Our Approach
Woodberry Kitchen relies on longstanding relationships with the growers of the Chesapeake to provide the ingredients that nourish and delight our guests. At our table, you join us in supporting local agriculture that celebrates the abundance and traditions of the region while helping to ensure its future. That’s true whether you come for dinner with a friend in the Tavern or host a 120-person wedding in our Gatherings space.
We’re not talking about adding heirloom tomatoes to our menu once a year and calling ourselves “farm-to-table.” Our focus is on demonstrating the possibilities of an entirely different food system from the one you encounter in most restaurants. It’s a system that’s regenerative instead of extractive: It builds healthy soil, provides nourishment for our communities, and supports the families and workers who feed us.
To answer the question you most likely have: Yes, especially given that the deck is stacked in favor of the commodity system, the way we do things is more expensive. We believe it’s our responsibility to use the resources we have to shift paradigms and practices and shrink that gap over time. Every box of organic greens we buy from One Straw Farm and each pastured pork chop purchased from Rettland Farm represents dollars that don’t go to massive corporations selling processed foods, caging pigs, and polluting low-income communities.
Plus, the result is a uniquely delicious Chesapeake cuisine. As in all great traditional culinary regions of the world, each dish is an expression of the land, the season, and the dedication of our growers and makers.
Here are a few of the many producers we rely on day after day…
Since 2012, Woodberry Kitchen has returned $25 million directly to regenerative food producers in the Mid-Atlantic.
PRODUCE
All of our fruits and vegetables come from diversified farms that use minimal or no synthetic fertilizers and pesticides. Many are certified organic.
One Straw Farm, White Hall, MD
Drew and Joan Norman run the OG organic vegetable farm in our region and have been pushing the envelope on the variety and volume of produce local farms can provide for decades.
Karma Farm, Monkton, MD
You haven’t really experienced peak farm-fresh flavor until you’ve bitten into a crisp winter carrot or a juicy summer tomato carefully grown by Jon Shaw and his team at Karma Farm.
Third Way Farm, Havre de Grace, MD
Tommy and Michelle Shireman see themselves as stewards of land and ecosystems and regenerative farming as resistance to a dominant system built on oppression. We buy their herbs, peppers, potatoes, and lettuce.
Moon Valley Farm, Woodsboro, MD
Emma Jagoz is a powerhouse vegetable farmer who started by tending tiny plots of land in Baltimore County (often with a child on her hip) and has grown the business to a 25-acre farm outside Frederick.
Farm Alliance of Baltimore, Baltimore, MD
When available, we purchase city-grown crops like greens from Strength to Love II in Sandtown and potatoes and peppers from the Black Butterfly Urban Farm Academy’s Curtis Bay teaching farm.
Black Rock Orchard, Lineboro, MD
Dave Hochheimer and Emily Zaas grow 77 varieties of apples, peaches, pears, nectarines, plums, apricots, blueberries, and more and are Mid-Atlantic market mainstays.
Karma Farm
Third Way Farm
Rettland Farm
MEAT AND DAIRY
99% of the meat purchased in this country—yes, even in great restaurants—comes from industrial systems that confine thousands of animals indoors and pollute air and water, disproportionately in communities of color. That’s a hard pass for us. We buy meat from farms that allow animals to live according to their nature and that incorporate manure back into healthy soil.
Rettland Farm, Gettysburg, PA
Beau Ramsberg raises pigs, chickens, sheep, and turkeys (for Thanksgiving) out on pasture and does his own humane processing on site.
ROAM Dairy, Lancaster, PA
Many small, organic dairy farms have gone under in recent years due to low prices paid by distributors. We buy milk directly from Amish farmer Omar Beiler, who also sells us organic grains.
Liberty Delight Farms, Reisterstown, MD
All kinds of animals can be found mucking around the pastures at Liberty Delight, where the barn roof provides solar energy in addition to shelter.
Firefly Farms, Deep Creek, MD
Working with small dairy farms and prioritizing ingredient quality, Firefly makes delicious, award-winning cheeses with goats’ and cows’ milk.
Meadow Creek Dairy, Galax, VA
A seasonal, grass-based dairy that makes Alpine-style raw milk cheeses in Virginia’s Appalachian Mountains.
J.Q. Dickinson
PANTRY
Susquehanna Mills, Pennsylvania
Susquehanna grows canola and sunflowers and processes the plants into oils that are a staple of Woodberry’s cooking, and they recycle oil waste into biodiesel that powers farm-partner vehicles.
Keepwell Vinegar, York, PA
Keepwell founders and owners Sarah Conezio and Isaiah Billington make high-quality vinegars by hand, sourcing their ingredients from an overlapping network of local farms in MD and PA. In Woodberry’s world of little-to-no citrus, vinegar provides crucial acidity. (Bonus: Sarah and Isaiah met in the kitchen at Woodberry!)
J.Q. Dickinson Salt-Works, Malden, WV
We get our salt from members of a seventh-generation salt-making family, who harvest it by hand from an ancient ocean trapped below the mountains in West Virginia’s Kanawha Valley. You literally can’t make this shit up!
Small Valley Milling, Halifax, PA
For bread, crackers, and pastries, we buy grains from this organic family farm and flour mill that specializes in nutritious whole grains like spelt and rye.
Mohawk Valley Trading Company, Utica, NY
In the lush mountains and valleys of upstate New York, Mohawk makes raw varietal honeys including buckwheat, apple blossom, and wildflower. They also tap sugar maples to produce dark, robust maple syrup.
Keepwell Vinegar
Susquehanna Mills
FISH AND SHELLFISH
Joe Rafferty, the Chesapeake Bay and nearby Atlantic Ocean
Joe Rafferty is the fish whisperer and all around great guy who sources fish and shellfish directly from watermen between Cape Hatteras, NC and Cape Cod, MA, with an emphasis on the Chesapeake Bay. We buy farmed oysters (colder months), crab (warmer months), rockfish, blue catfish, and other regional fish based on available science and best management practices.
Burnt Hill
BEVERAGES
Distillery Lane Ciderworks, Jefferson, MD
DLC is home to 3,000 heirloom apple trees, and we buy their delicious apples and fresh apple cider in season. Their hard ciders are a mainstay behind our bar.
Old Westminster, Westminster, MD
Especially at their newer Burnt Hill vineyard, the siblings behind Old Westminster are redefining what’s possible when it comes to biodynamic grape farming and winemaking in our region.
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Operations
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Financing
Financial institutions have been slow to recognize the value created by small-scale farms and regenerative food businesses. Steward is an innovative platform that provided the financing to make our next chapter possible.
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Waste management
We compost our organic waste with Compost Crew, a local company that provides rich soil to our region’s farms. We also recycle our oyster shells through the Oyster Recovery Program.
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Renewable energy
Through Neighborhood Sun’s community solar program, we purchased a share in a solar farm in Marriottsville, MD, which now provides a significant portion of our electricity.
