Context is an integral part when it comes to understanding anything in our lives, whether that be personal relationships, work or even your own kitchen. On our farm, context plays a vital role. Every decision we make has to lead back to better soil, happier plants and a healthier Earth. When taking context into account for how we farm, it helps us take a look at things as a whole and understand how we can work holistically with nature, as opposed to symptomatically patching the system.
What is Context?
At the core of it all, context is everything that influences and matters in your operation. At The Chef’s Garden, our context looks different than the context of a conventional farming operation. With regenerative agriculture at the forefront of all of our decisions, everything we do is rooted with deeper intention and care.
While context varies for everyone, a few notable key components the Noble Research Institute share that follow us in our every day farming practices are:
- Soil health parameters
- Climate, region and environment
- Our individual backgrounds, educations, experiences and knowledge bases
- Family and employee dynamics
- The history of the property
- Influence of neighbors and others
- Willingness to learn something new
- Our belief system
While these components shape our daily practices, they are themselves shaped by an overarching factor in our operation at The Chef’s Garden: sustainability.
Sustainability as our Foundation to Context
We work hard to provide chefs with the best in-season vegetables and we consider our produce to be at a higher standard than most not just because of what we’re growing, but because of how we’re growing them.
The Chef’s Garden treats sustainability as the foundation, not the finish line. While many think sustainability as being “green” and “eco-friendly”, we see it as something broader and more holistic.
For our farm to be truly sustainable, we believe that it must meet three essential criteria:
- Environmentally Friendly
- Socially Responsible
- Economically Viable
CEO and Co-Owner of The Chef’s Garden, Bob Jones Jr., often compares these three pillars to three legs of a stool. Keep all three strong, and you create a stable foundation that can support long-term success.
We take pride in caring for the land, but we take even greater pride in caring for the people who live on it as a direct impact of our work with the land. When we work with nature rather than against it, the Earth responds in kind—with healthier soil, more nutrient-dense vegetables for our customers and a farming system that supports over 150 dedicated team members.
Sustainability isn’t just part of our context—it is our context. It’s how we grow, how we think and how we ensure that both our farm, our food and our community has a future.
Context Matters in your Kitchen
Those who understand the care and intentionality behind their ingredients create dishes with deeper flavors and meaning. Having the context behind your ingredients allows you to respect and highlight the ingredient, not just cook with it. This context can include anything from the importance of sustainability to your business or home, how or where your vegetables are grown, or seasonality of your produce.
Take, for example, a carrot. To some, it’s just a humble root vegetable, pulled from a bin at the grocery store. But to the cultured cook, it’s a product of living soil, nurtured through regenerative agriculture not just for flavor, but to restore the health of the land itself. These carrots are grown in ways that deepen the richness and sweetness only truly healthy soil can offer. They aren’t grown just to fill shelves or pack boxes—they’re grown to nourish people, steward the earth and preserve the story of where our food comes from.
This context brings purpose into your craft, a connecting conversation with a guest and a flavor that’s remembered well after the meal has been served.
Context Shapes Everything We Do
Context makes every farm and kitchen unique. When bringing context into the picture it forms a lens through which your actions gain meaning. For a farmer, it guides the choice of methods to nurture soil for exceptional vegetables. For a chef, it informs the selection of produce, prioritizing the best for guests and the environment. Regardless of your role, The Chef’s Garden remains committed to working in harmony with nature, providing kitchens everywhere with vegetables that are full of meaning and purpose.