On the Farm and At the Bar with Mad Taco's Joey Nagy

The wind whipped through the fields on a recent morning at Marble Hill Farm in Fayston, where Joey Nagy and his partner, Georgia von Trapp, raise livestock and grow vegetables for the Mad Taco restaurants. Nagy checked on the goats in one pasture, said hi to his livestock dogs and pointed out landmarks visible to the north: Ploughgate Creamery, Knoll Farm, Burnt Rock Mountain.

In the barn, he fed hay to a few Kiko goats; then he got in his truck and drove a couple of miles to Waitsfield, site of the original Mad Taco restaurant. I drove ahead in my car. Billowy puffs of smoke and the smell of a campfire cookout signaled our destination in a strip mall on Main Street. In front of the restaurant, two smokers that burn sugar-maple wood — at the rate of a cord every eight to 10 days — were smoking meat.

The Marble Hill Farm goat and turkey, along with other meats, are smoked here for the four Mad Taco restaurants that Nagy owns with business partner Wes Hamilton. (The fourth one opened in late October in Middlebury.) Nowhere is the Fayston farm food consumed closer to home than at the original site.