The first half of the phrase—products—is pretty easy to define: what a company delivers to its customers. In the case of The Chef’s Garden, it’s fresh vegetables, herbs, edible flowers, and microgreens. The second half—purpose—is more abstract but can be defined as the more profound need being addressed with a product.
When a company’s promise (its purpose) is successfully delivered through its products, then it can be said that the product and purpose are effectively aligned. Therefore, that company’s goods are products with purpose.
From a consumer standpoint, it’s important to be clear about what matters to you and then find companies that provide the products you want and need and whose values align with your own.
From a company standpoint, it’s not just what you produce but how and why you do what you do. To help chefs and home cooks make choices that reflect their values and beliefs, we’ll share five elements of our purpose at The Chef’s Garden—and, by extension, at the Culinary Vegetable Institute.
Purpose #1: Sustainable Farming
We have long embraced the tenets of sustainable farming, continually replenishing the nutrients in our soil naturally and giving it all the time it needs. For example, we plant cover crops and use rotation practices that farmers have used over the centuries to create soil health physically, biologically, and chemically.
We recognize the profound importance of growing crops in an environmentally friendly way and are deeply committed to “growing vegetables slowly and gently, in full accord with nature.” These sustainable farming practices allow us to grow the most nutritionally dense fresh vegetables possible.
Plus, we go beyond simply considering environmentally friendly farming practices when focusing on sustainability. We also consider how to be socially responsible and viable economically. We participate in socially responsible farming by treating our farm team, plus our customers, vendors, and community, well—and we also place a keen focus on economic viability because, if this isn’t part of the equation, then we wouldn’t be able to keep providing our customers with the farm-fresh produce they need.
We want The Chef’s Garden’s legacy to be the establishment of a farming framework that will ensure safe, sustainable agricultural practices that will protect and enrich produce consumers for generations to come.
If you agree with this philosophy and want to support growers who practice sustainable farming, then we invite you to look at what crops we have available right now.
Purpose #2 Regenerative Farming
As important as sustainable farming is to us, our purpose goes beyond that to regenerative farming practices.
As the conversation about environmentally friendly farming practices continues, the language used naturally evolves. As part of that discussion, key stakeholders are pointing out how the phrase “sustainable farming” may imply keeping the status quo when, in fact, farming practices overall need to go beyond what’s being done today.
Using that definition, we’ve been implementing regenerative farming in daily practice for decades. Our goal is to leave the soil in better shape than we found it. We focus on making our soil increasingly healthier to grow produce that’s even more flavorful and nutritious.
Now, here’s a definition of regenerative farming by EcoWatch: It “improves the resources it uses rather than destroying or depleting them. It is a holistic systems approach to agriculture that encourages continual on-farm innovation for environmental, social, economic, and spiritual well-being.”
Under this philosophy, farming practices will:
- dovetail with how ecosystems naturally regenerate after being disturbed
- include greater biodiversity
- rely more upon internal resources than external ones
- be “aligned with forms of agroecology practiced by farmers concerned with food sovereignty the world over”
Those are goals and philosophies that we wholly embrace and put into practice. So, again, if you would like to get your farm-fresh produce from a family farm that advocates for and practices regenerative agriculture, we invite you to see what’s available now.
Purpose #3 Reducing Food Waste
We’ve been passionate about reducing food waste for quite some time now. We grow plenty of crops that can be used from root to tip, advocate for the use of ugly vegetables, and, through the leadership of Chef Jamie Simpson, maintain a zero-waste kitchen at the Culinary Vegetable Institute.
Chef Jamie made a stunning carrot puree that used the entire veggie, including the tops, as a delicious example of using a vegetable from root to tip. This blog post contains a detailed pureed carrot recipe and culinary insights. For example, Chef Jamie loves to puree because it’s a wonderful way to balance flavor and texture, and it’s a technique that allows you to use an ingredient—in this case, carrot tops—that’s unexpected. When you puree, you can truly use an entire vegetable without waste. As another example, you can include all of your favorite beans, including the stems, in your dishes.
The Chef’s Garden took a leading role in creating a craft beer using ugly carrots as a key ingredient. Here’s the short version. Farmer Lee Jones gave Chef Maneet Chauhan a farm tour, and, as part of it, he shared his passion for food waste reduction through the use of ugly vegetables with the James Beard Award-winning chef.
Chef Maneet then shared what she learned with her Nashville partner in their artisan ale company and a new craft ale was created using ugly vegetables as a core ingredient.
In other words, ugly vegetables had been given a purpose.
Then, food waste solutions are at the heart of operations at the Culinary Vegetable Institute. This includes innovative recycling and composting, becoming a registered cannery, maintaining a rare breed of pigs that thrive on vegetable-based diets and are exceptionally well suited for Northern Ohio winters, creating unique bitters for cocktails and mocktails, putting up preserves in the root cellar, and so much more.
If you’re curious about what else happens at the Culinary Vegetable Institute, consider attending an upcoming event.
Purpose #4 Being Connectional
Feeding the planet using regenerative methods is an enormous job that takes the efforts of heart-to-heart conversations between dedicated, like-minded people around the globe. No one person, farm, or organization can do it alone (to quote Bob, Sr., “None of us is as smart as all of us!”).
Ways that we participate in being connectional include our Roots culinary conferences. At these conferences, chefs, farmers, academics, food scientists, journalists, research and development experts, and consumers have pushed their unique and collective endeavors further to the forefront as they discuss the food they cultivate as it is grown and prepared. Related topics have included cultivating supporting teams, cultivating the direction and impact of the food and beverage industry, and so much more.
Farm visits by groups, such as the Landry restaurant group’s team, allow us to give tours of the farm, listen to food-related challenges that people are experiencing, brainstorm solutions together, and much more. Remember, a farm tour sparked the creation of an artisan ale using ugly carrots.
When conversations happen between chefs and farmers, each of whom cares about sustainability and regeneration, flavor and nutrition, and providing diners with quality produce, amazing things can happen. This allows the chef to see where and how the ingredients they’re using have been grown and facilitates chef-to-diner storytelling about those ingredients.
Here are elements of transparency that are vital to have in place when sourcing ingredients:
- Chefs should be able to easily understand where their food comes from in a more specific way than just the country of origin.
- They should also know how the crops were grown, including whether or not regenerative farming techniques were used.
- Middlemen are cut out, with the food obtained directly from the grower.
- The farm grows the food in line with the restaurant’s values.
The reality is that each time someone needs to source ingredients, he or she has a wonderful opportunity to choose suppliers with the same valued philosophy.
The Culinary Vegetable Institute blog contains a helpful list of questions that make sense to ask farmers when sourcing ingredients, and we’ll share that list here:
- What is your philosophy about sustainable farming?
- How does that philosophy translate into daily practices on your farm?
- Under what circumstances would you not follow these sustainability practices?
- In what kind of situations do you use pesticides?
- How do you treat your soil?
- Does everything you sell come from your farm?
- If not, under what circumstances do you act as a middleman for another farmer’s produce?
- Will you let us know if a certain product was not grown by you?
- When do you harvest your produce?
- More specifically, what will be the time frame between harvesting the produce and shipping it to our restaurant?
- What food safety procedures do you have in place?
- How will the food be shipped to me?
- What is the shelf life of your product?
- How should your produce be stored upon delivery?
- Am I able to tour your farm? If so, what can I expect to see and do?
Suppose you’re a journalist interested in discussing food sustainability, regenerative farming, or transparency in ingredient sourcing—or one of many other interconnected topics. In that case, we invite you to contact us at 419-433-4947.
Purpose #5 Providing Specialty Products by Combining the Old and New
We deliver specialty products with optimum shelf life, quality, flavor, and nutrition direct from the farm to the world’s most discriminating chefs and home cooks. We grow them using traditional farming techniques that make sense in today’s world.
In other words, at The Chef’s Garden, we look back while moving forward. Or, in the words of Bob Sr., “All we’re trying to do is get as good as the farmers were a hundred years ago.”
These philosophies are our guiding principles as we remain dedicated to growing vegetables in ways that counter modern farming culture. More specifically, we embrace seasonal growing and eating, which was once taken for granted. After all, farmers from a century ago naturally harvested the fruits of the season, trusting Mother Nature to provide them with the ingredients they needed when they needed them.
We follow in the footprints of those farmers as we walk among the rows of our crops. If you drive past our fields, you’ll see our dedicated team members hand-harvesting seasonal produce and filling their bins with these treasures. When planting, we use vintage tractors that are smaller, slower, and lighter than today’s huge models. They are right for us as our team gently tucks tiny plants into our regenerated soil.
We hope you now have a better sense of the purpose behind our products. If you’d like to join our group of treasured chefs, then please contact us online today!