A Celebration of the Season

It’s the golden hour in Teton Valley. The sun sits low on the horizon, illuminating wisps of clouds in soft pinks and oranges. A hundred people gather around two long tables decorated with fresh flowers and white linen tablecloths. The conversation buzzes. Plates mounded with food pass from hand to hand as the guests serve themselves from the bounty before them: crisp green and maroon lettuces bedecked with slices of pale cucumbers and earthy beets; roasted pig surrounded by heaps of baby onions fresh off the grill; and baskets of homemade bread.

For the past five years, Slow Food in the Tetons and New West KnifeWorks have hosted a farm-to-table dinner at Canewater Farm in Victor to raise money for the organization’s mission “to grow the local and regional sustainable food economy by supporting producers, educating consumers, and connecting them to good, clean, and fair food.”

The meal, however, is more than a fundraiser. It is a celebration of the season’s work and a way to pay it forward. These feasts of abundance—whether a ticketed event like Canewater Farm’s and north-end’s Owl Meadow Farm’s monthly peak-season meals, or a fundraiser combining a love of home cooking and animal rescue at Aska’s Animals—are all at their core a way to connect the community with an eating ethos: farm-to-table.

The farm-to-table movement has been around since the 1970s, but its arrival in the Tetons is more recent. Corey Milligan, the founder of New West KnifeWorks and the self-proclaimed “chief purveyor” for the farm-to-table dinner at Canewater, says when he first moved to Jackson in the 1990s, the local food movement was in its infancy.

During a stint in Ventura, California, in the early 2000s while his wife was working for Patagonia, Corey became enamored with the access to endless local produce. “When I moved back to Jackson, not much had changed,” he says. “So, I became a gardener.”

Corey is zealous about fresh food. He says he has no credentials as a chef, but he’s a foodie who for years helped host the traditional postgame feast for the Jackson Hole Moose Rugby Football Club. The club became famous for its pig roasts, and Corey began scheming other ways to share and promote the region’s fresh food.

In 2020, he teamed up with Canewater Farm’s Rafe Rivers and Slow Food in the Tetons to put on a local food extravaganza at the farm known as New West KnifeWorks and Canewater Farm present: A Dinner for Slow Food in the Tetons. The sixth annual event will take place August 21.

“We have a rule,” he says. “Three things can come from outside: salt, vinegar, and olive oil. Now, Rafe is involved in making and importing olive oil, so while it’s not made here it has a local connection. Otherwise, there’s no cheating. I’m fanatical.” (Last year, however, Corey made the vinegar.)

Canewater Farm provides the vegetables and greens. Lark’s Meadow Farms supplies cheeses, milk, and other dairy products. For the past couple of years, Corey has raised goats and pigs to supply meat for the dinner. He butchers the animals and prepares the meat himself with the help of friends and New West’s culinary crew. Next year, he may buy an animal from a local 4-H kid, but the meat will always come from the valley.

“The meal is all about sustainable, local, fresh food,” Corey says. “That’s the thing with farm-to-table, we eat what is in season. That’s what it’s all about.”

Corey’s partner in the farm-to-table meal, Rafe Rivers, founded Canewater Farm with his wife Ansley in 2019, relocating to the valley from Georgia with their two children.

Like Corey, Rafe is passionate about growing beautiful, healthy food in a way that sustains and supports the earth and his community. Canewater is certified organic, and Rafe works hard to be able to pay his workers a living wage. He grows a mix of vegetables on thirteen acres and says the farm is cranking nonstop from March 1 until October 31, supplying thirty vendors and restaurants a week, and staging booths at three farmers markets in Jackson and Teton Valley. The farm-to-table dinner allows him to showcase the results of that effort to diners up close.

“Hosting farm dinners provides special moments where we can share what we do with the community,” Rafe says.

Rafe has found inspiration from the partnership and hopes to host more farm dinners in the future. “It’s incredible to see so many volunteers from both sides of the Tetons come together to create such a special night for a cause we all champion,” he says.

Aska’s Animals Field of Dreams dinner, which takes place in August, also combines a love of food with an immersive dining experience to celebrate the animal rescue.

“We have worked with Teton Full Circle Farm to incorporate local ingredients, and we’ve sourced flower arrangements from Red House Flowers,” says Lantz Hartley, executive director of Aska’s Animals. “Keeping everything close to home feels right for an event like this, as we get to shine a light on the power of community coming together. This includes everything from the food we eat to the animals we save to the humans we meet along the way.”

Up at the other end of Teton Valley, Sarah Parker, of Owl Meadow Farm, began offering farm-to-table dinners last summer. Sarah’s inspiration was a friend who works for a gleaning organization in California. To glean is to gather leftover grain, fruits, vegetables, and other surplus crops to distribute to people with limited access to fresh food.

“I thought that was so great,” Sarah says. “And then I thought about my own situation. I have access to this gorgeous land, I’m able-bodied, the thing I can do is help feed people.”

She says farming gets her away from her day job, lets her spend time outdoors, and brings her joy. She feeds herself and her husband from her garden, and donates the rest to the Teton Valley Food Pantry and Community Resource Center of Teton Valley’s food rescue program, Food for Good.

Sarah decided last summer to host farm-to-table dinners to increase awareness of her work and maybe, eventually, raise some money to support her cause. For now, she’s happy not to lose money on the endeavor.

“[My husband] Parker and I did some traveling in Europe,” Sarah says. “We stayed in a lot of agritourism B&Bs in Italy, and I was inspired by the way local agriculture is entwined into the community there. When I came back, I started thinking about ways to use the farm to build community.”

In 2025, Sarah hosted three farm-to-table dinners with sixteen people each. This summer she hopes to offer more.

“The meals are all vegetarian and feature anything I can produce from the garden or using local products,” Sarah says. “I bought local milk and made ricotta cheese and yogurt. I make my own pasta and bread using flour from the area. But the real stars of the show are the vegetables.”

Her menu comprises three main dishes and a dessert. Offerings include heirloom tomatoes with gooseberries, shaved radish, and fresh herbs; homemade pasta with caramelized fennel, fried zucchini, Lark’s Meadow Dulcinea cheese, and sourdough crumbs; and charred sugar snaps and kale with tomato vinaigrette and baked goat cheese; followed by serviceberry ice cream with tulsi basil meringue and rye shortbread. The food is colorful, plentiful, and delicious.

The area’s harsh climate has always made raising food in Teton Valley a challenge, but today’s farmers are determined and excited about its potential. The farm-to-table movement is a way to share the bounty and educate people about the opportunities available here, literally in their own backyards.