Serenbe Farm Field Trip

Tuesday most of the cooks and the sous chef at Holeman got the grand tour from Paige Witherington, the farm manager. As you might expect from a line cook field trip, there were a lot of dick jokes, laughter, and a little blood.

The farm at Serenbe is impressive; at just 3.5 acres, it produced 38,000 pounds of produce last year, all of it organic. At the height of the summer season, Paige told us they were harvesting over 500 pounds of of tomatoes every week, and the squash needed daily pickings to keep up with the plants.

In order to keep an organic farm healthy and productive on heavy Georgia clay, Paige practices the "3 Cs" of organic gardening: cover-cropping, crop rotation and composting. She likes buckwheat for its quick turnover--it flowers within 3 weeks of being planted-- and sunflowers. "Their taproots can get 12 feet long, so they break up the soil." And the residents of Serenbe love having all-you-can-pick sunflowers.

The field of heirloom tomatoes was surprisingly orderly, the vines tightly trellised in long rows. They grow red, white and green zebras, and massive Speckled Roman paste tomatoes. Paige picked two and handed them to one of the cooks. "Take these and ripen them. They're great, meaty tomatoes." Later that night, the striped giants had already acquired a vivid blush, well on their way. Heirlooms are one of the most sought-after crops of summer, and demand isn't the only reason they're expensive; Paige said that 2/3 of them don't even make it to market.

Another summer crop is sorrel, which Paige has sown in a patch that she's hoping to make perennial. We've been getting mixed sizes of sorrel leaves, mostly large ones, but the smaller leaves are tender and succulent, and the trademark sourness is more complex and herbal. Getting sorrel year-round would be great

This fall, Serenbe's customers can look forward to carrots, beets, celeriac and parsnips. "I've never grown parsnips here, so I'm really excited." Having grown addicted to parsnips in England, so am I.

An unexpected bonus was the herbs and flowers. We got nasturtiums for the tomato salad, borage flowers, which taste like cucumbers for the bartenders, and spillanthes or toothache flowers for the novelty. These last are like a cross between menthol and novocaine, numbing the mouth and causing serious drooling. Naturally, they found their way, chopped or whole, into wilted nasturtiums offered to unsuspecting staff members with the entreaty, "The wilted ones are more peppery. Try it!" I spotted the spillanthes before popping the nasturtium in my mouth. A waitress and the food runner were less fortunate.

We stopped by the inground trampoline on our way out, and hit up the Blue Eyed Daisy bakery for sandwiches before rolling back to Atlanta and our Tuesday night shift.