Summer Cheffing and Stromboli

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posted on

April 14, 2026

Last summer, I was blessed to be the farm chef for a second season here at Polyface! After a summer of “firsts” the prior year, I enjoyed the reassurance of telling myself “You’ve done this all before” ...well, almost. Variety is indeed the spice of life, and nothing is exactly the same from one season to other (which I love).

Along with a new season came a fresh crew of stewards. Getting to know them was the highlight of my summer. Whether it was lively conversations as we ate dinner together, laughing at inside jokes while we cleaned the kitchen, or dancing our feet off to the Virginia Reel, there was hardly a dull moment the whole summer. But for all the fun we had, the connection I made with these young people through quality conversations far outweighs it all.

As the season wrapped up, I decided to incorporate stromboli into one of our dinners. I guess it turned out alright because that stuff was gone by the time I got my plate. I couldn’t resist doing it a second time because the process was so fun and the team seemed to really enjoy it!

Now, I am by no means an expert on stromboli, but let me shorten the learning curve for those of you who might be tempted to make the same mistakes I did.

I tend to think there is no such thing as too much cheese, but trust me when I say you can overfill this thing. While my team was more than gracious and said it was perfect, you can 1). avoid a lot of mess and 2). ensure that your dough is cooked through if you don’t go ham on the filling.

Speaking of ham, I stuffed my stromboli with Polyface ham, cheese, minced garlic, and fresh parsley. While the recipe I have included comes with specific filling ingredients, I am somewhat of a rebel who likes to modify recipes and cook with the resources I already have.

I hope you enjoy this concept as much as I enjoyed seeing my team eat it!

Stromboli Recipe

Pizza Dough Recipe

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Short of Turkeys and Beef

For the first time in many years, we’ll be short of turkeys for Thanksgiving. Consistent with our policy of full transparency, here is why. And we’ve been short of beef now for some time. The underlying theme of this explanation is to inform you completely about why and what we’re doing about it. Unlike many businesses, we don’t call up other outfits to supplement ours when we’re short. We figure out how to produce more and until then, simply run behind. Because of that, when we explore new markets, we can’t adjust our inventory instantaneously.We’ve had a couple of incredibly exciting market developments this year. We’ve always tried to experiment with new opportunities when markets request product. You never know which ones will be long term, short term, positive, or negative. Over the years, we’ve given away turkeys when we overproduced due to assuming a certain market opportunity would come through; that’s not financially viable. As a result, we’re pretty careful about expansion. Three years ago, a large corporation in Virginia asked us to supply turkeys and Christmas hams to their 300 employees. We had no idea they would hang with us this long, but here they are, happy and showing unbelievable loyalty. We’ve been reluctant to count on them simply because these kinds of things normally don’t last. But isn’t it exciting and even exhilarating that a big company is buying our kind of turkeys and hams for their employees? The other thing that developed—and these things develop slowly—was Azure Standard asked us to supply them with 1,000 turkeys as a trial to see if their customer base would like them. By the time that deal was formalized, we were too late to order more turkeys and did not have the full number for them, but we we did the best we could. Some of you who are Azure Standard customers will no doubt see our turkeys pop up on their sales platform. When an engine going somewhere wants to hook to us, we always try to at least collaborate in an experiment. That’s where we are; if all are happy, this could be an extremely positive strategic client for us in the future. In the same way, we’ve been contacted by a new internet marketing outfit wanting some of our beef. We’ve agreed to let them have five in 2027. We’re hoping ongoing discussions will lead them to carry our poultry and pork as well—right now they’re only beef. None of this is about building an empire. It is about collaborating with the cutting edge of authentic food and circumventing Big Food, Big Ag, and Big Pharma. Innovation comes in many ways. Polyface perhaps leads the world in the production element. But processing, marketing, and distribution are also undergoing innovation and staying relevant is a daily objective. That some of the most creative significant players in the integrity food movement are asking us to play with them is wonderful. They could just handle industrial organic meat poultry, which doesn’t see pasture and doesn’t enjoy the happiness context of Polyface livestock. But they’re talking to us, and that’s awesome. All innovation carries a ragged edge as it develops, refines, and hopefully becomes efficient over time. Thank you for indulging us the freedom to explore these new venues and to collaborate with some of the best players in the good food movement. As you can imagine, growing and experimenting create their own sore muscles. Being short is not fun for either of us, but be assured it’s not because our animals are sick or we’re getting tired of being farmers. You can laugh at that. It’s because, true to our history, we are committed to putting food worth eating on plates held by friends. We count you as friends; that’s why we’re taking you on this little explanation behind the curtain. Hang in there and thank you, thank you for your loyalty and patronage.

Summer Cheffing and Stromboli

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