A tractor is loaded up with ramps from Paisley Farm. Photo credit: Paisley Farm

So I’ve been in New York City all week working on my canning cookbook, published by Rodale (due summer 2010!) with  chef/collaborator Kelly Geary, owner of Sweet Deliverance NYC.

As part of the book, I’ve been interviewing a few farmers and growers.  Kelly went ahead and arranged for me to meet her farmers — the people who supply her catering/CSA business with all its vegetables — husband and wife team Mike Kokas and Jan Greer of Paisley Farm, located in the Hudson Valley of upstate New York.

Mike and Jan requested we meet in the city at a restaurant on the Upper West Side called Telepan.

I really didn’t know what to expect. I’ve been out of the city for so long, I have lost all pretense of knowing what’s cool or sophisticated or knowing what’s going on in Manhattan foodie world. So I show up at this restaurant, wearing a “chic” OP flannel shirt from Walmart and my customary green vest.  I looked like my usual hapless, country bumpkin self while the restaurant was, to my surprise,  fancy and gourmet (but cozy and warm).  Great, I thought, why don’t I just wear a pair of overalls?

I arrived at the restaurant a bit early–it was a few minutes before 5 and the restaurant hadn’t officially opened. A well-dressed couple was standing outside the front door.  The three of us stood outside  making idle chit chat for a moment or two before the doors were unlocked. The couple dressed and talked like they could be art dealers or architects or any number of glamorous professions. They were energetic and witty and looked like they probably lived on Central Park West.

Then chef and owner Bill Telepan — who I quickly gleaned is a household name in the farm-to-table foodie world and who has been written up in everything from the New York Times, Bon Appetit, Wine Spectator, Food & Wine — came out  and warmly greeted the couple, like the three of them were old friends.  (Bill Telepan is also very handsome. I could see him having his own show on the Food Network, or something.)

Well, you know what happens next: The couple turned out to be Mike and Jan from Paisley Farms! This incredibly sophisticated, well-dressed and worldly twosome standing next to me WERE FARMERS.

We were ushered into the restaurant and took a seat at the bar.  Turns out Mike and Jan have been supplying some of NYC’s finest restaurants — I’m talking Blue Hill, Gramercy Tavern, Telepan-level good restaurants — with farm fresh produce for the past 20 years.  That Kelly is already a member of this esteeemed tribe bodes well for her business (and, ahem, our book).

Jan and Mike must be quite good friends with Mr. Telepan because he kept sending all sorts of yummy dishes out of the kitchen for us to peruse — tart beet salads, smoked trout, an incredible bacon and egg-type appetizer and roast squab — I felt like a food writer for the Times, or something…. a food writer who dressed like a lumberjack.

As I conducted what turned out to be a very engaging interview (they’re ramp experts!), I registered that Mike and Jan are living proof that farming has truly entered a new realm of cache, one not seen since….when….Jeffersonian times? It was so nice to see with my own eyes that farmers are no longer treated like periphereal players even at the highest echelons of the culinary landscape.

It must be nice to go out to dinner in Manhattan when you’re Jan and Mike — they were treated like rock stars.  That standard will surely trickle down from here.