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Wood Duck Farm
September
10th, 2010
Remember back when you were a kid and
occasionally you would hear the adults joking about how old they were feeling.
While some may argue that I'm still a kid, just playing with bigger boy toys, I
can definitely say that my body felt "gravity" this week as a pinched nerve in my left
leg made me feel pretty ornery over the past few days.
My doctor told me that my pain stemmed from bicycling. Gosh and I thought..."I picked the
bicycle over running to be gentle on my body. What gives?" Dang this could not have happened at a worse
time either as we are in full swing transplanting our greenhouse plugs into
their nice cultivated raised field beds.
This being said, I am very blessed as my farm staff has been relentless
in "taking up my slack" and planting persistently all week, rain or shine. So in spite of my "inconvenient leg," it has
been a very good week here at the farm. Other noteworthy news for the week is
that ChefJustin Bayse, Chef de Cuisine at Stella Sola, has offered to host
our Sunday October
24th dinner date here at the farm.
With Chef Bayse now being on board, we have decided to call these autumn
farm dinners our All Star Guest Chef Series. Other news that we'd like to mention is that
our new chef friend over at the Dave Mathews band, Fianna, ordered our baby
salad greens, basil and arugula for their stint Friday night at the Woodlands
Pavilion. Last news of the week, was
that we received another shipment of baby chicks. The first arrival, a few
weeks ago was broilers; this batch was pullets aka "soon to be" laying hens. I
am now beginning to think "oh my gosh what have I done!"
Our All Star Chefs Line Up
Saturday October 2nd: Houston natives Seth
Siegel-Gardner and Justin Yu, two of the three chefs that collaborated to
create the Just8 Project with the highly acclaimed pop-up restaurant in
Montrose this past August. Chef Seth has worked with the celebrated Marcus
Samuelsson in New York and Chicago, where he served as executive chef at
Samuelsson's C-Houseand just returned earlier this year from a
month-long stint at The Fat
Duck, a Michelin three star restaurant in London. Chef Yu's culinary resume
includes The Grove, before taking off to
work under the late great chef Jeremy Fox at
Ubuntu, the Michelin-starred "vegetable" restaurant in
Napa, CA.. Interested in hearing more about their
talent? Visit these two links, Just
August Project Houston Press, Allison
Cook's Just 8 Project Review, Top
10 and JustAugust
Project Chronicle
Sunday October 24th Chef Justin Bayse is Chef de Cuisine at Stella Sola and was named 2010 James Beard Award Semi-Finalist Rising Star Chef of the
Year (FYI Deemed "the Oscars of the
food world," by Time magazine, The James Beard Foundation Awards are
the country's most coveted honor for chefs) Rumors abound that he will be
appearing on the Food Network show Iron Chef this fall as well. Also a Houston native, Chef Bayse has worked
locally with Executive Chef Chris Shepherd of Catalan and at the Hotel Icon
restaurant Voice. Outside of Houston, he has worked at a farmhouse restaurant
called Blue Hill at Stone
Barns in New York and was
also at Restaurant
August in New Orleans learning under Chef John Besh.
Sunday
November 7th Guest Chef LJ Wiley of Yelapa
Playa Mexicana will be winding up our autumn
All Star series. Chef Wiley was recently nominated in
My Table Magazine
for "Best Up-and-Coming Chef!". Chef Wiley is an avid supporter of "buying local" as he
visits us, and other area growers, every Saturday morning at the Urban Harvest
Farmer's Market. His resume includes attending the French
Culinary Institute (FCI): working at Smith & Wollensky, Brennan's, and Jean
Georges Vongerichten Spice Market
in NYC. This link may provide you some insight about Chef Wiley Houston
Chronicle Yelapa Review .
Dinner tickets can be purchased at our Urban
Harvest Farmer's Market booth on Saturday morning or via PayPal on our website
at Farm Dinner PayPal Purchase . Prices are $75 per person and the events will be BYOB.
The Saturday dinner will begin with a reception around 3:30 or so and we will
start our farm tour around 4 with dinner to follow around 5:00. The
Sunday events will likely begin about an hour earlier The dinner menus will focus on
locally grown/raised food and will likely include five courses or so. For more info/photos about our earlier
farm dinners visit WDF Spring
Dinners
Interested in hearing about our Fall
CSA program information? Visit our website by linking to CSA Details For a review of our current locations go to CSA Pickup Locations
Visiting the Urban Harvest
Farmer's Mktl on Saturday morning? Please stop by and say hi!
Incidentally, a lot of our farm events
and details can be found on our Face Book page as well.
All the Best,
Van Weldon
Cell 713 876 8645
www.woodduckfarm.com
email
csa@woodduckfarm.com
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