How The Anne Saxelby Legacy Fund is Ensuring a Bright Future for American Artisanal Cheese
By Pamela Vachon
In the wake of beloved cheese personality Anne Saxelby’s untimely death, her husband, Patrick Martins, founder of Heritage Foods USA, knew that something needed to be done to continue her work. “Right away I knew we had to do something to keep her memory alive, keep her active and part of the news,” he says. “I had to do something big.” What Anne Saxelby created in her short life is already incredibly impactful, and so it’s fitting that the project Martins spearheaded to honor his late wife, along with her mother Pam Saxelby, was deemed the Anne Saxelby Legacy Fund. (ASLF)
As the founder of Saxelby Cheesemongers, Anne Saxelby was a champion for American artisanal and farmstead cheeses, connecting chefs and consumers to the small farms and creameries that were producing world-class cheeses domestically. Her passion for American dairies began when she was quite young, as an apprentice at Cato Corner Farm in her early 20s. She would go on to found Saxelby’s in her mid-20s as a purveyor of only American cheese, (except for Parmigiano Reggiano, which knows no domestic equal,) first in the Lower East Side’s Essex Market, eventually moving to Chelsea Market. Just a year before her death she published The New Rules of Cheese, a Freewheeling and Informative Guide.
Apprenticeship Program
Beginning in a similar place as Saxelby did early in her career, the first element of the ASLF was to establish an apprenticeship program with American cheesemakers, farms, and agricultural organizations. “I emailed all of her cheese makers,” says Martins, “and asked would any of you be willing to carry on this idea that she did in her 20s?” Specifically connecting farms and creameries in need of labor with ambitious young adults without easy access to farms. “And all these farms right away were like, ‘we’re in,’” says Martins. “Everybody else was just like me—they didn't want to just relegate Anne to memory; she always left a little bit of herself with all these people.”
The apprenticeship application process launched just a few months after Saxelby’s death, accepting donations from colleagues and friends, and utilizing Slow Food as an umbrella company until ASLF is approved for non-profit status. With support from agricultural education programs at UCLA and Oregon State University, over 200 people applied, and for its inaugural year, approximately 33 apprentices will have paid, month-long appointments at 15 different agricultural organizations around the U.S. this summer, including cheese makers such as Consider Bardwell, Uplands, Jasper Hill, and Spring Brook Farm. The Anishinaabe Agriculture Institute in Osage, MN, a sustainable farming operation with an emphasis in native food sovereignty, will host 10 of this year’s apprentices, which were announced on June 9th, 2022.
The ASLF, along with the partner farms and organizations, covers all of the costs of the apprentices’ stay, as well as pays them for full-time work during their appointments. “It's like St. Jude's of the apprenticeship world,” says Martins. “The apprentice pays nothing at all. That was very important to us.”
Anne Saxelby photo credit Patty Brown Photography
Annual Benefit at Chelsea Market
The first Anne Saxelby Legacy Fund Annual Benefit will take place on Wednesday, September 14, 2022, from 6pm to 10pm at Chelsea Market, featuring provisions from over 60 of New York’s premier chefs and restaurants.
To shut one of New York’s prime tourist attractions for a private event, even for one of its tenants, is no small accomplishment, but “(Chelsea Market) was instantly wanting to be a part of it,” says Martins. “Anne was a very big market person. She loved markets.”
With the apprenticeship program underway, the next piece for the ASLF was hosting an event that would celebrate Anne Saxelby’s life, as well as raise money for the ongoing scope of what the organization wants to do. Again, Saxelby’s individual legacy is very much helping to create momentum for her institutional legacy. She is largely responsible for turning on New York chefs to the work of American artisanal dairies. “She would go around to all these restaurants with 50 pounds of cheese in the back of her bike seat with her youthful, entrepreneurial, Midwestern energy,” says Martins, and everybody was always charmed by her. So when the time also came to ask for support for a gala event to raise money for the ASLF, everybody who knew Anne wanted in. “I was like, ‘would you?’ and they were like, ‘yes,’” says Martins. “‘Don't even ask; you don't even have to finish the sentence, we're in.’” NYC heavy hitters such as Frenchette, Gage & Tollner, Gramercy Tavern, and Momofuku are among the many who will have a presence at the event this September (tickets start at $50 for students, $100 for apprentices, and $250 for general admission).
Connecting People and Building a Movement
“Anne had this idea of Republicans and Democrats exchanging their teenagers for a month,” jokes Martins. “I don’t know if she read it somewhere or came up with it herself.” While fanciful and in all likelihood facetious, Martins and Saxelby both understood how a better understanding of how the other half lives could be a real catalyst for positive change, which can easily begin with opportunities like the ASLF apprenticeship program, to connect people, especially from suburbs and cities, with the agricultural communities that produce food in this country. “We just want to add momentum to that whole movement of people exchanging, and learning from working with each other,” says Martins. The ASLF hopes to scale up to be able to provide transformative, agricultural experiences to as many aspirational young adults as possible.
“I think there's a desire to see an agriculturally based Peace Corps style organization grow in the U.S.,” says Martins. “I think that resonates with people; young adults working on sustainable farms,” he says, which is what he hopes to build the ASLF into, with a rolling application process for apprenticeships and appointments happening year-round. With an abundance of apprentices moving through the program, a big part of the Anne Saxelby Legacy Fund, is indeed the Fund part, according to Martins, where he hopes to be able to help finance future Anne Saxelbys.
“The biggest goal of the ASLF is that some of the apprentices start businesses in whatever; doesn't have to be cheese,” says Martins. “We would help support that either by connecting them to business investors or investing ourselves.” Anne Saxelby started a business that literally changed the world for some of the small farms she championed with just a small amount of seed money when she was just 25. “You don't need $80 million to start something significant,” says Martins.