Valley Green Feast teams up with local farms to deliver the Valley's best to at-home chefs

Local farms like Old Friends Farm of Amherst, Mass. realize that restaurants are not the only places to find local chefs looking for fantastic products. So they, along with many others, have joined forces with Valley Green Feast of Northampton, Mass., a service that delivers local, organic food right to the door.

Started by Jessica N. Harwood, 30, Valley Green Feast allows its nearly 100 subscribers to get fresh local food in their homes, without ever setting foot in the grocery store.

In Massachusetts, this trend has recently been on the rise. The Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources ranks Massachusetts "first in New England for direct sales of farm products to consumers," and Valley Green Feast is one of many contributors to this movement.

With Valley Green Feast, customers can order anything from local produce to meat, fish, cheese and other specialty products online, by email, over the phone or by mail. The prices for produce are comparable to grocery stores and are sometimes even lower. The process is quick, easy, rewarding.

“The food people get is really fresh, and we’ve made it easier for health-conscious people to get good food,” Harwood said. “Doing things this way is also easier for farmers, because we sell it for them so they don’t have to market. And the customers feel good about lowering their carbon emissions.”

By not driving to the grocery store every week to buy food, customers are indeed lowering their own carbon footprints. Valley Green Feast only uses two box trucks to operate, and for deliveries in Northampton, the Pedal People, a bicycle-riding, human-powered delivery service, does all of the deliveries.

The farmers are fans of the partnership with Valley Green Feast as well. Missy Bahret, 33, and Casey Steinberg, 33, co-owners of Old Friends Farm, have been working with Valley Green Feast for almost a year. “I think the connection with the food, that holistic approach, is good for balance. Environmentally, it’s a good start,” Bahret said.

Old Friends Farm has been running for six years, and Bahret and her staff have been doing things a bit differently than others in the area. They provide Valley Green Feast with their mixed organic greens, but their ginger in particular has drawn a great response in the local community. “We pretty much pioneered it a few years ago,” Bahret said.

Now, they’re speaking at conferences and trying to spread the word that they grow fantastic ginger. “It’s harvested at a young stage, Bahret said, “So it’s easier to use. You don’t have to peel it and there aren’t any of those coarse fibers that people often associate with the type of ginger you’d expect to buy in the store.”

Recently, Valley Green Feast started putting some of this ginger into their produce baskets that customers order for delivery. Bahret said that the ginger is a special item that you can’t find everywhere, perfect for at-home chefs. “It’s paired really well with garlic and it’s great in stir-fry,” Bahret said. “But I’ve heard that many people make their own ginger tea, ginger ale and ginger champagne with it. You can also pickle it and use it for sushi, or make crystallized ginger.”

It’s one of those unique ingredients that can spice up any meal, but because of its milder flavor, the ginger from Old Friends Farm is easier to use in the everyday kitchen. “It freezes really well, so it’s something that you can use a little bit at a time and then freeze and have it all winter long,” Bahret said.

By ordering from Valley Green Feast, at-home chefs can be assured that the products they’re getting from places like Old Friends Farm are of the same quality as those used in the upscale restaurants they love. It’s not just farm-to-table, but farm-to-kitchen table, and the result is personal and rewarding for those who take advantage of it.

Missy Bahret's Favorite Ginger Beer Recipe

From the book Wild Fermentation by Sandor Ellix Katz

TIMEFRAME: Two to three weeks.

INGREDIENTS (for 1 gallon):
3 inches more fresh ginger root
2 cups sugar
2 lemons
Water

PROCESS:
~Start the “ginger bug”: Add 2 teaspoons grated ginger (skin and all) and 2 teaspoons sugar to 1 cup of water. Stir well and leave in a warm spot, covered with cheesecloth to allow free circulation of air while keeping flies out. Add this amount of ginger and sugar every day or two and stir, until the bug starts bubbling, in 2 days to about a week.

~Make the ginger beer any time after the bug becomes active. (If you wait more than a couple of days, keep feeding the bug fresh ginger and sugar every 2 days.) Boil 2 quarts of water. Add about 2 inches of gingerroot, grated, for a mild ginger flavor (up to 6 inches for an intense ginger flavor) and 1.5 cups sugar. Boil this mixture for about 15 minutes. Cool.

~Once the ginger-sugar-water mixture has cooled, strain the ginger out and add the juice of the lemons and the strained ginger bug. (If you intend to make this process an ongoing rhythm, reserve a few tablespoons of the active bug as a starter and replenish it with additional water, grated ginger, and sugar.) Add enough water to make 1 gallon.

~Bottle in sealable bottles: Recycle plastic soda bottles with screw tops; rubber gasket “bail-top” bottles that Grolsch and some other premium beers use; sealable juice jugs; or capped beer bottles. Leave bottles to ferment in a warm spot for about 2 weeks.

~Cool before opening. When you open ginger beer, be prepared with a glass, since carbonation can be strong and force liquid rushing out of the bottle.