When you read the interview below, you’ll see why. They’re the people behind our grilling woods from Maine, and they’re doing right by their customers, community, and the environment. We recently spoke with Ken Theobald (the founder), and got some more info on the company.
SFB: What made you decide to go into the grilling woods business?
Ken: Just over 10 years ago, my wife and I found a building lot we were interested in buying because we were going to downsize our farmstead in Brooks, Maine. Unfortunately, the lot had over 200 non-producing apple trees on it. After some thought, we decided that we would start a small business using the apple trees for grilling woods. Once we began this, orders came in for other species, so our business grew and we now offer other varieties (all indigenous to Maine) as well.
We happen to be in the perfect climate for grilling woods.
SFB: It appears that you run the business in a sustainable manner that supports the local economy. Is it more difficult to do so, and if so, what drives you to continue this practice?
Ken: We do conduct our business in a sustainable manner that supports the local economy. Since our wood must be freshly cut, dirt free, and pleasing to the eye in order to be of the best quality for our clients, it is necessary that local farmstead and woodlot owners harvest the wood by hand. This is the only way in which we can achieve the quality our customers demand. We pay our local woodcutters a premium for their special handling, and in turn support the local economy.
SFB: What is the most satisfying part about what you do?
Ken: My satisfaction comes on two fronts. First of all, I love seeing local families bringing in wood to augment their family income. Just the other day, I complimented one of our local suppliers on the quality of his wood. His comment to me was, “if it was not for you buying our wood over this last winter, I don’t think our family could have made it!” If that does not give you goose bumps, nothing will. Secondly, it is incredibly satisfying to hear the compliments our customers are receiving from family and friends when they use our grilling woods. Every homemaker, chef, or backyard griller loves hearing that their food was delicious, and we like playing a part in that.
SFB: Why choose your product over others?
Ken: Other than the points I have already mentioned, we happen to be in the perfect climate for grilling woods. Maine has a very short growing season, which means the density of our wood is much greater than the southern varieties. Density translates into a much more favorable smoke. Where there is smoke, there is flavor.
Mainer Jeff Wolovitz founded Heiwa tofu in 2009 because, as he says on his website, “This business combines my need to sustain my family and my passion and contribution to the local food economy.”
That’s cool, but does his tofu taste any different than the next? We were skeptical, only because tofu is pretty mild-tasting to begin with. Often reduced to a poorly executed protein option for vegetarians, or the dreaded tofu scramble of college coffee shops, deep down, we know tofu deserves better than the treatment it sometimes gets stateside. Where would we be without mapo tofu, agedashi tofu, or soondubu jjigae? One shudders to think.
We decided we’d try some of Jeff’s tofu, cook with it, and see if it really tasted any different than the stuff we have readily available to us in Chinatown daily. Actually, it does. Slightly nutty, totally clean-tasting, and none of that weird metallic tang you get in commercial tofu, this stuff is sweet and gentle, tastes a little like fresh peas, and is a bit firmer than your regular tofu in water, making it awesome at holding its shape after it’s cut and cooked. It might have something to do with the organic, non-gmo Maine soybeans he’s using, the fact that each batch is handmade by him and his wife, or that it’s made and delivered super fresh. Or maybe it’s all of these things. We just know that it’s the first tofu we’ve tasted that’s made us turn our heads–and some of us are sneaking cubes of it home on a regular basis to cook with now.
Jeff also sounds like a cool guy. On his site, it says he ” mostly stays busy with the business, but also teaches West African drum classes. When he’s not working, he loves to cook for his family, tend to his vegetable garden and his fruit trees, put up food for the winter, forage wild mushrooms, and go fishing for mackerel and squid.” Hey Jeff, you stole my dream life. Minus maybe the drum classes.
Heiwa Tofu comes in a six-pack of 1# cubes, and is available now. We are taking in fresh shipments weekly.
We’ve been buying mesclun greens from Ted Dobson since 1995.
Ted’s approach to farming all starts with soil. In the same way that a stock becomes the foundation upon which the rest of a sauce is built, Ted knows that without good soil, there’s no way you can grow great-tasting greens. The way commercial farms tend to treat soil is akin to asking the human body to subsist only on vitamins: sure, it’s formulated to have the nutrients we need. But is there any way it can thrive? Check out Ted and Specialty Food Boston’s Jim Wilker in this video, where the two old hands talk about what it takes to grow and deliver a great product, vs what we get with commercial products. This would be a great little video to show your front of house staff if you find yourself trying to explain why you go to the extra trouble to source great stuff–and why they should care.
We had a more in-depth, off-camera interview with Ted about farming. Check out the rest of our conversation below.
SFB: Ted, how did you come to grow mesclun mix?
Ted: In the late 80’s, the term “mesclun” was not widely known, there were no “mesclun mixes” in the supermarket, and it was associated with high prices. It was more of a rarified product, the idea of which was brought over from Provence. I introduced chefs in New York to my mesclun mix back in the late 80’s. I was selling 1# bags of true mesclun mix for like $24/#. It had over 20 different varieties of greens, flowers, whatever–I was putting in things like rouge d’hiver, lola rossa, perilla, plus leaves from some of my asian greens like tatsoi and mizuna. In order to create the living edible mulch that these plants would grow in, I would plant things like clover, burnett and dandelion–much of which ended up in the mesclun mix.
My other business was baby head lettuces, which required sowing and transplanting. I had a year where I fell behind and missed the sowing cycle. I knew if we dug up the heads we had growing in the ground, I’d have nothing to replace them, because I had fallen behind–so I instructed my crew to just cut the leaves, and cut them small–so that we could preserve the head and they’d grow back. We took this mix of leaves, washed and dried it, and called our regular baby head lettuce customers to give them a heads up that they’d be getting a different product.
They loved it–went crazy for it–here was an already washed salad mix, made of beautiful, small baby leaves, with a whole mix of flavors and textures–a more affordable, straightforward version of mesclun, if you will–and that changed the course of things forever. The demand grew, but we didn’t see commercial “spring mix” really until ‘93 or ‘94. Then you start to see it go downhill–farmers figuring out how to do massive amounts, cheaply, containing far fewer varieties, sacrificing balance of flavors, packing it tighter, shipping it farther–to say nothing of how commercial farming approaches soil, the living medium in which these things grow.
It’s not that we don’t know how to be sustainable, it’s that we’ve forgotten.
SFB: What’s the significance of soil in the farming that you do?
Ted: To say soil is the most important ingredient in growing vegetables would not be an overstatement. Any farmer considers the nutrient content of the soil, that’s a basic given in order to grow food. But what commercial farming often doesn’t look at are the trillions of other microorganisms that are in healthy soil. It’s like the difference between eating food and being hooked up to an IV. And we wonder why we’re sick in this country.
SFB: What changes do you hope to see for the future?
Ted: What blows my mind is that until the 1860’s, New England was 100% self-sufficient when it came to farming. Then, when we started feeding cities, we started to see a shift towards single-crop farming. It used to be that every farm farmed multiple things. Now our food system, it’s been ripped apart. Now we grow maybe 5% of what we use here in New England. It’s not that we don’t know how to be sustainable, it’s that we’ve forgotten.
My hope for the future is that we move away from petrochemically-based farming practices and big-tool agriculture, which violently chops up huge amounts of soil, releasing enormous carbon reserves from the soil. We want to keep those carbon reserves in the soil, which is why I believe in low-till farming. You just turn the soil gently, as much as is needed, and always make sure that something is growing in it that’s replenishing the soil. Consider this–on my twelve acres, a quarter of an acre at a time, over a ton of greens a week. This end up being, over the course of six months, roughly half a million salads. From a twelve-acre farm! New England could be self-sufficient, grow healthy and nutritious food, have cause to revive agriculture education in schools, creating jobs locally, and grow enough food to feed everyone.
SFB: What do you think of the farm-to-table movement?
Ted: Honestly, I’d like to think I had something to do with coining that term. No, really–back then, you didn’t want to say “organic.” Organic isn’t what it is now–back then, people heard the term “organic” and automatically thought of a limp, dirty carrot, trucked in from Vermont a week ago, languishing on a shelf in a dusty co-op that cost twice as much as a “regular” carrot. The term was associated with Primitivism in people’s minds. For that reasons (and this was long before there was a legal definition of “organic”), I never choose to use those words to describe my product. I described it as “farm fresh” and told people that it was going right from my farm to your table. I’d like to think I helped coin that term!
Rick and Kristie Knoll bought a ten-acre farm in Brentwood, CA back in 1979, and have been using their “Tairwa’” approach to everything they farm, including the farm ecosystem itself, ever since. Biodynamic before organic was even cool, these trailblazers out in California grow your incredible green garlic, fava leaves, pea greens, stinging nettles, wild mustard greens, and cardoons. These are coming to us straight from the farm, right after being from the field, very carefully packed, and shipped overnight to us the next day. Often, these veggies are less than 48 hours out of the ground when you’re getting and serving them.
We interviewed Rick Knoll to find out more about their practices, what motivates them to do this work, and ask Rick about his hopes for the future of farming.
From their website: It’s not surprising that Rick has a strong interest in biodynamic farming. He holds a Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from UC Irvine. Much of what he studied in the early 1970’s laid the foundation for his interest in growing food without chemicals. After working for 6 years as an aerospace-industry chemist, Rick began to turn full time to organic farming, first by studying agroecology at UC Santa Cruz for 3 years, then becoming a full-time farmer.
Specialty Foods Boston: What made you decide to go into farming? What do you want people to know about why you use the farming practices you do?
Rick Knoll: I was recently out of the Navy and found myself getting sick all the time. I had strep throat four times in one year, and just wasn’t getting better. At the same time, I was in graduate school, studying organic chemistry, specifically, how it relates to plants. We were learning that all plants had ways to defend themselves against other plants, animals and threats in their environment. At that time, it was considered anthropomorphic to say that plants have immune systems, but essentially they do. Most drugs found in the medicines that we use originated from plants. In fact, most medicines are basically a manufactured emulation of the chemicals in plants that affect our health.
What I was finding out, in trying to get healthier, was that food was full of antibiotics, hormones and pesticides. It still is, but now it’s also genetically modified. It’s becoming food our bodies can’t recognize anymore; it’s a toxic invasion of our bodies.
You can’t grow anything with blemishes in this country.
Yet blemishes can be an indicator of health in a plant.
There are people who say that organic and non-organic foods aren’t all that different, because the nutrient levels in both are similar. But what’s not taken into account are all the beneficial microorganisms that live in and on our food when it’s grown naturally and not treated with pesticides. We NEED these microorganisms for a healthy immune system and brain function and, therefore, our health and intelligence. Now I’m providing with the food I grow, enhanced immune function to maintain a healthy body. That’s important to me and farmers like me.
SFB: What else do you wish people realized about your produce, vs. the commercial/commodity/mass- or factory-produced version of your product that they may not?
RK: How hard it is to grow a perfect-looking piece of fruit. You can’t grow anything with blemishes in this country. Yet blemishes can be an indicator of health in a plant. A peach with a small blemish may be one that survived a particular peach disease, rather than something grown in a sterile environment that has no resistance. The peach variety that survived is a healthier peach for us and for the environment.
SFB: What are your hopes for the future of farming?
RK: An end to genetic engineering, pesticides, herbicides, and to learn how to grow food ecologically. The more love you put into it, the more you get out of it. These non-ecological technologies are perverse to our health. You can’t expect to genetically engineer foods that have never been seen before, have never been grown before, and expect your body to just deal with it. I think that it’s the root cause of a lot of disease today.
I’d also like to see more young farmers. I don’t see that many; and I think it’s because it’s hard work to grow food. I’ve seen kids come and say they want to farm, but they just don’t want to work that hard. They’d rather be on their iPad. Typing on your iPad is the opposite of farming.
SFB: What is the most satisfying part of what you do?
RK: When we’re at the farmer’s market, and I see a young mother with a child come by–and the kid grabs a piece of fruit and shoves it in his mouth. And the mother yells at him and says “you don’t like that!!” but he does, and eats it anyway.
I love seeing someone bite into one of my peaches or plums and end up with the juice running down their hands and chin. Then their face lights up with a smile as their body recognizes REAL food!! That makes my day!
Rick’s wife and partner Kristie Knoll is a total badass too. Check her out in this article from the SF Gate, where she talks about why they decided not to use the word organic: “”I felt like the feds were going to be lowering the bar,” says Kristie Knoll, 57, a petite, voluble woman with close-cropped hair. “That blew me away. You don’t ever lower the bar. That’s not how you achieve greatness.”
