Hotchkiss Magazine: Fairfield Farm and Food

16 H O T C H K I S S M A G A Z I N E

Growing a New Kind of Education

B Y D I V Y A S Y M M E R S

Up on the[Hotchkiss] Farm:

few rules apply when you’re wan-

dering around the Hotchkiss Farm

– still known formally as Fairfield

Farms – but the most important is

to close the gates behind you. The

280-acre School property off Route 41, where open

meadows are dotted by clumps of white oak, hickory

and maple trees, is home to some 50 head of cattle – a

benign and shaggy-coated mix of Devon, Devon-cross,

and Hereford and Hereford-crosses that belong to local

farmer Allen Cockerline.

Poised between Lakeville and Sharon, 260 acres of this

gorgeously diverse blend of forest, wetlands, upland

fields, and pasture were acquired by Hotchkiss in 2004, a

generous partial gift from Jack Blum ’47, a former

trustee, and his wife, Jeanne, who raised Black Angus cat-

tle here for 27 years. In 2010 the School purchased the

remaining 17 acres, a tract that included the Blum fami-

ly’s stately, white-columned home and three sturdy out-

buildings. With dramatic views of the iconic twin oaks

beloved of local painters and the Taconic hills cascading

north to Massachusetts, the farm is a spectacular setting

for events such as the annual Prep for the Planet day,

held for the third time in September 2011 and inspired

by Head of School Malcolm McKenzie’s remark, several

years ago, that “Prep for college is vital, but prep for the

planet is a more compelling matter, a matter of survival.”

For Hotchkiss preps, it’s an opportunity to spend a

day outside picking apples, beans, and squash, digging

potatoes, clearing trails, and in general experiencing a

place that’s becoming a pivotal part of Hotchkiss life.

“We’re getting better every year,” said Josh Hahn, assis-

tant head of school and director of environmental ini-

tiatives. “We’re more organized. We have more crops,

so the diversity of the produce is better. And these kids

are discovering where their food comes from, how it’s

processed, and where it goes. ”

“I think today, especially, it’s really important to be

able to grow food locally in an organic way,” said Maude

Quinn ’15. “And I think it’s really cool to be out here

and know that Hotchkiss is part of something like this.”

About eight tons of potatoes were harvested from the

Farm this fall, which is almost half the estimated 20 tons

consumed in the Hotchkiss Dining Hall during a typical

academic year. Students, faculty, and staff have been

feasting on squash and fresh greens, tomatoes and an

impressive variety of other vegetables planted, tended,

picked, and even pickled, by members of FFEAT

(Fairfield Farms Ecosystems and Adventure Team) and

six hardworking farm interns. Thanks to an agreement

with the School’s food service company as well as con-

tracts with a pair of humane, FDA-approved slaughter-

houses in Connecticut and Massachusetts, an estimated

600 organic free-range chickens raised on the farm will

A

Teaching Healthy Habits

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17F a l l 2 0 1 1

‘‘My hope for the farm is that everyone atHotchkiss will be ableto say that they had apart in providing thefood that they eat inthe dining hall.” —Maren Wilson ’14

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be cooked and eaten at Hotchkiss this year, as will meat

from three grass-fed steers the School purchased from

Allen Cockerline; this spring, there may even be rice

from an experimental rice paddy.

“My hope for the Farm is that everyone at Hotchkiss

will be able to say that they had a part in providing the

food that they eat in the dining hall,” said farm intern

Maren Wilson ’14, in a passionate email at summer’s

end. “We are a big school so it is a huge goal. But the

internship program in the summer and FFEAT in the

fall and spring help so much in integrating talk about

the farm in classrooms and at lunch tables, and helping

advertise how sustainability and organic farming are

really important in the world today.”

A Destination and a Classroomeyond its increasingly visible role providing organ-

ically grown food for the School Dining Hall, the

Hotchkiss Farm is also where art classes can practice

plein air painting, poetry classes can find inspiration,

environmental science classes can explore terrain that

includes rare grassland bird habitats, and American

history classes can reflect on the fact that this was once

part of a land grant from King George III. For the past

two years, the School’s human development teaching

assistants have organized a nutrition seminar, and there

are other courses in the works that will look at every-

thing from genetically modified food to food-borne ill-

nesses. When completed, farm trails will add an esti-

mated three to five miles to the six or more that already

traverse the Hotchkiss Woods, resulting in an even

more welcoming nature experience/destination for stu-

dents, faculty, staff, and neighboring town residents.

One particular stretch of field between the big red barn

and a screened gazebo that Jack Blum built for his wife

has already lent itself to tented gatherings of all sorts,

from an end-of-year staff and faculty retirement cele-

bration in June to a 99.9 percent farm-grown Trustees’

dinner in September. At a faculty wedding in August,

“The cows came right up and watched,” said Head of

the Visual and Performing Arts Department and

Instructor in Art Charlie Noyes ’78, with a laugh. “The

Farm has become a part of the fabric of the School.”

In the spring of 2008, it was a different story. As

B

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Noyes puts it, when he said farm, “no one knew where

it was.” But by then Allen Cockerline, owner of

Whipporwill Farm in Salisbury and a longtime purvey-

or of healthy, grass-fed beef, had been brought on

board to help manage the property. He and Noyes were

old friends, and he encouraged Noyes to get involved

with planting crops. “It really was an organic process,”

Cockerline explained during an educational day at the

Farm held for faculty and staff last summer. “There

were early discussions of what can we do? How can we

grow food? Then we sank the plow into the ground and

said, ‘All right, let’s do it!’ ”

Enlisting the initially reluctant help of the School’s

climbing club, a co-curricular activity he coached at the

time, Noyes took them out to the Farm to plant squash,

pumpkins, beans, and potatoes, all crops that are simple

to grow. At the same time, he sat down and wrote a

proposal for a new co-curricular activity – the Fairfield

Farms Ecosystems and Adventure Team, or FFEAT.

The following fall he and the kids who had signed up

for FFEAT spent days cleaning out the Farm’s barn,

since its concrete floor made it ideal for storing potatoes

and apples in what they hoped, erroneously it turned

out, would be a rat-proof root cellar of sorts. Deer had

already decimated the beans and pumpkins. And when

it came time to harvest the potatoes, Noyes sent three

girls out to check how they looked. “Yeah, yeah, you

already showed us where they are,” they assured him,

and off they went, only to come back empty-handed.

“They couldn’t find the potatoes,” Noyes remem-

bered, laughing. “So we all trundled back out to the

field – and this was a teaching moment, because the

vines had withered at that point, and because we don’t

use fertilizer or weed killer, it just looked like a weedy

field. I said to them, ‘If you stand here, you can see

there’s kind of a row,’ and they said, ‘Oh, yeah.’ And

they started to dig, and they pulled up a potato, and

you’d think they’d found gold, they were so happy.” He

laughed again. “They all started digging and they were

filling the bottoms of their T-shirts with dirty potatoes.

When I asked them what they were doing, they said,

‘We’re gonna eat them! We’ll bring them back to the

dorm and have a feed!’ ”

The excitement of that moment was as unexpected as

the realization that the students didn’t know potatoes

grew in the ground; admittedly, plenty of city-bred

adults don’t know, either. It’s only in the last decade

that the organic and locavore farming movement has

gained momentum, fueled by ‘slow-food’ gurus such as

Alice Waters, who spoke at the School in 2009, and The

Omnivore’s Dilemma author Michael Pollan, who has a

house in nearby Cornwall. The knowledge disconnect

between the process of growing food and the con-

sumers who buy it has narrowed considerably; even

Wal-Mart sells organic, locally grown produce these

days. In the three years since FFEAT was founded, stu-

dent awareness of where their food comes from has

similarly grown in leaps and bounds – as has the

School’s use of Fairfield Farms. “We now have five

acres under tillage and we could expand easily and

double that. That’s a lot of food,” said Noyes. “This

year we’ve partnered with Sodexo, our food services

company, to streamline the farm-to-table process, so

we’re getting homegrown food to the School more effi-

ciently. That means most of it is going to the Dining

Hall – so kids are eating what kids grow.”

A Homecoming of Sortshere’s definite synchronicity in the fact that the

house Hotchkiss acquired in 2010 was built in

1905 by Albert B. Landon, the husband of Carrie

Bissell, who was Maria Hotchkiss’s aunt. In the 1700s,

the land surrounding it was the core of a 7,000-acre

tract deeded by King George to Captain James Landon,

who in turn conveyed 170 acres of what became known

as Tory Hill to the Bissell family. (A loyalist, Landon

lost everything in the Revolution.) Both Maria

Harrison Bissell Hotchkiss and her brother Charles H.

Bissell, a future School trustee, were born in a house on

T

Opposite: Students enjoysome downtime at thefarm, attracting mild inter-est from resident cows.

Top: Charlie Noyes ’78gives instruction to mem-bers of FFEAT (FairfieldFarms Ecosystems andAdventure Team).

Above: Erin Markey ’11shows off an example of thefarm’s robust crop.

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Tory Hill Farm, also known as Home Farm. Before her

death in New York City in 1901, Maria visited Charles

frequently, and her funeral service was held there and

was “largely attended,” according to records, “the fac-

ulty and students of the Hotchkiss School being pre-

sent in a body.”

When Charles Bissell died, his will included the wish

that his “farm of land with the buildings thereon, con-

taining one hundred and seventy-five acres, more or

less, on Tory Hill, in said Town of Salisbury” to the

Maria H. Hotchkiss School Association “to create in

said school an Agricultural Course or Department

where, under scientific direction, the various branches

of farming or dairying, fruit culture or other kindred

agricultural subjects can be both practically and scien-

tifically taught.”

The Blums, too, were avidly committed to conserv-

ing the land – and Jack Blum, as a former commission-

er of the Connecticut Department of Agriculture,

hoped that Hotchkiss students would “work and study

on the farm and become educated, engaged, and pas-

sionate stewards of the environment.”

It’s finally happening. For the past two years

Hotchkiss has sponsored summer farm internships, and

Kurt Hinck ’08, now a sophomore at Gettysburg

College, and lower-mid Maren Wilson ’14, are veterans

of both summers. For Wilson, who arrived not knowing

what to expect, it’s been an opportunity to master skills

like weeding, seeding, harvesting, and tending fruit trees;

even welding portable chicken coops and raising the

birds – a breed known as Kosher Kings – in “the most

healthy and organic way possible.” Hinck, who was co-

manager this year, had worked on a farm in Millbrook

every summer since his lower-mid year and volunteered

for the Farm’s first spring planting as a senior in 2008.

He’s still amazed by the progress that’s been made. “Just

that little five-acre plot, we buried them in squash last

year. We had too much. The potential is awesome.”

This summer the program was expanded from three

to five days a week, and Wilson said she “smiled all the

way home” because of the enormous tasks accomplished

by the group, which also included Tavo True-Alcala ’11,

Sandie Knuth ’10, and Nancy Palmer ’11. Supervising

them was Serena Whitridge, a Millbrook School (“I’m a

traitor, sorry!”) and University of Vermont graduate who

worked at Growing Power, a nonprofit urban farming

organization in Milwaukee before coming to Hotchkiss.

“It’s exciting seeing the potential of what it is now and

then dreaming of the future, of how much more food

can be produced,” she said, noting that one of their more

ambitious projects is building hoop houses – portable,

passive solar greenhouses that extend the growing season

by allowing winter planting.

They also help boost soil fertility: the Farm’s

Stockbridge clay loam, while a “great grassland soil,”

can be tricky in wet years with crops, “corn, soybeans,

that kind of stuff,” according to Allen Cockerline, who

works closely with students. The kind of tender-hearted

farmer who takes care to ensure his cattle lead idyllic

lives with ends that are as swift and humane as possible

(the three steers he sold Hotchkiss were sent to a

slaughter-house that runs on principles established by

animal advocate Temple Grandin), not long ago he

took a group of faculty and staff on a tractor tour up a

narrow grassy road and down to a small, experimental

rice paddy, where a Japanese variety already successful

in Vermont was planted last spring. “Who would have

thought we’d be growing rice?” he asked, with a grin.

“But it’s credible. It’s viable. And we’re doing it.”

Modeling Self-Reliancearther up on Farm property there’s a beaver swamp

where Charlie Noyes hopes to put in observation

decks. There are trails that need to be built, marked with

signage, and maintained. New crops are being planned

(this year, the Farm grew black beans for the first time)

along with new and larger storage areas to hold the pro-

Above: Members of theprep class harvest potatoesat the annual Prep for thePlanet Day in September.

F

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Below: Students work atPrep for the Planet Day,before sitting down to ahearty farm-to-table lunch,with food from FairfieldFarms.

dishes whose enticingly labeled contents included

“tossed salad with tomatoes from the Hotchkiss Farm”;

“herb roasted potatoes with potatoes and rosemary

from the Hotchkiss Farm”; “braised greens with collard

and kale from the Hotchkiss Farm”, and braised barbe-

cue brisket from Alan Cockerline’s grass-fed cows.

Even the fresh cider was pressed by the kids from

apples they’d picked that morning. “It was a great expe-

rience,” said Serena Sommerfield ’15, seated contented-

ly on a hay bale near classmates Gloria Odoemelam,

Kahiya McDaniels, and Maude Quinn.

It’s only the first of many. “Our focus is on how

these kids can create their own futures,” points out Josh

Hahn. “Producing energy with the new biomass plant,

building soil and sequestering carbon, and growing

food – this is all part of the creative, regenerative, entre-

preneurial, problem-solving mindset. The Farm builds

context for the content we teach in the classroom. Even

if we only produce enough tomatoes for a month or

half the potatoes we consume all year, we’re modeling

not just being consumers, we’re modeling self-reliance.

And that’s really the thrust of each and every environ-

mental initiative the School promotes.”

duce that’s harvested next year. There’s already an

emphasis on food justice, with the Farm participating in

local food banks and similar outreach, including educa-

tional displays right in the Dining Hall.

“A lot of my kids are saying, ‘OK, this is all well and

good, but what about the people who can’t afford

organic?’ ” explained Noyes, who sees the Farm’s poten-

tial for integration into the life of the School as limitless.

“One of Josh Hahn’s missions as environmental coordi-

nator is to weave in curricular elements – not just envi-

ronmental studies and science courses, but also the arts,

languages, math. Every program, whether co-curricular

or curricular, will be built on the four R’s: responsibili-

ty, relationship, relevance – which is absolutely essential

– and rigor.”

In September, after a morning of hard but exhilarat-

ing work for Prep for the Planet day, the prep class was

treated to a farm-to-table lunch prepared by Andy Cox,

the new manager of the School’s dining services. A far

cry from the packed sandwiches of yore, there in the

Farm’s red barn, not far from where the latest batch of

fast-growing Kosher King chicks peeped contently

under warm lights, a long table was covered in chafing

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A Passionate ‘Farm to Table’ Chef

B Y K R I S T E N H I N M A N ’ 9 4

The Dining Services’ Andy Cox:

ast summer, as Andrew Cox prepped

his family’s move from Boston to the

Lakeville area, he realized there’d be a

few adjustments to country life – like,

the lack of mail delivery in his new

town of Copake, NY. All things considered, however,

the 33-year-old chef was ready to escape the urban jun-

gle and spread out in a landscape primed for his dream

project: building out a local food system.

Cox, who hails from New Haven, came of age as a

cook at the beginning of a national culinary awakening,

just as socially-conscious consumers began to press for

more sustainably- and humanely-sourced whole foods

at their favorite groceries and restaurants. He’s staffed

stands at farmers’ markets and worked the soil beneath

his ingredients. The food he serves his own family

comes from small growers who eschew hormones and

antibiotics, pesticides and fossil fuel-based fertilizers.

Cox put in stints for chefs who shared his beliefs in

Oregon, Chicago and Boston. Then he joined the ranks

of corporate food service, where he has helped improve

sustainability practices at Sodexo in particular. Cox

recently left his post as Sodexo’s executive chef at

Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of

Government, where he served locally-sourced repasts

to the likes of Condoleeza Rice and Al Gore, to take

over as Sodexo’s general manager of Hotchkiss Dining

Services. Cox says the School’s farm was a big lure to

Lakeville. But his rapport with Josh Hahn, director of

environmental initiatives, and John Tuke, chief financial

officer, was equally important.

“I could see we were all on the same page in terms of

achieving more sustainability,” says Cox. “We all see

eye-to-eye on the challenges we have, but also the

opportunity to really be a leader in the industry.”

What will the 21st-century dining hall look like?

Here, Cox expands on his philosophy and plans to

innovate in Lakeville.

Q You’ll have to tell me how a former physicsmajor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Instituteended up in culinary school.

A I studied physics for more than a year, but then I

switched majors several times. Eventually my parents

suggested a leave of absence. I moved to Chicago and

did some telecoms engineering. A friend came for the

summer, and since I got out of my union job early

every day we wound up cooking dinner every night.

Before she went back to the East Coast she put me on

the mailing list of every culinary school in the city. I got

laid off after 9/11, but they gave me re-training money.

I ended up enrolling at Kendall College.

L

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23F a l l 2 0 1 1

‘‘The farm manager andI want to grow all thefood that we need andwe’re looking at thosecosts now. We mightsucceed with potatoesby next year.”—Andrew Cox

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Q You must have done some cooking as a kid.

I actually became a vegetarian in college and wound up

having to cook for myself a lot since my fraternity was

not very vegetable-friendly.

Q Do you eat meat now?

A Yes. I gave it up for four years because I was moral-

ly-opposed, not to killing animals but to eating the

highly-processed commodity meat that’s everywhere in

our society. The first time I ate meat again, a friend had

gone deer hunting. I thought that I might as well start

back up with the real stuff. We did a rack of venison

with a cherry and pinot-noir reduction.

Q You eventually landed at Blue Ginger, theBoston-area restaurant owned by celebrity chefMing Tsai. But your formative education in sea-sonal cooking came much earlier?

A Yes, while I was at culinary school I went to intern

for a Kendall alumnus who had a farm-to-table restau-

rant in Ashland, Oregon. The menu changed every day

based on which growers showed up at the back door. I

visited a lot of farms, and I volunteered at one that did a

lot of our greens.

Q How did that influence your outlook as achef?

A When I went back to Chicago I was only willing to

work in restaurants that served local food. There were

basically only three at the time; I just bothered the chefs

till I got a job. I ended up at a very refined restaurant

with a chalkboard that listed every ingredient and what

farm it was from. The chef quizzed the waiters con-

stantly on the sourcing — he was that passionate about

making sure people knew where the food came from.

Even after I moved into corporate food service, that

philosophy was still what influenced me the most. I’ve

tried to take advantage of every opportunity to push

people toward using local food and reducing waste.

Q Why is local food better?

A You can’t know what’s happening on a farm halfway

around the world, and it’s pretty easy to green-wash

with certain labels. With local food you can find out

what farmers are putting into the soil – if it involves pes-

ticides, petrochemical fertilizers, insecticides. You can

learn what they’re doing with their water management.

You can find out if they’re paying their workers a living

wage. Your food is going to be healthier, you’ll know if

it’s better for the environment, and you’ll respect it a lot

more. You’ll know you’re helping to stimulate the local

economy and developing community.

Q I understand Hotchkiss just bid out itsfood-service contract for the first time in morethan a decade, and though the School decidedto continue working with its previous contrac-tor, Sodexo, you were an important part of thewinning package, along with a set of sustain-ability standards that the company wants toimplement.

A The program is called A Better Tomorrow, and it

has 14 metrics that we work toward. Some of them are

measurable, that we’ll look at quarterly or annually.

Local purchasing, energy reduction, and health and

wellness all factor in.

A You didn’t come in thinking that feedingkids healthier food would be easy, did you?

My wife reminded me that she’d gone to a prep

school, and everybody hated the food. She said, ‘The

kids are gonna hate the food no matter what you do.’ I

Below: Chef Cox makes anafternoon visit to the Farm

and gets some just-pickedproduce from a student.

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25F a l l 2 0 1 1

guess there’s only room for improvement; that’s how I

see it. I hated brussels sprouts growing up, until I

learned to cook them properly. I think Hotchkiss kids

would eat beef tongue if it’s cooked well.

Q So where do you start?

A My first focus is on cooking real food well, from

scratch. There’s stuff we’re serving that I myself would-

n’t eat, like frozen strawberries in syrup. We have a full

bakery and a Culinary Institute of America-trained

baker, but we’re buying pre-made scones and throwing

them into the oven. Items like those need to be looked

at across the board. We’ve done away with large, sauce-

laden portions of meat at lunch. We’re trying to stick to

lighter sandwiches. We started offering an organic oat-

meal bar every morning with various toppings. Do we

still serve Cap’n Crunch cereal? Yes. But the oatmeal bar

has been really well received. You just can’t take away all

the fat and sugar at once.

Q How do you ramp up the locally-sourcedofferings?

A We have some now from Connecticut and

Massachusetts, but I’ll be working on getting even more

into our system. There are a lot of factors involved; it’s

complicated from the standpoints of food safety and

pricing, as well as transportation. Mainly I’m trying to

figure out things like, how many carrots do we go

through in a year? Can we grow them here at the

Hotchkiss farm, harvest them at their peak, process and

then store them for use them all year-round?

Q Wow. How much Hotchkiss-sourced foodare we talking about?

A The farm manager and I want to grow all the food

that we need, and we’re looking at those costs now. We

might succeed with potatoes by next year. If we can

grow 18 tons of potatoes, that’ll save us money. My

long-term goal is to put a processing plant-slash-kitchen

on the farm.

Q What about meat?

A There’s a lot of red tape there, and I’m trying to break

through that now. In the case of our beef, it’s basically all

commodity. It’s full of hormones and antibiotics. Can we

afford to switch all our beef to grass-fed right now? No.

But when we start saving money in other areas, including

energy and waste, that will help. I’ve just set up an

arrangement with a slaughterhouse in Massachusetts so

that we can raise our own cattle, slaughter and serve it. It

turns out there’s even a local farming family with a stu-

dent at Hotchkiss who has a number of steer, and they’re

willing to sell to us. First I have to set up processes to be

sure everything meets USDA regulations and Sodexo

product-quality assurance.

Q You mentioned energy savings. What kindof shape did you find the kitchen in?

A Oh, man. The bakery has lights that are on 24

hours a day, because nobody knows where the light

switch is. I’ll walk by storerooms with lights on when

nobody’s there. I think we could install motion sensors

there for savings. We also have seven walk-in refrigera-

tors, four reach-ins, and three walk-in freezers; it’s too

much. We use one refrigerator just to store oil that gets

used on one of the buses. It doesn’t need to be refriger-

ated! I’ve already talked to the mechanic and he’s going

to just start taking these containers. We’re paying for

water and energy where we don’t need to be.

Q Are you starting to hear about some of yourchanges from students?

A I’ve gotten some comments about the fact that we

don’t have dessert every night any more. But we have

fresh fruit available 24 hours a day. Malcolm asked

what we could do with stuff from the farm, to highlight

it there. We ended up with carrot cupcakes and a cream

cheese frosting.

Q Mmm. That reminds me of a Hotchkiss tra-dition known as “a feed.” Have you heard of it?

A No.

Q It involves late-night gluttony. I’m guessingyour influence won’t be felt there as much.

A I’m not sure about that. But you never know.

Left: In the School’s pastrykitchen, Cox shows somegarlic twist rolls for theevening’s dinner.Purchasing from localgrowers, energy reduction,and health and wellness areamong the dining services’sustainability standards.

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Documents

Hotchkiss Magazine: Fairfield Farm and Food