Field Work: Chef Skylar Bush on Creating an Edible Farm Dinner

Chef Skylar Bush and team construct a restaurant without walls

By Skylar Bush / Photography By Rebecca Denton & Angelea Presti | June 25, 2023

"Farm dinners have taught me that anything is possible with community and collaboration.” — Skylar Bush

The smell of vegetables roasting over slowly burning oak is quite possibly one of the most visceral aromas this world has to offer. There is a connection to the earth that is unrivaled when cooking naturally just feet away from where the harvest took place. Turning a farmer's hard work into a cohesive menu and nourishing people with dishes that play off the season and terroir is my raison d’être.

It is true that there’s no safer home for a chef than their kitchen, a space where every single thing has its place and is in order. Mise en Place is a real thing in the culinary world; it’s accountability and respite from many hours worked every single day. For a few years now, I have chosen to make my kitchen on the banks of a creek, or in the middle of a cornfield. Is it insane? Yes. Is it efficient? No. Is it the most glorious thing once it all comes together, when 150 people gather on the creek banks or in the cornfield to bring a beautiful community together and partake in the fruits of so many people’s labor? Absolutely.

Plating grits and greens at the Spring Farm Dinner on Delvin Farms

Creating a restaurant without walls for an Edible farm dinner is a lot like abstract art. You start with a blank canvas and have an idea of what it is going to look like, but as the weather has its way and equipment malfunctions, you adapt. As editor Jill Melton always says, “We’re not saving lives here, just having a farm dinner.” The blue circles you had envisioned soon become yellow squares and you realize that somehow your vision has been made even better by circumstance.

But this is a great ability for life, right? The rigidity of a traditional restaurant cannot be compared to a farm dinner. A farm dinner is a living, breathing thing without confine and has to be treated with respect. The journey, the outcome, the whole thing is malleable, but there is one constant: stay positive and true to the mission of treating a farmer's work with respect and making people happy.

Farm dinners have taught me that anything is possible with community and collaboration. Nourishment does not stop at the plate—it extends through any person that has ever grown a vegetable, stoked a fire or eaten a dish at an Edible farm dinner and beyond. I’m grateful for each of you.