<GuerrillaGrilling1>

$1 Oyster Monday

GUERRILLA GRILLING AT NESENKEAG FARM

At 8:00 am on Monday, June 9th I found myself with seven Rialto cooks, servers, busers and managers crawling up 93 North towards Litchfield, New Hampshire to visit Eero Ruuttila and Liana Eastman at their Nesenkeag Farm. We were off on our first Guerrilla Grilling adventure. After some strong coffee and crisp toast, we hit the road – Nuno with his flat bed truck loaded with a grill, a cooler and service for 12 and Catherine in her Honda with most of the staff.

From 93 to 3 to 3A, the roads narrowed, the view opened but housing developments dominated and my heart sank. I remembered from other visits that the soil in this particular stretch of southeastern New Hampshire is exceptionally fertile. Zillions of years ago glacial run-off from the White Mountains paved the earth with highly productive loam—great soil rich with organic matter and perfect for farming. To see it planted with rows of look-alike houses instead of rows of tomatoes was depressing.

Finally, after three miles of suburban sprawl, we reached Nesenkeag—a haven of organic farming. We drove through the gate and pulled up next to a barn filled with tractors and equipment. A bright red, gleaming Ducati motorcycle sat beside a slightly faded red cultivator (the cultivator is Eero’s, the Ducati is the delivery man’s).

Red vehicles - tractor and Ducati

On this record-breaking 95 degree day, a small work area remained cool under the shade of shag bark hickory trees, a lean-to constructed by a group from the Timberland company and the gurgle of the nearby Merrimac River. A fat, warty toad enjoyed the shade, almost fading into the color of the wooden pallet and the brown leaves below.

A nicely camouflaged toad

Newly harvested, cleaned greens are spun dry in three old Maytag washing machines, stripped down to their colander-like drums. An old truck converted into a refrigerated walk-in keeps everything fresh until the Ducati-loving delivery person picks it up and takes it to Rialto and other Boston and New Hampshire restaurants.

On the side of one shed a small altar honors the culture and history of Cambodia, the home of many of the farmers who work at Nesenkeag. A compelling photo makes you stop and take a closer look. It is of a Cambodian genocide memorial.

The work area is cool and humid. The Cambodian workers don conical hats and prepare to weed the fields. It doesn’t feel quite like typical New Hampshire.

Cambodian women working in the fields at Nesenkeag Farm

We all load into the back of Eero’s faded blue pick-up truck, feeling carefree to be seatbelt-less, perched on the rails of an old truck, bouncing up, down and over dirt roads.

On the pick-up truck

In the pick-up truck

Eero gives us a tour of the fields—pointing out the soil differences between the rich upper fields and the lower, sandier fields closer to the river. Spring flooding the last few years inundated these lower fields with water, destroying crops and sending the farm into a re-organizing frenzy.

Eero and the Guerrilla Grilling team touring the farm

Nesenkeag is an 100% certified organic farm. Keeping this certification has become increasing difficult because of the time-consuming and often ridiculous paperwork that the Federal government now requires. Eero uses a green manure system, planting wheat and legumes in combination to help fix nitrogen to the soil and increase microbe growth. Peas & oats, winter rye & hairy vetch are planted on rotation with other plants. About 1/3 of his fields are fallow each year.

Lush red clover and iddy biddy spinach just peeping up

In one field, rows of tall red clover alternate with young potato plants—Eero’s technique for tricking the not-so-sharp potato beetles into thinking there are no tender potato plants anywhere around. The clover forms a barrier so the bugs can’t find the potato plants.

A hidden row of potato plants

Eero is a true steward of the land. He responsibly and respectfully tends to it, working it and resting it, educating visitors about it, sharing its yields with food banks and restaurants alike. The land is owned by a land trust and Eero has been its manager for the last 22 years and hopefully for the next 22 and the 22 after those as well.

LUNCH

A full plate

A shaded feast

Nuno lit the Smoky Joe and everyone helped set the table. Liana, Eero’s wife, had borrowed a little tent, tables and chairs and even brought red-checked tablecloths. Olives, salami, Parmigiano Reggiano, mixed nuts with dukkah, Tuscan rolls, confit artichokes and garlic yogurt (all from the Rialto kitchen) adorned the table. As we waited for the coals to heat, we nibbled: garlic yogurt smeared on Tuscan bread topped with a quarter of an artichoke and a shard of Parmigiano Reggiano. A delicious snack.

The garlic yogurt (check out our recipe here) turned out to be our secret, guerrilla grilling weapon—a cultural and culinary translator of sorts, bridging the divide between East and West, between Rialto, Nesenkeag and Cambodia.

Garlic yogurt - an internationally appreciated secret weapon

The cool yogurt worked equally well atop the grilled green garlic bulbs that had just been yanked from Eero’s soil, as alongside the beef sate with lemon grass that the Cambodian women workers had added to our feast. We tried it with the Cambodian salad of green papaya, cucumber and carrots tossed with vinegar and sugar as well as with the homemade picante Portuguese chorizo that Nuno’s Dad had made.

Green papaya salad with garlic yogurt

Cambodian beef sate with Nesenkeag greens

Chorizo, grilled bread and antipasti

Central to our feast, were the very first Spring salads from Eero’s fields—a mix of tender mesclun greens with a squirt of lemon and olive oil and a few handfuls of baby spinach with a balsamic vinaigrette and fresh mint, lemon balm, chive and sage flowers.

Eero's Mesclun greens and tender Spinach

The garlic yogurt not only took care of any lingering colds, lurking vampires or upset stomachs but also brought us all together around a table—cooks and servers, farmers and friends. Seeing, smelling and tasting where our delicious food came from told a vivid and important story that we took home with us.

Jody, Eero and Liana

Thank you, Eero and Liana, for hosting us, sharing with us your farm and produce and teaching us what it means to work an organic farm on a slip of land in the corner of New Hampshire.

GUERRILLA GRILLING

A FOUR STEP GUIDE