As a produce supplier to dozens of our top local chefs, restaurants, bars and markets, Carriage House Farm’s garden manager Kate Cook knows her stuff. Since 2010, Cook has overseen the four-acre garden located within the 300-acre registered Ohio Century Farm, which has been in farm manager Richard Stewart’s family for five generations.
Although small, Cook’s plot packs a mighty punch, this year yielding about 50 different products, including culinary herbs and edible flowers. In its entirety, Carriage House also supplies honey and bee products, wheat, cornmeal and vinegar.
Cook lives in Northside with her husband Dave, daughter Sophia, a handful of laying hens and a couple of Society Finches. We recently met for lunch at Pleasantry — one of Cook’s customers — to get some gardening tips, find out how she plays a big part in what’s on your plate when you go out to eat and learn about her unique career trajectory.
CityBeat: Why did you choose Pleasantry for lunch?
Kate Cook: I chose Pleasantry because they are one of my client restaurants. They buy produce, honey and grain from us at Carriage House Farm, and I’m a schmuck because I’ve been selling to them since they opened and this is my first time eating here.
CB: Before you were a farmer, you were a theatrical makeup artist. Interesting transition. What’s up with that?
KC: I started dabbling with theater when I was in like fourth or fifth grade because our school would do a simple musical once a year and I loved it. I kept with it through high school, where I did all kinds of musical and straight theater, a lot of Shakespeare, and my senior year we had a project where we had to write a one-act play. The play that I wrote involved some effects makeup — about a mailman that had been attacked by a dog, so his leg had to be all bloody — so I go, “I have to learn how to do this.” I did some reading — this was before Google; I was reading actual books in the library — and I tried it out and it turned out really, really well, like better than any of us could have expected, and I thought, “Hmm. Maybe I should think about doing this for a living.”
I ended up going to Ohio University, which is known for having a fantastic theater program. …I had great mentors for makeup only to find out when I left Ohio University that places like Industrial Light & Magic and the Weta Workshop and Jim Henson were only looking for software developers, which I was not. So I kind of kept it in my back pocket as a skill and, since my birthday is Halloween, I get to roll it out every year.
CB: How did you become a professional gardener?
KC: I worked for a graphic design firm for a little while as their office manager and marketing manager and they laid me off in 2008 and I got into the Findlay Market chef program called Cultivating a Healthy Environment for Farmers. That was also when I got to know my present business partner, Richard Stewart. I had met him at the Northside Farmers Market. …Richard likes to talk, and we got talking and talking and talking and when he heard that I was in the market garden program for Findlay, he told me about (Carriage House Farm’s) volunteer program. When I was doing the Findlay Market program, I volunteered out at Carriage House to see how a large farm worked. I had no practical experience with large-scale agriculture, and even now Carriage House isn’t large-scale agriculture except in our little microcosm, so it was a great learning experience and by the end of the first year as a market gardener, the Findlay Market program wasn’t really working out for me and Carriage House couldn’t keep up with its demand, so that’s how I ended up managing the garden at Carriage House Farm.
CB: How do you decide what to plant at Carriage House Farm?
KC: There are many factors that go into my planting choices. One is how well I know that crop will do, not only in our region growth-wise, like is the weather right for it? Is it something I feel will sell well, not only to the consumer but also to the restaurants? Half of my product goes to restaurants and retailers, and I also pay attention to what other growers in the region are doing and I try to be a little bit different. It might be I’m growing a different radish variety or different greens varieties and am I doing this crop in a season when other people aren’t growing it right now? Is it beautiful? Is it tasty? Do I want to eat it? That’s a rule I use a lot because I try not to sell anything that I won’t eat.
CB: How closely do you work with our local chefs? Do they make requests?
KC: I use the cold, dark months to try to meet with my chef clients and get feedback. One of the things I’ve learned with most of the chefs I work with, since they work in independently owned restaurants, they have a lot of creative control over their menus and a lot of time they have visions of what they want to be doing in certain seasons. I try to educate them and say, “Yes, I can have that ready at that time of year,” or “No, you’re not going to have that for another two months after you roll out that menu.” And there are a couple of chefs who are great in that regard and say, “Great. I’ll work around the schedule of the season here versus what I want to have on the menu.”
CB: Carriage House Farm isn’t organic but you are zero-spray. What’s the difference? Why should we care?
KC: The biggest difference between a farm that is certified organic and our farm is that the folks who are certified organic have spent a number of years taking meticulous records of not only what type of inputs they put into their soil but also where the seed comes from, because all of the seed has to be certified organic also, so that means that it needs to come from another certified organic farm and they pay a lot of money to have each one of those crops inspected and certified as organic.
Now that being said, many people believe that certified organic food hasn’t been sprayed with any chemicals or pesticides, and that’s false. There’s a listing of all the chemicals that are ok for organic production available to the public at omri.org (Organic Materials Listing Review). We at Carriage House have decided that we don’t want to go that route for a number of different reasons — some of it’s cost. The other part is that we produce beautiful compost at the farm and my business partner Richard and I decided a long time ago that it would be better to just not spray anything; I amend my soil with compost and that’s it.
CB: We’re at the beginning of the growing season. What’s your advice for home gardeners?
KC: This is definitely the time of year where you can have cool weather crops going and almost be done, because Cincinnati’s springs are awful and we get hot really fast. And most cool weather crops like your greens and your radishes, turnips, your peas, all those things like cool weather. So now I would start planning for your summer things, your tomatoes, your peppers, your basil. Home gardeners who don’t have a lot of experience, I would strongly suggest you start small, only a few things. Do the herbs that you like to use in your kitchen-grow things you’re going to eat and start small, because we’re all about getting out and getting dirty this time of year and then August comes and your garden is a jungle and you don’t want to be out there. So, have a small success and build on your success.
This article appears in May 10-17, 2017.