HISTORY
Saltbox Farm has been in Chef Ben Elliott’s family for almost three-quarters of a century. Built by Ben’s grandparents, Edward and Emilie Thomas, in the 1940s, the farm got its name from the saltbox style of the main house. During that time it has seen generations of children grow, families celebrate, snows come, springs arrive and harvests abound.
Ben spent much of his childhood at Saltbox Farm with his grandparents. It was a typical family farm with a variety of animals for their own use, including chickens and geese for eggs and meat, pigs, sheep, horses, and a cow for milking. They maintained a large vegetable garden and Ben’s grandmother put up much of the late summer harvest to enjoy during the cold winters. There was also an orchard, berries for jam making, and bee hives for honey.
In the kitchen, Ben would help his grandmother, a talented home cook, prepare classic New England dishes consisting almost entirely of ingredients from the farm, using recipes from a well-worn 1932 edition of the Fanny Farmer cookbook. With his grandfather, Ben spent countless hours in the gardens, planting, weeding, and harvesting and it was on this farm that a love of eating, cooking, and farming was born.
Ben and his family moved to the farm in 2004, and in 2010, Ben left the fast-paced urban restaurant scene to restore the farm. A professionally trained chef, when Ben began the restoration of the farm he knew that he had a lot to learn; that by trade he was a cook and not a farmer. Driven by a dream to preserve the beautiful open space as well as a feeling of responsibility to renew agricultural practices and food production, Ben knew he wanted to do more than simply enjoy the view. He wanted to use the land in a way that would benefit the earth and the community, and -if he was lucky- link his love for this special place with his passion for cooking with fresh, local ingredients.
That first spring when Ben made the transition from full time chef to full time farmer he spent all his time outdoors, mending fences, building a chicken coop and filling it with chicks, creating a small orchard filled with apple, peach, and pear trees, and planting raspberry bushes. A close friend of the family who happened to be a “real” farmer came over to help Ben and till 1.5 acres of land. Ben ordered seeds and soon had an acre of vegetables—a lot of veggies for a small family—so he joined a farmer’s market and began selling his produce to local restaurants.
From that point, Ben was on his way to realizing his dream and building Saltbox into what it is today. He returned to cooking professionally—at Saltbox—working as a private chef and catering local events before eventually establishing Saltbox Catering. In 2015 Ben opened Saltbox Kitchen, a restaurant and microbrewery in West Concord. During this time, the farm continued to grow and strengthen, producing fruits, vegetables, eggs, honey, lamb, and hops for the restaurant, the brewery, and catering. The farm has continued its mission, not only to follow sustainable agricultural practices, but to also be a connector in the community, and the foundation for all that Saltbox’s chefs and brewers create and share each season.
