Alumni Post: Wildyards Pasta
We’re Jess & Shirley, co-founders of Wildyards! We manufacture and sell pasta made from grains grown by farmers who are committed to regenerative practices.
We met at Climate Farm School in September 2023 (Hudson Valley) after deciding to leave the tech industry. After an incredible on-farm week, we spent the next month talking to people across the food system (including CFS alum - shoutout to Ash!). We kept coming back to the idea seeded in CFS that we need stable, growing markets for regenerative farmers to sell into, and we felt strongly that eater demand should play a pivotal role in changing our food system. There are two core memories from CFS that heavily influenced us; for Shirley, it was Jay at Stone House Grains showing us his massive siloes of organic yellow peas and asking if we knew anyone who might want to buy them. For Jess, it was watching Brett mill wheat berries, learning how much refined wheat today is stripped of its incredible natural nutrients, and realizing that many of us have a gap in understanding where our food comes from.
We both wanted to make a staple food product, and the more we learned about grain processing/milling, the more excited we were that there could be compounding benefits (climate, health, flavor, digestibility, etc) that give us a better shot at influencing consumer shopping behavior. Fast forward a few months, we flew to SF to learn from a pasta maker, found sourcing partners, incorporated our business, moved into a commercial kitchen, and just wrapped up our second farmers market!
Our mission is to “make sure our great-grandchildren can eat healthy foods from healthy lands”. We’re also painfully aware that we can’t make an impact if we’re not a healthy business, so we’re always thinking about how to thread the needle between demonstrating our ideal food system and finding ways to succeed in our current one. For example:
When we first called up local farmers, we expected to run through the 5 soil health principles and see who’s checked off all of them. We quickly learned that there’s a huge range in how grain is grown in our region (bottom line: it’s really hard!). We’ve since redefined our standards to partner with farmers that “have a clear commitment to improving soil health, can articulate what regenerative farming means for them, and are actively experimenting to move towards it.” One line we drew in the sand, driven by our consumer hypothesis, is to partner with farmers who are definitely not using glyphosates and ideally not using any “-cides”.
We decided to prioritize keeping growers & millers local to each other over the proximity of an individual farm/mill to the eater. We believe milling is part of the small-scale regional infrastructure that growers lack, and expertise needs to be built between growers & millers around the climate and unique varieties grown in their region.
What’s ahead, and how you can help support us:
We’re still iterating on our product. If you know of any chefs, pasta experts, or food critics in NYC that would love to be a part of our iteration / feedback process, please let us know!
We are planning to start testing other channels beyond farmers markets in NYC soon. If you have any contacts in food service or retail buyers in the area, or even not in the area that would be willing to give us some advice, we’d love to get in touch.
Follow us on Instagram at @eatwildyards for more updates!
