A celebrity farmer plays to changing tastes

If he's not skateboarding, playing soccer in a local league, or hobnobbing with top chefs in his Armani jacket, you may have seen Tom Culton at the Headhouse Square farmers' market in his variation on the Huck Finn look - straw hat, silk scarf, and maybe his grandfather's lederhosen.

But don't be fooled by the 19th-century garb. Culton is not your grandfather's Pennsylvania farmer.

Just 30 years old, Culton is rocking the Food Channel-flavored world of American pop culture, a rising star of a new breed that would have seemed unfathomable a decade ago:

Celebrity farmer.

Culton glides between two worlds. One is the Lancaster County patch of soil that's been in his family for three generations, where he labors to grow purple Brussels sprouts and other high-end produce for about 20 restaurants in Philadelphia, including Vetri, Osteria, and Zahav, and 50 more in New York such as Thomas Keller's renowned Per Se and Daniel Boulud's trendy eateries.

Then there's his fast-growing circle of celebrity chefs, the glossy spread in a national food magazine, and a push to host his own cable-TV series showing how food gets from farm to table.

And on Sept. 23, Culton's more elaborate produce will go on the block at Sotheby's "The Art of Farming" auction, featuring 23 organic growers and sustainable-food proponents Martha Stewart and Bette Midler, among others.

In some ways, the glitzy side of Culton's widening world - his trademark offbeat wardrobe now includes that $2,000 Armani jacket, on loan from an upscale restaurant - is a commentary on America's unending mania for all things lavishly food-related.

Attention is now heaped not just on the superstar chefs who run gourmet restaurants but also on the farmers who supply them, especially with the growing popularity of the "eat local" movement.

But friends say Culton's key to success is not the colorful hats or the skateboard, but his authenticity and his devotion to his Lancaster County soil.

"He's very charismatic, very articulate, very passionate - I think it's a bit of a surprise to people," said Aaron Matzkin, a photographer and partner in the TV project, who met him at the Headhouse a few years ago.

"He has this great happy-go-lucky childlike attitude toward life, but once you start talking to him about what he does, he certainly knows what he's talking about. He's passionate and articulate. He's not blowing smoke."

After all, even a farmer whose produce is featured in Bon Appétit magazine, as Culton's crops were recently, still has to deal with the humbling hard work and unpredictable weather that go into urging tiny seeds to sprout into a bounty of fruits and vegetables.

"I do hustle from the time I wake up in the morning," said Culton, standing amid rows of potatoes on his lush 53-acre tract in Silver Spring, outside Lancaster, in his usual work getup of straw boater, ascot, and bare feet.

"It's the nature of the business. You can't sit back and wait for the world to come to you."

Hard work is in Culton's bloodlines. His family has been in the Lancaster County area since 1740. But Culton Organics has replaced the barely-scraping-by staples that his mother and grandfather grew there - such as tobacco and carrots - with Flageolet beans, Rouge vif d'Etampes pumpkins, and those purple Brussels sprouts. Not your typical Amish market fare.

Reinventing the family farm was not something he had planned to tackle at such a young age. Culton, a Hempfield High School graduate who did not attend college, was only 20 when his mother died in 2001 and he took over the family business.

Almost from the beginning, he knew he would have to become what he called "the ultimate hustler." He said: "As a businessman you got to have that mentality, unless you have a trust fund. You're either in debt to the bank or working your butt off. I was raised that you don't want to be in debt to the bank."

It helps enormously that Culton is a bundle of perpetual energy - his joints jangle as he talks enthusiastically about his passions, whether it's working the land or his Sunday-night soccer matches.

Friends say his high-energy, attention-grabbing persona is simply who Tom Culton is, and not a tad contrived - not that the sideshow isn't great for business.

"Tom is a fun guy; he entertains the customers," Katy Wich, Headhouse manager, said with a laugh. "He's goofy, but very serious about farming and the products he brings to the market. He loves to talk about the varieties and their place in different cuisines."

So much so that Culton often has the longest line at the market.

"He is a good salesman. He won't let you go until he gets his point across about what he has to offer," she said.

Culton's coming of age coincided with a decade of rapid change in the restaurant business, and he was quick to pick up on the trends.

From local chefs, he learned that restaurants were looking for higher-quality produce and more variety than they were getting from large distributors.

After a few trips to France, he began growing heirloom crops. Then he cold-called restaurants. His first major "get" was the venerable Le Bec-Fin, which bought small table grapes from 75-year-old vines that Culton says a French policeman gave to his grandfather.

In the meantime, the unusually attired young farmer became a Sunday fixture in the crowded Headhouse, where he learned by asking customers that Vetri was the hottest restaurant in the city.

A 2007 phone call led chef-owner Marc Vetri to send his chefs to the Culton spread, where they started purchasing Italian artichokes and other hard-to-find delicacies.

"It's things they can't get from anyone else than me," Culton said.

Three years later, Culton now sends a refrigerator truck once a week to New York with produce. A new visitor to his farm last October - TV's Top Chef head judge and Craft restaurants impresario Tom Colicchio - is a customer.

"It was cool," Culton said of the visit, even as he acknowledged he didn't know a lot about Top Chef.

Chef-owner Sean Cavanaugh of Lancaster's John J. Jeffries called Culton "the new standard" for organic farming. As the restaurant's main supplier, Culton offers dozens of unusual varieties, Cavanaugh said.

"He doesn't just grow tomatoes or squash or onions. He grows 15 different kinds with different characteristics to them," said Cavanaugh, who was tickled with the French pumpkins that Culton dropped off recently.

Culton's farm is one of 5,400 remaining in Lancaster County. Most don't have the cachet or high profile of Culton Organics, and many are struggling.

Some have mixed feelings about the notion of the farmer-as-rock-star.

"We have two different kinds of farmer, those that are celebrities and the poor schlubs out there without the heirloom tomatoes," said Ann Karlen, director of Fair Food, which connects Philadelphia chefs with farmers in Southeastern Pennsylvania and runs a stand at the Reading Terminal. "I believe all are vital to our region. But do farmers have to be celebrities? Could we instead have deep respect for the work they do and pay them a fair wage?"

Currently, Culton works 20 of his acres with only his 78-year-old grandfather and one hired hand. For the first time he was able to put some money away last year.

"I don't want it to compromise my relation to the land," he said of the relentless pitching. "When I go to the beach for two days, my heart is here. You love your land so much you want to be here."

That said, Culton goes back to digging up potatoes - his grandfather driving the tractor while he steers the plow. There are some monster tubers that he picks up to show visitors.

Suddenly he shouts to his grandfather to stop, and he pulls a cell phone out of his pocket. It is a call from Culton's alternate universe - a restaurant that loved the French carrots that he recently delivered.

"It's nice to hear," Culton says, then goes back to doing what he does best.