My wife
and I own, "The Purple Bean Cafe" in Austin, Tx. We sell breakfast
and lunch sammiches and recently added a dinner menu. It’s never been easy
deciding what to add or subtract from the menu. Ingredients are only the beginning;
we still need to source the ingredients, calculate total cost of goods sold and
figure out where and how long we are going to store the ingredients. We do our
best to create as many delicious combinations as we can from a manageable core
group of ingredients. Once we think we have a winner, my daughter Dasha and I
eat it for a week straight. If at the end of that week it still sounds
good, it goes on the menu. That is part of the reason almost all of our
sammiches have tomato, onion, and basil. It’s a bonus that this tri-fecta
tastes fantastic on both our breakfast and lunch sammiches.
The
other day I was heading back to our restaurant supply store for the third time
in three days to get basil because the previous two days they were out and they
weren’t sure which truck the basil was coming in on. I had just planted 8 basil
plants in pots on the patio of the restaurant as an emergency backup, but they weren’t
ready to harvest yet so my fingers were crossed that there would be basil at
the store this time. The whole way there I kept thinking, “There has to be a
better way”. My wife and I had been to local small farms and farmer markets,
but we could never be sure they would have what we needed when we needed it. The
big supply store was our best bet for dependability even though it isn’t perfect either.
It was on this drive that it occurred to me that one of our customers, Kevin
Titus owned a small self sustaining farm out near Bastrop and he might be able
to grow enough basil to guarantee a steady supply for us. Then my imagination
ran wild for a few minutes and I wondered if he could grow ALL of our
vegetables for us. I sent him an email to see if he would be interested in
talking about it. I don’t think her fully understood what I was asking for. Kevin
replied back letting me know he’d be happy to sell me his current surplus of whatever he had. But
I had moved well beyond just wanting whatever he had availlable at that time. I wanted to know if it
would be possible for him to produce all of the vegetables, eggs, and chicken for
our restaurant on his tiny 1.3 acre plot of land. Just how much can he squeeze out of that tiny plot?
We met the following Tuesday and Kevin brought 3
dozen eggs with him. They were $3/dozen. Way more than the $1.20/dozen I had
been paying when I bought them buy the case. I would have to add 50¢ to each
breakfast sammich these eggs went on to cover the additional cost and that made me nervous. What if folks don't want to pay the extra? We sat down
and I asked him if he could grow enough fruits, vegetables, and chickens on his
small farm to meet all my needs. He didn’t know, but he was interested in
trying. As we talked, we realized we both had the same beliefs on
what are the fundamental responsibilities shared by both farmers and restaurateurs:
- Maximum positive environmental impact
- Organic, no pesticides, herbicides, antibiotics, growth hormones or anything else. Everything that goes into the farm must come from the farm (except the initial seed and animal stock). We want this to be a “Closed Loop System”
- Heirloom varieties (No GMO products EVER!). We want varieties that grow well in central Texas and that have been farmed here from traditional seed stocks.
We both believe we
have a responsibility to provide affordable, healthy food to our community that
is part of an economically viable system, self sustaining, and has an overall
environmentally positive impact. The question is, “can we do it?” Neither of us
really knows for sure, but we both got very excited about the possibility and
are determined to give it a try. We shook hands, Kevin went to his day job, and
I commenced to cooking the eggs he brought. We started offering the, “Farm
Fresh” eggs right away and to my surprise, all but one customer ordered the
more expensive eggs. We sold out of all three dozen eggs by the end of the
day!! I emailed Kevin requesting more eggs as soon as he could. Two days later
he brought four dozen eggs and by the end of the day we had sold out of all of
them as well. It was at this point I felt like we were on to something
positive. We made arrangement to have me, LaValle, and our baker Ben visit
Kevin at his farm to survey the farm and talk more about the possibilities.
I was blown aware
by marriage of old and new farming techniques that Kevin was employing on his tiny
little farm. It was by far the most efficient, ecologically beneficial farming
I had ever seen. I was impressed by everything from his compost tea system to
the chickens running around the lot as if it belonged to them and we were just
visitors on their farm. Water retention, soil retention, fertilization, and pest
control were all carefully planned out and operating for self sustainability.
He has everything from crop rotation to shade farming on his land and we could
see clearly that he was only just getting started. The vegetables that were
growing were young and incredibly healthy for the poor rocky soil conditions in
the area. He explained to us how he is able to pull all his learning together
to make that happen, and over the next year I plan to use this blog to tell you if it can indeed be done,
how he does it, and how you are going to benefit from it by dining at the Purple
Bean Café.
Troy Twibell
The Purple Bean Cafe
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