If you’ve opened a menu at Richmond Station, Café Boulud or Canoe, you might have seen The New Farm acknowledged as a vendor. For the last decade, Brent Preston and Gillian Flies have been committed to growing vegetables using sustainable practices for restaurants in the GTA and retail stores (Big Carrot, Fiesta Farms) from their 100-acre certified organic family farm just west of Creemore. Last year, the couple built The Kitchen, an event and education space for food events and fundraisers—many aimed to make local, organic food accessible to organizations like Community Food Centres Canada. It’s available for private farm-to-table dinners, cooking classes and overnight retreats (bunk rooms can sleep eight to 10).
Recently, the Chase Hospitality Group (The Chase, Little Fin, Kasa Moto, Colette Grand Café, Planta) hosted an intimate ticketed dinner that fed 100 guests on the farm. All proceeds from the event were donated to SickKids. Here’s what the place looks like:
Guests arriving to the farm first walk past a 10-acre rainbow of salad greens. The hand-planted-and-harvested vegetables are found on many Toronto restaurant menus:
Preston and Flies even wrote a book about their farm. The New Farm: Our Ten Years on the Front Lines of the Good Food Revolution is endorsed by the Ontario Culinary Tourism Alliance, Nick Saul of Community Food Centres Canada, Daniel Boulud and Arlene Dickinson.
The property has a wood-fired pizza oven:
But here, Tyler Shedden, CHG’s culinary director, is cooking butterflied Kolapore Springs trout in it:
Because every backyard should have a custom-made grill on which to make fresh tortillas and pork carnitas:
Rotisserie beef rib was served with horseradish cream:
Besides a number of salads and sides made from the farm’s salad greens and seasonal produce, other sponsors that helped make the 21-item feast possible included Blackview Farms, VG Meats, Monforte Dairy, 100KM foods and Norman Hardie—all producers using sustainable practices:
Here we have Fogo Island Fishery shrimp stuffed in tomatoes with seafood sauce, and celery and herbs plucked from the farm’s garden; and cod Basquaise with peppers, tomatoes, espelette and olive oil:
Food was served buffet-style:
Here’s a fully loaded plate:
Colette Grand Café’s executive chef Jennifer Dewasha oversees the logistics and manages the CHG volunteers in The New Farm’s Kitchen:
Hey, look who we found tending to his one acre of farm land: Richmond Station’s Carl Heinrich and his family moved to Creemore for the summer to learn how to grow some of the produce used at Richmond Station:
Did you know that squash flowers can be either male or female? Neither did we:
Harvest tables were set up in the herb garden and bocce ball court:
The dessert spread included cherry clafoutis and strawberry rhubarb cobbler served with fresh whipped cream:
Come September, a group of 20 guests will enjoy an even more private meal cooked by Heinrich, Joshna Maharaj (Gladstone Hotel) and Scott MacNeil (The Stop). Two dinners were auctioned off for $11,000 each at last year’s What’s on the Table:
Besides supplying CFCC with produce, the farm hosts Farms for Change, an annual summer concert featuring 15 local restaurants and artists like Sloan, Sam Roberts Band and the Tragically Hip on their barn stage:
And of course there’s a bonfire:
9783 Nottawasaga 6/7 Sideroad, Creemore, 705-466-6302, thenewfarm.ca, @TheNewFarm
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