One of the coolest things about summer is having the opportunity to eat a variety of local vegetables. Who doesn’t love corn on the cob in the dog days of summer? Well, our visit with the Yarnick’s on September 5th started off with eating freshly picked raw corn. Yep, you read that right, raw corn. When you have fresh, juicy corn from the field, it’s doesn’t need to be boiled – trust me!
 |
| Fresh Corn |
Dan Yarnick is the owner of Yarnick’s farm in Indiana, PA. Our team members thoroughly enjoyed meeting Dan and his family. We really gained an understanding of how passionate Dan and our other partner farmers are about growing the best, freshest produce for us to feature in our restaurants.
After we tasted sweet corn, we visited the greenhouses to see what was being grown. The heirloom tomato house was my favorite. It’s amazing that these tomatoes were planted in February and will continue to produce fruit until October.
 |
| Heirloom Tomatoes |
Many of us at Eat’n Park are a little competitive, so to put competition into the mix, we decided to do a yellow squash picking competition. The first person to fill a ½ bushel basket wins a basket of everything that the Yarnick’s grow. We all loaded up on the back of a wagon that was pulled by one of their tractors. The competition was fierce, since we had some seasoned veggie pickers. Two of our team members grew up on a farm, so picking squash was old hat to them. Of course, one of them was eventually crowned the winner.
 |
| Fresh Picked Squash |
When you visit our Eat’n Park restaurants, one of the things that we pride ourselves on is our commitment to purchasing local through our FarmSource program. Hopefully, these little guys look familiar. Our friends at Yarnick’s grow all of our local grape tomatoes for our salads at Eat’n Park. It’s one of the most labor-intensive jobs on the farm, but they take pride in knowing that these tomatoes are a big part of separating us from other restaurants.
 |
| Grape Tomatoes |
I hope that you enjoy reading about our farm tours. I look forward to telling you more about the food we source and the steps we’re taking in being a sustainable restaurant.
 |
| Our Team Members |
Share
No comments:
Post a Comment