Your guide to Vermont food

Born in Los Angeles as Ryan Kim. Arrived at the Putney School in Vermont — a teenager with a mullet and very little idea of where he was.

Putney had a working farm. I dug potatoes. I dug manure gutters. I learned what a CSA was. I learned why a tomato grown in your backyard tastes different from a tomato driven 2,000 miles in a refrigerated truck.

This was where I first learned the realities of local food.

Photographed 2,000 trash bins as an art project. Spent a summer at the Burlington Airport baggage claim watching people reunite. Wrote a 60-page thesis on the Vermont dairy industry.

Graduated Middlebury with an economics degree and a broken heart. Was supposed to go into banking. Instead: Kerouac years. Oaxaca, Mexico. I learned Spanish and how to eat everything.

Walked out of Muddy Waters coffee shop in Burlington. Bought a GoPro on a whim. Hitchhiked across Los Angeles in one week on $60 to prove I could. Then rode a Honda Rebel — 6,000 miles — from California back to Middlebury.

Christmas Eve. Courthouse. I gifted myself a new name: Rocket. Just one name, like Cher. Or Sting. A declaration.

Started Eat Vermont — an outlet to be creative, hang out in kitchens, eat free food. The vision was small. The thing that grew was not.

Over time I came to understand what Putney had been trying to teach me about local food. I saw farmers ground down trying to “make it work.” I saw the economics of the thing — and I believe there's a better way.

Eat Vermont has grown. A book. A documentary. A membership program. A community.

Working with the Apple Store taught me the value of a second name. I legally changed my name to Senator Rocket — two names again, but now entirely my own.