Seeds and Salt

We’ve sourced herbs from Seeds & Salt for our cocktails at Kingfisher. This year, our fingers are crossed for Erin's planting of Butterfly Pea Flowers, which turn liquids blue--and then pink--with the addition of acid.

Erin Torgerson, owner of Seeds & Salt in Durham, NC, is a self-proclaimed "farmer-cook.” She attributes her early interest in food, culture and storytelling to watching Julia Child after school on PBS when she was young. Her path has been winding between cooking and farming ever since.

In high school, Erin worked at a restaurant that she describes as "less Julia Child and more Hell's Kitchen." After college, during a formative work-trade farm stay in Europe, Erin worked on a farm started by a Michelin star chef. He shared this experience with Erin: the care with which he would handle the beet as an ingredient had been entirely transformed by growing beets for the first time and caring for them over the three months that they take to mature.

Erin was further inspired to pursue seasonal cooking. She earned her Culinary Masters in Sustainable Gastronomy at The University of Gastronomic Sciences in Pollenzo, Italy. When she returned to the US, she found a position that combined her interests as a farm chef and grower at Elkstone Farm in Colorado, where she helped create an agritourism program including cooking classes and farm lunches.

At this time, Erin describes, "I knew how to harvest and how to plant things. Still, I was spending so much time in the kitchen and not really knowing how to look at an acre and grow food on it."

When Erin Torgerson's friend, Michelle Aronson, bought a farm near Saxapahaw, Erin decided to move to North Carolina and help Michelle with the creation of Farmbelly. "At that point, I knew I wanted to farm—full stop," Erin says. Erin began working full-time at Red’s Quality Acre in Durham in 2020. At the start of 2021, she asked the farm's co-owner Dave Henderson if she could have a couple of beds to treat as a micro-farm. This incubator garden at Red's Quality Acre is the farming component of Erin's project: Seeds & Salt.

"It's a small amount of land, but it's still a lot for one person," Erin explains.

In 2021, Erin’s garden had six 50-foot beds. With limited space, it didn’t make sense to plant slow-growing crops like carrots, so Erin focused on niche culinary herbs and flowers that appeal to local chefs. Many of these crops, including her favorite herb to grow—za'atar—can be cut or picked and will grow again.

"Tedium has kind of been the theme," Erin says, "big farms don't have the time to pick edible flowers one by one, but that's something I'm able to do."

This year Erin has made a leap to 26 beds and with more space she is growing some vegetables like specialty peppers and pearl onions.

As is true for many small farmers, Erin faces the challenges of finding affordable land and making ends meet financially for her business. She began her incubator farm at Red’s Quality Acre with the intention of learning how to plan crops for her space, but her main lesson thus far has been the difficulty of finding buyers and selling what she grows.

Farming is only half of the work of Seeds & Salt. Erin has always loved teaching and getting people excited about eating seasonally. She hosts Pasta Nights, which are “a good winter crop,” while the farm is quieter. Erin describes Seeds & Salt’s Pasta Nights as an all-hands-in dinner party.

“Pasta is a perfect blank canvas for seasonal cooking,” Erin explains. During the height of the pandemic, she would sit with her roommate for hours and make hand-formed pasta. “Socially, it is a way to get people together. For me, as we are remembering how to talk to people and look them in the eye, it’s so helpful to have something to do with your hands.”

Growing specialty culinary crops provides a beautiful tie-in between the micro-farm and Pasta Nights. While Erin hesitates to look more than a couple of months in advance, for now, it feels like Seeds & Salt is taking shape and uniting her dual passion for growing food and sharing it with the community.