My girlfriend invited me over for dinner. She said she was serving pot roast. When I was growing up my grandmother served pot roast for Sunday dinner — it was good, but I don’t remember loving it.
My friend explained that the beef and vegetables were from an Amish country farm where everything was organic and fresh, and it was included in her CSA box that she picked up in Strongsville. She couldn’t eat a whole roast, and so I went, and I loved it. A couple of weeks later, she sent me a picture of turkeys running wild at the farm and told me she would be getting a turkey.
It was all so wholesome. Real food. I felt honored to enjoy it.
Then, at our family’s Thanksgiving celebration in Ohio City a few weeks later, the table was dominated by a turkey my son-in-law ordered and picked up at Ohio City Provisions on Lorain Avenue. It was the best turkey I ever ate, and the gravy was great too. What an asset to the community, I thought, a store in Ohio City that sources fresh turkeys and makes and sells gravy to accompany it. I pulled out my friend’s live turkey photo to show the family — what a coincidence that our Thanksgiving turkey and my friend’s roast came from the same farm in Holmes County!
The turkeys from Wholesome Valley Farm are pasture-raised on over ten acres of organically grown pasture, fed non-GMO organic feed, and pasture rotated daily. They arrive in your kitchen antibiotic and hormone free. Once you’ve had a properly raised turkey, you’ll never want to defrost a turkey again. Whole smoked turkeys and brined bone-in turkey breasts are also available by ordering them on the Ohio City Provisions’ website. Or from the farm directly, if you want to drive through the countryside.
So how do they do it, how does it work, how did it morph into this beautiful thing that involves a farm, community-supported agriculture and a store? How does the puzzle fit together?
What I love about Ohio City Provisions is that owners Trevor Clatterbuck and Adam Lambert have a storefront business with farm-to-store produce and freshly cut meats, a CSA that delivers fresh and almost-local food all over the Cleveland area, and a farm where turkeys run wild and will be ready for our Thanksgiving tables. It’s a symbiotic system that involves two guys, one a business owner and farmer, and the other a chef and butcher, and visions that mesh well together. It must feel good.
If you live in Cleveland, you know that Ohio City Provisions has the best meats available in the area. The store is at its heart a grocery and butcher shop, and it’s open daily from 10-7. For many, it’s a go-to destination for specific cuts of meat, but it’s also the perfect spot to buy things to round out a meal. The grocery stocks freshly baked bread, seasonal produce and whole grains.
You can also find staples for the pantry — canned goods, dried beans and fermented foods — and just what you need for breakfast — yogurt, eggs and cheese. On a weekday evening, you can stop by the store to pick a protein, say, fresh eggs and gruyere, some mushrooms, leaf lettuce and green onions, and a loaf of bread, and dinner is an omelet served with salad and freshly baked bread.
You’re not likely to find duck, venison, goat and rabbit at your full-service grocery. Nor can you find onsite cured and smoked sausages made from heritage and heirloom pork and pasture-raised chicken. If you want a charcuterie board for the next party you host, you can find the best cheese and charcuterie at the deli counter — the choices are outstanding. The best way to keep up with the store — what’s offered and what’s on sale — is to take a look at the store’s Instagram and Facebook pages. A recent Facebook post showed shelves brimming with apples, cider, root vegetables and greens.
But my question remained — how did all this come together? I pondered this as I looked at the sausage options featured on the website — beef and port bratwurst made with brined brisket and ground with pork; chorizo fermented for 24 hours before smoking and poaching off; bacon breakfast links made with maple sorghum and smoked jowl bacon; porcini mushrooms sausage.
Let’s start with the farm. When I reached out with questions and a request for a tour, Allyson, who responded to my email, said that for the safety of visitors and animals, they don’t do them. But the turkeys, chickens and cows can be seen from the parking lot. If you’re a CSA (community-supported agriculture) customer of the farm, this is where you go to pick up their freshly available food. The store has a unique self-serve set up, which allows customers to write down their products and prices in carbon-copy receipt books and pay by providing a credit card number. This system allows customers the flexibility of longer store hours (which vary, so check before you shop). The farm is located at Route 62 in Wilmot, Ohio, about an hour south of Cleveland in Holmes County.
The farm’s food is also available through Fresh Fork Market, Trevor’s original business operation, which has over twenty pickup locations in the greater Cleveland area. The multi-farm summer share bags are available for 22 weeks a year and can be picked up on Fridays and Saturdays. Customers can choose from one of three sizes, and can pick carnivore, omnivore, vegetarian and vegan options. The winter share, which starts now, runs for 15 weeks, at a price of $53.56 a week.
The beauty of a CSA is that you get the food that’s available that week, and the cook can experiment with recipes based on what he or she has spread out on the kitchen counter — what goes with bratwurst with ramps, and what does one do with ramps? The Winter Share is filled with fresh fruits and vegetables, stored crops like potatoes, squashes and turnips, hydroponic leafy greens, grains and dairy, and a variety of frozen products and canned products.
I was still trying to sort out the story. I knew Trevor and Adam own Ohio City Provisions, but who owned Wholesome Valley Farm and how is it related to Fresh Fork Market owned by Trevor? Here’s the story, as relayed by Allyson.
Trevor, owner of Wholesome Valley Farm, Fresh Fork Market and Ohio City Provisions, started working with Wholesome Valley Farm when Fresh Fork Market, which he owned, was looking for new produce vendors. There was a need for additional pasture-raised meats to support the demand at Fresh Fork, and the future Ohio City Provisions, and the team at WVF had land and resources to start raising more animals. This brought the former owner of the farm and Trevor to the table to discuss a lease-to-own agreement, and in 2017 Trevor purchased WVF, which makes Trevor a first-generation farmer. He and Adam, a friend and chef, wanted to offer the same thing at a butcher shop and partnered to open Ohio City Provisions in 2016.
So now we come to the end of the story and what it means to you. You can drive down to Wholesome Valley Farms to see the animals and the store. You can also drive over to Ohio City Provisions to buy fresh food for dinner. And you can participate in the CSA, summer or winter, and pick up the food where it’s distributed in the Cleveland area. You can order a turkey on any of the websites.
It’s pretty wholesome stuff. Thank you, Adam and Trevor. I’m looking forward to eating your turkey on Thanksgiving Day.
Claudia J. Taller has been writing for Cool Cleveland since shortly after its inception. She is the author of four books and has written many articles for local and national magazines. Find out more about her at http://claudiajtaller.com/.
Cleveland, OH 44113