Food for Thought: Terroir

The Taste of Place

“Terroir, terroir,

What you eat is what you are.”

This statement is true, not only for people but also for plants. There are differences in flavour and characteristics from one variety of vegetable or fruit to another, but where plants grow and how determines to a great extent their flavour and quality.

When we first moved to White Lake, a local man said potatoes from this little valley where our farm is located were special. I smiled and nodded politely. We started growing potatoes as the first settlers here had done, in the clay soil fertilized with rotted cattle manure. The potatoes were very good, but I did not realize how good they were until I started giving them to friends in the city. People kept saying they thought all potatoes tasted the same until they tasted ours. One dinner party almost ended on a bad note when the host told a guest that the potatoes he was raving about could not be bought, and he thought she was just refusing to reveal her source.

Although we are not a certified organic farm, we are in practice which means that we use no herbicides, pesticides or chemical fertilizers. Plants raised on land treated with chemicals absorb the chemicals and pass them on to whoever eats them. On top of that most non-organically grown vegetables are treated many times with pesticides before they are harvested. Traces of all of these chemicals, as well as routine antibiotics in feeds, can be found in the manure of animals who ingest them or are exposed to them.

Every year at Castlegarth Farm we enrich our soil with a layer of well-rotted manure from our cattle, raised without antibiotics, on our own pastures and hay. People have known for centuries that land enriched in this way will remain fertile and produce good food and crops forever. Most large farms have lost sight of that. Chemical fertilizers enable them to produce huge crops, but their soil deteriorates over a relatively short time, and so do the nutrients, flavour and quality of the vegetables and fruit they produce. Genetically modified vegetables are supposed to be better, but they deplete the soil at an even greater rate and nothing is known about any long term effects on those who eat them. Scientists have recently discovered that most of the vegetables we eat today do not have the rich nutrients of those grown several generations ago.

How can you get vegetables full of flavour and nutrients? You can start growing your own, if you can get organic manure; smaller growers who sell at local markets will gladly provide information on their produce so you may make informed choices; or you can dine at Castlegarth Restaurant where these wonderful vegetables, harvested daily, sometime only minutes before they are served, are made into wonderful dishes by Matthew and his culinary staff.

Which end of the field?

Wine connoisseurs have known for centuries that certain regions produce wines of distinctive flavour. Many pride themselves on being able to to determine these regions from a few sips of wine in a blind taste test. They often face the ridicule of people who do not understand the complexities of soil and plants. Remember the old joke about the wine taster who haughtily gives a very specific locale for the wine he is tasting, and the skeptic who replies, “But can you tell me which side of the road?”

I too have been skeptical, but if you give me a Black Plum tomato, for example, and ask which end of our field it came from, I can tell you with a high degree of accuracy. In many cases I could tell whether a tomato was grown on our farm or elsewhere.

At Castlegarth Farm we have two distinct types of soil. Most of the land is clay which can almost turn to concrete if you try to work it up when it is too wet. Our second type of soil lies in a band along the creek which was probably once a bog fed by underground springs. It is a light peat material, very easy to work up and plant. That pocket of land, about 400 m. from our main garden at the house is a different growing environment.

We have only been using that locale for about six years, mainly because it is so far from the house. We are still experimenting to find which vegetables taste better in that area and which taste better when grown in clay. Salads and yellow tomatoes taste about the same, as do peas, but San Marzano and Black Plum tomatoes have a richer, more complex flavour when grown in clay. Carrots, parsnips, and turnips, on the other hand, like the light-weight soil and taste a little sweeter than their counterparts who have to force their roots into clay.

All our vegetables have a wonderful flavour no matter which garden they harvested from because they are free of chemicals and are able to benefit from micro-nutrients that only organic manure can provide. Chefs Matthew and Jennifer of Castlegarth Restaurant not only prepare and serve the vegetables grown at the farm; they are part of the process: choosing the varieties to be grown, planting and monitoring their progress, and selecting the best for their customers. Bon appétit.