with him in his restaurant was dreamlike. Even after the hours that he has logged at Alinea, he seemed truly excited about the food and experience that he creates for his guests. As he describes one of his dishes, a lamb dish, he uses the word, “respect.” It takes him a minute to find the word, and his choice throws me a bit. He aids the description with tactile attention as he grabs a piece of metal flatware overlain with a piece of clay. He takes care to explain how the dish is served, heated to 400 degrees on the clay which is lain on the metal flatware in front of the diner. I got so lost in the moment that I forgot to take notes. But years later, I am still thinking about the ways that Grant has changed, and continues to change, the world of food and dining.

His energy and love of culinary experimentation seem boundless. Earlier this year, we saw the opening of his second restaurant, Next. Customers started lining up at noon for inaugural drinks at Aviary a bar he co-opened with Nick Kokonas. And the publication of his book Life on the Line once again put Achatz in the limelight. His continually renewed take on something as old as dinner is more than inspirational. It is sublime. A moment is precious not simply because we get to experience it but because so many moments must come together to create something new. So many that it seems altogether improbable, practically impossible that anything happens at all. When I first saw the picture of Achatz’s bacon wrapped in a butterscotch ribbon, suspended on a wire, it reminded me that anything is possible. We build on the foundations of those that come before. We inherit their way of seeing. We borrow their tools. But what we do from there is uniquely our own.

A New Generation of Farmers

At age 39, Kylie Spooner put her Ivy League education to unexpected use.  She moved  into the farmhouse where her father, Dean Spooner, was raised.  The late Henry Spooner, Kylie’s grandfather, bought the two bedroom farmhouse in 1938 along with the small plot of land upon which the house sits. Using simple tools, two horses, and an axe, Henry cleared forty acres of field from the land and put it to use as grazing for cattle.  The farm, located in West Edmeston near Cooperstown, New York has been a working dairy ever since.  In the year 2000, Dean retired due to a farm-related illness that took him out of the fields that he had been working since he was four; almost sixty years of farming the property.  Farming, it seems, was becoming a family vocation.  It was a vocation that Kylie had no intention of taking up when she started her own business, got married, and pursued her degree in Urban Studies and Sustainable Development at Columbia University.  But, in 2010, after finishing her degree and ending her marriage, she yearned to come back to the land, “I had a little drawing of an old barn under snow, a beautiful old barn with a stone foundation.”  That farm drawing, pinned to the wall in front of her desk served as beacon, an image to bring her back to the farm.  We all have fantasies that pull us through difficult times, and for Kylie, “That little picture of the farm sustained me. I would see it and remember that I was going to go back to the farm.” Today, Kylie is proud to be taking her turn as the third generation of farmers on her family’s land.

I am really excited to be tuned into all the history.  I love that this is how my people survived. I love that I am part of that determination. I am honoring and nurturing this land.  In the meantime, it is just so satisfying to grow things myself, to understand plants and animals, and to understand what it takes to make them healthy.

Kylie is part of a new generation of farmers. While 39 may not sound much like a “new generation,” she stands in stark contrast to an aging face of farming.  National estimates account for 2.2 million farmers in the U.S. and their average age is 57.5 years old.  One fourth of U.S. farmers are 65 years old or older. Only 2.8% are between the ages of 24-35.

As a new farmer, Kylie is lucky.  She has already overcome two of the many obstacles that new farmers face including access to land and the skill-training that allows for capable new farms to be ready in the face of difficult seasons.  There’s a huge learning curve, and most of the country comes out of school having no idea how to plant, cultivate, or harvest food or fiber: our most essential and basic needs.  Kylie was able to spend her first season working alongside of her father and learning from his years of experience.

Kylie, along with other new farmers, also represents a new variety of practices and goals that she uses to develop her farm.  Over the decades, farms have been set up to promote efficiency. This has meant large scale, single-product cropping. But that has only been possible due to stable oil prices, relatively stable weather patterns, and access to healthy soils and water (70% of the water that we use now goes to agricultural lands).  More recently, along with the explosion of a conversation around sustainability, ideas like soil health, nutrition, and resilience seem to be taking center stage.  Kylie relies on a diverse ecology to create a healthy farm and revenue that goes along with varied production.

Spooner and Daughter Farm is no longer grazing territory for dairy cows.  Instead, they now cultivate a market garden on an acre and a half of the land and has been selling the vegetables in three different farmers markets.  The garden, along with a burgeoning flock of Dorset sheep are choices that represent this dynamic resilience in farming.

Spooner’s background in sustainability doesn’t only mean a difference in her farming practices that she uses to manage the farm, Spooner is also thinking of her farm differently, “If you are going to devote so much of your life to work, then you better love it.”  And this is reflected in her goal for the land,

To think of the farm as one being. To think about it as a being that needs to be made healthy and whole.  Whatever I am raising on the farm, I want them to be both taking from the farm but also inputting and helping to make the farm a healthy and whole organism

Despite growing support for local food movements, we have a long slog before we achieve a sustainable food system. As we move toward approaching sustainable food and farms as a human system, the work work of inspired new farmers and their practices, like the one’s at Spooner and Daughter’s Farm, are a good reason to be hopeful that we’re making progress.

Authentic Travel

Travel, for many, is a search for an authentic cultural experience. Many a trekker, tourist, and seeker have found themselves going to greater lengths, greater distances, and greater cost to find “unique,” “real,” and “meaningful” encounters; a momentary refuge from the day-to-day reality of a modern life.  Lives all over the world have been touched through travel because unique and inspiring experiences offer precisely the ingredient for change.  And sometimes those momentary encounters of authenticity can be just the right experience to send a rippling current of change throughout our lives.  The experience of, and subsequent quest for, meaningful connection has led me to journeys around the world.  Now, with a better understanding of this ingredient I have realized that the truth is we don’t need to go all that far to find authentic and meaningful cultural experiences.  Through unlikely conversations with farmers and artisans I have heard eloquent descriptions of U.S. landscapes and communities as fodder for authenticity. And I have been so inspired as these conversations have me looking forward (not backward) to a time where are values guide us into deeper connection with communities.

Authenticity is really about acting from an sense of authority anchored to a sense of self. There is a love and understanding that comes when we show up to a community ready to explore and connect.  And it is bringing many of us to simply seek more pure encounters with the hyper-local.  Gavin Johnston, a heritage breed farmer in Westport, New York thinks that the values guiding a new food movement are here to stay,

“Local, sustainable, farming and local food, and all the values that go with them are     not a fad. They’re here to stay. The values and the kind of people that are being     drawn to this movement are admirable, interesting, and becoming more and more sexy in all  senses of the word. The people creating these small (and some big) farms are endless sources of inspiration and interest”

He has said out loud something that I have been feeling but haven’t been able to put into words.  I just nod in agreement as he continues thoughtfully,

“Americans have thrown themselves so far down shallow and meaningless paths of         disconnected work and play, that the FARM, is going to more and more represent           something  authentic.”

Maybe it comes off as one of Rockwell’s illustrations to paint Suffolk or Addison County as a pastoral dream that might re-ignite that lost connection- to work, to community, to land.  Yet, connection to land and an inner compass for self reliance really do seem inherent in the words – farm, farmer, pasture, earth.  That may be, in part, because whether I venture Khenti Aimag or Sullivan County, I have found no better gateway to cultivate human connection –to land and people and the connections between –than through our food. In this light, the adage, “know your food,”  may very well be synonymous with, “know your people.”  Maybe because food hits so many different aspects of human existence.  Maybe because food is so basic.  But with each passing day, I believe more and more strongly that people want to work with their hearts, with their souls, with their hands; not simply with their heads.  Connecting to our communities and to our land in our search for the “authentic” life is the heart of the seeker’s journey. And wherever it takes me, it is well worth the journey.

Oysters, oysters, oysters!

“An oyster leads a dreadful but exciting life.”
– M.F.K. Fisher

As Spring finally peaks its head out from behind the cloud’s we’ve been dreaming up ways to celebrate. Saxelby Cheesemongers & Taking Root are pairing up to share our their top three reasons — wine, cheese, & oysters —why lovers of local food fare could not have a more delicious state to live in than New York. We’re taking a salty and cheese-filled adventure to Long Island’s North Fork on May 7th, 2011; an Artisanal Adventure that will kick off to a season of cheese, fun and travel.

We’ll depart from the historic Essex Market and head toward our first stop where we’ll sample an assortment of featured wines from Bedell Cellars Winery, a 30-year-old sustainably farmed and family owned estate vineyard. Saxelby Cheesemongers will feature delicious goat cheese from Long Island’s very own Catapano Dairy along with a full service picnic style lunch. We’ll be joined by Roz Cummins of the Blue Ocean Institute who will not only share a bit about the social and historically rich past of these magical bivalves, but will also talk about sustainability initiatives and why oysters are so important to New York’s ecosystem. (Did you know that oysters can filter up to 50 gallons of water a day?) Oysters really are a delicious and vital part of the health of our waters. We’ll take a deeper dive into oyster aquaculture as oyster Farmer Karen Rivara will give us a tour of the Noank Aquaculture Cooperative at Peconic Land Trust’s Shellfisher Preserve. Working to conserve Long Island’s working farms and natural landscape, the Cooperative uses their facilities for shellfish aquaculture research and education. Rivara will share an inside look into her operations and teach us about aquaculture and the importance of oyster conservation in the area. After the tour, we’ll sample an array of oysters, pearls of the North Fork! Last but not least, if time and weather permits, we’ll visit the historic Horton Point Lighthouse to take a stroll and enjoy the gorgeous waterfront. We’ll head on back to the city by 7:00 pm, well fed, well rested, and ready for summer!

For more information or to join this artisanal adventure and special tour of the North Fork of Long Island visit www.TakingRootUS.com/adventures

Program begins and ends on May 7th, 201. Ticket price is $125 and includes transportation, picnic lunch, and all tasting/farm tour fees and a charitable contribution to the Peconic Pearls program.

Reimagining a Healthy Food System

You will notice a theme running through our next five blog posts. Our posts this month will feature a variety of voices that promote different strategies that we can all use to contribute to playing our part in fixing a broken food system. We start these posts with an inspiring blog by our very own Tanya Matthews who will address connecting our interests and passions to creating a healthier food system. Then, we we’ll go to Milk School with Jean Tsai of NYMilk who will give us much needed information about the healthiest & happiest choices we can make about purchasing milk. Lauren Bille will talk about increasing biodiversity and resilience in our food system by trying new foods like heirloom vegetables and heritage meats. We’ll wrap up our series with a discussion about why we think domestic travel and artisanal adventures are a critical piece of fixing the food system and promoting better, healthier, stronger, and more sustainable communities and people. We hope you’ll share your thoughts with us throughout this exciting series on fixing a broken food system.

Travel and Our Roots

*A version of this article was published in the Huffington Post

March is Women’s History Month! Here at Taking Root, we’re thinking about the women who have guided us and defined the world of travel. We’re thinking about women like Amelia Earhart and the Harvey Girls as well as others who are carving out success stories of sustainable travel today. We’re on the lookout for women who have served as pathfinders and leaders, women who have influenced us and our craft. All month we’ll be focusing on women who have inspired us to travel. And we hope that you’ll share your favorites as well.

In a recent Huffington Post blog, I explored the axis point that makes travel possible: home. As much as I have been thinking about the women leaders in travel, I have also been thinking about the women closest to me, those women who have influenced me more than any other. The more I travel and the farther I go, the more I feel a pull toward home (real and imagined) and my roots. When part of me seeks salvation from feeling perennially uprooted, I yearn for something rural, a place where I know my neighbors.

The place that I imagine is not unlike my mother’s hometown of Crane Missouri. By way of facts, Crane is a small town located in Southern Missouri with a population just over 1,000. If you weren’t looking for it, you might just pass it by in search for something bigger or more interesting. But as with most small towns, the character and the identity is in the people, and in their traditions. Crane Missouri was home to my grandfather, a doctor and my grandmother, a home economics teacher. It is where my mother spent her formative years. I believe within this American small town, there is the thread of a legacy for me that stretches beyond simple lineage. And I look to the women of my life and the traditions of a place like Crane to show me how we might be better at bringing communities together, not just as part of a distant past but in order to forge a new kind of future. A future where we draw from the traditions and our communities to rekindle a sense of home: belonging.

One such tradition, happens in Crane every August when 10,000-20,000 people descend on this small town for carnival rides, petting zoos, and two-days of feasting on chicken and potato salad for a festival known as the Crane Broiler Festival. The festival had it’s start in 1952 sponsored by the southwest Missouri broiler growers association, an assorted lot of 60 “growers” in Stone County. During it’s early years, as the website boasts, all of the chickens were raised locally. Also starting in 1952 was a beauty pageant. The winner each year is crowned with the title Miss Slick Chick. (A title my mom held in 1956).

It is true that these days, that the chickens are no longer raised locally. True also, that many of the local businesses of Crane’s Main Street that pulled together to start the Broiler Festival and the pageantry have long since vanished, along with my grandparents. Yet, I cannot help but think that it is something much more than nostalgia that makes me want to cheer for the uninterrupted history that will lead us to the 59th annual Crane Broiler Festival in 2011. These days, I cannot help but think of Crane, Missouri as a powerful beacon of community. This is especially true as we face real threats to the rural character and identity of small towns. I look to celebrations and traditions like the Crane Broiler festival to hold the threads of community that link us to our culture and our past. Travel has a deep history in going away and returning home. And a new ethic of travel makes me wonder if we might draw that circle a little closer, walk a little slower, and connect more deeply and more meaningfully to the communities we visit. It might just spark a renewal, a sense of home. If you’re stopping through Crane late this summer, do take part in this bona fide Americana.

I hope that for all of us, Women’s History Month is the month that we explore the traditions and celebrations of home.

Welcome to Taking Root!

Our mission is to hand craft travel adventures that educate travelers, stimulate local economies, and celebrate the people and places we meet along the way.

In this first month of 2011 we’ve launched our website, set-up our Facebook page, and now we’re embarking on our monthly newsletter. Soon we’ll be taking reservations for select spring adventures.

Each program cultivates an emerging ethic in travel; a reminder that participants can enjoy artisanal adventures and still care for communities and the environment.

Reclaim Your Vacation

We’ve been overhearing that your New Year’s resolution is to claim your free time, and connect with your community. Viva la Resolution!

By the time you’re fully saturated with mai tai and sunshine vacations, we’ll be ready to serve you up something a little more…je ne sais quois. One of our friends put it this way,

Our last vacation was a resort getaway. We had a lot of fun, but we ended up talking about how we’d love to do something more eco-friendly. We felt uncomfortable at the resort, never fully relaxed because we felt cut off from the local culture, conspicuously touristy, and disappointed by what all the fancy hotels had done to the beachfront.Taking Root offers exactly the alternative we were talking about.

Taking Root is creating more meaningful travel experiences and we hope you’ll join us. Fly fish with local guides, learn from local conservation experts, and work alongside artisans on our wine and cheese making weekends. Come meet our favorite local farmers and small business owners. Reclaim your vacation!

What People are Saying

“I cannot wait for our weekend in the spring with Taking Root.It will be fantastic. This is exactly the kind of spirit that makes us what we are.”

“Seeing a company like this is always inspiring. What a rich opportunity…travel with a purpose.It seems logical that travelers can also provide value to the communities they visit.”

“I love what your doing.I think it is a much needed service.”