“'Innumerable measures bring us this food, we should know how it comes to us.’ This is our mantra. We are passionate about connecting people to where real food comes from and how our food choices do matter and can make a difference when we choose to support a local sustainable food system.”

Savory spring Parmesan and millet waffle with asparagus, house-made rhubarb-jalapeño marmalade, radish butter, a Locally Laid egg, Fischer Family Farms lardons, sunflower seeds, powdered sugar, and local maple syrup; “Mushrooms and Sweet Peas”: a blend of foraged and cultivated mushrooms with snap peas, foraged ramps, organic butter, and lemon; tahini tomato chicken with fingerlings, ramps, mixed herbs, bibb lettuce, hemp seed buttermilk vinaigrette and garden “doodads” (edible flowers and herbs).

As close to their many farms as a tree is to its forest, the Birchwood seems to have become inextricable from the many farms that supply it, so much so that they now work with eight seasons, to reflect farmers’ reality. There’s not just summer, but also “scorch“, when the heat makes tomatoes sugary and lettuce bolt. Not just autumn but also “dusk“, when growing stops, but vegetables remain in their fields. Meanwhile, Birchwood’s different community justice initiatives make it a crossroads. They say of forests that you can’t see them for the trees, but Birchwood lets you see both the forest and the trees, the farms and the community, in one sustained gaze.