Farm to Table at Pendle Hill

Gearing up for the 10-day permaculture design course in August, Blake Darlin talked with co-leader Joel Fath (also the Pendle Hill gardener) and Kitchen Manager Albert Sabatini about food, agriculture, and how Pendle Hill is embracing a more sustainable economy.

The word "permaculture" was coined in the 1970s but the idea is as old as sustained human settlements and the rise of agriculture 10,000 years ago. A permaculture designer studies a site's ecological systems in order to harness their intrinsic power for the production of useful resources – but without threatening the bio-diversity or stability of the site. Based on 12 principles of permaculture design, the vision is the harmonic overlap of home, garden, farm, and wildlife. The intention: no less profound than to re-imagine how we live with the natural world.

Pendle Hill has a committed track record with Mother Nature. The quarter-acre vegetable garden has been organic for over twenty years and provides a 3-season harvest. The 23-acre grounds are home to a variety of birds and beasts, including flying squirrels, bull frogs, a beaver, and occasionally a pair of ducks. During the 10-day permaculture design course, participants will re-evaluate Pendle Hill's land usage. In the end, they'll have created a plan for bio-diverse green spaces and sustainable future food production.

An acre of tomatoes? Or summer and winter wheat to bake into Pendle Hill's loaves? Not likely. "I don't think we could ever produce what we need in our kitchen at current numbers," reflects Joel, a lithe Iowan whose bandana keeps a bountiful mop of curls in check. Instead, he expects to find "a critical energy towards forest gardening – a perennial-based food harvest." He means berries, nuts, mushrooms, herbs, and fruit trees like apple, pear, and cherry. These foods are often pricey on the market and don't require large tracts of land under cultivation.

The bigger question: the economy of permaculture

The cornerstone of permaculture is sustainability – permanent systems, or the ability to plan for change. Unsurprisingly, that food-laden truck belching combusted non-renewables across the continent doesn't factor highly in a vision for a sustainable future. Even organic produce, for all its merits, can sometimes travel thousands of miles across land and sea in shrink-wrap armor. That economic model, which is widespread in the US, leaves behind a wake of pollution and trash, and is set to become more difficult as the cost of fuel increases. The concern becomes waste reduction and self-reliance.

On these topics, Kitchen Manager Albert Sabatini has a few ideas. For starters, he's a dedicated local-vore, and has made connections with a handful of area farms since joining Pendle Hill earlier this year. "A lot of people think 'local' as within 500 miles," he says. "I think of it as 35 miles, and that's my goal for Pendle Hill."

Albert's experience with food production began in 1989 on an organic farm in Pennsylvania. Since then, he's worked on farms in North Carolina and Maine, and now owns farmland in the foothills of the Poconos. At Pendle Hill, Albert is forming connections with area farmers to ensure Pendle Hill's meals are healthy, fresh, and ethically sourced.

The primary reasons to eat local, according to Albert, are personal health and care of the environment. He believes that eating food grown locally takes advantage of the ties we already have to our ecosystem. On a physical level, our bodies respond better to the freshness, appropriateness, and balance of the local in-season harvest. No less important is our metaphysical connection to the earth under our feet.

Here's the icing on the cake: Albert has shown that doing the right thing for our health and the environment has immediate financial benefits. Pendle Hill's standard supplier of organic flour, says the Philadelphia native, "ships from Montana, North Dakota, maybe some places in the midwest… and the truckers are making all the money." Most of Pendle Hill's dollar – about $0.65 – ends up with the middleman, not the original producer. "And what happens when the price of gas hits six dollars per gallon?"

By purchasing from a local farm instead of a catalog, Albert cuts the volatile shipping costs out of the equation. Already, he spends about a third of what he would buying from a big distributer. And, what's more, the glass milk jugs and wooden produce crates are returned to the farm when empty – a perfect, closed system.

Dining Farm-to-Table

All this ensures that Pendle Hill's famous kitchen continues to model a philosophy that is physically healthy, economically fair, and environmentally sustainable. Of course, at any time you can be a part of positive change and enjoy wholesome meals from scratch by dropping in at Pendle Hill. And stay tuned – the kitchen has more culinary refinements on the menu!