“I’VE DEFINITELY BECOME THE COOK I ALWAYS WANTED TO BE,” MCVEY SAYS. “IT TOOK ME GETTING OUT OF RESTAURANTS AND STARTING A FARM TO BE ABLE TO ACHIEVE THAT GOAL WHICH IS KIND OF FUNNY.”
BLUE GOOSE FARM FORT ERIE, ONTARIO
photographs by Kelsey Vansickle
McVey had a little agricultural experience, having worked at a few farms in his early 20s and had entertained the idea of farming again one day. He didn’t know that day would come so soon. It was 2020, and while it wasn’t the best year to start a business, looking back, McVey says it was “a blessing in disguise,” since he didn’t have experience with farming at a larger scale and now had some time to learn. “We built a little 3,000 square foot garden, which we call ‘The Little Goose,’” McVey says, noting that the garden now serves as a flower patch managed by his wife Ashley. “That was where I learned all the techniques,” he says, adding that the mistakes he made there were “huge lessons” to him and meant he didn’t have to take any big risks.
EENAN MCVEY SPENT 13 years working in restaurants in Toronto before he moved to the Ontario countryside to become a farmer, partnering with chef and actor Matty Matheson to open Blue Goose Farm in Fort Erie. Four years later, the chef-turned-farmer tells The Rooted Journal he’s never cooked better in his life. “I’ve definitely become the cook I always wanted to be,” McVey says. “It took me getting out of restaurants and starting a farm to be able to achieve that goal which is kind of funny.” McVey and Matheson — who most people know from the acclaimed FX series, “The Bear” — met on the Toronto restaurant scene, and began working together after McVey visited Matheson’s Fort Erie property in the summer of 2019. “I was blown away,” McVey says. “It’s a beautiful landscape — a big forest in the back and then there’s just this one big open field — and I said to him, ‘Why don’t you have a farm here?’” To that, Matheson told him: “All right, then you do it.”
LEFT: THE TINY BUT MIGHTY BLUE GOOSE FARM IS ONLY AN ACRE BUT OPTIMIZED FOR GROWING HIGH-QUALITY FOOD. TOP RIGHT: THE BLUE GOOSE ICON. BOTTOM RIGHT: PRODUCE FROM BLUE GOOSE LANDS ON THE MENUS OF TORONTO’S FINEST RESTAURANTS LIKE MATHESON’S PRIME SEAFOOD PALACE.
ABOVE: MCVEY HARVESTS TOMATOES.
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ISSUE 01
FROM FARM TO CHEF’S TABLE
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