Published on September 13, 2006

Pete Johnson’s greens stretch toward the far reaches of his Craftsbury farm. Mr. Johnson’s signature salad blend started him on his way to being a vegetable magnate. Now he has embarked on a new project that offers local vegetables to subscribers throughout the year. Photos by Joseph Gresser

CRAFTSBURY — Today Pete Johnson’s business depends on growing and shipping the vegetables served in high-end restaurants as far away as New York City.  But the proprietor of Pete’s Greens is planning on a future in which people eat what grows close to home.

Walking around his 220-acre Craftsbury farm, Mr. Johnson shows off lush rows of the salad blend that gave him his start, a half-acre greenhouse bursting with tomato vines, and a mind-boggling assortment of potatoes, carrots, parsnips, beets and cabbages.

Mr. Johnson plans to feed people no matter what the weather.  His old dairy barn holds a refrigerated storage room, a large root cellar, and will soon house a walk-in freezer. 

All this in service of Mr. Johnson’s next big step, a year-round CSA.  Consumer supported agriculture (CSA) has become a fixture in many areas over the past few years.

A person buys into a CSA at the start of the growing season and, in return, receives a box of produce every week into the fall.  The farmer gets money early in the year and a buffer against some of the risks of farming.

The buyer gets fresh vegetables, but knows that the vagaries of weather prevent the farmer from being able to promise just what will be ready when.

Mr. Johnson has just launched a CSA that extends the general idea past the growing season.  Good Eats, as the plan is called, offers subscribers two

A heap of abundance is on display at Montpelier’s farmers’ market. Radishes, broccoli, multi-hued Swiss chard, and Chinese cabbage are arrayed to tempt passersby. Pete Johnson says the Montpelier market has become an important part of his business.

choices, the vegetable share and the “localvore” option.

The former provides greenhouse tomatoes and peppers into November.  Later the greenhouse will provide mixed greens, scallions and hardy crops such as pac choi.

With a mild winter the greenhouse can produce fresh crops as late as Christmas.  Harsh weather, though, will put an end to greens.  Then the root cellars will be tapped for potatoes, carrots, beets, cabbage, onions and winter squash.

The localvore plan provides frozen spinach and other greens; frozen soup; apples and cider from Champlain Orchards; yogurt, cream, cornmeal, whole wheat flour and dried beans from Butterworks Farm; oyster mushrooms from Wild Branch Mushrooms.  In addition, Quebec producers will supply sunflower oil, popcorn, rolled oats, spelt and rye, as well as pearled barley.  Local maple syrup and honey are also on the menu.

Localvore is a new word meaning a person who eats food produced close to home.  Mr. Johnson said the idea appeals to him, but he thinks that if everyone has to maintain a root cellar, they could spend 80 percent of their time feeding themselves.

He envisions the day when communities have such facilities as the village grain mill, root cellar and cheese maker.  This future will owe a great deal to the past, by choice rather than necessity.

Spuds fly out of a potato digger in fields of Pete’s Greens. The harvester acts like a slotted wedge, forcing the tubers out of the ground while separating them from the surrounding soil. Pete’s expects to harvest about 20 to 25 tons of potatoes this year.

Mr. Johnson is moving toward this future while continuing with his present business.  With help from Black River Produce of Springfield, he ships his signature mesclun salad blend, heirloom tomatoes and other crops around the region.

Restaurants, especially fancy city establishments, get special treatment.  Mr. Johnson says that chefs demand the highest quality.  Farm manger Nick Augsberger speaks with them.

“If there is a problem with something, you have to tell them,” Mr. Johnson said.  “They may want the vegetables anyway, but they have to know in advance.”

Mr. Johnson says the restaurant trade is subject to fads.  For a while, he said, every restaurant served baby pac choi.  Baby vegetables were popular for a time, but now, he said, jumbo vegetables are in.

He said it was pointless to try to keep up with fads.

In any event, if a plant grows in Vermont, Mr. Johnson can probably supply it.

His fields supply ten kinds of onions, including Italian roasting onions, which are red and torpedo shaped.

They also produce blue, red, yellow and white fleshed potatoes.  Out in the field Caleb Butler drives a tractor pulling a deceptively simple contraption that scoops up the tubers and separates them from the soil.  Mr. Johnson says he expects to harvest between 20 and 25 tons of potatoes this year.

He also grows many differently colored varieties of beets and carrots.  Asked why, Mr. Johnson replies that he wants to provide a variety of colors and flavors to keep the winter diet fresh.

Mr. Johnson is also moving in the direction of prepared foods.  He has started taking vegetable seconds and surplus produce from the Montpelier

Pete Johnson inspects a tray of heirloom tomatoes in his half-acre greenhouse. Their names are evocative — Cherokee purple, green zebra, yellow Brandywine — but Mr. Johnson says there are far more tomato names than tomato varieties.

farmers’ market to Fairfax.  There, at the Food Venture Center, a giant kitchen for food start-ups, he prepares salsa and vegetable soups.

He also freezes packages of melon pieces, and whole tomatoes which, he says, pop out of their skins when put under hot water and can be used to freshen up sauces, soups and stews.

Mr. Johnson’s tomato plantation is a wonder in itself.  He grows market variety beefsteak tomatoes in its warmth, as well as a rainbow of heirloom varieties.  There are hundreds of named heirlooms, he confides, but only about 40 varieties.

He has discovered that the roots of some varieties are insufficiently hardy for his purposes, so grafts these tomato vines onto the vigorous rootstock of a wild Mexican tomato.

To keep his energy costs under control and to keep in line with his philosophy of local production, Mr. Johnson uses recycled restaurant grease to heat his barn and greenhouse.

Right now, he says, is the time to make preparations for a future in which local production may not be optional.

“We’re putting money into the freezer and cooling in the barn now, while we’re rich,” he says speaking of our society more than himself.  In ten or 20 years, Mr. Johnson suggests, things may be very different.