SUNDAY DINNER

SUNDAY DINNER

I had dinner last night . . .

With Jen and Pete Salinetti.  

On their farm . . .

In Tyringham, Massachusetts.

With 171 of their soon to be best friends.

The Salinettis are a dying breed. They are actually family farmers making a living on their family's farm.  In an age of giant agri-businesses, tariffs and irrational love-affairs with he-who-will-not-be- named, their brethren in the fly-over states are taking it on the chin.  The Salinettis, however, have figured a way out.

They go small.

And they spend a lot of time getting their hands dirty.

The Salinettis' farm is called Woven Roots.  It is a linguistic testament to their agri-committments. On their web site, they sound like hippies from an age past.  "We recognize," they say,  "the interconnectedness of all life: soil, plants, microbes, insects and animals." 

Don't be fooled. 

They generate an unheard of annual average of $100,000 in crop value per acre (the big guys are at 5-7k per acre). And they make enough money to raise their two children, Diego and Noelia.  

They've perfected the art of permanent bed, no-till farming. In permanent beds, the soil is never compacted and rarely disturbed.  Woven Roots' crops are grown in 30 inch rows, separated by 12 inch aisles. "Once these spaces are defined," the Salinettis explain, " they remain that way." The beds are carefully aerated with a u-bar (no tractors and no tilling) and local compost, cover crops and mulches feed the soil and literally build it up over time. 

The compost and mulch is carried in five gallon buckets and then spread and lightly raked. No chemical fertilizers, herbicides or pesticides are used, and Jen and Pete harvest by hand, leaving the root structure in the ground.  As a consequence, the top inch of soil is minimally disturbed but "the structure below is not disturbed" at all.  And, as they note, "[w]hen the soil is aerated, but not disturbed, water and nutrients percolate through with ease, creating a perfect environment for nutrient dense crops."

The results are impressive.

Woven Roots grows more than 75 crops and harvests almost year round.  More than 80 households are enrolled in its CSA ("Community Supported Agriculture ") program, which allows locals to purchase a share of the Salinettis' annual produce.  For those members, farm-to-table isn't a night out at a restaurant. It's a near daily event.

The farm is set in the rolling hills of the Berkshires.  Its fields slope gently into a narrow valley that lies against a small, wooded rise too large to be a hill, too small to be a mountain, but undoubtedly breathtaking when colors explode in fall foliage.  

Though yesterday's panorama was still late-summer green, the cultivated fields told a different story.  Before dinner, we walked by lush rows of celery, lettuces, growing carrots, red peppers, eggplants and the occasional grape vine (Pete plans to add vintner to his resume).  Every so often we stopped and the two farmers became our professors, explaining the yin and yang of their small but prosperous enterprise.

Some things I learned . . . 

Weeds -- or more precisely -- their seeds do not grow the deeper they lie beneath the soil.  This means that building up layers of soil naturally inhibits weed growth because the seeds are too far below the surface to thrive.

Here's another . . . 

If you harvest by hand and cut just slightly below the soil line, the remaining root structure is a natural source of nutrient for the soil.

And a third . . .

No till is a climate change no brainer.  

When you either do not -- or only minimally -- disturb the soil, the carbon from organic content remains below the surface, is not exposed to oxygen, and thus does not become carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere. Some experts believe that if all farming were no till, you would reverse climate change, and while this has not been statistically proven, one thing is certain -- tilling contributes significantly to the earth's carbon footprint and no tilling more or less  reverses that.

Back at Woven Root . . .

Dinner was delicious.  

The four courses included an eggplant, grilled squash and fire-roasted red pepper combination; wild coho salmon in the farm's own succotash salad and cherry tomato-herb relish;  bison short rib with cheddar polenta and green popcorn shoots; and an abenaki corn pudding with whipped cream and the farm's own peach compote.

All of us sat at a long table out in the field.  (The meal itself was prepared by a locally renowned chef.   And all of the logistics -- field kitchen, table prep, serving and clean-up -- were handled by "Outstanding in the Field" (OITF), which has been running these year round "farm to table" events nationwide for the past twenty years.)

The meal was served family style to each section of  the table.

You met and talked to the people seated alongside and in front of you as each section passed around its platters. No phones, no televisions, no Internet. But lots of back and forth.  And lots of laughs.

It reminded me of Sunday dinner at my grandmother's back in Brooklyn.

Earlier in the day, Jen Salinetti had reminded us that no till farming was nothing novel.  It's how Native Americans farmed.

As I left, nourished in more ways than one, I was thinking about . . .

Nana and Native Americans. 

You can learn a lot from your ancestors.