The Long Way to Lunch: A Bike Tour to Stone Barns, by Hailey Moore
Traveling with a bike almost guarantees spontaneous conversation with strangers. A couple of weeks ago, while on the Amtrak to and then at the Portland, Maine, airport, I was approached by several fellow travelers who just had to know what is in that bag? Upon learning that the luggage in question contained my bike (or, an Otso Warakin that was standing in for my bike during a review period for The Radavist), one man was inspired to share with me a couple of stories and photos from his own bike-touring experience aboard a Brompton through the French countryside.
Another told me that bike touring was something he “used to do”—recalling an adventure down the entirety of the California coastline—while looking wistful that he’d lost touch with the practice. I appreciate the kind of instant familiarity that forms through these encounters, but I wish that travel by bike was a more common popular pastime. While I personally subscribe to less-traveled, off-road, adventurous terrain, I think that there are many ways to structure a bike tour. As I learned on this trip, sometimes just having a destination is enough and you can cobble together the journey along the way.
September 10, 2024 - Portland, ME
I started pedaling south from downtown Portland at the unhurried hour of 9:15 a.m. A belated-retirement-and-birthday celebration for my mom had brought me to Maine for the first time and, having also spent little time in New England aside from the 2022 Nutmeg Nor’easter, I wasn’t in a hurry to leave the Northeast without making a few more stops. In reality, I was also on the hook to crew my partner for a 100-mile running race in Virginia on September 20th, so I reasoned that it didn’t make much sense to go all the way back to Colorado in the interim only to return to the East Coast. In addition to experiencing the wildly scenic terrain of Acadia National Park (which a friend and I did during a quick 36-hour window the previous weekend), I hoped to make my way by bike to visit some friends in the Connecticut River Valley and then continue over to the Hudson River Valley for what would possibly be my personal touristing highlight of the whole trip: a solo lunch date and tour at Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture.
Stone Barns is best described as a non-profit farm that doubles as an ecological agriculture research and education center; it also works as the primary sourcing partner for its sister restaurant, Blue Hill. In the way that many refer to a second mountain home that’s plusher than most first homes as a “cabin,” the name “Stone Barns” quaintly undersells the rustic-yet-stately primary structures, built by the Rockefellers in the early 1930s to serve as a family dairy operation. In 2004, descendents of the family created the non-profit and Stone Barns began working in tandem with the sustainability goals of the Blue Hill restaurants—one location on the farm grounds and the other in New York City—headed by chef Dan Barber. Today, Blue Hill bears the status—and expense—of being a twice-Michelin-starred restaurant—at least for their tasting-menu dinner experience.
The Netflix series Chef’s Table put Blue Hill—and, by extension, Stone Barns—on my radar during the show’s first season run in 2015. The mission of Blue Hill and Stone Barns marries two of my personal interests—refined dining and sustainable food-growing practices—and the
Netflix feature exemplifies the increasingly influential role that chef’s are playing in shaping food culture in the US.
This spring, I picked up Dan Barber’s already decade-old book, The Third Plate: Field Notes on the Future of Food, a critical examination of how and why America developed a meat-dominant food culture, supported by a widely and detrimentally industrialized agricultural model. Though far from fresh off the press, I found Barber’s writing style engaging and his words still highly relevant—it’s the best non-fiction book I’ve read in recent memory.
In provocative contrast to extolling the virtues of the now-trendy farm-to-table movement, Barber writes that, while certainly a worthwhile practice, visiting one’s local farmers’ market isn’t enough to shift America’s cuisine (i.e., the culture surrounding the way and what we eat) to a more sustainable model. If sustainability (not to mention improved nation-wide health) is the actual end goal, then chefs need to take a more active role in changing the focus of restaurant menus to more local, seasonal, regenerative, and plant-forward dishes. In short, today’s world gives chefs the opportunity to be the influencers of the food industry.
Reading The Third Plate reinvigorated my interest in Stone Barns, so with my New England trip on the books, I decided a visit to the Hudson Valley campus for the more affordable day-time cafeteria meal option at Blue Hill would be the organizing element for a non-traditional tour. In other words, I’d be taking the very long way to lunch.
With the exception of a trip from Trento to Rome down the Italy Divide last fall, most of my tours start with prioritizing the riding, rather than the end point; to lean on the cliché—the journey not the destination. But with a little time to fill before commencing my crewing duties in Virginia, I started scheming my route from Portland to Tarrytown, NY, with a stop through the twee township of Hadlyme, CT, along the way. I quickly discovered that the Adventure Cycling Association’s Atlantic Coast route would be easy to plug-and-play to get me to the northeast corner of Connecticut; from there, picking up an impressively long rail trail would take me the remaining 65+ miles to Hadlyme.
Another uncharacteristic twist to this trip was what I planned to carry, and not carry. Although I planned to put in full days of riding, I wouldn’t be able to completely unplug from real-life responsibilities and fully embrace the touring mindset. With some ongoing writing and other work-related projects, I’d need to carry my laptop and stay on top of a few assignments along the way.
To better facilitate this split mindset, I opted to make this trip a full-on credit-card tour, staying in hotels or with friends along the way. I decided that running a Jr. Ranger pannier set up front would be the best way to carry all of my electronics (including laptop), extra clothes, toiletries, and food—while, importantly, leaving room for Stone Barns souvenirs. Having the newly-released Capstone bag on my bars would provide quick access to my point-and-shoot camera and other touring sundries.
On Day 1 I managed to log 125 barely undulating miles, starting in Portland and finishing for the night slightly off route at a (surprisingly nice) Sleep Inn outside of Derry, New Hampshire (a suburb of Manchester, maybe?). Quiet bike paths out of Portland led to weaving coastal roads—as an inland mountain-town dweller, seeing the ocean by bike is always an arresting experience for me. Although mostly paved, I found the ACA’s route quite enjoyable through Portsmouth, but unfortunately the quality of the riding degraded significantly once past Exeter, New Hampshire. As a result, the actual on-bike experience during my second day was pretty sub-par; I won’t belabor the point, but I can’t really recommend that stretch of the Atlantic Coast route.
In the end, I tallied 82 miles for the day—trying to fill most of the hours with interesting podcasts and audiobooks (including David Foster Wallace’s on-theme essay “Consider the Lobster”)—to reach a roach-infested Red Roof Inn in Sutton, Massachusetts. The limitations of a limited-budget credit card tour I suppose. This may be the only instance in which I call anything about Starbucks fortunate, but fortunately there was a Starbucks across the street that opened at the ungodly hour of 4 am—I arrived at a more reasonable 5:30 in order to put the Red Roof experience behind me as quickly as possible.
Day 3 was as pleasant as the previous day was unsavory; after leaving Sutton and crossing into Connecticut, I soon joined the mostly gravel Airline Trail and—like a jet plane—it followed a nearly unwavering straight shot south and east.
Photo credit: Ultraromance
The real highlight of the day was being picked up on the trail by Ronnie Romance for an escort back to his and Tenzin’s home for an evening of tasty Insta-pot beans shared around a backyard fire. After three days spent solo, I let myself linger late the following day as our coffee conversation roamed; morning turned to afternoon before I was repacked and ready to roll.
At this point, I’d mentally accepted that this time with friends and my Stone Barns visit were both more important than covering the entire distance under my own power. After a quick jaunt across the Connecticut River via the local ferry and a 20-mile ride down to Clinton, CT, I stumbled my way through public transport (two trains and two bus rides!) all the way to my hotel in the Hudson Valley, leaving a mere five-mile ride for the following morning to make my long-awaited reservations.
A few yellow leaves dappled the bike path as I rode up-valley on Saturday morning, but the day was still warm with summer. I arrived early to the farm, eager for a slow hour of coffee and people watching before starting a tour of the grounds. Not quite 100-years old, and updated in modern times, Stone Barns has an older—almost medieval—feeling. Something about the resounding solidity of those stone walls, and the ancient maple tree in the courtyard that, in peak season, yields 1.5 gallons of syrup a day.
I will admit that it felt a little strange to be the only observable party-of-one on the otherwise family-crowded Saturday, but just like at the airport, mentioning that I’d arrived (mostly) by bike from Portland, Maine, quickly sparked conversation with a woman selling tomatoes from the farm at the onsight market. Purchasing a box of beautifully mixed heirlooms made me doubly glad I was running panniers.
The tour of the grounds affirmed the admiration I’ve grown to develop for Stone Barns from afar. In the field, I learned about how they “dry farm” their tomatoes, a method that essentially eliminates all watering after the plants have reached their fruit production stage, thereby concentrating the sugars and flavor, by keeping the tomatoes from taking on tasteless extra water weight (this is a growing tactic often applied to wine grapes). The farmer leading this section of the tour also told us about Stone Barns’ crop and livestock rotation practices used in order to keep the soil at maximal health—one tenant of regenerative farming holds that treating the soil first will yield the most flavorful produce while keeping the land productive into the long term.
Outside the bakery, we sampled Blue Hill’s 100% whole-grain naturally leavened bread and got a few insights into their experimentation with making whole-grain croissants. In the kitchen, we were shown samples of “bone charcoal,” a relatively new practice for the restaurant whereby bone waste from butchering is carbonized and turned into charcoal bricks for cooking. Stone Barns has also started working with a local potter who turns powderized bone into kiln-fired ceramics; a play on the concept of bone china.
Finally, at the end of the tour, we heard about Stone Barns “retired dairy cow” program, where cows used for milk production are allowed to graze the pastures until they reach 10-14 years old before slaughter and butchering. While mature beef is commonly accepted for its more developed flavor in Europe, this is not routine in the US due to the extra expense required to graze cows for years after they have reached full size.
Over a quiet patio lunch—a hearty slice of heavily topped whole-wheat focaccia, two takes on from-the-garden salads, a slurp of tomato gazpacho, and a slice of almond and stone fruit tart—I thought about how Stone Barn’s extreme intentionality is a marked outlier in America’s wider food industry. Not unlike choosing bikes over cars, adopting a more thoughtful approach to our food choices requires a non-trivial amount of time and energy. But the trade-off of that extra toil is a connection—to land and place—that feels deeper, more rich. Back at the bike rack, where my Warakin stood alone, I gently tucked my tomatoes into the top of a pannier and started riding down the tree-lined drive. My lunch at Stone Barns is a meal that will keep me full for a long time.
About the author: Hailey Moore is a freelance writer and copyeditor based in Boulder, CO. She's an avid climber and cyclist with a passion for food and local community matters.
