Farmer Lee Jones – Celebrate Mother Nature’s Seasons

What is the best type of farming?

It is our personal belief, says Farmer Lee Jones from The Chef's Garden,  that God designed a system far superior to anything we can fake out chemically or synthetically. The way that we're farming [in the US] chemically and commercially today is much like our Western culture of medicine. Once we get sick, then a doctor prescribes medicine to treat the symptom. The method of farming that we're trying to do today is more like the Eastern culture. The Eastern culture is, get the body in balance to defend against the disease in the first place. So we have a sane healthy soil, healthy vegetables, and healthy people. We do the soil analysis based on the deficiencies that we find within the soil. Then we plant crop specific. This is what's really cool based on the deficiency we plant cover crops. Different types of plants will accept different types of energy from the sun, buckwheat, Clover, vetch, barley. We even have a 17 variety cover crop mix that we use to give us a, it would be like, like us taking a multivitamin, the plants except different types of energy from the sun, so based on the deficiency in the soil, you plant crops specific. You let that land sit fallow and let the plants in and if you can visualize the leaves of that plant as antenna or receptacles, they accept the energy through the leaves into the stems, then down to the roots and then into the soil. Then the next year when we plant the turnip or the beat or the carrot or the radish or the zucchini or whatever it happens to be, it picks that back up and when we eat it, it builds our immune system. 

What is the Culinary Vegetable Institute?

The Culinary Vegetable Institute's initial vision was a place for the foremost chefs in the country to be able to come and to do experimentation and research and to be able to play. It's an R&D lab. We have relationships with culinary equipment companies that have the best of the best and the newest ideas. Normally we have about 600 visiting chefs a year. The idea was originally for chefs to be able to come. It's evolved into a place where we do corporate R&D and corporate retreats. So corporations come and bring their guests. As you know, the, what most of them usually did for many years was go out to Greystone and then toward the Napa Valley. There's only so many times you want to do that. And so this really gives corporations an alternative to be able to come in. It's kind of nice, they have a captive audience because you know, you're out in the farm and so they're not getting wandering off into a bar or some other thing. They're focused on really building the relationships. It's about relationship building and learning different ways to be able to use ingredients.