Bon Appétit Management Company

Since I moved to Seattle a year and a half ago, there’s no farm whose name has come up more than Quillisascut, located in the foothills of the Huckleberry Mountains in Rice, WA. And since I visit farms as Bon Appétit Management Company Foundation’s West Coast Fellow, I have lots of conversations about food and farming. Quillisascut is a cheese company, selling what they call “traditional farmstead cheese from the pampered pets of Pleasant Valley,” but it’s also a school for the domestic arts. After completing a five-day “Introduction to Farming” workshop at Quillisascut recently, nicely documented by Farmgirl Gourmet, I understand why this farm school is so beloved by food service professionals, healthcare students, farmers and aspiring farmers, vacationers, and other “co-producers” (as Slow Food and the farm’s cookbook, Chefs on the Farm refer to us “eaters”). Attendees from […]

The question is: How do you connect large volume needs of the University with the very small volume output of most Midwestern family farms? Bon Appétit at Washington University recently hosted a farmer’s meeting, inviting over 35 farmers from Illinois and Missouri, to tackle exactly this question.

As soon as we arrived at Country Roots Farm in Pueblo, CO, I knew this was going to be an interesting visit. Lying around were so many creative gadgets and yard decorations made from repurposed materials that I half expected Doc from Back to the Future to appear in Carhartts wielding a pitchfork.

A few decades ago, when the majority of hogs lived outdoors and were able to eat whatever they wanted, pork was deliciously fatty and juicy. As industrial agriculture grew, pork became known as “the other white meat.”Director of Culinary Operations Bernie Laskowski from the Art Institute of Chicago would like to do something about this state of porky affairs.

Students at Carleton College in Northfield, MN, are already well-versed about the importance of sourcing food locally, but it’s not often they get to actually visit one of the farms that supplies the café and see first-hand what it means to run a family farm.

I recently had the pleasure of visiting Larga Vista Ranch in Boone, Colorado along with some of the Bon Appétit team from Colorado College. Doug Wiley, who owns Larga Vista Ranch along with his wife Kim, is one of those passionate, charismatic people that I could listen to all day. A fourth-generation farmer working land that has been in his family for 95 years, he is well versed in everything from the benefits of raw milk to climate change and food safety.

Mother-son team Elizabeth MacAlister and Mark Gillman run Cato Corner Farm — a small, pasture-based, and family-owned cheese operation in Colchester, CT.

Located in the heart of ranching country, Whitman College in Walla Walla, WA, is proud to support the work of grass-based ranchers like Cheryl and Robert Cosner of Upper Dry Creek Ranch.

Last fall I had the pleasure of traveling to beautiful Colombia to visit the birthplace of the delicious Fair Trade Certified™ Cordillera chocolate with which Bon Appétit Management Company chefs bake. Now that I’ve gone over the basics in my first post and told you all about farming cacao in my second, I can now talk about the social responsibility aspect of the business.

The young farmers movement and interest in campus farms is blooming, and with them, inquiries about campus farms are steadily flowing to my inbox. This information is meant for sharing­ – for inspiration, ideas, and contacts. So here’s yet another amazing campus farm to know about: Zena Farm in Salem, OR.