CFK: We Do Kitchen Right
By Tom Bloomer
Photos By Nicole Ray

In autumn of 2006, Mary Wessel Walker was picking leeks with friends at the Community Farm of Ann Arbor when a conversation ensued that would become the "Genesis story" of Ann Arbor's Community Farm Kitchen. She recalls that another young woman, a child-care worker, was talking about how parents would come to pick their kids up at the end of the day and say things like, "Oh, honey, I missed you! Let's go get some KFC and have a nice family dinner together." "They were so close!" Walker says with a smile. "They had this wonderful commitment to eating dinner together. But there was just this element of good food that was missing."

At the time, the farm, which is now in its 22nd year of operation, was facing a challenge with its community-supported agriculture (CSA) program. As the local supply exceeded the demand, they weren't quite fulfilling their membership potential. Every season saw a surplus; they really needed more members (typically called subscribers).  "We were trying to figure out how to reach out to more people, because there are a lot of CSAs in this area," Walker explains. "This was [before the publishing of ] Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and Omnivore's Dilemma. It felt like we'd all kind of saturated the market."

The discussion turned to broadening the CSA customer base to include people who were committed to environmentalism and interested in eating healthy, whole foods but just didn't have much food-prep time between work and family commitments. Many, as well, didn't know quite what to do with their weekly bounty of fresh produce. "It's sort of a mystery to some people what to do with six Daikon radishes," Walker says with a grin. "So we sat there talking about how it would be nice if someday, somewhere, a farm could help these people out [and] offer the convenience of really good, fresh, prepared dishes to its CSA members, maybe even help them make that transition to learning how to prepare it themselves," Walker says.

The then-recent Bryn Mawr College philosophy grad suddenly had a moment of epiphany. "I thought ‘Huh, I'm not doing anything in particular right now. Why does this have to be someday, somewhere?  Why can't it be right here, right now? I can do this.'" And so she did it. And still does. Quite well, in the opinion of the kitchen's growing membership. "The food is first-rate!" member Julie Dorsey attests. "It is not a stretch to say I have loved every selection. Mary and her team are innovators. I requested the vegan option, and even my meat-loving friends have raved about every single meal we've shared!"

The Community Farm Kitchen works together with the Community Farm of Ann Arbor, embracing said farm's passion for providing fresh, local food produced with a great degree of care for the land.  They are based on Biodynamic agriculture which, as their literature explains, "seeks to work with the life-giving forces of nature." The food is free of chemicals as is the soil from which it grows.

Housed in the Rudolf Steiner building-named after the man who introduced Biodynamics in 1924-the kitchen has, in only three years, grown from an effort by Walker and a few helpers to one employing a cooking staff of seven, who prepare the fare in a day-long spree on Fridays.  The fresh produce is picked up from the farm every Wednesday; recipes are put together on Thursday; their cook-a-thon commences early Friday morning, with subscribers coming in between 4 and 7:30 that day to get their bounty. Each Community Farm Kitchen dish comes in a tub carefully labeled with ingredients, storage information and serving suggestions.

The week I visited, available produce included Oriental greens, Swiss chard, beets, carrots, lettuce, green onions, parsley and maybe a little something extra. For the basic CSA subscriber, this would mean a fridge full of veggies that would require a fair amount of work within days of delivery. For the Community Farm Kitchen subscriber, it meant split pea and zucchini soup from The Best-Ever Vegetarian Cookbook; baked beet-and-carrot burgers from Farmer John's Cookbook; Mediterranean summer greens sauce (complete with olives and capers), also via Farmer John; and Rockstar Salad with lettuce, green onions, arugula and mizuna, and grated carrots. A week prior, offerings included garlic scape soup (a creamy vegan recipe from Supernatural Cooking by Heidi Swanson), white bean and carrot hummus (a CFK original), kale and Swiss chard sautee (with "the crunch and heat of hot peppers and chard stalks") and more.

All recipes are chosen by Walker, and all subscribers pretty much get what they get on any give week. "I do accommodate dietary restrictions like allergies, and vegan diets." Beyond that, "I decide, then post the coming week's offering on our blog so people can get a sneak preview."

So how is that working out for the kitchen? The fact that in a scant three years their list of subscribers has allowed the business to grow and thrive bodes well. These days, Community Farm Kitchen is expanding in other ways, too: They now sell baked goods throughout the winter at the Ann Arbor Farmers' Market; they are in discussions about offering meat-based dishes (you can trust that the animals will be humanely raised, with no chemicals) and are even considering building relationships with other, like-minded produce CSAs. Ann Arbor Community Farm has wisely suggested a ceiling of no more than 25 percent of their members.

But the real answer to that question comes from the members themselves.  "If you like to eat healthy and local but don't want to invest a lot of time in food preparation, there's no better option that the CFK," offers Kevin Hawkins, a member since last year. "It's also great to be exposed to ways of preparing food that you might not have thought of on your own."

Adds Kathy Daly, a three-year member, "I am wildly enthusiastic about the CFK. I had been a shareholder of the Ann Arbor Community Farm for many years. When Mary started CFK, I knew that it would be the solution to the eternal shareholder question, ‘What do I do with this kale?'"

Taking in all of the glowing praise from these members, I note again and again that they affectionately refer to the kitchen by its initials, CFK. Thinking back to the fast food chain mentioned in Mary's "Genesis story," I can't help but smile at the coincidence and what it might say about how our food system is reversing its direction to something more healthy and viable.

communityfarmkitchen.com

Tom Bloomer is a writer, advertising/marketing specialist, cuisine enthusiast and fervent Michigan booster.