RENSSELAERVILLE— Local ingredients. An accomplished chef. Youthful energy. And a  business plan to  do something more than a little different.

Together these ingredients compose the recipe for Kuhar Family Farm Market and Kitchen (stay tuned, the name may change prior to opening day), a new business set to open its doors soon just west of Rensselaerville hamlet on route 353.

Husband and wife Micah and Rochelle Kuhar are the new owners of the building that currently houses the local post office and the Hilltown Café. Soon, as its eastern end,  it will also house their vision for bringing gourmet, fresh, and prepared-on-the-premises takeout to their part of the world.

In the past, the building has housed  a school, a co-op, and a massage parlor, say the new owners. It stands on the site where the famous Rensselaerville Academy stood from 1844 to 1898.

Micah belongs to the fourth generation of a farming family that took root here when his great- grandfather Kuhar migrated  from Czechoslovakia, determined to make  the most of the local meadows, thin topsoil, and challenging weather.

Rochelle hails from Pulaski, north of Syracuse. She  comes from a family, she says, “of hunters-gatherers...fishermen, hunters, trappers.”

She came to Albany 10 years ago to study at The College of St. Rose and become a teacher. She now teaches sixth grade math in the Greenville Central School.

Micah studied culinary arts at Schenectady County Community College and got his first kitchen job in Rensselaerville’s Palmer House Café.

It  was there —  Rochelle waitressed at Palmer House — that they met and fell in love.

Founded  in 1984 by Bill Bensen and still owned by him, Palmer House was from the first a pioneer in farm-to-table dining, the Kuhars say. “Bill was maybe the first person to ever collect wild ramp as an ingredient,” said Micah.

After lots of real-world learning under Bensen — a “natural born teacher,” says Micah — he became the restaurant’s chef for several years while Bensen attended to family matters. Bensen is now chef there again.

The Kuhars’ new place will be another expression of the now well-established farm-to-table  ethos. Except it will have no tables.

“We’re not in competition with Palmer House,” Rochelle stresses. Both places have high standards for ingredients and preparation. Both are for people who  want to eat well. But Kuhar Farm  will be open only Monday and Tuesday, while Palmer House serves dinner Thursday through Sunday.

But more than operation hours will be different.  Kuhar Family Farm and Kitchen will provide a gourmet backup kitchen to people who sometimes don’t have time to cook, or don’t want to,  but who want to eat well at home.  Micah says, “It will be farm to your table."

Micah and his father, Barry Kuhar, still provide Palmer House with beef, pork, and goat.

“We wish Palmer House the best,” says Rochelle, “but we got burned out on á  la carte...We didn’t have a lot of time for us.”

Micah and Rochelle share a “passion for good healthy all natural food, “ Rochelle says. They also say in their mission statement that their “commitment to animal health and environmental stewardship [shapes] our daily operations and care for our animals.”

Before planning their new business, they tested with friends their idea for a part-time business that would give them a more independent life: “Fast food that isn’t fast food and you know where it came from,” said Rochelle.

“Do it!” friends told them.

Kuhar Farm Market and Kitchen will have limited hours on its two open days. About one-third of its 20-by-50-foot  space will be an open kitchen where every Monday Micah will prepare the dishes of the week: one meat dish,  one vegetarian, one non-dairy, one gluten-free.

In the run-up to welcoming their first customers, the couple has been busy registering their business and obtaining a  “food processing establishment” license from New York State.

Asked what a typical menu from their kitchen will be like, the processor-in-chief — in reality a “gourmet chef,” Rochelle points out — described offerings like “roasted spaghetti squash tossed with farm-raised pork in a bolognese meat sauce”; a vegetarian option of “homemade pappardelle pasta, tossed with shiitake mushrooms and asparagus in a herbed brown butter sauce; curried goat stew; and roasted vegetable lasagna.

Also available will be the Kuhars’ farm-raised pork, goat, beef, shiitake mushrooms, heirloom tomatoes, salsa, roasted tomato sauce, and weekly soups.

A weekly email blast to their mailing list will tell their customers what’s ready for pick up Monday and Tuesday evenings, in pints or quarts to go.

“We expect to see a lot of families with kids,” Rochelle says.

They think they may also fill orders on weekends — the area has many weekend residents — by appointment.

“The community support has been great,” Rochelle says.

In addition to prepared foods, their own Kuhar beef, pork, and goat will be ready-to-go from coolers.

Barn-wood interior walls to give the space a rustic look, a chalk board outside to announce the week’s fare, and picnic tables out back (the property abuts the Huyck Preserve) are all part of the vision, too.

All ingredients will come from Kuhar farms or from other local farms. Outside the couple’s  greenhouse to the east of the hamlet — it contains 40 different kinds of heritage tomatoes — a horse and a herd of goats happily graze. A second herd of orphaned goats regard Rochelle as their mother and follows her on walks to a nearby stream. 

A bit to the north of the hamlet,  another field supplies pasture for Kuhar cows. Behind a fence, a field of towering hop vines —- 300 plants, four varieties — should be ready to harvest this year, Kuhar says. Each plant is making its  way up the coconut-fiber ropes that top out far above,. Hops, used in making beer,  were once a big local cash crop, Kuhar says. “They like windy spots to prevent mildew, lots of sun, and they don’t mind if the soil is subpar.”

He’ll be supplying hops to the Helderberg Brewery Incubator at the Carey Institute for Global Good in Rensselaerville.

It’s all part of a thriving local ecology that unites people who share the Kuhars’ enthusiasm for good food and good drink.

Self-reliance seems a local theme too. In the spare time granted by his newly independent lifestyle, Kuhar is building the couple a new home — he has learned post -and-beam construction — on higher ground above their present home.

At Kuhar Farm Market and Kitchen, look  for the school bell the couple plans to install there. Or, rather, re-install. A bell has been found that once summoned children to the old school that stood here until  it was razed in 1955.  The old bell is about to make a comeback, this time to ring out a new summons. To  good food.

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The Kuhars plan a grand opening celebration, July 23, 1 to 5 p.m. Persons wanting to be on their mailing list to receive the weekly menus can send an email to [email protected].