Hudson Valley Food & Farming: Why Didn't Anyone Ever Tell Me That?

By Tessa Edick

Farming has sustained the Hudson Valley for more than four hundred years. Family farms grow succulent fruits and wholesome vegetables, from corn and cabbage to apples and peaches. They raise cows, chickens and lambs and produce an array of cheese and other fresh products. Hudson Valley locavores are once again turning to neighborhood farms for the freshest foods--and in the process, they are revitalizing the local economy and preserving the rich lands that are their heritage. Author Tessa Edick and the FarmOn Foundation are at the heart of this local movement. Their work is so simple yet so impactful that you will wonder, "Why didn't anyone ever tell me that?" With stunning photographs and an insightful narrative, Edick introduces some of the most innovative and inspiring Hudson Valley farmers along with their delectable harvest.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The History Press
• Release date: Nov 11, 2014
• ISBN: 9781625853004

Tessa Edick

Tessa Edick is founder and executive director of FarmOn! Foundation, which educates the public about the Hudson Valley farming community. She began her career as founder of Sauces "�n Love, where she revolutionized sauce in a jar and built the company into an international force. She is founder of the Culinary Partnership, which helps chefs launch their recipes to retail shelves. She has earned 16 NASFT sofi awards and had her products featured on Oprah's "O List." She writes the column "Meet your Farmer."?

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Introduction

MY FOOD FORMULA AND CELEBRATING THE HUDSON VALLEY FAMILY FARM

My food legacy: Born and raised in Upstate New York, I fled farming life for a city mentality, a cosmopolitan lifestyle, success and glamour. I traveled around the world in search of education, a career and like-minded people. Funny thing about traveling in search of something is that everything you need is always within you, never where you are going. Ironically, I ended up back in an agricultural community—the kind of community that made me so happy in my youth.

My journey into food is unusual. I grew up with a mother who was vegetarian but told us when someone generously cooks for you, you eat what he or she made and say thank you. She actually was a pescatarian, now that I know that term—though I had no idea as a child. We just ate good food, sourced from the farm, and eating was social.

My great-grandparents lived on a farm with dairy cows, cornfields and a gorgeous garden. Each of us kids had our own personalized mason jar filled with sea salt that we took to the garden to consume fresh-picked veggies. I was the eldest of three children raised by a struggling single mom who somehow always managed to produce homemade meals made from farm-fresh, local ingredients for us every day. She created drive-through convenience with high-quality ingredients and homegrown love by getting to know all of the food producers within a stone’s throw of our house. We ate with the seasons and frequented farmers’ markets weekly for the freshest food. With grandmothers, aunts and cousins, we preserved and canned those ripe, gorgeous fruits and vegetables at the end of each season at that farm so we could eat peaches, pickles, tomatoes and beans year-round. I had fifty cents to spend at each visit to the farmers’ market, and my choices were always the same—fresh chocolate milk and fabric from the fiber farms I could use to make Barbie’s clothes for her runway show.

The American silo and family farming in the Hudson Valley. Courtesy Stephen Mack.

My mother insisted that without breakfast, there was no point in going to school because you would be thinking about eating instead of figuring out how to change the world, so we were forced to the table in the morning for fresh bread and eggs or French toast from yesterday’s loaf. Or Georgette, who minded me and whom I called Gaga, would make me an egg (which she always got from the farm) over easy and tell me not to tell my mom it was cooked in bacon fat, which made it perfect with that crispy white edge. I loved to clean the bright orange yolk on the plate with warm buttered toast.

Mom packed our school lunch each day in the morning—always with a note of affection on our napkins that, at sixteen years old, felt anything but cool. Snacks were limited to fresh fruit and vegetables in Tupperware she would cut up and have ready to eat in the fridge. This was a far cry from the salty, sugary, crunchy treats our friends’ moms served that made us all want more and an orange soda—the real forbidden fruit in our home.

By the time she was eight, my sister Tara was a professional sugar extortionist—she’d do anything for the stuff. One of her trademark bribes was picking our neighbors’ flowers (straight out of their garden), knocking on their door and offering them their own flowers in exchange for an orange soda. Not my mother’s proudest moment, but a family legend nonetheless.

This morning’s egg. Courtesy Cayla Zahoran.

At Trevor Valley Farm, freshly sliced tomatoes from the garden with tree-ripened peaches for lunch. Courtesy Tessa Edick.

Dinner was never at 5:00 p.m. like the families of five to fifteen kids that were common in our Irish Catholic neighborhood. I was constantly begging for cube steak at 5:00 p.m. like the Dermodys’ meat and potato dinner, but since my parents were entrepreneurs and divorced, eating at dinnertime seemed to be an impossible feat. We ate closer to 8:00 pm and often out, mostly at restaurants owned by friends of my mom who fed us what they had cooked that day, something special that we would eat family style, which Mom loved. It was good eating and somehow—never mind her five-foot frame—my mom would eat her own food and off our plates too, a practice I still dislike today. Eat your own food from your own plate, and if you would like seconds, ask politely, please.

When we ate at home, it was always like a sitcom. When my dad and mom split up, my mom’s friends stayed with us to help out—but they never left. I grew up with the Ya-Yas who were constantly in the kitchen and cooking and who made eating social and fun. We never had to eat anything we didn’t like, but we had to try it once.

We never had to finish our plate, though we were encouraged to eat until we were satisfied, and we were confident that another meal was hours away. We were familiar with all types of vegetables, fruit, fish and freshly bottled milk. My mother loved to bake, and as a teenager, I followed her lead.

Since we grew up without money and both my parents were entrepreneurs, our eating schedule wasn’t the norm, but there were a few constants. Milk came in glass half-gallon jugs from Byrne Dairy, and when we were little, it was delivered to the milk box off the pantry. We always had fresh tomato sauce that my mother would spend a whole day making in a special big heavy pot that started with scoring fresh tomatoes, removing the skin and seeds and melting into pure goodness for pasta, fra diavolo and other meals each week.

The other oddity at our table was the abundance of fresh lobster and clams. My mom had a client who imported and exported seafood and brought her a box of lobster tails weekly, which—when you don’t eat meat and need to add protein to a meal—is a great go-to. We had more lobster growing up than you can fathom—in our eggs, in sandwiches for the beach, in pasta, in risotto, in salad, as appetizers and always as a perfect lobster roll, which is still, hands down, my favorite food today. It was ironic to always have the fancy shellfish as a staple in the freezer given our economic challenge, but I still appreciate every bite of every lobster I eat today and devour the sweet meat from every corner of the shell.

Speaking of shells, clambakes are another popular eating tradition in the Upstate New York summer months on holidays, birthdays or boating days. Friends and families would gather at lake houses of friends and family or tie up the boats on the lake and celebrate the few sunny warm days with laughter and food. We would shuck the clams and eat them raw with lemon and cocktail sauce or steam them with a quick dip in melted butter or even grill the cherry stone gems and eat them hot off their shells when they popped open. We ate dozens of them in a day with fresh butter sugar–style corn on the cob, and then we’d pair all of it with the one really unique food that no one knows about unless you are from the New York Finger Lakes region: the salt potato. It’s a small new potato with a thin skin—not red and not fingerling—but when boiled with plenty of salt, it forms a crust and melts the interior into a mashed texture that never allows you to eat just one. Hinerwadle’s was the farm that produced them, and I have yet to see them beyond New York State borders, despite the recent celebration of the one-hundred-year-old family farm.

Sunday dinner at Grandmother Dot’s house was always formal. Your seat at the table started in the kitchen at the kids’ table, and your manners earned your right to a seat at the big table, ripe with witty conversation, good food and memorable eating habits with the family that sat ten or twelve any given Sunday.

At the big table, less-than-perfect manners were intolerable, and the table was set with enough plates, forks, spoons and glasses to make Emily Post’s head spin. If you weren’t in training until your teenage years, you would be terrified arriving at the properly set table and trying to decide which utensil or glass to use when and how. But despite her ironclad rules, Grandmother Dot hardly ruled with an iron fist. She always pulled newbies aside and gave them one simple rule so they’d always know exactly which plate or glass to use for the right purpose. Make the OK symbol with both hands. The left hand forms a b, and the right hand forms a d. B stands for bread on the left, your bread plate, and d stands for the drink on your right, the drinking glass. Once we got those down, we just watched and learned how and what to pick up next. It seemed somehow silly at the time, but I feel fortunate that my grandmother was convinced that someday you will sit next to the president for dinner and your table manners will be useful! Now I never worry when I’m at the table, whether I’m eating in the field with farmers or in a dining room with diplomats.

A foraging, pasture-raised pig. Courtesy Cayla Zahoran.

There were strict rules. If you burped at our table, you were immediately scolded and banished. You were to wash up, dress and come to dinner with interesting and informed conversation to share to make memorable meals worthy of the effort made to grow, prepare and cook the food. Because my grandmother worried that we would embarrass ourselves eating without decorum or politesse, once we had her rules down, her strictness actually freed us up to enjoy the meal and the company. It honored the bounty and the moment of a family sharing dinner together every Sunday afternoon and the goodness to come from that experience. My Grandmother Dot was right.

Holidays? They were madness growing up, even when our turkey was served with heaping sides of politesse. We were surrounded by two families that shopped, prepped, cooked and served everything you can dream up for a fattening celebratory meal. I had no idea how important it was at the time to source local and eat fresh, nutritious food because we always had it. Aunt Aurelia made everything we ate from local farms and fed us well. Thanksgiving was always crazed, as both sides of the families converged. We had everything from a microwaved turkey Aunt Laura insisted on making in the ’80s (to show off the new invention she had first: the microwave oven) to a deep-fried turkey in the yard, which I think was an excuse for my uncles to build a bonfire and buy a keg. The one consistent thing was the turkey, which came from a local farm. Who knew that’s why it was always so delicious, no matter the method of cooking or who made it. We were already thanking the farmer by buying direct!

We had a plethora of parties growing up. My mom believed that if you ate standing up, there were no calories. She always watched her weight living by these rules: never deny yourself any food you crave; eat fresh food in season, including plenty of fruit and vegetables; and three bites of anything is all you should ever need to be satisfied but stay fit and healthy. Our parties were always overflowing with people, whether it was a seated dinner or cocktail party with small bites. Sometimes the FL message was whispered around to us all, which translated as family last. FL was code for us to eat last because more folks showed up than we had prepared to serve! Never mind that Mom was a pescatarian—there was always a spiral-sliced ham roasted and served with mustards and chutneys and bread. Salty food meant people would drink, which Mom was convinced kept everyone laughing and made for a better party. She wasn’t wrong.

New York State’s Hudson Valley is a food mecca and farming treasure. Courtesy Stephen Mack.

Everyday eating varied but was always healthy, quick and easy, though it never sacrificed freshness, flavor or nutrition. If you eat food with nutrition, you eat less. You have fewer cravings and are generally thinner as you simply don’t eat too much. Each week, Dad would come to dinner with us and the Ya-Yas, which meant a meal with at least five women, as well as delicious food of all kinds, chatter and conversation that was never dull and made me learn that the table is where emotion lives. There were tears and fights, admissions and corrections, disdain and love. These memories bring me back to the kitchen at night to cook. They bring me back to a family table to