click to enlarge - Courtesy Of Pitchfork Farm And Pickle
- Products from Pitchfork Farm and Pickle
Pitchfork Farm, an organic vegetable farm in Burlington's Intervale, has launched an offshoot retail business in the Soda Plant building at 266 Pine Street.
Pitchfork Farm and Pickle, which opened in late January, is the latest food and beverage enterprise to set up shop at the former site of ReSOURCE. It sells fermented and pickled products made from vegetables grown on Pitchfork's 18-acre farm, including kimchi, sauerkraut, fermented watermelon radish and a variety of quick pickles.
The kimchi, from a recipe devised by chef George Lambertson of ArtsRiot, incorporates Napa cabbage, scallions, daikon, carrots and garlic from Pitchfork. For the upcoming season, the farm will add ingredients used in fermentation, such as ginger and varieties of hot peppers, to its crop rotation, the farmers said.
"We're going to be growing with the intention toward pickling this year," said farmer/fermenter Julia Irish, "as well as [growing] what Pitchfork has been doing for years."
Pitchfork sells vegetables to about 40 wholesale accounts in the Burlington area, including the University of Vermont Medical Center, restaurants, food trucks and grocery stores. Co-owners Eric Seitz and Rob Rock have been farming together at the Intervale for a decade. Irish, who has worked at the farm, is a partner of Seitz and Rock at Pitchfork Farm and Pickle, where she is developing recipes, fermenting and pickling.
"She's a fermentation fanatic," Rock said.
Irish's sauerkraut recipe comes from the Bavarian father of a friend, for whom she named the product: Sepp's Bavarian Style Sauerkraut. Jericho King, a cook at the Great Northern who ferments for the restaurant, provided guidance on equipment and tools, she said.
Pitchfork Farm and Pickle also sells microgreens that it cultivates under grow lights in stacked racks in the store. "It's like a butcher shop of microgreens," Rock said.
The retail store will be open Tuesday through Saturday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.