Naturally, Danny Seo, Summer 2017

IT’S ELEVEN O’CLOCK on a Monday night and Joshua McFadden, clad in a hoodie and a baseball cap, is poking around in a dark open field about 30 minutes outside of Portland, Oregon. The chef, who’s come to be known as the “vegetable whisperer,” is not foraging for mushrooms or looking to pick ripe tomatoes or sweet corn under the stars—at least not yet. He’s seeking aliens.

“You just never know, you know?” McFadden asks in jest. “You get this beautiful piece of land and then all of a sudden you get this space ship right in front of you. I wanted to come out here at night and make sure that wasn’t the case.”

In truth, he was visiting with the intent of eventually developing a fully working farm “with vegetables and trees and animals and stuff.” He’s been looking for a piece of property for five years now and has visited this particular 88-acre plot four times during day. Now that he’s seen it at night, he’s ready to declare it a winner: “I think we’re good!”