In-Season: Tender Herbs
Some of my favorite kitchen pleasures involve herbs: the magic of chive blossoms soaked in vinegar in the spring, fragrant basil in the thick of tomato season, mint muddled at the bottom of a tall dri...
Thinking Big in Small-Town Michigan
A line of pristine white ducks, right off the page of a nursery rhyme, makes punctual trips across the lawn to the pond and back. Friendly hens, chittering and digging in flower beds, trail visitors around the 12-acre estate. Thousands of daffodils start to appear in clumps and alleys on the property, along with tiny grape hyacinths, almost hidden in the grass. Even if it weren’t spring, there would be a sense of bourgeoning at Farrand Hall.
An outsize energy emanates from the charming historic farmstead in Colon, Michigan. What owners James Gray and Jacob Hagan have created around the two-story 1854 farmhouse is inspiring. In a short time, it has gone from a country escape for the Chicago couple to a culinary destination, with dinners selling out months in advance. Spend any time with them and you realize that they are only midflight, full of expansive visions for what is to come.
The couple has assembled a diverse group of talented people in this rural part of southern Michigan “to be a part of something that hopefully at some point will be considered one of best experiences in the country,” says Hagan.
The dinners started seven years ago with friends and chefs from Chicago whom Hagan knew from years of working in the food industry. Last year, Farrand Hall hosted 30 guest chefs, mainly from the Midwest, with many Michelin stars and James Beard awards among them. The five-course meals are served at long communal tables outdoors under a pergola in fair weather or inside purpose-built barns.
A strikingly elegant black barn houses the kitchen and seating for 40. “We wanted something really modern but so simple that the silhouette of it kind of faded into the landscape,” says Hagan. Light streams through a wall of plate glass; antique rugs soften the concrete floor; gleaming copper pots, taxidermy trophies and gilt-framed oil paintings create an eclectic harmony on deep plum walls. Sipping a glass of dry French rosé, euphoria setting in, you could easily forget where you are.
It's all part of the Farrand Hall vibe, according to Gray, who designed the interiors with a mix of rustic and glamour chic. His philosophy, he says, is “Let’s feel good. Because I think design and rooms make people feel certain ways.” A testament to his artful touch—inside the adjoining white barn among the curated collection of antiques for sale—are two coffee table design books in which Farrand Hall is featured: Cheap Old Houses (by the HGTV show hosts) and Midwest Modern Manifesto.
From February to October, guest chefs cook on Saturdays, and on Friday nights Executive Chef Donte Shaw—recently back in the area after a stint in Florida—serves three-course meals with a “modern homestead” menu that changes monthly. Hagan describes it as “Midwestern, hyper-local, hyper-seasonal. We use a lot of local farms, because we are surrounded by some really amazing things here.” Nearby Butternut Sustainable Farms, in Centerville, is their main partner for produce.
Chef Shaw says, “I’ve always wanted to work in an environment like this,” and he looks forward to helping create “a sustainable ecosystem” at Farrand Hall. The food he plans to cook “won’t be fussy, but composed and clean.” His menus so far have featured the elevated comfort food he built his reputation on: the flavors of ingredients like field peas, grits and greens; lamb, duck and crab heightened with sophisticated pairings and sauces.
Shaw and his sous-chef, Lucas Jáuregui, also run the café at Farrand Hall, which is open Wednesday to Saturday, 8am–2pm, serving scratch-made quiche, soups, salads and pastries.
An ambitious vision for the property’s future came into focus last year with the creation of Farrand Farm, a nonprofit designed to provide world-class culinary training. It offers internships to local high school and college students, including those in the Kalamazoo Valley Community College (KVCC) culinary program.
Farrand Farm is fundraising for long- and short-term goals. This year they’d like to do a kitchen expansion to make space for more interns. Ultimately, they hope to acquire another 20–30 acres of adjacent land “to start an educational farm and build a state-of-the-art educational facility, something that would have multiple commercial kitchens, for us to be able to work
directly with KVCC and the Career and Technical Education program,” explains Hagan.
As passionate as they are about creating opportunities for the next generation, Hagan and Gray also express a sense of mission in bringing people together around a dinner table.
“In today's world, especially with everything that's going on politically, I would like to think of Farrand Hall as being a beacon of what could be, showing the world that if you come together—regardless of your experiences, of your politics, of your biases, of your judgments—if you put a bunch of people together, that almost always you walk out of that feeling some connection to the other human being, to the human experience,” says Hagan.
“You'll find commonality with people who you just met, who you might not ever meet again,” adds Gray.
“And,” says Hagan, “those are the experiences you take away with you.”
Farrand Hall
58522 Farrand Rd.
Colon, MI
farrandhall.com
Lisa Barnett de Froberville is a French teacher and the managing editor of Edible Michiana.
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