Vermont Vox Populi: A Conversation with “Farmer's Diner" Owner Tod Murphy and VC Editor Rob Williams

Q (Rob). When most of us hear the word "diner," we may be reminded of our favorite local Ma and Pa "greasy spoon" joint. Explain the radical concept – serving food mostly acquired from within a 100 mile radius - behind your notion of a "Farmer's Diner."

A (Tod). Gee, I wouldn't call what we do here at the Farmer's Diner “radical.” Given the popularity of the restaurant with so many people from various political and social backgrounds, the restaurant seems pretty mainstream, in terms of what people say they value when given the chance to express themselves. Things like great-tasting food that comes from real farmers and folks who live nearby.

Q. I hear you, but your business model is “radical” in the sense that it gets to the “root causes” behind the problems associated with a global corporate/industrial food model where the average piece of food in the United States travels 1200 miles to reach our plates.

A. Our goal of spending 70 cents of every food dollar within 50-75 miles is radical for a business in a global economy where greed – a.k.a. maximizing profit and externalizing costs – is commonplace. But to regular citizens, I don't think we are radical. Great tasting food and a good cause, but not radical.

Q. How did you first come up with the idea for the "Farmer's Diner?"

A. Oh, I talk about a caffeine-induced epiphany. There is the logical, western, tortured-by-empiricism answer that says I rationally was thinking about how to move all the great food on the farms into the community in a way that was approachable for all types of citizens and, by process of elimination, came up with the idea for a diner. There is also the answer that LIFE wants this type of business, that the way humans have been doing business in the past has been destructive, so we're trying to bring about businesses and societies that are about ways of creating better health and stronger local relationships. Our culture places great value on the idea of the individual, who conquers in some heroic way – a flash of brilliant insight, an achievement of great physical prowess. However, most of what is required to create a world of health and connection comes from dogged persistence and integrity, values that are not canonized in our cynical culture.

Q. I ate at the old Farmer's Diner in Barre many times, and really enjoyed it. Why the move to Quechee?

A. Farmer's Diner has been a process, a series of iterations working towards the goal of being a restaurant that is financially sustainable, as well as ecologically, culturally, and agriculturally sustainable. There was and is a great deal of skepticism about the viability of the model of purchasing local food and serving it at what Wendell Berry calls “democratically priced” levels. So, we started small to test out much of the model and learn what we needed to know without incurring a great deal of debt. Barre was a 50-seat diner with a tiny kitchen. Given many of the regulatory issues and other costs of doing business, a small family-priced restaurant is difficult to operate at a profit, particularly given the intensity of labor needed to manage local food in the kitchen. So, we decided to close Barre once we learned as much as we could there, and move to a location that was larger – 120 seats – so we could generate greater cash flow to cover the management expenses.

Q. How has business been in the new location?

A. We've been busy for the first two months working out the kinks, being swamped by tourists for foliage, and then spent November catching our breaths and finishing up the missing details from pre-opening. Now, we are starting to build our business with the local community, putting together author reading events, going to chamber of commerce functions, doing catering for office meetings, those types of things.

Q. What are some of the new opportunities and challenges on the horizon for you?

A. We want to “let the paint dry” at Quechee and learn what we still have to learn. This restaurant requires a greater volume of all the products we use, and this has caused some new problems to solve in terms of the adequacy of supply dairy as one example. Because we opened at the end of the summer, we scrambled to find enough local produce – so we are putting together a meeting with farmers to plan out production for next year. We started making our own pickles, and realized that, given the volume of pickles we go through, we are likely going to have to put together an acre or so of pickling/cuke production. So, we are focused on nailing down the operational aspects of Quechee, building the supply chain, and learning more of the details about how this business model works at a low retail price point.

Q. Can your "pilot project" help point the way for Vermont becoming a more independent and sustainable place to live in this new century?

A. Wow. That sounds pretty big. I've certainly learned a great deal about what is required and what is possible for a robust independent food economy for Vermont. Wendell Berry has outlined the principles for a thriving local economy. Step one is meet your own needs to the maximum degree from your own resources. As every politician has repeatedly pointed out, Vermont has many great resources on the food economy front, but the “talk-to-do ratio” for most public institutions needs improving. We know that Vermont can certainly produce all of its own dairy needs and then ship the excess to regional market. We could do the same for grains, legumes, storage vegetables, fresh and canned vegetables and proteins (both meat and soy-based). What is required are the infrastructure industries – like Vermont Butter and Cheese, the Soy Project up in Hardwick, Vermont Smoke & Cure in Barre, PT Farms Meat Processing in St. Johnsbury, Vermont Mystic Pies – these are the non-farm infrastructure pieces that have to be encouraged and supported by state government, citizens, and other businesses within the state.

There is a great support system that has been put together by non-profits like Northeast Organic Farmers Association (NOFA) and the colleges in Vermont to do the transfer of knowledge between farmers.

The big issues are infrastructure, land costs, and availability, the cost of capital, and most of all, where are we going to find the farmers? The idea of the family farm as a business model(farm is passed on through several generations) is not feasible, given the current political and economic climate. Folks don't want to say that or believe it, but that is the lesson of the past one hundred years – that the family farm is dead.

It seems that the two models of farming going forward are, first, the “second career farmer,” somebody who has had a professional career and decided to leave that to begin farming. The other model that seems to have legs is the one where a group of people come together around a piece of land and agree to share the financial burdens and risks as well as the labor and management risks – like the Cobb Hill “intentional” community in Hartland, for example, or Amish communities.

So, the Farmer's Diner has thrown itself into this fray by pulling together disparate pieces of a local food system. What we have learned is hard to put into a few bullet points. A Wall Street friend has said that our great ability is our being able to talk and operate with a full understanding of farm production issues, then to move on from there to the full understanding of economic and market issues. Vermont's agricultural dilemmas are only going to be solved by working from farm to customer with a full understanding of all the business that goes on in between. I hope the governor will look at appointing someone to the Secretary of Agriculture position who has actually has a farm background, a finance background, and an economic development background.

I'm afraid, though, that the person who would be qualified to produce great results for Vermont from the Ag Secretary's office would rattle too many cages for any governor who wants smooth seas and re-election.

Q. Do you think the state of Vermont should become its own independent republic, as it was from 1777-1791?

A. I think this is a great question as a starter to think about how we live currently versus how we want to live. Here's what I think is really behind that question. The national culture – socially, economically, politically – is unsatisfying. It doesn't call on us as citizens to some type of life that is greater than our own lusts, greed, and individual fulfillment. It is a culture that is destructive, divisive, and complex beyond our ability to fathom.

What we want of a place as humans, as citizens, is to live with a culture that is healthy – economically, emotionally, physically. We can measure some of those things – survival rates for babies, alcohol and drug use, size of people's paycheck, cleanliness in drinking water – but some of the foundation stones of a healthy culture are harder to measure.

The Vermont independence question, I believe, has behind it these concerns and frustrations. The public discussion I have heard has, at times, sounded like a bit of a fairy tale, that somehow by leaving the Union, we would be free from the oligarchies that run the United States, we would be free from the politics of Washington. The fairy tale in this is the belief that the problem is out there beyond us and if we can pull away from the bullies we will be better. I think we are living in a Faulkner novel, only now the Snopes aren't running the town, they are running the entire country, and they will run an independent republic unless citizens decide to start taking responsibility for their lives, their communities, their places.

Q. And this is exactly what Vermont Commons proposes that Vermonters do. To stop looking to Washington, D.C. and multinational corporations to solve our 21st century problems, and instead, start de-centralizing and re-localizing political and economic power in our own communities here in the Green Mountains.

A. We are in trouble every time we think the solution is outside of us. We have to live committed to the health of the place where we live, our homes, our land, our neighbors, our towns. From that base of health, we can create the changes we want to see in the world. Believing that a new republic will resolve issues if we don't change how we live is foolishness.

Q. I couldn't agree more, Tod. Thanks for sharing your wisdom here, and good luck with the Farmer's Diner.