RAISED RIGHT
The first lady shows how healthy living starts with farm-fresh food
Abunch of third-graders recently stood at a stainless-steel table, reaching their lit- tle hands up to big mixing bowls to com- bine flour and butter and to stir together apples w ith cinnamon and sugar. They
were making apple crisp inside the gleaming kitchen of
Blue Hill at Stone Barns in Pocantico Hills, N. Y. Pastry
chef Alex Grunert was a patient teacher, showing the
children how to stir and mix but also teaching them
that, during the winter, it’s more appropriate to use
apples than berries in your cooking.
If you turned your gaze out the windows behind
the students, you would see the courtyard where, last
autumn, first lady Michelle Obama stood in front of
a gaggle of reporters, wearing a floral print dress and
greeting the spouses of heads of state from around the
world. The first lady had invited them to tour Stone
Barns Center for Food and Agriculture and to dine
at its top-rated restaurant, Blue Hill at Stone Barns,
because the Stone Barns mission dovetails with
her Let’s Move! initiative. Since this 80-acre work-
ing farm, education center and restaurant opened
in 2004, each has helped hundreds of thousands of
visitors—many of them schoolchildren—understand
where food comes from.
“This is a place where
people can see sustainable
farming in action, a place
where they can touch, taste
and ask questions,” says Jill
Isenbarger, executive direc-
tor. “Our goal is to ensure
that when visitors leave Stone
Barns they understand why
sustainable farming is impor-
tant and feel inspired to make
changes in how they eat—for
their own health and for the
health of our environment.”
Stone Barns has been a
farm since the 1930s, when
the Rockefellers, who owned
the land, built a dairy barn on the property. When
Peggy Rockefeller died in 1996, her husband, David,
decided to turn the property into a nonprofit center
dedicated to sustainable agriculture, a cause his wife
had embraced throughout her life. Today, the farm
raises 200 varieties of vegetables in its 6. 5 acres of cultivated fields and its 22,000-square-foot all-season
greenhouse. It raises chickens, turkeys, geese, sheep
and pigs on the 23 acres of pasture and 40 acres of
woodland, rotating the locations of the livestock to
take advantage of a natural cycle that keeps the pastures healthy and gives the animals the space and
nutrition they need. Blue Hill at Stone Barns—where
chef and owner Dan Barber helped propel the farm-to-table movement into the mainstream—buys its
food from the farm and composts its scraps to return
to the soil.
Adults can learn all about these practices on the
farm’s weekly Insider’s Tour, led by Stone Barns staff
and volunteers. But there also are other ways for visitors to connect w ith the land and the food that’s grown
there: cooking classes, lectures, backyard beekeeping,
hands-on farm chores and monthly Meet the Farmer
events. Many of these events are family friendly, too.
After a recent farm tour, Isenbarger overheard a
couple of students talking about lunch. One little girl
offered another a bite of her ham sandwich.
“What is ham?” wondered one.
“Dead pigs,” her friend replied without hesitation.
“A nd they smell much better as bacon, too,” she added.
Funny? Sure. And even a little graphic. But, Isen-
barger says, “I couldn’t have been more thrilled to see
that these 5-year-olds were already starting to make
the connection bet ween the pigs they had seen roam-
ing in the woods and the food they eat, including the
ham in their sandwiches.”
And as for that apple crisp? The kids loved it, and
they seemed to understand that eating locally means
enjoying apples while they are in season. But they are
still kids, after all. When a Blue Hill chef asked who
would like another scoop of ice cream, every single
hand shot up in the air. —Liz Johnson
