Alumni team up to support local agriculture
BY KIMBERLEY SIRK
PHOTOS BY BOB CHRISTY, '95
C
hef Michael Fiala counts himself among the fortunate. He blends his passion with his vocation.
Fiala, a 1996 Kent State graduate with a degree in biology, left the area after graduation to attend one of the most prestigious culinary programs in the country, the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y.
He says that because he was slightly older than most of the future chefs in his classes, he was able to focus more clearly on his singular goal of becoming an executive chef at a well-regarded restaurant.
After stints in Miami and in the Finger Lakes region of New York, Fiala began to blaze a trail through the culinary scene on Cleveland’s East Side. He created meals at Moxie in Beachwood and Fire on Shaker Square before becoming executive chef at the Inn at Turner’s Mill in Hudson.
While at Fire, Fiala noticed that an urban agriculture and farmer’s market program, known as the North Union Farmer’s Market, set up shop on Shaker Square each summer weekend across from the restaurant. At the farmers’ stands, Fiala discovered a treasure trove of fresh local products and noticed how the local food tasted so much better than most grocery store produce. The farmers shared similar passions: Not only did they strive to make their goods delicious and available to those who might not frequent countryside farm stands, but they also wanted to make their practice of agriculture sustainable.
On the strength of that experience, Fiala became convinced of the wisdom of sustainable local agriculture.
Fiala was able to maintain and continue relationships with some of those farmers during his days at the Inn at Turner’s Mill.
Just three years after Fiala began leading the Inn’s kitchen, the owners decided to close the destination dining spot with only a few weeks’ notice.
The closing and sudden unemployment gave Fiala time to reconsider his options and consider the path his life would take. Once again, his Kent State experience served as a centering point.
National parks and local farms
“I had this biology degree, and I was interested in the work of the National Park,” says the longtime Kent resident. “I figured that I could become a naturalist or botanist because of my science background, and I loved working with kids,” he recalls.
And again, happenstance — and good connections — intervened.
Michael Fiala plates an appetizer course at a recent event. Photo by Bob Christy
“Two people within a day of each other e-mailed me the job announcement for executive chef here at the National Park Association,” Fiala recalls.
In March of 2008, Fiala became the Cuyahoga Valley National Park Association’s first executive chef.
Founded as the Cuyahoga Valley National Recreation Area in 1974, it gained National Park status in 2000. The Cuyahoga Valley Countryside Conservancy is a nonprofit organization that strives to promote sustainable farming within the Cuyahoga Valley National Park (CVNP) through its Countryside Initiative.
The CVNP, through a federal bidding process, assigns interested farmers to existing farmsteads in the park. In 2008, seven families farmed in the park. Their products ran the gamut, from berries and vegetables to flowers and goats. Ideally, 20 working farms will one day operate within the park’s boundaries.
Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) programs help make the bounty of the national park land available to local families. A CSA offers “shares” for sale in their farm’s output. A share provides a family of four with a basket of fresh produce each week during the growing season.
The Countryside Conservancy also holds two farmers’ market programs during the summer months. Both markets feature produce and other locally produced food, including products provided by farmers within the national park.
The nonprofit arm of the CVNP is the Cuyahoga Valley National Park Association. Its goal is to bring the public into the parks for recreation and educational opportunities. This is accomplished, in part, through the programming of the Cuyahoga Valley Environmental Education Center (CVEEC), which houses, among other things, Fiala’s kitchen.
It is through the auspices of the CVEEC that Fiala both educates and feeds park visitors with the wisdom of supporting local agriculture.
Where in the world did your dinner come from?
It is clear from a first meeting with Fiala that he is in his element in a kitchen within a park. Although he has worked at more elaborate facilities, Fiala feels called to bring sustainable agriculture and conservation programs to visitors and his staff of six.
“When I started, we had what could be considered about half a compost pile. Now, we have four,” Fiala says.
Through part staff education and part environmental education, Fiala teaches employees and diners that green wastes, such as fruit and vegetable peels, go into a heap that will not only save landfill space, but also provide rich organic matter to condition soil.
Greenfield Berry Farm. Photo by Bob Christy
His goal is to reduce his kitchen’s waste to nothing.
According to the Countryside Conservancy, where and how America’s food is produced has seen a radical shift over the past 50 years. Currently, huge farms produce about 98 percent of the nation’s food. The benefits of that method are a food supply that is predictable, abundant, convenient and inexpensive. The costs of that type of agriculture are largely distasteful: think of hard, waxy tomatoes; loss of farmland; potentially harmful chemicals in our air, water and land; and poor labor conditions for farm workers.
The conservancy seeks to change the equation of food being produced, distributed and consumed globally, then handed down nationally and locally, to the exact opposite: local farms producing goods for local needs first.
That’s why, says Fiala, people need to foster relationships with the people who produce local food whenever possible.
Fiala’s first foray into local produce came in June, when he worked with Daniel Greenfield, ’05, of Greenfield’s Berry Farm, to provide strawberries straight from the field.
Greenfield, who holds a doctorate in cultural foundations in education from Kent State, was enthusiastic about the prospect of working with a chef who espouses the same principles he supports.
“I believe in the idea that we as humans should have a relationship with a piece of land,” Greenfield says.
“We need to have relationships with each other — farmer and consumer. The practice of farming is all about cultivating relationships.”
Greenfield’s Berry Farm produces various berries, fingerling potatoes and other produce in its own Community Supported Agriculture program. Fiala purchased a share in Greenfield’s CSA last growing season, and used that produce in the CVEEC kitchen. While his share is not enough to feed an entire group of diners, Fiala was able to use the output of the CSA to experiment with recipes and to educate his staff on the preparation of local food so fresh, it sometimes still had dew on the leaves.
The berry farm also hosts what has become a popular summertime ritual, even before local farming awareness was raised — families coming together for berry-picking.
On one sultry early June afternoon, as Fiala walked the fields with an eye toward an upcoming event, groups of children — some led by teachers, others by their parents — roamed the rows of ready-to-pick strawberries.
As the groups completed their survey of the berry patch and filed toward their cars, they handed cash directly to Greenfield.
No middle-men involved.
Progress, one row at a time
Fiala believes that, while his overall aspiration to use only local foods in his kitchen may take some time to realize, a more short-term series of reachable goals is possible.
Fiala’s seal of approval. Photo by Bob Christy
Lisa Battista, ’84, is Fiala’s supervisor at the CVEEC. Her charge is to operate the park’s Extraordinary Spaces program, which, as she says, “provides top-quality and memorable life experiences in a gorgeous National Park setting.” Because of Fiala’s dedication to local food and the park’s pristine beauty, hiring him has been integral to creating that experience for park visitors.
“In keeping with other education centers nationwide, our organization is committed to promoting sustainability in food service and production, defined by fresh, local ingredients,” Battista says.
“Chef Fiala was hired largely due to his reputation as a top local chef with the interest and ability to produce wonderful meals using seasonal and, when possible, local ingredients.”
Fiala believes that relationships with farmers like Greenfield allow him to learn more about how the food was produced.
Today, Fiala says, so many people have been swayed to the value of local farming that some farmers attend four farmers’ markets on Saturdays. Many more markets could spring up if only there were enough farmers to populate them.
“Relationships become very important,” Fiala says. Trendiness may fade, but local agriculture is taking root, he adds.
Looking back, Fiala says the kitchen has come a long way toward the goal of using locally sourced food and asking the right questions about how that food was raised and prepared.
“When I started here, we had a standard institutional freezer which contained standard institutional food,” Fiala says. “Now, we might still serve breaded chicken, but we locally source whatever we can and bread the cutlets by hand.
“We might not necessarily get all we need from within the National Park’s boundaries, but we do get the vast majority from within the Cuyahoga Valley watershed,” Fiala says.
In all, the CVEEC feeds hundreds of participants a year, from school groups and camps to business meetings and small conferences.
Fiala tells the story of one gathering, a group of park superintendents from around the country, including a special guest from Italy.
“During the morning, they had toured Goatfeathers, another farm within the park. They saw the goats peacefully grazing,” Fiala shares. “When my turn to present to the group came, I told them about the menu I had planned for the evening, which included roasted goat!”
The level of connection to the dinner, Fiala says, surprised some of the guests.
“There was a groan from the group. I told them the roasts were not the same goats they saw that morning,” he says with a wide grin.
In 2009, he hopes to add other local suppliers for items such as pastas.
He adds that once people taste the difference, they can appreciate the effort. A trip to a local farm, such as to sample Greenfield’s berries, or fresh greens from the Basket of Life Farm, underscores the lessons.
“I want to be able to ask a farmer who produces chickens, ‘How were those chickens raised? How were they treated and what were they fed?’” Fiala says. “That’s the connection I as a chef want to have with the farmers who supply my kitchen.”
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Daniel Greenfield and Michael Fiala inspect the harvest at the Greenfield Berry Farm. 
