By Madison Butkus
Hometown Weekly Reporter
Nestled within the town of Dover, MA, lies an area with open fields and an array of beautiful farm houses. Powisset Farms, which has been dated back over 300 years, remains to be an invaluable cultural resource for not only its own community, but also all those around them.
Chef Thi of Walpole, MA. Thi, who has been working at Powisset Farm for four years now, does an array of jobs around the farm, including teaching culinary classes, making delicious food for the farm store, creating incredible recipes, and so much more.
When sitting down with Chef Thi to discuss her work and role on the farm, she explained that, after years of searching, she has finally found her dream career. Originally going to school for design, she always had an artistic side, but was not sure exactly where she wanted to end up. During college, Thi worked at an upscale restaurant as a busgirl, always having a special love of food. “Food was always a part of my life,” Thi stated, “especially growing up in my house. We never went out to dinner. My mother would work these long hours and come home and create these delicious meals. So it was always a part of my makeup and everything around me.”
This also inspired Thi to be able to do the same for her own family one day. As she spent more and more time within the restaurant business, she fell in love with it, even going on to open one of her own. She did this for five years, but truly yearned to educate people, just like her teachers had done for her in college. This is how she ended up at Powisset Farm as their head Chef.
While she has an array of jobs on site, one of her favorite aspects of the job is teaching the cooking classes. They range from children to adults, including many Council on Aging (COA) classes as well. “What I love about these classes,” Thi mentioned, “is when people are pleasantly surprised by the full experience of them. That always feels really good. COA classes are amongst one of my favorites to do. I also really love when a person comes in by themselves for a class and ends up leaving with many new friends. Everyone is always making friends with one another and that is just what I truly believe in: food is able to bring people together. And they all come here for the common purpose of learning something, but then they leave with so much more.” The COA classes are amongst the most rewarding for her because it allows seniors to realize that, while they are aging, they are still very capable of creating these types of meals.
Thi additionally loves to do culinary experiences in which she helps bring attendees together with the amazing people who work on the farm. The recipes Thi creates for these classes/experiences are no short of deletable and all use fresh ingredients grown right at Powisset Farm.
For those ingredients not able to grow at the farm, Thi provides simple, local, and readily available products that can realistically be found within any supermarket. An important part of these classes is that Thi listens to how each attendee responds to them, trying to incorporate recipes in future classes that people will want to come back for.
Throughout each class, Thi reveals an abundance of kitchen/cooking tips and tricks, her favorite kitchen appliances, food alternatives for recipes, and much more. She also has participants throw away any food waste into a composting bin. For everyone at the farm, sustainability is such a major component of what they do and they strive to make better contributions towards aspects like global warming and food waste.
