Soil and Society Meet at Heirloom Auction
Sotheby’s, the refined auction gallery in New York City, dug into the dirt last night with The Art of Farming. The first-ever auction featuring heirloom vegetables and more, lots included a CSA (community-sponsored agriculture) share, a flock of exquisitely feathered Plymouth Rock chickens (attending via video), and delivery of four potted Newtown Pippin apple trees to anywhere within the city. Over $200,000 was raised from this first-ever sale of produce, livestock, gardening advice and other agriculture-related experiences. Hanging in the audience was delicious.
The decorous saleroom, rimmed by tables displaying breathtakingly beautiful vegetables in still-lifes reminiscent of Dutch 16th C. and French genre painting, held a standing-room audience of the urban and urbane—well-toned, Manolo- and tasseled loafer-shod, monied, and vital to charitable events, alongside Greenmarket farmers and purveyors who service New York’s chefs. Dr. Brent Ridge, one of the Fabulous Beekman Boys from The Discovery Channel Planet Green reality show and an organizer of the auction, sat in front of me. His velvet-edged, slim, designer-styled black blazer and shiny rubber Wellies encapsulated the evening’s delicious juxtaposition of serious purpose and media-glam.
The money raised benefits The Sylvia Center at Katchkie Farm and the GrowNYC New Farmers Development Project. The Sylvia Center inspires children to eat well through hands-on experiences at the farm and in New York City. GrowNYC helps immigrants with agricultural experience become local farmers.
After enjoying fabulous, fresh dragon’s tongue beans that I bought earlier in the day at the pop-up market set up outside Sotheby’s the day of the auction, I bid on a mouth-watering hamper of produce from Rodale’s model organic garden. It was quickly exceeded. (Full disclosure: Rodale publishes my cookbooks and my editor was at the event.) Attending the $1000.00 a ticket heirloom-heavy dinner following the auction was also beyond my means. But I can’t wait to check out its chefs’ work at their restaurants. Jeff Gimmel’s Swoon Kitchenbar, offers a $24.95 menu on Meatless Mondays, and Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s ABC Kitchen is by the Union Square Greenmarket in Manhattan.
The auction was a kick-off to Eat Drink Local Week, a feast of events sponsored by Edible New York magazine from Sept. 26 – Oct. 6.
