It’s PYO Blueberry Season
We went blueberry picking the other day at Windy Hill Farm in Great Barrington. Picking them requires patience and perseverence, but doesn’t everything worthwhile in life? In the back of our minds, we were thinking of the first stanza of Blueberries by the great New England poet Robert Frost:
You ought to have seen what I saw on my way
To the village, through Mortenson’s pasture to-day:
Blueberries as big as the end of your thumb,
Real sky-blue, and heavy, and ready to drum
In the cavernous pail of the first one to come!
And all ripe together, not some of them green
And some of them ripe! You ought to have seen!
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Where to Pick
Barton Orchards
Cty. Rt. 7, Beekman/Poughquag Rd, Poughquag, NY; 845.227.2306
Daily: 9 AM - 5 PM
Ellsworth Hill Orchard & Berry Farm
461 Cornwall Bridge Road/Route 4, Sharon, CT; 860.364.0025
Daily: 8:30 AM - 5:30 PM
Greig Farm
223 Pitcher Lane, Red Hook, NY; 845.758.1234
Daily 8 AM - 8 PM
Mead Orchards
15 Scism Rd., Off Rt. 9, Tivoli, NY; 845.756.5641
Weekends only: 10 AM - 5:30 PM
Samascott Orchards
5 Sunset Avenue, Kinderhook, NY; 518.758.7224
Daily: 8 AM - 6 PM
Windy Hill Farm
686 Stockbridge Road; Great Barrington, MA; 413.298.3217
Daily: 9 AM - 4 PM
If you know of a berry patch we overlooked, please leave a comment below. And call ahead to make sure that there are still berries on the bushes.
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Posted by Dan Shaw on 07/16/08 at 07:02 PM • Permalink
Grass-fed Beef (and Authentic Farmhouse Style) in Salisbury
Allen and Robin at their back door
Robin and Allen Cockerline, who raise grass-fed beef in Salisbury, CT, are not the type of farmers who’d call their house “stylish” or describe their hamburgers or hot dogs as “gourmet.” But their good taste is quite evident at their quaint shop at Whippoorwill Farm, where they sell their meat (tenderloin, brisket, sausages, sirloin, pork chops and more) on Saturdays from 10 AM - 4 PM.
The Cockerlines are anything but quaint. They are unreconstructed hippie-artists-turned-farmers who’ve been making a living from the land since the early 1970s, when they dropped out of the Montserrat art school in Beverly, MA. They eventually found their way to Falls Village CT, where they were dairy farmers who milked their cows daily and grew hay and corn for feed. It was never an easy life and only got tougher over two decades. “There’s a saying in the dairy business, Get big or get out,” says Allen, who decided to get out.
As the millennium approached, Allen started selling his dairy cows and transitioned to raising cattle. Traditionally, even pasture-raised cattle are fed grain the last few months of their lives to fatten them up. “That’s what makes American beef sweet,” he says. “But I decided not to add that layer of Twinkie fat. I thought they looked their best straight from the pasture.” Allen’s intuitive belief that grass-fed beef was superior was confirmed by a seminal New York Times Magazine article, Power Steer, in 2002. “Michael Pollan put grass-fed beef on the map,” says Allen.
The Cockerlines put themselves on the map eight years ago when they designed a corn maze and started selling beef at White Hollow Farm in Lime Rock and realized that it could be a decent business. Three years ago, they bought a run down farmhouse on two acres along the Salmon Kill that borders 60 acres of protected land that they have permission to use for grazing. As artists, they saw the possibilities of the property, and Robin has decorated their house with humble antiques and overstuffed furniture that’s impervious to dirty dogs and muddy boots; it’s country style at its most authentic.
They have developed a loyal following at their once-a-week shop where they also sell their own eggs, Sky Farm greens, and Adamah pickles and kraut. They’re still surprised that customers favor more expensive cuts (tenderloin is $25 pound), though Robin and Allen think the hamburger ($5 a pound) is the tastiest of all, and their all-beef hot dogs (7 for $10) are succulent without seeming heavy. Allen surmises that the problem with the hamburger, which is 92% lean, is that people do not understand how to properly cook it. “I tell everybody the same thing,” he says. “Don’t press down the burgers when you grill them. You’re not getting rid of fat since there’s hardly any in ours. You’re pressing out all the juice.”
Allen plastered the walls on the fireplace wall and installed a vintage wood stove. The green quilts on the white sofas hide dirt and can be easily washed. Stacks of art and design books feed their imaginations and conversations.
There’s no need for curtains because the views of the pastures should not be blocked.
The dining room table was made by a friend’s father; mismatched chairs mean that it’s easy to add more to the table without upsetting the balance.
The table is set for an ordinary weekday dinner: grilled grass-fed beef, a salad of Sky Farm Greens, mashed turnips from Chubby Bunny Farm and a bottle of red wine.
The Cockerlines’ border collie, Maggie, rests after playing soccer with a visitor. She likes to play ball with Whippoorwill Farm’s customers.
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Posted by Dan Shaw on 07/10/08 at 11:54 AM • Permalink
Bizalion’s Is Le Source for Pluperfect Picnics
A humble ham-and-cheese sandwich does not sound like picnic fare fit for Tanglewood, unless it comes from Bizalion’s, a cafe and charcuterie in Great Barrington. Jean-Francois Bizalion, who grew up in France, creates sandwiches that are unapologetically un-American. On a crusty baguette made daily by a baker in Pittsfield, he spreads sweet butter with a few whisper thin slices of jambon and gruyère and slivers of cornichons. To my mind, the sandwich always seems to taste better when you get it to go and it’s been wrapped in white butcher’s paper so when you open it you feel like you’ve given yourself a gift.
All of the sandwiches (such as pâté maison, salami, avocado and brie) are equally understated and deeply satisfying. Jean-Francois is a stickler for ingredients, which reminds you why France was historically considered the culinary capital of the world. “The picnic tradition in France goes back to the early 19th century,” he says. “Think of Manet’s Le déjeuner sur l’herbe.” 
Bizalion’s offerings are well edited because Jean-Francois likes to sell only what he knows how to make perfectly like pain au chocolat, quiche Lorraine made with locally raised bacon, or a mustardy vinaigrette that’s an old family recipe.
Bizalion’s is an old-fashioned family business with an unlikely pedigree. Before Jean-Francois and his wife, Helen, moved to the Berkshires, he was a fashion editor in New York City. Now, he and Helen live in Sheffield with their daughters (Isabelle, 5, and Anouk, 3) and his children from his first marriage (Julien, 21, and Chloe, 16) often work in the store on weekends. 
Almost five-years-old, Bizalion’s has succeeded despite its awkward location in Great Barrington between a Mobil station and a cemetary. “Lunch has really taken off which was not part of the plan,” he says. There are a few small cafe tables, but it’s the long communal table that gives Bizalion’s the air of an expatriates’ salon where all are welcome. “People tend to shop more after they’ve eaten lunch, it seems to open their appetites,” notes Francois, pointing to his innovative olive oil bar where you can taste before filling a decanter with oil from Turkey, Lebanon, Italy or Greece. (If you go for breakfast, you must order his incomparable fried egg, which, and I don’t exaggerate, verges on being a work of art.) Now that he’s firmly rooted in the community, Jean-Francois is making more local food connections, and he often has a stand at the Sheffield Farmers’ Market. He’s carrying “exquisite” free range chickens from Wolfe Spring Farm in Sheffield and he’s having Chubby Bunny Farm in Falls Village raise a pig for him, which he’ll use to make rillettes, bacon and prosciutto—all wonderful fillings for future sandwiches.
Bizalion’s
684 Main Street; 413.644.9988
Tuesday - Friday 8 - 5:30 ; Saturday 9:30 - 5:30; Sunday 9 - 4
Closed Monday
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Posted by Dan Shaw on 07/02/08 at 10:07 PM • Permalink
Robin’s Candy Store: The Sweet Smell of Excess
There’s a fine line between whimsy and wacky, and Robin Helfand is the tightrope walker behind Robin’s Candy Store, which opened on Main Street in Great Barrington on June 21. She’s taken the old White Knight Records space and renovated it so that it feels like a sweet shoppe with a pedigree. “You see those glass cabinets in the back?” she says. “I got them from Gatsby’s [which just closed after decades on Railroad Street] who got them from another store in town so they’ve been in Great Barrington for 70 or 80 years.” She unearthed the original worn floorboards and hung crystal chandeliers that lend the shop an Old World flavor. “When my daughter and I were in Italy, we noticed that all the candy shops have chandeliers,” she says.
A resident of Lakeville, CT, who runs the Millerton Market and Millerton Card & Candy in nearby New York, Helfand sees herself as another one of the independent retailers who make Great Barrington a distinctive pedestrian-friendly town where chain stores are not welcome. She envisions giddy, sugar-fueled families strolling the sidewalks eating her Italian ice, gelato and ice cream, and carrying shopping bags of licorice, gummy bears and chocolate bars to eat at home.
Helfand contends that a candy store is the great equalizer, a place where anyone can afford to treat themselves to a sweet pick-me-up. And she is trying to make sure that people of all food sensitivities will find something they like. She notes that vegans can have her Italian ices (made by Richie’s in Boston) and that she’ll always have at least one no-sugar added ice cream (made with Splenda.) “We are trying to develop a gelatto with soy milk, too,” she says.
Helfand has apparently never met a candy concept she didn’t like, and the store has everything from a 9 pound Nestle Crunch bar ($98) to Cricket Lick-Its (lollipops with a genuine cricket inside). There’s a self-serve dispenser with 24 different colors of M&Ms and another one with just as many varieties of jelly beans. And there’a mind-boggling assortment of 50 types of licorice. “We sell more licorice than chocolate,” says the number-crunching Helfand, who hopes to bring Robin’s Candy Stores to other walking towns like Rhinebeck, Woodstock and Northampton.
The store is meant to be a fantasia for all ages, and everyone who walks in seems enamored of the toy train chugging along a track around the perimeter of the store and crossing a bridge overhead in the center of the shop. Helfand is enough of a realist to recognize that many parents and dentists will disapprove of her store, so she is handing out free toothbrushes with the message Keep That “SWEET TOOTH” Healthy!
Robin’s Candy Store
288 Main Street, Great Barrington, MA; 413.528.8477
Sunday - Wednesday 11 AM - 9 PM
Thursday - Saturday 11 AM - 11 PM (subject to change)
A toy train chugs along a bridge that spans the center of the store
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Posted by Dan Shaw on 06/26/08 at 07:28 PM • Permalink
It’s Pick-Your-Own Strawberry Season
A friend of mine has a theory about local strawberries, which are really the only strawberries worth eating. She believes that you should gorge on strawberries while they’re in season and eat them three times a day. She maintains that you should consume nature’s bounty in excess and by the time there are no more strawberries to be picked in our region you will not want to look at another strawberry again for another eleven months. Thus, you will not even be tempted in February to buy California strawberries that have only a vague resemblance to the berries grown at farms in Berkshire, Columbia, Dutchess and Litchfield counties. (My friend applies her theory to tomatoes and raspberries as well.)
The most economical and profoundly pleasurable way to indulge in local strawberries is to pick your own. And there’s nothing quite like eating strawberries in the field as another friend, Lygeia Grace, blogged in Real Simple. “Sweet and still warm from the sun, the fruit has a musky, earthy taste that can never be recaptured once you are back home.” The fortuitous thing about picking strawberries is that you get tired and bored at exactly the right moment when you have picked just enough berries to last a few days. This never happens when you pick apples (you always have way more than you need) or when you pick blueberries or raspberries (which is incredibly time consuming and you eat most of what you’ve picked in the car ride home.) . Our current favorite place to pick strawberries is the Thomspon Finch Farm in Ancram, NY, which is centrally located even though it feels like it’s in the middle of nowhere. Certified organic, Thompson Finch’s berry patch is beautifully maintained with healthy plants that were loaded with fruit this week. Owners Marnie and Don MacLean don’t want you driving unnecessarily so call 518.329.7578 to check whether it’s a good day for picking. If Ancram seems too out of the way, here are some other farms to consider.
Pick-Your-Own Farms
Green River Farms, Williamstown, MA
Taft Farms, Great Barrington MA
Ellsworth Farm, Sharon, CT
Mead Orchards, Tivoli, NY
If your favorite pick-your-own farm is not listed here, please leave a comment and tell us about it.
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Posted by Dan Shaw on 06/17/08 at 09:13 PM • Permalink
A Paean to Germana: The Guido’s Butcher
Germana Sachs, the beloved butcher at Guido’s in Great Barrington
Like any good butcher, Germana Sachs has rough hands and a thick skin. But what makes Germana a great butcher is that she’s also got a tender heart. “I enjoy making people happy,” she says softly and sincerely. “That’s my special trade.”
Germana, who resembles the actress Lily Tomlin, has been butchering in the Berkshires for 30 years. “I started slicing cold cuts for the Mazzeo Family in Pittsfield when I was 19,” says Germana. “I learned a lot from Rudy and his brother Patsy.” For the past dozen years, she has been behind the Mazzeo’s meat counter at Guido’s Fresh Marketplace in Great Barrington, where many customers think of her as the store’s unofficial mascot. She hand-makes all of the store’s hot and sweet Italian pork and breakfast sausages (which you’ll also find atop the pizza at Baba Louie’s.) The sausages, as well as the kebabs she assembles, are especially popular during grill season.
“We sold 500 pounds of sausage over Memorial Day weekend,” she says, noting that summer is not her busiest season. “Christmas and New Year’s are the worst. We have huge lines. People want special things—filets and prime ribs, crown roasts of pork and lamb.” Germana prefers steak, preferably a ribeye, which she likes to prepare with a dry rub of black pepper, garlic, cayenne, paprika and salt. “Mix it up, rub it on the meat and let it sit on the counter so it’s at room temperature. Never put a cold steak on a hot grill.”
Born in Italy where she watched the women pluck the feathers from just-killed chickens as a child, Germana moved to the US when she was nine. (She now lives in Copake, NY with her husband.) She maintains an uncomplicated, Old World instinct for good food. “I am not a chef like some of the guys I work with,” she says, though she is always advising customers on how to prepare chops or a roast. “I’ve never had anyone come back and tell me that I told them the wrong thing to do,” she says her eyes widening, as if just realizing what an essential service she provides. As for Guido’s tri-state clientele, she admits to having favorites: “The customers who speak to me in Italian—I love that,” she says.
Though Guido’s attracts many free-spending weekenders, Germana says she knows that many of the midweek senior customers (who take advantage of Guido’s senior discount on Mondays -Wednesdays) have modest incomes, and she encourages them to try less expensive cuts of meat. Her default recommendation is boneless sirloin. “You can do anything with it,” she says.
Though the butcher department is owned by the Mazzeo family (who lease space from the Masiero brothers who owns Guido’s), Germana takes pride in it as if her name were over the counter instead of theirs, which has made her a local legend. “After 30 years, people know me,” says Germana as she fingers the gold cross she wears around her neck. “I’m not better than anybody else but the customers respect me. It’s nice to be respected.”
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Posted by Dan Shaw on 06/12/08 at 04:34 PM • Permalink
Liquor for Locavores: The Berkshires Own Booze
You might assume (as I did) that Berkshire Mountain Distillers is a boutique brand dreamed up by a green-minded, martini-drinking MBA as as a thesis project. It has a smart slogan ("Think Globally • Drink Locally") a product line whose evocative names have regional resonance ("Ice Glen Vodka,” “Greylock Gin,” “Ragged Mountain Rum"), and a logo that incorporates a rendering of an archetypal New England barn that looks as good on a T-shirt as on the side of an oak barrel. But Berkshire Mountain Distillers is actually the brainchild of a former emergency-room physician’s assistant who lives and works on the historic Soda Springs Farm in Sheffield, MA.
“The funny part is that I’m really a beer drinker,” says Chris Weld, Berkshire Mountain Distillers’ founder, who launched his line of hand-crafted liquors in the beginning of May. The other funny part is that he’s not a party guy but a biochemistry geek who treats making booze like a science project. “I’ve been wanting to build a distillery since I was in the 8th grade,” he says. “My mother was going to help me and then we found out it would be illegal.” Weld is clearly proud of mastering the various processes required to make top-shelf artisanal alcohol (he’s positioned Ice Glen vodka to compete with Grey Goose at $29 a bottle) and satisfying the standards set down by the federal government. (For example, molasses or sugarcane must be used to make rum by law even though sugar beets could theoretically be substituted.) He worked with the oldest still manufacturer in Kentucky to design his plant, but he used the venerable Balgen Machine Company in West Stockbridge to make all the pipes and other contraptions in the old hay barn that’s his headquarters. 
He has three silos filled with four tons of corn from George Beebe in Sheffield, and is looking for local farmers to grow wheat and rye for his bourbon.
Testing his recipes was less fun than you might imagine. “We had to taste fractions of the distilllates and some of it was awful,” he says. But over the past six month, he and his associate, Colin Coan (who has been brewing beer for a decade), have refined their formulas and techniques. Greylock Gin is made with botanicals like Angelica Root and Orange peel that give it a spunky, well-balanced floral character. “When we did our first tasting at Guido’s, gin was our surprise best seller,” Weld says. Ice Glen Vodka has a pure taste and clean finish. “We filter it for a long time, and our water comes from an old spring right here on the property that the Pittsfield Sun in 1901 said had ‘few equals and none superior’,” he says.
“And vodka is primarily water. “The Ragged Mountain Rum tastes more like an easy to drink Armagnac than a traditional rum. “I tell bartenders that people who want Bacardi or Meyer’s are going to be surprised,” he says. “This is really a rum that you can sip plain on the rocks.”
But isn’t Berkshire rum an oxymoron? Isn’t it really a tropical drink? “No, “ says Weld, “they made rum in New England in colonial times, until the British started taxing molasses.” These days, Weld divides his time between the farm and the road, making sales calls and deliveries to more than 50 stores and bars in the Berkshires, who’ve enthusiastically received him. “Only two places have said no to me,” says Weld, who’s enjoying all aspects of his new career and has even invented a cocktail called the Grey Ghost. “This business is a great mix of art, design, biochemistry and agriculture.”
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Posted by Dan Shaw on 05/29/08 at 10:18 AM • Permalink
The Fishman Cometh: Matt Rubiner’s March to the Sea
During the go-go Reagan years, even dropouts had clearly defined goals and strategies for achieving them. Only 28 when, as an MIT research director and a prospective PhD candidate, Matt Rubiner decided to bail on academia, he took comfort in the knowledge that he was still young enough to retool.
“I asked myself, ‘What else could I approach in this academic way?’ Wine, of course, but I wasn’t really that interested in it.”
Cheese, on the other hand, felt right. So in 1992, Rubiner took a job with Fromage Kitchen in Cambridge, MA. His timing was perfect. While he was learning the business, the nation’s economic boom converged with the Atkins diet and the artisanal food movement to make America safe for luxury cheese. Soon, over cocktails, corporate lawyers were asking Wall Streeters, “Is this farmstead?” and “Was that one made from raw milk?” Matt Rubiner, who, by then, was Mr. Cheese was on his way.
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“It smells like Europe in here,” my friend Dan says as we step inside Rubiners, the luxury cheese and specialty food emporium on Main Street in Great Barrington. When I tell Rubiner this, he is pleased. “My grandfather owned groceries stores. He always taught me, whenever you walk into a food store, close your eyes and breathe in deeply. Do you smell bread baking? Proscuitto being cut? That’s good. Do you smell floor cleaner? That’s not good.”
By May 2004, Matt had hung his shingle, Rubiner’s Cheesemongers & Grocers, on an elegant former bank in Great Barrington. A few months later, he opened a small café in back. “A shop as expensive as ours is bound to be viewed as elitist,” he says. “I wanted to give people another reason to come here. We had to complete the adventure.”
But from the start he knew that a little café like his could never support a highly-trained staff. “The restaurant business is not to be entered lightly,” he says. “Our goal was to have a simple café. We were betting that simple preparation coupled with extreme quality—not just eggs with salt, but eggs that had been laid that morning with fleur de sel—would trump technique. And it worked.” Today Rubi’s café may be the most egalitarian restaurant in the Berkshires—investment bankers and ladies-who-lunch sit next to ratty parking lot kids, all parties pleased to be there and all eating exactly the same stuff.
Ever intent on shortening the distance between the producer and the consumer, Matt Rubiner’s latest mission is his march to the sea. In an introductory e-mail to prospective customers of Rubiner’s Pre-order Fishmongers, he confessed, “I am an incompetent cooker of fish…my grilled tuna tastes like Chicken-of-the-Sea.” Finally, he concludes, “Maybe I’m just not getting good fish.”
In fact, he already had contacted a couple of suppliers in Portland, Maine, one of whom told him, “Fine, but you have to buy like our chef customers,” meaning superstars like Daniel Boulud, Eric Ripert, Charlie Trotter, and Barbara Lynch. In some instances, that meant finding a customer willing to tangle with a whole fish, such as an 18-pound Alaskan king salmon ($25.95 per pound) or a 10-15 pound hake ($7.95 per pound).
The response to his e-mail was encouraging. And so it came to pass that, here, in the mountains of Western Massachusetts, we now can buy Maine periwinkles ($6.50 per pound) and halibut cheeks ($21.95 per pound)—cheeks so fresh that yesterday morning they were still living next door to a swimming halibut’s teeth. Expensive? Not when you compare it to filling up the tank and driving to the Cape.
Place telephone or e-mail orders on Wednesday before 5 pm and pick up on Friday after 12 noon. If that’s too inconvenient, Rubiner can arrange for home delivery, even across county and state lines, for “a nominal fee.” All orders must be secured with a credit card.
264 Main Street, Great Barrington; 413.528.0488
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Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 05/07/08 at 11:30 AM • Permalink
Is this Spa Cuisine? Canyon Ranch’s Secret Sauce
I recently went to have dinner with my mother who was at Canyon Ranch for a few days, and I learned one of the the dirty little secrets of the famous spa in Lenox: You’re allowed to eat as much as you want! I saw the man at the next table have three orders of lamb chops as well as salad and plate of pasta. And then he had a hot fudge sundae for dessert. When I looked around the dining room, I noticed that most people were having hot fudge sundaes. I was beginning to understand that it’s not just the massages and exercise classes that lure my mom to Canyon Ranch, it’s the food. My mom did some research and found out that Canyon Ranch gets its hot fudge from Wax Orchards (which has an online store.) Sweetened with concentrated fruit juice, the chocolate sauce has 45 calories per tablespoon and is one of the reasons why people who go to Canyon Ranch are always smiling.
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Posted by Dan Shaw on 04/06/08 at 11:10 AM • Permalink
Grassfed in Ghent: An Extended Two-Family Affair
The first defining moment for Dan Gibson occurred when his daughter Christine finally walked through the door of their house in Katonah, NY on September 13, 2001, still covered with ash from the catastrophe that had destroyed her NYU dormitory on the corner of Water and Wall Streets two days before. A second epiphany came five years later, after he’d already given up his job as Senior Vice President of Corporate Affairs at the Starwood Hotels and Resorts and gone into the Registered Black Angus business on an 800-acre former dairy farm in Ghent, NY. This one was precipitated not by a trauma, but by the publication of Michael Pollan’s 2006 book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma.
“I want to be the Joel Salatin of Columbia County,” Gibson says. Salatin, a cantankerous, off-the-grid Virginia farmer whose innovative methods are detailed in Pollan’s book, found that there is a perfect symbiosis between dirt-scratching chickens and grass-fed beef cattle--a symbiosis that rests on crap.
As it happens, chickens like the lush grass that springs up around cow-paddies and the grubs and larvae (future flies) than thrive within it. And cattle like the nitrogen-rich grass that quickly sprouts anywhere chickens have recently been. Once a herd has grazed a pasture off, the chickens move in. During the day, they wander about at will; at night, when they would otherwise fall prey to predators, they enter portable coops called egg-mobiles, modeled on the ones Salatin devised. The result: not a drop of their precious waste is lost.
Farm Intelligence
Steer: a castrated male
Cow: a mother
Heifer: a female who has not yet borne a calf
When grass-fed, all of the above yield equally high-quality meat.
Bull: a male
Natural cover: a bull inseminating a heifer or cow as nature intended
Artificial insemination: When natural cover is impractical, this technique is used to upgrade the prestige hence marketability of the resulting calf.
Farm subsidies: A USDA program benefiting, among other farming sectors, the grain industry. By subsidizing corn used as cattle feed, the cost of industrial meat is kept artificially low and the presence of antibiotics dangerously high. (Corn makes cattle sick; antibiotics fix that.) Ubiquitous corn (corn syrup is present in three components of a McDonald’s burger) is suspected by some to be the root cause of the nation’s obesity epidemic. That and ridiculously cheap food, of course.
Certified Angus Beef: Not necessarily 100% Black Angus; likely crossbred and grain fed.
Registered Black Angus: 100% Black Angus, a breed that has superior intra-muscular marbelling, hence better flavor
Grass-fed Registered Black Angus: 100% Black Angus humanely raised on an optimal diet.
Free range: Legally defined as a chicken that is given access to the outdoors for at least 15 minutes a day.
Pastured poultry: Everything the term “free-range” implies but no longer delivers; largely grass diet, hence higher in Omega-3 fatty acids.
This clearly makes sense for the farmer and also makes for a happier life for his chickens and cattle, who get to do it their way and for twice as long as commercially-raised poultry and beef. What’s in it for the consumer, of course, is what’s in it—and what’s not. Hormone and antibiotic-free grass fed beef, according to a University of California study, has ten-fold the beta-carotene of grain-fed, a minimum of 60% more omega-3 fatty acids (putting it on a par--by this measure, at least--with wild salmon). It also has two or three times the conjugated linoleic acid and three times the Vitamin E (alpha-tocopherol antioxidants). All of which are thought to be factors in the prevention of everything from depression and Alzheimers, to cancer, arteriosclerosis and diabetes and in the promotion of vision, bone health, and weight control. The flavor? “How it was supposed to taste,” according to Gibson; in other words, like non-industrialized beef.
So how did this city slicker, whose expertise heretofore centered on running hotels, suddenly transform himself into an innovative cattleman? First and most crucial, by making the farm managers, Jim and Ilene Stark, who were already in place when he bought the dairy farm, full partners. Then, in time-honored farm tradition, he added his own family to the workforce, turning Grazin’ Angus Acres into a multi-generational enterprise. Dan and Susan Gibson’s son Keith and his wife, Nicole, live and work on the farm. Gibson’s wife, Susan, who was literally the girl next door in Bucks County, PA, when they were growing up, has added collecting eggs each afternoon to a range of pastimes that heretofore centered on gardening and decorating. Grazin’s manpower increases in summer when Dan’s formerly-widowed father, Frank, comes up from Florida with his bride of less than one year, Susan’s formerly-widowed mother, Betty, to lend a hand.
That’s right. In journalism, that’s called burying the lead.
Grazin’ Angus Acres grass-fed beef is served at many local restaurants, including Vico and The Red Dot in Hudson, Local 111 in Philmont, and The Blue Plate in Chatham.
It is also sold frozen at The Berry Farm, Route 203 in Chatham; Hawthorne Valley Store, Route 21 A, Ghent; Random Harvest, Route 23, Craryville; Honest Weight Retail Store, on Central Avenue, Albany, and at the Grazin’ Angus Acres farm store, where chickens and eggs are also available.
Grazin’ Angus Acres, 125 Bartel Road, Ghent; 518.392.3620 Orders may be placed by phone or e-mail (see website) and may be picked up at the Grazin’ Angus Acres farm store.
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Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 03/11/08 at 04:34 PM • Permalink
