Local Fish Feeds Crews At Farm Aid

CHATHAM – Local seafood made its first appearance at the recent Farm Aid concert at Saratoga Springs, N.Y. and was, by all accounts, a big hit.

 Brett Tolley of the Chatham Harvesters Co-op brought 600 pounds of monkfish tail to the festival, where it was fed to staff, crew and musicians. Chefs who cooked the fish and those who ate it gave the monkfish a thumbs up, he said.

 “They were raving about how delicious the monkfish was,” Tolley said. “We were really pleased with the reception.”

 Farm Aid has been promoting family farms since 1985. Through his work with the North American Marine Alliance, Tolley has done advocacy work at the festival telling the stories of small-boat fishermen and their families and relating those experiences to family farmers.

 “We’ve been building a relationship with Farm Aid for the past 12-plus years,” he said. “They’ve really embraced us.”

 This year he was able to leverage those relationships with his work with the Harvesters. Live Nation, the food service provider for Farm Aid, looks for local and ethically sourced food for the event and reached out to ask what fish were in season. That resulted in four or five Chatham-based members of the Harvesters, including Doug Feeney, Matt Hamilton and Greg Connors, contributing the monkfish tails.

 Most of those he spoke with at Farm Aid had never tried monkfish, Tolley said.

 “I would say they were very impressed with how not fishy it tastes,” he said. The texture of monkfish is often compared to lobster, and Tolley said about a third of those he spoke with said they liked it better than the crustacean. 

 He said he hoped the positive reception will lead to a relationship with Live Nation, which supplies food to concert venues across the country. Although the Chatham fish wasn’t available to concertgoers, he said getting it to food vendors was a goal.

 “I’d like to imagine a future where all big music events who work with Live Nation would be sourcing fish from us,” he said.

 The Harvesters are hoping to convince more institutions like hospitals and schools to purchase locally caught seafood. This week the group will make its first delivery to a local school after the food service program at Truro Elementary School reached out. Tolley said he believes it’s the first time that locally caught dogfish will be served to school children in the area.

 “We’re super excited about that,” he said. Noting that the menu at Chatham Elementary School, which his son attends, included no fish at all, he hoped that the Harvesters can convince other school systems to try their products.

 “I feel like this is part of why our presence, our ability to pool our local catch, pack it and distribute it fills a gap in the supply chain that’s existed for so long that most food service providers in schools and hospitals don’t even know it’s possible,” he said.

 The Harvesters have also been partnering with the Cape Cod Cooperative Extension and Sustainable Cape Cod to get fish into local food pantries. This ensures that fishermen get a fair price for their catch and those who need it can access high-quality seafood.

 He estimated that the Harvesters products have gone into more than 5,000 meals, “and we’re just getting started.”

 While he was able to network with Farm Aid staff and chefs, Tolley said he didn’t get to meet the concert’s headliners.

 “My hope was to get backstage, maybe bump into Willie Nelson or Neil Young, but it didn’t happen,” he said.