Farm Fresh Rhode Island blog

Help us get an Incubator Kitchen off the Ground in RI!
Go back a few decades and RI had many certified food processing sites for food harvested from RI farms and waters. There were places for, well, you name it: canning tomatoes, pickling cucumbers, preserving fruits, making cheese and yogurt, baking and roasting, butchering meat, shucking oysters, and filleting fish. But today’s reality is much spottier. As bigger-is-better policies pushed the national and global consolidation of our food supply, there was reduced support for local farms and food processing sites and many closed.

With a reawakening today to the economic, environmental and basic social value of local food production, RI entrepreneurs are rising to the opportunity. Farm Fresh routinely offers guidance and support to folks interested in creating or building upon their food business. Through our Open Kitchen initiative we aim to expand the diversity of foods produced in RI using ingredients grown in RI, thereby providing a livelihood for more Rhode Islanders. But the obstacles associated with starting a food business are staggering. There are start-up costs for ingredients, equipment, and licensing, plus the trouble of finding a certified kitchen and a consistent customer base. Because there are so many obstacles, there are also few success-story mentors who can help.

Enter Hope & Main
In order to build a robust local food system we need more infrastructure, like dedicated kitchens for processing local foods. We are thrilled that RI’s first fully dedicated incubator kitchen, Hope & Main, is now being planned for the former Main Street School site in Warren, RI. Based on incubator models across the nation, this shared-use facility will be rented out by the hour or month to provide kitchen equipment and storage, along with professional services, mentoring and education to ensure that local businesses mature and are eventually prepared to stand alone.

Lisa Raiola, Executive Director of the new not-for-profit organization that hopes to create the kitchen, tells Farm Fresh, “Hope & Main is intent to build upon the Farm Fresh mission through a series of cooperative partnerships. We aim to work with Farm Fresh to supply the members of our kitchen incubator with fresh local ingredients and to expand the reach of Farm Fresh’s educational and nutrition programs to more Rhode Islanders.”

If you might be interested in sharing a kitchen or know someone else who would, then please fill out the Hope & Main Needs Assessment Survey. Help this proposed incubator kitchen get off the ground!

Farm Fresh knows there is a serious need for a dedicated incubator kitchen space in the state. Please pass this information to others who may be interested in the kitchen, your feedback is valuable in planning for this venture! Email Christie with questions.

THIS IS NO ORDINARY BREAD: from rye seed to rye flour to rye bread, it’s the first produced 100% in Rhode Island in decades. And if Schartner Farms, Kenyon’s Grist Mill, Seven Stars Bakery and the non-profit Farm Fresh RI have their way, it will be the first of many loaves. To celebrate this “Buy Local RI” small business success, Lt. Governor Elizabeth Roberts and RI DEM Division of Agriculture Chief Ken Ayars will break bread with the three partnering businesses.

Official Breadbreaking: Monday, April 12th at 10am at Seven Stars Bakery on Hope Street in Providence. Come taste!

This spring, Seven Stars Bakery will begin serving rye breads on Saturdays at its cafés and farmers market locations made exclusively with Rhode Island flour. The flour will first be featured in a Volkenbrot, an especially dense loaf that is a new addition at the bakery. The rye flour will be used in additional loaves as the season progresses, with plans for 100% of the rye flour in Seven Stars breads to come from RI farms by year’s end. Schartner Farms will also begin growing wheat for the bakery this summer for use in additional loaves.

“Thousands of Rhode Islanders will have the chance to eat locally grown bread that is incredibly fresh and supports the local economy through every step of its production,” said Hannah Mellion, the AmeriCorps VISTA at Farm Fresh RI who brokered the RI Rye partnership. “This story, which began at a Rhode Island farm and ends on a Rhode Island plate, was created by simply linking neighboring small businesses. There are so many opportunities for local partnerships like this one. We see this as just the beginning of our Local Grains Initiative, and as usual with Farm Fresh projects, success tastes great!”

“The RI Rye Project is an outstanding example of local businesses working together to create an all-Rhode Island, all-local product from start to finish,” said Lt. Gov. Roberts. “I‘d like to thank Rich of Schartner’s Farm, Paul at Kenyon’s Grist Mill, Jim at Seven Stars and Hannah at Farm Fresh RI for partnering in an innovative way to bring Rhode Islanders the first locally-grown, locally-ground, locally-baked and locally sold bread we’ve seen in generations. This is a great Buy Local RI success story.”

WHO’S WHO: THE FARMER, THE MILLER, THE BAKER

Rich Schartner, farmer/owner at Schartner Farms in Exeter, has been growing rye for years on the family’s 85 acre farm. Rye is planted as a cover crop to add nutrients to soil and prevent erosion. When life hands you thousands of pounds of rye seed, why not make flour and bread? In the fall of 2009 Farm Fresh RI reached out to Rich Schartner to explore this opportunity, and so the Rhode Island Rye project began.

Paul Drumm, miller/owner of Kenyon’s Grist Mill in Usquepaug, grinds flour in roughly 400 pounds batches and is located just six miles down the road from Schartner Farm. Over one hundred years old, they are best known for their johnnycakes and cornmeal mixes. Kenyon’s has always ground grains into meal or flour for local farmers, and has worked hard to source local grains whenever possible. The RI Rye project was an opportunity to honor that tradition.

Jim Williams, baker/owner of Seven Stars Bakery in Pawtucket, crafts a wide variety of artisan breads. The new availability of Rhode Island Rye flour offered an opportunity to source fresh-ground ingredients, support local agriculture and introduce new products into their bakery. To start, Seven Stars Bakery will be buying hundreds of pounds of RI Rye flour each month to create a special 100% RI Rye loaf. The loaf is now available for sale at Farm Fresh RI’s Springtime Farmers Market in Pawtucket, the bakery’s Providence and Rumford cafés, and its 5 other farmers market locations. Plans are to use RI Rye and wheat flour in more loaves starting this fall.

Farm Fresh RI’s Local Grains Initiative activates the Rhode Island food system and economy in new and exciting ways. The availability of RI Rye further links producers and consumers and provides valuable community-based economic development. The RI Rye, from harvest to loaf, traveled a mere 40 miles, provided income for three businesses and is only local bread flour currently available in Rhode Island. And the result is delicious! Other businesses and bakeries interested in purchasing the RI Rye Flour can find it online through Farm Fresh RI’s Market Mobile.