Welcome to the Know Your Farmer Series

This post is the first of what we hope to be a long lasting, ongoing series here on the Dig Inn Blog – we’re calling it the Know Your Farmer Series.

The goal of these posts is to offer our readers a brief glimpse into the lives of our farmers and suppliers so that you can better understand where our food comes from and get to know the folks responsible for its production and existence. Having spent the last few years touring farms and greenmarkets and meeting farmers of various backgrounds, capabilities, interests and scale, there is at least one glaringly obvious fact common to all that has become very apparent to me – I wouldn’t want to be a farmer.

Not that I have anything against the profession or the industry – I have nothing but the greatest respect for these folks. It’s just really, really hard. The weather, commodity prices, insects, deer and other wildlife – it seems like 100 things need to go right before you can even think about the bottom-line. If more of us understood all of the challenges involved in farming responsibly and successfully growing sustainable food, I suspect that we would look at each morsel that goes into our mouths from one of these farms slightly differently.

And that is the point of this series – to help you, the reader, understand all of these challenges and why high quality products sometime need to cost a bit more. After learning more about how these products actually make their way into a Dig Inn near you, we hope you’ll agree with us that paying a little premium is entirely worth it.

And with that, let’s get started. Time to meet our first featured farmer…

Anthony Panarello of Natural Earth Farms

Anthony and his wife have been running Natural Earth Farms out in Calverton, New York since 2008. They started with 10 acres of fallow land and have developed an all organic, Certified Naturally Grown operation over the past 3 years.

Anthony has been farming for 15 years, having started his career working summers on dairy farms in the Hudson family. Being raised in an Italian family, Anthony grew up spending time with his grandparents in the garden, where they raised tomatoes, eggplant, peppers and basil.

After working for a number of years in Long Island on produce farms, Anthony realized he had a passion and talent for growing veggies. Finally, in 2008, the opportunity came to him to acquire 10 acres of fallow land for himself, and he jumped on it. Over the past 3 years, he has tried lots of different veggies (some with greater luck than others), including tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, beets, broccoli, kale, and cucumbers, just to name a few.

A true family man

Anthony and his dad

One thing we really like about Anthony is that he’s very focused on his family. This is something we really value here at Dig Inn and try to bring into our company culture.

Anthony has a wife, Marie, and a 15-month-old son, Anthony Vincent. Both Anthony and Marie love to cook (particularly for Sunday dinner), and they like to spend time on Block Island when the growing season allows. Anthony is also very close with his father, who likes to help out on the farm whenever he has the time.

The demands of the farms are constant, but Anthony always makes time for his family. We encourage our employees to do the same.

Natural Earth Farms and Dig Inn

Chef Dan and I met Anthony about a year ago while searching for more local folks with organic operations. We hit it off immediately as he shared our enthusiasm for growth and bringing real food to the masses (something which many local, small operation farmers do not share – at least not yet).

We’re currently getting our broccoli for the Broccoli & Quinoa Salad from Anthony. He is now working on acquiring another 10 acres of land, much of which we hope will be earmarked for Dig Inn’s 2012 menu.

If you want to learn more about Anthony and Natural Earth Farms, you can visit their website at naturalearthfarmsny.com.

Know any other folks like Anthony? Please let us know in the comments below. We’d love to meet them and potentially work with them.