A group of entrepreneurs in New York have started a new way for small businesses to raise capital by turning to their communities and customers. a vehicle for companies and their customers to work together through “social loans.” Like other small-scale financing vehicles (e.g. Kickstarter), Smallknot helps businesses raise money through small contributions from many people. Unlike Kickstarter, Smallknot pledgers are paid back–so they get a 3-fold return. They get their money back, they get the option of incentives at various pledge levels, and they get the satisfaction of helping to support a business they already belong to and believe in.

We’d love your help replacing these chairs and tables: pledge any amount on Smallknot.com to help us reach our goal of $10,000. It’s an investment you’ll be able to dine on–literally–for years.

Before my third year of college, because I was about to move into my first apartment with a kitchen, my grandmother decided that it was time for me to learn how to make sauce. “Sauce,” in my family, is not a generic category of foodstuff, but means only one thing — tomato sauce — and it is the ultimate foundation of cuisine. No one in my family cares about the iconic mother sauces that form the base of classical culinary technique (bechamel, hollandaise, vinagrette, whatever) — for us, there is only one foundational sauce. And when you can make sauce, it is only a short step to the heights of Italian-American cuisine: lasagna, chicken parm, pizza, baked ziti, meatballs (which you must cook in sauce, and not in the oven, even though it is true that they dry out more in sauce). I don’t think I’ve ever celebrated a holiday or a family birthday that didn’t include a dish with sauce in one form or another. [Read more-->]

If you’ve never seen goat anywhere other than stewed in a curry, you’ll be surprised at some of the things we have in store: mocetta, a dry-cured goat ham. Goat sausage. Thin-sliced roasted hams tossed with some beans and new potatoes from our farm. Shanks and necks, braised and pulled for a sauce. Belly cured in the style of bacon.

And even though it’s starting to cool off–even dipping into frost at nights–there’s still lots going on at the farm: tomatoes are still ripening in the greenhouse, fall and winter squashes curing in the barn. Frost-hardy greens are getting a start in seed flats for a long winter in high tunnels to keep us eating fresh and local produce right through January.

Call us at 718-302-5151 any day before 6:00 and reserve a table for next week’s dinner. We’ll have one seating at 8:00, and it will include 4 courses and dessert, along with Brooklyn Brewery beers. The cost of the dinner is $65.

Our September Farm Dinner is coming up and will feature these vegetables alongside milk-fed pig that our friends Raven and Boar Farm found for us. The dinner will be Wednesday, September 28th, at 8:00. We’ll serve 4 courses along with beer from the Brooklyn Brewery for $65. 

If you’d like to attend or if you have questions, please call the restaurant any day before 6:00. This will be one of the last farm dinners of the year this year, so if you’ve been meaning to come, reserve now!

If the weather holds, they’ll be on the menu at our next Farm Dinner, which is coming up in 2 weeks: Wednesday, August 24th at 8:00 pm. We’ll also have tomatoes and eggplants and peppers from the farm and we’ll build a menu around them and a variety of fish and shellfish from Westport Aquaculture and Sea 2 Table. The dinner will include 4 courses and dessert and will cost $65. As usual, there’ll be just one seating: reserve now to make sure you’re in on it!

If you’d like to make a reservation, call the restaurant at (718) 302-5151. If you’d like more information, you may call or email mail@pigandegg.com.

Krissy gathering lettuce before the heat sets in

That black dirt is no joke: it looks like the purest potting soil you’ve ever seen, deep black and light as dried peat–we kept jabbing our hands in it to see how deep we could go before it compacted–wrist deep every time (we later learned that it runs up to 90 feet deep in some places). It’s famous as a medium for alliums: row after row of onions, shallots as big as tennis balls, garlic. But we also saw incredible eggplants and brassicas and, at Glebocki Farms, some healthy looking artichokes.

We filled those black dirt farmers with pity as we talked about the challenges of running our farm, where vegetables have to fight their way through beds of dense clay to thrive. But we picked up some good hints for growing (including a better way to stake tomatoes) and we met some interesting farmers, including Jeff and Adina Bialas, who grow everything from ground cherries to hops & cotton on a little 6 acre pocket of land carved out of sprawling onion and corn fields.

We stopped for lunch at Quaker Creek Store in Goshen, where we talked shop with extension agents over platters of home-made sausages and pirogies that rival any we’ve ever eaten:

We ended the day at S & S O Farm, whose owners helped pioneer the first Greenmarkets in the city. Their operation has grown to 450 acres since the early days, and as you’d suspect if you’ve ever shopped at their stall in Union Square, they grow everything.

By late afternoon, we could see that we’d have to outrun a ferocious-looking thunderstorm to get home, but we took our chances and stopped in at Bellvale Creamery for ice cream on the way, figuring we’d be a little harder to wash away if our bellies were filled with mint chip and Black Dirt Blast.

We’re one week out from our 3rd farm dinner of the summer. All the best vegetables are coming into season right now–we’re taking a crew up to the farm on Monday to harvest and bring down our first tomatoes, peak-season haricots verts, baby beets, garlic, and more.

The meats at this dinner will be a variety of game birds–cornish hens, pheasant, and quail, all from Quattro’s Game Farm–and we’ll pair each of 4 courses with beers from the Brooklyn Brewery.

We keep these dinners small and offer just one seating at 8:00. The game bird dinner will be on Wednesday, July 27 and will cost $60, which includes food and beer.

Call the restaurant at 718 302 5151 if you’d like to come, or email us at mail@pigandegg.com with the number of people in your party and a callback phone number (if you email, please note that your reservation can’t be guaranteed until we’ve called to confirm).

But after a brief adjustment period of getting used to flipping and assembling burgers, pork belly sandwiches, and lima bean salad by the dozens while hungry metalheads looked on, we got into it. The experience of cooking while looking out at a mist-heavy river as Manhattan looms duskily in the backdrop is hard to beat.

Evan enjoying himself

Happily set up.

Grilling with a view

The dining room.

Our farm dinners feature produce we grow on our farm in Oak Hill, and they give us a chance to stretch and try some new ideas. This first one is especially exciting because the students from the Auto Garden help work the dinner with us, and their enthusiasm for what they’re learning about food is inspiring–a compelling testament to the importance of this kind of education.

We’ll serve 4 courses of food with beer pairings from the Brooklyn Brewery. The produce will all come from our farm in Oak Hill or from the Auto Garden itself; beef will come from Vermont Quality Meats. The price for the dinner is $65, and every cent of it will go to support the Auto Garden as they grow the garden, take students on field trips to local farms, and expand their cooking club.

The dinner will be on May 11 at 7:00. Reservations are strongly suggested—call the restaurant at (718) 302-5151 during business hours to speak to a server and reserve a table.

If you’d like to find out more about the Auto Garden, check them out on Facebook.