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Tim Stark: Rock Star Farmer and Faulty Snapping Turtle Wrangler

Posted by Ed Levine, July 30, 2007 at 3:00 PM

Tim Stark of Eckerton Hill Farm, a genuine Greenmarket superstar farmer (and former management consultant by way of Princeton), is writing a memoir due to be published by Doubleday in 2008.

Presumably to help him meet his deadline, Gourmet magazine is publishing what it is calling Stark's blog. It's not a blog, it's really more like a series of journal entries, but it is informative, smart, and frequently amusing.

My favorite post to date had Stark moving a snapping turtle off the road near his farm in Pennsylvania. Grabbing the snapping turtle by the tail, Stark ushers it to safety, and then implores his readers to do the same if they find themselves in a similar situation.

In the only comment on what Stark has written, Gourmet editor Ian Knaus begs to differ:

Please, do not do this. Snapping turtles will take your fingers off. They are nasty, nasty beasts. I have hunted, butchered, and eaten snapping turtle (in season). It is outstanding meat (think veal, but with more flavor), but turtles happen to think that human finger meat is equally outstanding.

So maybe Stark is not the world's greatest snapping-turtle wrangler. I still love the tomatoes, strawberries, and peppers he sells at the Union Square Greenmarket in New York City on Wednesdays and Saturdays. A Stark warning: Get there early, as chefs often reserve ahead of time a lot of what he brings to market, leaving slim pickin's for the rest of us.

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Tags: Eckerton Hill Farm, Gourmet, Tim Stark