GUERRILLA GRILLING AT WHITE GATE FARM

It was a beautiful July day with all the usual components of summertime on a New England farm: blue skies, warm air, white barn, newly harvested vegetables. A standard-issue bucolic scene.  In fact, this landscape hosted a cast of unlikely colleagues with stories of hard work, blinding tragedy, determination and gratitude. Over the course of our visit to White Gate Farm in Dracut, we met an assortment of remarkable people, each as intriguing as the next.

The Director

Jennifer Hashley had invited us out to White Gate. She's the Director of the New Entry Sustainable Farming Project (NESFP), a Tufts University program that helps immigrants with limited resources begin farming in Massachusetts. Young, bright and smiling in a flowered T-shirt, jeans and work boots, Jennifer looked the part of someone who lived the happy, healthy farm life she had carefully chosen.

Jennifer’s left hand was wrapped in a fresh white bandage.  It looked serious and, by the way she was holding it, painful.  “Oh,” she told us. “I caught it in our truck. It took off the last knuckle of my baby finger and they couldn’t reattach it.  I’ll be fine.  Yes, it’s hurts. And I shouldn’t lift anything heavy.”  The accident had happened just the day before, but it hadn’t interrupted her busy, committed schedule.  She'd already been up since 5 am to help another group of farmers with a Mobile Poultry Processing Unit that she'd helped design.  Clearly, Jennifer is a strong, tough woman.

                  Flowers from Jennifer's garden on a tablecloth she brought

THE FARMERS

As we unloaded the grill from the truck, Jennifer introduced us to Mr. Kim who stood in front of his small farm plot.

Mr. Kim arrived in the United States from Cambodia in the early 1980s.  He's a slight, gentle, elegant man who wore a light blue, collared button-down shirt with a black baseball hat.  In the U.S., he worked at Hewlett Packard as a mechanic for many years and was also a backyard gardener. Around 1998, after being introduced to a few farmers' markets, he heard about the Tufts program and began farming a plot of land at White Gate in Dracut.

                        Mr. Kim's lettuces, waiting for the fields to dry out

Mr. Kim, like other farmers who participate in the NESFP, sells his Asian produce to a CSA, a good way to spread the risk associated with farming. At White Gate, he had stately rows of lemon grass and water spinach, burly amarynth, a simple elegant structure covered with bitter melon vines, a blanket of garlic chives, rows of green onions, cilantro, Thai basil, and a tangle of squash plants peppered with bright orange blossoms. 

Mr. Kim takes “a snout to tail” approach to eating squash as well as just about everything else on his farm.  He blanches the leaves and eats them tossed with garlic.  Stems are peeled, chopped and stir fried with the blossoms. The squash is cooked in a variety of ways and, of course, the seeds are saved for next year.

                                     Some of Mr. Kim's harvest

As we listened to Mr. Kim describe how he grows and prepares various vegetables, Rechhat arrived, another Cambodian farmer with NESFP. Rechhat pulled a wagon of beautifully arranged and bundled vegetables worthy of a glossy spread in a Martha Stewart magazine. Sitting in the wagon were little purple eggplants and round green Kermit eggplants, a handful of cherry tomatoes, peppers, Asian and pickling cucumbers, water spinach, green onions, garlic chives, jalapenos, fuzzy melon, a bundle of mint, Thai basil and something called frost lake or Asian celery.  

                            Rechhat on the go with his wagon of veggies

While we were talking, Rechhat darted back to the car and brought out a thermos of hot tea.  Made from dried garlic chives, it had a copper color and a prominent garlic aroma but a mild flavor and had been sweetened with just a hint of honey. We loved it and all felt much better after drinking it, hoping it would give us the energy that Rechhat seemed to have. Like many of the farmers in the NESFP, Rechhat works two jobs.  This morning he picked 40 pounds of Thai basil and 100 pounds of cilantro to fulfill an order.

                              Garlic chive tea, from nursery to cup

We climbed up Rechhat's pumpkin patch on top of a mounded hill.  It was glorious to be up there in the sky surrounded by pumpkin blossoms—a Dorothy in the poppy field, or rather pumpkin patch, experience. We picked some of the "male” blossoms (with their long green stems) for our lunch.  They don’t produce fruit so we weren’t picking a potential squash.

                               Jody and Rechhat in the pumpkin patch

                              Male pumpkin flower, obviously

We visited his hot, humid, green house where he grows mustard greens in kiddie swimming pools, dries garlic greens on screens for his tea, and starts his seedlings for the fields.  It felt like a little plant factory where Rechhat's energy was infused into all those green shoots.

                                         Rechhat's nursery

THE LAND & THE LANDOWNERS

As we meandered back towards the grill to begin preparing lunch, Jennifer told us about White Gate.

In the late '90s, John Ogonowksi, the owner of the farm, had been approached by then Deputy Secretary of Agriculture Gus Shumacher to participate in the Tufts project by renting land to immigrant farmers. Coming from an immigrant, farming background himself and with some excess land on hand, John was enthusiastic about the idea and agreed wholeheartedly. He not only provided land but helped the farmers in the fields, lent advice and often waived their rent.

In addition to owning land and growing crops, John was an accomplished pilot for American Airlines. On September 11th, he was the captain aboard flight 11, the first plane to crash into the World Trade Towers.

Although we had never met him, we could only imagine the generous, brave kind of man he was. It seemed his spirit lived on in the fields at White Gate and in the lives of the people who worked his land.  After the tragedy of 9/11, John’s brother, Jim, stepped in to manage the farm. We met Peg, John’s wife, when she passed by walking her dog with one of her three daughters. She expressed fondness and admiration for the farmers as well as gratitude that John's project lives on. 

               Friends from White Gate - Peg, Rechhat, Mr. Kim and Jennifer

THE FEAST

After walking and climbing and talking, we were hungry.  Nuno, our guerilla griller extraordinaire, had been hard at work back at the Weber cooking up our lunch.  Knowing that we would be visiting Cambodian farmers and cooking Asian vegetables, I had asked Nuno to add some soy sauce and ginger to our pantry of guerrilla grilling essentials.  He had also brought shrimp to grill along with sausages, some olives, cheese and peaches.  By far and away the stars of the day were the vegetables - the water spinach, bitter melons, tomatoes, Asian cucumbers, Kermit eggplant, and, in particular, the grilled garlic chives and stuffed blossoms. It reminded us once again that putting vegetables in the center of the plate and using animal proteins almost as condiments is the best thing to do for the body, soul and planet.  

              A plate of farm-fresh veggies, with a side of shrimp and sausage

Jennifer, Mr. Kim, Rechhat, Peg, all the folks from Rialto and some other new friends as well sat down under the shade of a tent for the feast. Mr. Kim sat next to Peg and shared his thoughts about John and expressed a tremendous sadness over his death. We passed the vegetables around the table and talked about different ways to prepare various dishes. We laughed and ate and talked and relaxed. No one wanted to pack up to go home but eventually it was time.

                              Relaxing at the table, Peg and Mr. Kim

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