If you are a fussy Pittsburgh chef and want only the best and freshest local products on your menu, chances are you buy from Penn's Corner Farm Alliance, a select group of growers from the five counties surrounding Pittsburgh.
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Doyle Freeman of Cherry Tree, Indiana County, sells asparagus to Paula Vorkapich of Shadyside at Farmers at the Firehouse on a recent Friday. (Andy Starnes, Post-Gazette) |
Until this month, Penn's Corners' 15 small growers -- organic or sustainable farmers all -- supplied restaurants only.
Good news for home cooks: Penn's Corner is bringing its wares to Strip District shoppers.
The Alliance growers will set up an open air market from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. every Friday, now through Thanksgiving, in the lot next to No. 7 Engine Company at 2216 Penn Ave.
They call themselves Farmers at the Firehouse.
"We're so excited about this," said Pam Bryan, Alliance spokeswoman and owner of Pucker Brush Farm in Indiana County, where she raises sheep and goats, 20 to 30 kinds of microgreens, salad greens and perennials.
"This is a great opportunity for our farmers and the Strip shoppers. We'll be bringing in a lot of products they haven't had available before and for the first time products direct from the grower."
The Friday market will also be a pick-up point for the Alliance's 100 or so CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) subscribers. The subscribers contract for weekly baskets of fresh vegetables and meat products.
The opportunity to bring the Alliance farmers to the Strip came about in part because retired advertising executive Ray Werner has a daughter, Katie, who is manager for Maggie's Mercantile, an out-of-the-ordinary vegan restaurant near Donegal that draws clientele, vegetarian and not, from miles around.
Katie Werner's boyfriend is Douglass Dick, executive chef at Lucca, a Craig Street restaurant in Oakland known for its insistence on quality produce. Dick's menu could pass muster in San Francisco, so lovingly does it spell out exactly who grew what and where.
Through Katie and Doug, Werner got to know the Alliance and its products. He and his wife, Susan, own the No. 7 Firehouse. The restored building once housed Werner's agency, Werner Chepelsky & Partners Inc., which later merged with Bozell Kamstra.
"This produce is the highest quality you are going to find," Werner said. "You are getting it direct from the grower; it will last longer and will be better for you."
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| | Farmers' markets, now and then
Farmers' markets are a vivid and lively reminder of our early roots as an agrarian culture. Our region is blessed with an active network of markets, some old, some new.
Today we visit a new farmers' market that has just opened in the Strip.
Next week, we take a look at East Liberty's venerable Farmers' Cooperative market, which has been serving generations of the same families for more than 60 years. We'll also share the results of a survey on how readers view the importance of locally grown produce.
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For sale will be salad greens, edible flowers, kale, tomatoes, cider, honey, free-range chicken eggs, asparagus, rhubarb, mushrooms (including exotics), cut herbs and plants, perennials, hanging baskets, patio pots and container tomatoes.
Among the less usual salad makings are baby stinging nettle, red mustard minutina and baby mizuna. Mushroom exotics include hedgehog, maitake and royal trumpet.
"The mushrooms are picked Wednesday in Kennett Square, near Philadelphia, and sold Friday," said Margie Dagnal, Alliance president. "Wait until you see how beautiful these mushrooms are. This produce is not like supermarket lettuce that takes 14 days to reach you."
Dagnal grows salad and microgreens in high tunnels, plastic-shielded hoop tents, on three acres in Oakdale. Microgreens are inch-high sprouts, harvested with scissors, of radish, broccoli and other vegetables. "The amazing thing is they taste exactly like the vegetable they would grow up to be."
Meat products include certified organic whole roasting lambs, veal sausage and organic free-range chicken. Coming shortly will be free-range and organic beef.
The Alliance has tailored its approach to CSA delivery.
Quantities will be smaller so that people are not overwhelmed -- "enough to supply two vegetarians or a four-member family for a week." Subscriptions will be shorter -- "eight weeks, at about $160, compared to an entire summer," Dagnal said. "Many CSAs cost $300 to $500 a season. That's a lot to pay in advance."
Subscription baskets, at about $20 each, will contain a variety -- a couple of hydroponic tomatoes, a couple of zucchini, a bag of salad greens, a quart of strawberries, some mushrooms and a special treat, say, a bouquet of flowers one week, some home-baked cookies or a loaf of Ray Werner's artisanal brick-oven bread another.
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Moira Cleary of Oakland selects bedding plants at the Firehouse. (Andy Starnes, Post-Gazette) |
Subscribers will not be buried in a single product, kale or zucchini, for example. Recipes will accompany lesser-known vegetables and herbs, suggesting flavorful ways to enjoy them.
Are Pittsburghers learning to go out of their way for organic and sustainably produced foods?
"It's a gradual education," Bryan says. "You win over one at a time. In fact, it's transplants from the coasts who are some of my best customers."
Says Dagnal: "Growing organically means feeding the soil micro-world -- and the plants benefit."
Werner, who has had a long-time love affair with the craft and ceremony of bread baking, is looking forward to baking his Fumo Sancto (holy smoke in Italian) -- hearth-baked organic loaves to be tucked into the CSA baskets.
For now Werner and the farmers are hatching ideas to lend ongoing excitement to the market scene.
Werner might bring his Irish band, the group he plays the concertina (Irish squeezebox) with. He might invite folk musicians from Calliope, a board he serves on. Chefs may be asked to fire up a grill and let people see and taste the possibilities of the summer bounty. An old fire bell might be found to signal opening of the market.
What he'd like most is to see the farmers' market find a permanent site in the Strip, one with a roof. He might build a brick oven there and teach children to bake bread.
Virginia Phillips is a free-lance writer and translator based in Mt. Lebanon.
How to become a CSA subscriber
Organic produce is closer -- and fresher -- than it used to be: These two organic and sustainable CSAs welcome new subscribers. Leave a message and they will get back to you. These are working farmers, so give them a day or so.
Kretschmann Farm, 257 Zigler Road, Rochester, PA 15074; 724-452-7189; kmann@-usaor.net; or check their Web site users.stargate.net/~kmann/
Don and Becky Kretschmann have more than 500 customers in the Pittsburgh area. With the help of their three daughters and other workers, they have been providing customers with organic and sustainably grown produce, fruits and meats from June through Thanksgiving since 1971.
Penn's Corner Farm Alliance, or Doyle Freeman, manager, 814- 743-6589; ctfarms@helicon.net
Penn's Corner, a group of organic and sustainable growers from five counties surrounding Pittsburgh, delivered products only to upscale restaurants until the opening this year of Farmers at the Firehouse at 2216 Penn Ave., the Strip. The Firehouse Market, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Fridays, is the drop point for Penn's Corners CSA subscribers. The products include organic and sustainable produce, eggs, meats, herbs, exotic mushrooms, flowering plants and specialty items such as artisan breads, cookies and honey.
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