Cali - FORN - I - A (part un)

A four month respite from writing. Gads!

An incredible trip to the North California Coast is worthy of picking up the keys again and sharing some beautiful photos.

In the summer of 2007 I had the good fortune to attend the Facilitating Sustainable Agriculture Conference (thanks Dr. J) and enjoyed my first visit to Ithaca, NY and the finger lakes region. I also got to catch up with an old Peace Corps buddy, Noelia Springston, and visit she and her husband's brand spanking new farm. As luck would have it I also got bumped on my US Airways flight up there and yippee for me, got a free ticket voucher out of the deal!

Well the last year's been a bit busy trying to get my Thesis finished, and I kept hoping I could really use that ticket as a reward for a thesis well defended. Well, the voucher was due to expire during the summer of '08 and I had to go ahead and use it or lose it so I guessed I might be done schooling and all by October and booked a ticket to San Francisco for October 10th.

Ha ha. My thesis ain't defended, but, it's job seeking time so that seems like a good excuse to go ahead and head on out there, right?

With a lot of help from my #1 farm buddy (a blonde canadian type) I got in touch with some farms to visit, scheduled a visit to the Center for Agroecology at Santa Cruz, shipped my bicycle UPS and away I went for 11 days of adventure.

So my first comment is that San Francisco just moved right up there to the top of my list of favorite American cities. Though I was quite disgruntled at the time, it was possibly to my good fortune that my bicycle on its ride out west was in a Train wreck and delayed for a few days, leaving me with some extra time to explore the city.

People often rave about the food in San Francisco and for good reason. I didn't have a bad meal the whole time. Here's a quick summary:

• the Market Bar @ the Ferry Building----Poached Eggs on Polenta with stewed tomatoes and swiss chard
• Cafe Divine @ Northbeach----- Porcini Ravioli, Homemade Gingerbread with caramel, and port for dessert
• Chez Panisse @ Berkley----- Baby lettuces with pomegrante, persimmon and fig, Roasted delicata squash, Roasted Fennel, and damn forgot the name of the chicken.
• Helmand Palace @ Van Ness---- Aushak - Afghan ravioli filled with leeks and scallions with mint/cilantro yogurt and beef sauce, Mourgh Challow - chicken and split pea curry, Rice Pudding.
  
• Mi Lindo Yucatan @ Noe Valley ---- shrimp/mango ceviche tostado, empanda, flauta, taco de Cochinita

Hmmmm! Yeah pretty good. Fell in love with a little bar in North Beach called the Columbus Cafe that had Speakeasy beer on tap for $1.50 a pint as part of their Recession Days special. Yeah, how could you not fall in love with San Francisco. Oh yeah, and I got to go white water Kayaking on the south fork of the American River just where we discovered gold for the first time in California...good ole Coloma.

So anyway eventually the bike came, I cheered right up and started heading south the 80 miles to Santa Cruz. I rode along the bay early one morning on my way out of town and this is what I saw.



and then the great GGB!



and then down the road a piece the California coast.



I broke myself in pretty good that day travelling 50+ miles. Went past the beautiful town of Pacifica and up and back down the Devils Slide (where these little photos were taken), then on to Pigeon Point Hostel which is one of two lighthouse hostels along this stretch of coast.



Hung out with some good folks here then early next morning had to hot foot it down to Santa Cruz to meet up with some folks at the Agroecology Center at UC Santa Cruz.

But I passed some groovy little places on the way. One of my favorites was Swanton Berry Farm which is one of the first organic strawberry farms in California. The place got my attention right off the bat with this great farm stand sign.



This place had the coolest farm stand I've ever seen. There were samples of strawberry jam on animal crackers, hot strawberry cider (yum), chocolate covered strawberries, strawberry shortcake, strawberry cheesecake, strawberry truffles (sooo good), pumpkin pie, then also cauliflower / leek soup....all organic. Then they had a sofa with a bookshelf filled with books about labor unions and cycling. I fell in love with this one book called the Noblest Invention - an Illustrated History of the Bicycle. I spent some quality time in this place both coming and going. Here's a quick shot of the simple building with a certified kitchen in back and some picnic tables out front.



And check this out. A little sumthin' for the cyclists! Yeah.



I'd run into another red and white sign early that morning as I was riding through literally miles of conventional Brussels Sprouts farms. They grow so many sprouts along this section of coast they actually have a Brussel Sprouts festival according to my Krebs cycling map. There were also sprouts all over the road, presumably swept out the back of hauling trucks. The sprout fields were quite beautiful and you could smell that sweet pungency of a Sprout.



But this red and white sign contrasts sharply with my friendly cycling sign in an eery but funny sort of way.


The Peligro Sprouts!

Well that's about all I got time for today. I'll see if I can't put some more stories up here in the next few days. And get back in the habit of writing.

a taste of local grass

When summertime comes, there’s just something that makes us want to fire up the grill and throw a bunch of hand patted beef burgers onto the sizzling flames. The crackling sound of searing meat and the wafting smells of the cook out cause most of us to salivate with anticipation. Just one whiff often makes one think, “I wonder if I can get an invitation to that cookout?” Our long-time friends the cows, the often uncelebrated guests of honor at the summer cookout, must feel exactly the same way when they stand at the fence staring upon a fresh pasture of tall, succulent grasses and think “How, oh how can I get an invitation to that good looking pasture?” When the fence is finally let loose they scramble into the forage, put they’re heads down and happily begin smacking and crunching. Tall, fresh grass is the cow’s equivalence of a summer cookout. And to a grass fed beef rancher the one sound that’s even better than burgers hitting the grill is happy cows crunching on fresh grass. “That’s my favorite sound,” explains Etwenda Wade, the rancher behind Tink’s Beef, a grass fed beef ranch located just east of Athens in Wilkes County.

With the interest in buying local and sustainable foods in full thrust, grass-fed beef is just beginning to come into its own. Not yet a part of our everyday parlance, grass-fed beef is a simple enough concept, but a full appreciation requires at least a basic understanding of the universe of the cow. Cows are herbivores; which simply means that their bodies are physiologically designed to ingest and digest green plants. Cows began to evolve, with the help of human domestication, from wild aurochs of Europe, Asia and North Africa around 6000 BC. This ancestry has predisposed cattle to be wide ranging foragers constantly on the search for tall fresh grass. Cattle also possess a strong herding instinct as a leftover defense mechanism from the once constant threat of predation. This lingering instinct basically says “eat and move, eat and move, and stay with the group.” By constantly moving they never overgraze the grass, and by staying together they eat faster, competing with each other for the choicest bites and gaining weight fast in the process.

Grass-fed beef takes full advantage of this ancestral ecology between cattle, grasses and don’t forget good old fashioned sunshine by mimicking the efficiencies of nature developed over a millennia. Rather than let cows lolly gag around the pasture, eating grasses down to the roots, damaging the soil, and exposing themselves to their own pathogens, ranchers keep the cows in smaller sections of pasture called paddocks with the use of electric wire fence. The closer quarters make the cows eat faster, then in a few days they’re moved to a fresh section of pasture with tall yummy grass. For the cows it’s just like having a cookout at least once a week. And by managing the relationship between cow and grass in ways more consistent with ancestral patterns, the health and vigor of both are improved.

With the age of cheap corn and cheap transportation coming to a close this new system of raising cows offers a long laundry list of benefits. To date, only a handful of Georgia farmers have made the leap. Etwenda Wade, who is a fourth generation rancher with cattle raising in her blood, found the grass-fed beef approach offered her an opportunity to regain a heritage of rewarding farm work while also restoring her own health. Her great grandparents were one of the original pioneer families of central Florida, eventually amassing a staggering 20,000 acres of land where they ran their cattle as they do in westerns, traveling with the herd like cowboys. Being that far south with that much land, they never had to feed hay or grain, so Tink learned about grassfed cows right from the beginning. Growing up with her cousins as neighbors, she picked up the nickname Tinkleberrry from a young cousin that couldn’t quite muster Etwenda. Luckily Tinkleberry, got shortend to Tinky, and finally to Tink.

Tink wasn’t given the option of taking over the family land and to her dismay most of it was sold for housing. Several years after moving to Georgia her dream of returning to farming became a constant obsession. Based on a friend’s recommendation she and her husband visited Wilkes County for the Mule Day celebration held each fall and she fell in love with the town of Washington. “To me it’s the prettiest town in the state of Georgia.”

Twelve years ago they purchased a beautiful and historic 230 acre homestead and Tink started raising cattle. But as is often the case, it took some hardships before everything fell into place. Chief among these was Tink’s diagnosis with multiple sclerosis. Conventional treatments for MS commonly produce some adverse side effects causing patients to seek alternative remedies. For several years Tink followed the conventional treatments, but after little success she reached a turning point that caused her to seek healthier ways of living, including a total change in diet. Now she doesn’t eat processed foods of any kind, and hasn’t touched fast food in the last seven years. The more she took possession of her treatment the more she realized that changes in lifestyle, rewarding work, and a healthy environment were crucial to her physical and mental well-being. Today she’s off of all medications and considers her grass-fed beef operation to be her most effective treatment.

Tink’s other breakthrough that inspired her to produce grass-fed beef came from her experience raising hogs in confinement for seven years. When they first purchased the farm it came complete with three swine houses and a contract to raise 750 hogs every three months. Tink has always loved animals and she hoped it would be a good way to make payments on the farm. But her discomfort with confinement really hit home one day when they were loading up hogs to send to the processor and one of them got out and into the pasture where he was able to walk on grass for the first time in his life. Pigs are easy to stress out, and as he walked around he kept “putting his little hoof down and picking it back up” as if to say, “something’s not right, this doesn’t feel like concrete.” All of a sudden the confused pig just had a heart attack and rolled over dead. The shock of the big wide world was just too much for him. That moment is one she’ll never forget and she got out of the confinement business for good.

Just like a good gardener who has to understand the physiology of the plant and the properties of the soil in order to grow a strong healthy crop, good cattle ranchers must spend a great deal of time trying to think like a cow. In fact, it’s not a half bad idea to try and think like a blade of grass too. Tink’s close attention to what her cows eat, and how her fields respond even inspire her to take an occasional nibble now and again just to see what’s going on. “I’ve tasted all the grass out here,” she states. “Clover is very sweet. If I was a cow, clover would be my diet.”

In our rather consumer-centric economy we tend to focus a lot of our attention on the benefits that sustainable foods have on us, the eaters. Things like health benefits tend to get our attention first, with environmental benefits coming in as a close runner up. On the rise is an awareness that sustainable foods also contribute to a better quality of life for those who produce our food. This includes not just the farmers but also our friends the cows. Stories about healthier lifestyles, family-owned businesses, and deeper community relationships tend to inspire, and such inspiration can have a big impact on society’s capacity to change.

“I’m on a mission,” explains Tink. “It started out as just a little thing but now every time I bring beef home and I taste it, and it tastes good, do you know how rewarding that is?”

As one of the only options for eating locally produced grass-fed beef in the Athens area

Tink is on the innovative front-lines of the burgeoning interest in locally produced foods. These kind of benefits extend far beyond the plate.

Organics in Georgia - the warm up to Vidalia Onions

Several months ago I was doing some research on organic agriculture in Georgia and came across some USDA data from 2005 on certified organic acres in each of the 50 states. I wasn't really surprised to find that Georgia is listed in the bottom ten states for the total number of certified organic acres. In fact 8 of the 10 states at the bottom of this list are in the southeast. However, when I looked at just organic vegetable acreage (you know vegetables are the most profitable and intensive crop type per acre) GA suddenly leaps into the top sixteen states.

Why is that I wondered? Here's a few theories, organic grains (row crops) and livestock take up a lot more acres than vegetables, and these two areas of the organic market just haven't caught on yet in this region. There's a good reason for this. Organic row crops are more difficult to grow in the south due to our poor soils (less organic matter) and high weed, insect and disease pressure.

Regarding organic livestock, most of the nation's organic livestock operations are located out west closer to where the organic grains are grown. Unfortunately organic livestock doesn't mean much more than the animals are fed organic feed, and they aren't given hormones or anitbiotics. Now these can be good things but there are no animal density requirements (in other words 100,000 chickens in a house is o.k.), and no pasture requirements. So rotational grazing livestock operations are now considered the more sustainable choice to organic grain fed livestock. Most of our grass fed beef and other grazing operations don't bother to get organic certification because unfortunately the organic standard for animals has mostly been conventionalized.

So that brings us to vegetables, the mack daddy of the organic movement. 42% of all sales in the certified organic market are fruits and vegetables. And Georgia is somehow nestled up at #16. Who is in front of us? Well, they are some large producers. Here's a countdown of the organic vegetable acres in each of the top 16 states (data from 2005):

Georgia	606
Texas	625
North Carolina	640
New Mexico	643
Minnesota	750
Pennsylvania	869
Wisconsin	928
Vermont	963
Colorado	1,957
Florida	2,140
New York	2,952
Arizona	3,639
Oregon	3,737
Virginia	4,859
Washington	10,331
California	58,327

In '05 there were 98,500 organic vegetable acres total in the nation. Now look at California. They possess more than half the total number of organic vegetable acres in the entire country.

Things are changing quick here in Georgia. Take a look at the six year growth rate in organic acreage. This is just those folks who are certified. There is no information on the number of growers who are growing organically but don't seek certification.

6-YEAR GROWTH	2003	2004	2005	2006	2007	2008
Certified Organic Acres	273	413	665	1,076	1,565	1,799

Now that's some growth. Over 6-fold in five years! So what's being grown on all this acreage. I put in a call last week to Vernon Mullins, the Organic Program Manager for the Georgia Department of Agriculture to ask. Vernon is a wonderfully pleasant fellow, and I could tell he was disappointed that they hadn't tried to figure out the answer to this question before. In fact, he was uncertain if they even could figure it out. He said that when people send in their certification registration, they often just list Assorted Vegetables. Hmmmmm. (but on the paperwork for organic registration, farmers are actually required to submit info on Product Grown, Amount Grown (Quantity), Annual Gross Sales, and Acres in Organic Production - so there is an answer to this question somewhere) He did mention that the only certified animal operation is a 28,000 head layer operation somewhere down in south Georgia. That's a bunch of eggs. I wonder where those are being sold.

One thing is certain, one of the fastest growing segments of organics in Georgia is in Vidalia Onions.

But for that story you have to stay tuned, we're just getting warmed-up.....to the Vidalia Onion!

Maymester Begins

Dr. Carl Jordan's agroecology lab at the University of Georgia offers one of the only intensive courses in both the principles and the practice of organic agriculture offered in the state. This summer is the 5th year the course has been taught as a Maymester session. The course is entitled Organic Agriculture and the Ethics of Sustainability. It's an intensive course, with only 16 total meeting days. 16 students (both undergrads and grads) are participating.

Today was the first day. I'll be sitting in on as much of this course as possible and sharing some highlights here and there as time provides.

Today's guest lecturer was Paul Sutter, an associate professor of History at UGA. Paul is an Environmental Historian and gave the class a good foundation in the history of American agriculture, with specific insights into some of the regional differences in agricultural settlement.



Paul described the settlement of America as a search for arable land. He described the notion of extensive vs. intensive agriculture in which land was seen as a resource whose main value was short-lived fertility. Once this fertility declined it was abandoned for un-spent land. Agriculture in the west was of a migratory nature. He contrasted this with the type of agriculture that developed in the northeast, where continuous mobility was no longer an option. Here farmers had to develop methods to sustain fertility the best they could. One of the ways in which they could do this was using animals to concentrate fertility.

Paul had some interesting things to say about aesthetics and environmentalism. He described how most of our large national forests out west are in areas where there was little opportunity for agriculture. Our aesthetic ideal of nature was isolated from our working agricultural lands. They were put in two separate boxes and environmentalist rarely thought about the latter.

Take a listen to a small part of Paul's talk. I guess this is my first official podcast. Outdoor recording ain't no easy feat so forgive the planes and windnoise.

Enjoy

http://www.farmlandconservation.org/assets/podcasts/Extensive_sound_bite4.mp3

Or Click here

The Wonderful Fava Bean

Tonight's meal has inspired me. There are so many foods that most of us have never known. Greens and roots and beans and lettuces and crazy things that make one excited to be alive again, with an incredible sense of discovery and wonder. And yet, the joy is deepened that much more if we can see these plants come up out of the ground, and know something about how they are cared for, and the history of the species, and how it has been used by people in ancient, sometimes distant lands. When the taste lingers with a knowledge of these things, ah, the delicious sweetness of deep roots.

So I'll show a quick peek of tonight's delicious feast and then come back to this and add how these things are grown, where the varieties come from, how long in the field, are they easy or difficult to grow, harvest, wash, transport? How long do they last? How long is their season? What foods do they complement?

This is the very first meal of my life with the fava bean. Celia Barss at Woodland Gardens encouraged me to take some last week after working on harvest day. I was able to pick them with the crew. After a few minutes of picking I found that they come lose from the plant easiest when grabbed and lifted straight up. There may be some risk of damaging the stalk of the plant however.

Like asparagus they are an early spring delicacy. I found in Alice Water's cookbook on Vegetables a recipe for Chilled Fava Bean Soup that sounded tasty. To get to the bean can take some time. First you split the pod and pop out the light green pod. Then you parboil for one minute. Douse in cold water then use your thumb nail to split the pod and squeeze the bean out of this second pod. The inner bean is beautiful dark green. Rinse again and add to a pan with well sauteed onions and garlic (I used some fresh spring garlic) in olive oil. Cover with chicken stock until beans are tender. Add to a blender then add additional chicken stock until the desired consistency. Drizzle with fresh rosemary infused olive oil.

The second dish was a Gratin of Broccoli with Sauce Mornay. Simmer on low 1.25 cups milk with a quarter onion, nutmeg and bayleaf (I substituted rosemary). Separately make a roux with butter and flour. Add the milk and stir on low until creamy. Add a fine grated cheese. I used cheddar and parmesan. Boil broccoli, drain, mix into the sauce. Line a gratin dish (darn I should have used mine, would have made the picture look better) with butter, added toasted bread crumbs to the bottom, add gratin, put untoasted breadcrumbs and butter on top and bake at 425 for 20 mintues.

And Hoila! Radiohead's In Rainbows made for excellent cooking music. Then Bob Dylan's documentary, No Direction Home made for good Friday night entertainment while I ate.




Tomorrow after I take my car in for a new timing belt, water pump and fan clutch I'll be swinging over to the Morningside Market, Georgia's only year round organic farmer's market. I'll get some good pics of the spring harvest bounty and tell a little bit about what I know of these good friends.

Goodnight.

Today's Lunch

Good farming produces good food. Perhaps an entertaining way to follow the whole loop around will be to show you the wonderful challenge I'm faced with in preparing and eating all the organic food I work, barter, and beg for.

This past week I've had the daunting responsibility of putting down
-1 bunch carrots
-1 bunch beets with greens
-3 greenhouse grown tomatoes
-1 carton sunflower sprouts
-2 ounces cilantro
-2 pints strawberries
-1 bunch asparagus
-1 bunch brocolli
-1 bag leaf lettuce
-1 gallon whole raw milk

This weekend I spent a good 4-6 hours making

1) A carrot - cilantro soup - also using 2 pints homemade chicken stock and one potato. This is still in my fridge as we speak.

2) A roasted beet dip - Roast beets under foil in half an inch water and a little olive oil. Peel beet skins. Put in a food processor with 2 tablespoons orange juice, half cup sour cream, corriander and cumin. I'll post a photo later

3) Beet greens - cooked in a pot with bacon (sorry this was store bought) and onions.

4) One roast chicken with garlic lemon butter - I killed this chicken myself. See Day of the Chicken below for the whole story.

And last but not least.



One BST on sourdough. That's a Bacon, Sprouts and Tomato. It doesn't just look pretty.


Food courtesy of Woodland Gardens, Full Moon Farms, and assorted farmers of the Athens Locally Grown cooperative.

May all your meals be blessed,
J

Field Day at Spring Valley Eco-Farms

Today we had about 80 or more people out at Dr. Jordan's farm for an educational field day. The rains blessed the midday from about 1 until 2:30, then the skies cleared and we were able to lead the crowd with relative ease.

Personally, I realized how important it is to have places like the farm to introduce people to new farming concepts, and the little 100 acre farm on Spring Valley Road is an amazing place for just such an activity.

The day and the group was split into three sections. Dr. Jordan gave an overview of the history of the farm and an introduction to soils and soil organic matter. Krista took folks up to her research plots to talk about no-till and alleycropping research. Jason used the bulk of the day to discuss the principle concepts of the vegetable operation and the new livestock enterprises.

It was a lot to take in a day. My role was mainly to transport the groups around the farm, and I enjoyed getting into conversations with our guests about yesterdays annual Old Timey Seed Swap, and the challenges we are up against in creating valid arguments for conventional farmers to make the switch to organic agriculture.

As much as I'd like to rehash all the great discussions of the day, I'll keep it simple and focus on the things that best caught my attention.

Jason's discussion of the spader was of great interest. This tillage tool is important in organic agriculture as a way to incorporate cover crop residues throughout the soil horizon without pulverizing the soil and damaging soil texture and organic matter. It penetrates to a depth of 14 inches. Cover crop incorporation should be carried out about 30 days before you plan on planting into the bed. I am breaking this rule pretty badly in my own garden this year. I tilled my weeds under two weeks ago and I planted lettuces within one week and now have planted okra and a few tomatoes this week. Oh well, I'm learning.



They don't make Spaders in the U.S. This one is from Italy. They come in quite a few sizes, including one you can use behind a walking tractor.

We showed the group the new Freedom Rangers chickens. These birds are a beautiful reddish color and come from European breedstock. They are considered hardier for organic and sustainable production, and also possess a richer flavor with more dark meat. Unfortunately the folks that run this business just closed it down so this might be the last batch of these guys. Back to the old Cornish Cross.

It's always great to get the opportunity to hear Dr. Jordan talk about soils and organic matter and how he realized we've really got our work cut out for us in the southeast in preserving organic matter. I love it when he brings up that the GA state legislature declared Red Clay as the official soil of Georgia, which he says is like declaring Smog as the official air of Los Angeles. I noticed today how he explains that because forests are perennial and slow growing, they don't have the same nutrient demands as your agricultural crops, so the slow release of nutrients from more lignous organic matter is not limiting. He then showed a cross section of soil from the vegetable plot and discussed how compost was needed on a regular basis.



Well. That's a quick and dirty summary. I've got an audio recording of Dr. J's talk that I'll try and link to my website soon.

A New Breed of Farm

A couple of weeks ago I came home for lunch and sliced a one inch thick center slice out of a locally grown, organic bright red tomato as big around as the length of my hand, laid it between two slightly toasted pieces of loaf rye bread, slathered it with mayonnaise, sprinkled it with fresh ground pepper and took a bite. It was about 40-45 degrees outside and overcast, but all of a sudden it felt like the sun was shining in my mouth. Eating a tomato this good at this time of year makes you feel like there’s a small crack in the firmament, and a small beam of heaven’s light focused just on you. I like to call that center slice the “steak” of the tomato, and there’s just nothing on earth as good.

Less than a mile away from where I live in Winterville, GA sits an unimposing small farm called Woodland Gardens. My yummy tomato was grown on this farm; only a stone’s throw from the Athens airport, and maybe six or seven miles from downtown Athens. Along the road in front of the farm is an itty bitty yellow sign that reads, “Organic Garden, please don’t spray.” Down a short dusty road stand ten tall domed greenhouses. A curious passerby might pause and say, “I wonder what they’re growing down there?” A good answer would be, “All kinds of stuff!”

My first visit to Woodland Gardens occurred one summer morning, about 4:30 a.m. It was pitch black of course, and I was hitching a ride to the Morningside Farmer’s Market in Atlanta; the only year round farmer’s market in the state that sells only organic products. Before heading off, I helped two lean, quick moving, hard working women load a refrigerated truck from top to bottom with boxes of tomatoes, carrots, cucumbers, beans, squash, zucchini, okra, lettuce, potatoes, onions, leeks, herbs, bunches of fresh cut flowers, and about a dozen items I couldn’t identify. Everything had been harvested the day before. This food was fresh. So fresh, it was practically wigglin’!

Everyone at the market was magnetized towards the Woodland Garden booth. The bounty of beautiful shiny fruits with chalkboard signs describing each item and how much it cost in blue, green and pink chalk. The bright colors and the smell of fresh cut flowers, ripening tomatoes and respiring greens entranced passerby. The fresh blessings of the earth had been brought to the big city.

Woodland Gardens isn’t an ordinary farm. It’s a new breed of farm; an example of what farms may look like if society truly decides to try and eat local. Most people can’t yet imagine what eating local actually means. To most of us it probably sounds trendy, unrealistic, or downright confusing. But current and future generations are facing some challenging questions that until the last few years were inconceivable. Where will our food come from? How will people make a living in our rural landscapes? What happens if everybody sells the farm?

Celia Barss is a new breed of skilled farmer. She’s young, she’s savvy, she speaks three languages and she’s the farm manager of Woodland Gardens. Born in Canada then raised in Papau New Guinea and Baltimore, she gained her training as a farmer at the University of California in Santa Cruz. She didn’t grow up on a farm, but she always loved to have her hands in the dirt, and after finding her passion for growing food she never looked back. She knew what she wanted to do and focused on it. These days a farmer doesn’t have to be born on a farm to be born to farm; and that may be a blessing to the rest of us since less than two percent of the nation’s population still grows our food. Celia is tanned, sinewy, and confident in her craft. There’s nary an organic farm or farmer in Georgia that can compare to the level of output, efficiency and quality of produce at Woodland Gardens.

When asked to paint a picture of Woodland Gardens, Celia explains the different structures that allow them to grow year round. A total of one acre of land sits under ten passively ventilated greenhouses called high tunnels, and two heated greenhouses. Four additional acres are devoted to field production. “Each area is the best place to have the crops at different times of the year,” Celia explains, and she’s developed a system of careful rotations to maximize crop performance and efficiency.

The major advantage of greenhouses is they allow a farmer to extend the growing season, thus providing year round income, maintaining full time employees, capturing a bit of a price premium, and allowing folks like me to eat local tomatoes in the month of February. But the greenhouses also preserve nutrients and organic matter in the soil. Since a greenhouse blocks rainfall, precious nitrogen from compost isn’t leached from the soil after a heavy rain. The plants are irrigated with drip tape and nitrogen is slowly released by the decomposition activity of micro-organisms in the soil. _

Every good farm starts with a farmer who loves doing what they do. Isn’t that true of excellence in any craft, and every profession? Celia explained that in addition to this love of the craft many farmers feel responsible for providing good food, “because they’re able to do it.” Fortunately for us, some people are just born with the talents that make for good farmers. They love being in the earth, they have a mind for detail, and possess bountiful storehouses of energy. Bit by bit these individuals are finding their way back to the farm as opportunities expand and society begins to appreciate this contribution. A new breed of farmer is slowly, ever so slowly being born. As this occurs individuals like Celia and places like Woodland Gardens stand out like an experienced older sister who just graduated from college. If you’re lucky maybe she’ll take you out, show you around, and instill in you an encouraging example of future possibilities.

Mule Days with Tim and Alice Mills

It’s 5pm on Saturday October 13^th and I just got home from a lovely day with Tim and Alice Mills. I had called to schedule a time to interview them and they told me they were going to Mule Days in the town of Washington on Saturday morning and invited me to attend. It seemed like a good way to spend the day.

We met at their house at 9:30 that morning and had to wait a few minutes for their daughter Rebekah and son-in-law Brian and granddaughter Emma to get there. They had stopped at Burger King on the way over.

Tim was dressed in his characteristic coveralls and a plaid shirt. Before we stepped out Alice told Tim he needed to put his hearing aids in. Tim has a hard time hearing even with his hearing aids. We piled in Alice’s white Cadillac, which is the first authentic farmer Cadillac I’ve encountered, and Bryan and Rebekah followed behind in their Chevrolet Avalanche.

Washington is in Wilkes County so we drove through Winterville on our way over to 72 then took 72 through Crawford and Lexington and on for another 24 miles or so. On the drive over we talked a lot about the drought and how it had affected things. Tim and Alice have a 140 foot well that they water from, only the ground has shifted and lodge a solid rock into the shaft at about 40 feet. There’s still water at 40 feet but Tim talked about his idea to fire a rifle down the shaft to try and break up that rock. Their loyal and somewhat slow farm hand Paul is super excited about this idea.

Tim, Alice and Paul spent yesterday afternoon fishing up at the Jubilee Lakes and didn’t have any luck. I told them how all the refugees fish everything they can out of the lake and put the whole fish in the freezer, then take the fish with them when they leave for Atlanta. Tim mentioned he wanted to catch a turtle when he realized all the fish were pretty much gone. This got us talking about turtle stew which I’ve never had. I mentioned that it seemed they would be tough. The trick to making good turtle according to Tim is to feed them corn meal for about 2-3 weeks before killing them to clean them out of all the weird things they like to eat.

This got us talking about feeding corn, and how I’d noticed that the supermarkets were advertising “All grain-fed” beef like that was a good thing or something. This conversation was interesting as Tim’s familiarity with the Bible had led him to believe that “fattening” the calf was a biblical instruction from God, that there was nothing wrong with that. We talked about how ruminant stomachs respond to grain and the problems with strains of e-coli that can now be passed from a cow to a human due to the acidic stomach of a cow from eating grain.

The Mule Day was a popular event with cars lined up at the entrance. There was a show ring and a mule drawn plough demo on one side and food and vendors on the other. The event was staged at the Callaway House historic preservation center, a great little locale with a beautiful, stately plantation style home with pillars and big front porch and one of the tallest, thickest southern magnolias I’ve ever seen. It was probably four feet across. They had reconstructed an 1889 one room schoolhouse as well. There was a sorghum mill and they were cooking up the sorghum syrup. This was neat to watch. There was brick fireplace, built of two long walls on top of which they sat a long iron flume. The sorghum syrup was moved from one section of the flume to the other depending on how long it had been cooking. As it was cooking a bright green film of chloroplast coagulated on the surface and was skimmed off. At the farthest end the syrup began to simmer and gain its characteristic dark color.

One of the things I enjoy the most from these type events it the opportunity to learn a few new terms. Of course, sometimes I have to relearn some old terms. The purpose of the event was to celebrate the mule and a mule simply put is the offspring of a male donkey and a female horse. It’s an F1 hyrbrid so to speak, and usually unable to reproduce. Before we left the house, Tim had explained that one of the advantages of the mule is that they will eat of lot of things that a horse will turn their nose up at. They seem to be hardier in that regard and not as prone to problems such as foundering. There are all types of mules, and as they moved about the show ring the judge explained a little about the cotton mule which was narrower and able to do delicate field work.

There were wagon rides, and tons of food. We walked over for lunch. I had a rib plate and enjoyed gnawing on the bones under the shade of a pine, wiping my face with white bread, interspersed with bites of beans and potato salad. Tim generously offered a delicious brownie with giant chunks of chocolate embedded. I also picked up a couple of three dollar pieces of pottery for Christmas presents.

On the way home I learned a little more about Tim and Alice’s history. They talked about their rodeo days, how every weekend for about 2-3 years they would travel to a rodeo where Tim would often ride the bulls.

They had moved to Athens about 25 or 30 years ago coming from North Carolina where they both had family. Tim got a job on a feedlot owned by a man named Miller, and as part of the deal he provided them with a free place to live. It wasn’t much to look at they said, but they arrived in June and enjoyed fixing it up, adding carpets to cover nearly rotten floorboards and building kitchen shelves. Rebekah was five years old at the time.

When I first asked where they had lived when they arrived in Athens, Alice answered, “The Loveshack.” Anyone who has been in Athens for very long knows that this was where the band the B-52’s lived and wrote many of their early songs, and eventually memorialized the shack with one of their most popular songs. Alice said that the band actually came by one day wanting to visit their old stomping grounds and she and Rebekah got to spend the day with them.

Tim was working on a piece of equipment inside the silage silo and got silage sickness, which can affect you if you breathe the fumes coming up out of the fermenting silage. The gas produced is nitrogen dioxide and kills people every year during the process of filling and maintaining silos. Tim went to the doctor and was told he had two choices. He could take one week of bed rest or he could go the hospital. Well the Mills had no health insurance, so bed rest seemed the way to go. Tim’s boss, Mr. Miller was a hard man and told him he could have the afternoon off but he expected him to be back the next day. Tim said that was not going to work. They spoke the next day and Mr. Miller told him to be back that day. No matter how many times Tim tried to explain to him how serious this was, they had reached an impasse. Tim did carpentry jobs for several months and the family moved into the trailer of a man and his daughter about Rebekah’s age. It worked for a short time but Tim and Alice knew they needed something of their own. They sold the house they had built in North Carolina and bought the little yellow house on Harve Mathis road.

The Mill Farm Brunch

The Mills Farm Brunch was one of the shining moments of last month. It's been nearly one month ago now on Sept. 9th, but well worth going back to take a look at it. The event was a fundraiser for the Classic City Chefs & Cooks Association, the local chapter of the American Culinary Federation.

Tim and Alice Mills are two of my favorite people in all of Athens. They add a soul to our local foods scene that just makes me smile every time I think about them. I'll do a whole write up about them at some point but this entry is going to focus on the food we had at brunch.

You'll notice we just got a taste of everything, but it was perfect. Almost like a Tapas style brunch. Here's the menu....and the recipes.

Red Mule Polenta with Goat Cheese, Poached Egg, Truffled Hollandaise and Shaved Country Ham

Polenta:

1 cup Red Mule Polenta
2 cups chicken stock
1 tablespoon whole butter
1/4 cup heavy cream
4 ounces Sweet Grass Dairy goat cheese
Salt and pepper to taste

Poached Egg:

4 whole eggs
1/2 gallon water
1 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon tarragon vinegar

Truffled Hollandaise:

4 egg yolks
Juice of 1/2 lemon
dash Chalula hot sauce
2 ounces water
8 ounces warm melted butter
Salt and white pepper to taste
1 teaspoon white truffle oil

For the polenta: In a sauce pan, bring stock to a simmer. Add polenta and stir for 2 minutes. Add butter and cream and cook for 5 minutes. Season to taste and reserve.

For the poached egg: In another sauce pan, bring water to a simmer. Add salt and vinegar. Crack each egg into a small cup and gently place in water. Poach until firm and reserve.

For the hollandaise: Over a double boiler, place a bowl with eggs, lemon juice, water, and hot sauce, whisking until eggs are 150 degrees and form ribbons. Do not scramble. Pull from heat. Whisk in butter and truffle oil.

To serve: On serving dishes, divide the polenta. Place one poached egg atop each dish of polenta. Top with Truffled Hollandaise Sauce and garnish with thinly shaved country ham.

Note: You can shock eggs in ice water and reserve in the refrigerator for use later that day.

- Recipe from Athens Country Club Executive Chef Christopher McCook, CEC

Saffron Infused Double Cream Vermont White Cheddar Red Mule Grits with Dry Rubbed Hickory Smoked Pork and Butter Bean Tomato Chow Chow

Grits:

2 teaspoons Saffron threads
6 cups chicken stock
6 cups heavy cream
2 teaspoons Kosher salt
2 teaspoons Coarse ground black pepper
8 ounces butter
2 cups Red Mule Grits
16 ounces cheddar, shredded

Smoked pork:

8 pounds Boston butt pork roast
1 cup JMCC dry rub
3 pounds hickory chips
10 pounds charcoal
12 ounces beer

Chow Chow:

1/2 cup yellow onions, finely diced
8 ounces cabbage, finely diced
8 ounces butter beans, cooked
1/2 ounce salt
1 cup rice wine vinegar
1/2 teaspoon dry mustard
1/4 teaspoon ginger
16 ounces green tomatoes, finely diced
4 ounces carrots, finely diced
4 ounces celery, finely diced
6 ounces sugar
1/4 teaspoon turmeric
1/8 teaspoon ground cloves

For the grits: Add saffron to chicken stock. Bring to boil, reduce heat and simmer for 10 minutes. Strain stock. Add cream, salt and pepper and butter bring to a slow boil. Add grits, whisking. Cook, stirring, for approximately 20 minutes. Add cheese and allow to melt. Makes 8 servings.

For the pork: Place chips in hot water and soak overnight. Rub pork with dry rub and wrap in plastic wrap. Refrigerate overnight. Light charcoal burn until gray and ashen (in a grill with a lid). Drain chips and spread over coals. Unwrap pork and place on a rack 12 to 18 inches above the chips. Cover and let smoke until wood chips are exhausted. Pull pork from grill, place in an ovenproof dish on a rack, add beer and cover. Place in a 300-degree oven for 4 hours. Remove from oven, trim fat and chop or shred meat. Add barbecue sauce to meat if you desire. Makes 20 4-ounce portions.

For the chow chow: Combine all ingredients in a non reactive pan bring to one boil, reduce heat to simmer and cook for 30 minutes. Cool and store refrigerated. Should be served with this recipe at room temperature. Makes 30 2-ounce portions.

- Recipe from Jennings Mill Country Club Executive Chef Lance Jeffers

Fried Griddlecakes with Country Sausage, Green Tomato Jam and Cane syrup

Griddlecakes:

3 cups Red Mule cornmeal
3/4 teaspoon of salt
6 teaspoons baking powder
Dash cinnamon powder
6 eggs
3 tablespoons of melted bacon fat
2 1/2 to 3 cups milk (at room temperature)

Green Tomato Jam:

3 pounds green tomatoes cut into 1/2 inch pieces
1 lemon
1 orange
3 cups sugar
1 teaspoon salt

Sausage patties

For the griddlecakes: Mix all of the dry ingredients together well. Add the eggs and continue mixing. Slowly add the milk until the batter reaches a pourable consistency. You may not need all of the milk. Add the melted bacon fat into the batter and continue stirring until well incorporated.

Spoon mixture into a well-seasoned pre-heated cast iron skillet and cook on one side until it begins to form an edge and is bubbling inside. Carefully turn and continue cooking until done.

For the green tomato jam: Place the tomatoes in a heavy bottom saucepot and cover with the salt and the sugar. Let them sit overnight. Take the zest off the orange and the lemon, using a zester; save this and reserve the juice. The next day stir the tomatoes and place over a low burner. Add the cinnamon. Add the juice and zest and cook slowly until tomatoes become fairly soft and the mixture thickens. Store in the refrigerator.

For the country sausage: Fry the sausage patties in a hot skillet, turning frequently until they reach an internal temperature of at least 165 degrees.

To serve: Place cooked griddlecake on plate, arrange sausage patty on top of cake, spoon green tomato jam on top, and lightly drizzle with cane syrup.

- Recipe from Athens Country Club Sous Chef Chris Borden

Girl Ponders Mule.

I took a lot of pictures of Tim's mule Luke who grinds all the corn into the grits, polenta and cornmeal pictured above. Luke's the hardest working member of the family. I like this picture of a girl staring deep into Luke's soul.

Field of Greens

This morning I headed on over to Andy and Hilda Byrd's 2nd Annual Field of Greens fundraiser. They call it the "Organic Farm Aid" and have a good ole farm, food and music get-together with over 500 people with all proceeds going to benefit Georgia Organics.

Some of my closest farm friends were in attendance and its always good to meet new people at these type events. Its a tight knit community and one with great rewards. My camera only retained battery power for about 30 minutes so I was limited in my abilities to capture all the terrific goings-on.


This was Michael McMullen's daughter who had her own table where she was selling pokeberry seeds. She was incredibly articulate in describing for potential customers the medicinal benefits of pokeberry. Her beaming father stood nearby and commented after her eloquent delivery, "The benefits of home-schooling."



This is a goat. Aren't goats great?


This is an okra blossom. Pretty huh?


This is Tim Mills. One of my favorite people on earth. On the table there is his corn meal, polenta, and grits which he grinds with the help of mule named Luke.

A Day with the Dairymen of Georgia

Little did I know that Georgia's second biggest dairy region was only about 35 minutes south of Athens.

Morgan and Putnam Counties are north Georgia's last dairy counties. Today I was part of a meeting hosted by University of Georgia extension on helping dairy operators develop environmental management plans for their farms.

It was nice rainy morning, the kind that looks just like Portland, OR weather from the inside of a van, but once you took one step outside and were enveloped with the heat and humidity you realized we're still in the south and its still August. Myself and two UGA faculty took some remote, winding and quite pretty roads around the top end of Lake Oconee, passing through Greshamville, on our way to Buckhead. No, not the Buckhead in Atlanta. This is Buckhead of Morgan County. The two are just a little bit different.

We took a left at the bait shop and another left at the fillin' station and pulled into Bonner's Buffet Restaurant where the Georgia Dairy Association has its meetings every month.

We had our meeting. It was a tough sell to encourage these busy farmers of the utility of taking time from their busy schedules to develop an environmental management system (EMS) for their farm. It was a fairly new approach to addressing environmental issues, and its success rate hadn't yet been proven. At least not on farms. EMS's were originally conceived for industry as a way to be proactive, make continuous incremental improvements, stay ahead of regulation, and ultimately cut costs. Cutting costs had been successful for industry through implementation of an EMS. Thus far the EMS strategy on farms hadn't shown that many cost benefits.

There were some good questions from the audience. One observation made was that perhaps farms implementing EMS hadn't seen cost savings because farmers are already having to be as efficient as possible just to survive. The audience felt like there was some validity to this point.

The group performed an exercise where they went through a list of environmental management concerns on their farm and they ranked how important each one was. They performed this ranking for themselves as the owner/operator, but also how important these topics were to regulators, to neighbors and to environmental groups. The topics were on everything from nitrate pollution of groundwater, to erosion, to dust and odors, and wildlife habitat. They also decided to add water use to the list. It was interesting and maybe just a little surprising that they consistently voted themselves as having the highest concern on most topics. The group was really engaged at this point. Some of them recognized that they were very concerned about these issues and probably hadn't given adequate reflection on management opportunities on their farm.


After the talk it was time for lunch. Fried catfish, fried chicken, barbeque, french fries, hush puppies, slaw, watermelon and cherry cobbler. I went back for seconds and thirds and had about 4 glasses of iced tea. Over lunch I asked if they drank their own milk on the farm. To my surprise they said no, they bought milk in the store like everybody else. The fella sitting next to me said that when his father was still around they used to pick one cow out of the herd that they would hand milk for themselves. She was chosen for two reasons. She always showed the lowest bacteria count in her milk and she was nice and easy to milk. The only problem, it slowed up the line when she came into the parlor to be hand milked. He said they don't do that anymore. Both the fellas I was chatting with added that people come by the farm sometimes and ask to buy unpasteurized milk out of the tank. They'll always say, "We'll pay you." And these guys always respond, "I don't care. I can't sell you that milk." Unpastuerized is illegal to sell in Georgia and there would be stiff penalties.

The extension agent who was sitting with us added that recently some folks got sick who were drinking raw milk that was being sold as pet food (one method farmers have used to sell raw milk). I wanted to know more about their personal tastes and distinctions for milk from the farm vs. the grocery store, but I got the impression they didn't really think that way. They were interested in my visit to Russel Johnson's farm and his plans to build a bottling facility and selling his milk direct to grocery stores.


During my final conversations on the front porch this little stray kitten kept climbing up my leg clear up to my belt. That cat had more personality than most any cat I've seen. Would've made a good farm cat. If only I had a farm.

Week of the Chicken!

Bright and early Monday morning of this week I giddily awoke, made a cup of coffee, put on a dark black t-shirt (the one with NY's jazz club the Village Vanguard on the front), jumped in my car and drove toward the glowing orange sun. I also had on pants!

It was about 6:45 in the A.M. and today was chicken slaughtering day. I feel fairly confident that I was one of only 4 other people in the Greater Athens area that were going to be slaughtering, scalding, plucking, eviscerating, chilling and then packing 100 chickens under God's blue sky.

For the last 8 weeks two small square pens, approximately 10x10 constructed of wood, chicken wire and a tarp had been holding 50 chickens each as they were moved once per day across a pasture beneath a palonia orchard. These chickens and these pens, undneath these trees, on this grass, on this farm, in this day in age offers more hope, knowledge, and wisdom than may be evident upon first glance.

Chickens haven't been treated very well by humans over the last 30-40 years or so. What I mean by that is imagine spending your entire life at a Rolling Stones concert, standing room only, shoulder to shoulder, in a windowless stadium, all the bathrooms are closed, and the band never shows up. That's kind of what life is like for a factory chicken.

Having spent some time in these chicken factories, I've never met a farmer who loves what they are doing. As many people have pointed out, it doesn't really resemble farming. When you walk in, you are smacked in the face by the heavy smell of ammonia. There are no windows so the 50x500 foot house is dimly lit (just about all day to keep the chickens eating 24x7). There are 30,000 chickens, and your job is to pick up the ones that have died, and make sure the automatic waterers, feeders, and temperature monitors are working. Getting a kid to go into one of those things day after day can't be easy.

With pastured poultry, a farmer is outside. The chickens have all the fresh air and sunlight they could want. They are moved each day onto fresh grass which they happily munch on, and pick through the soil looking for bugs. Each day they lay down a fresh layer of manure to help fertilize the pasture, which helps the grass grow for the cattle that will be following behind. They don't have to spend a single day in yesterday's excrement. It's fresh, clean and sanitary.

Now in the end the chicken does still get killed and eaten. Such is the price paid by a domestic fowl in an omnivorous world. But the important question is, did the animal live a good, tranquil, healthy life? Was the animal under intense stress? Was it deprived of its "unalienable rights" of fresh air, grass, bugs, ability and room to move around, freedom from one's own feces, and sunshine. No. By all accounts these birds have been happy!

Our crew of 3 were excited. This was the inaugural day of chicken slaughter on this particular farm. The very first batch. There was never going to be another first time, and I wanted to be a part of the ceremonial celebration of the good lives these chickens had led, and the unique nourishment they would afford to a whole mass of people.

Set up began promptly at 7AM. There were cutting tables to wash down, kill cones to set up, a turkey fryer would serve as our scalding pot. A brand new feather master would pluck the feathers. Then there was a tray for catching the blood beneath the cones, and a garbage can for the eviscera, and another tub for offal (the feathers). We had sharp knives, and matches, and a pulley system for dipping the birds in the scalder. It was all set up in stations. After about an hour of getting things together, we were anxious to try it out.

The birds were taken from their pen out in the pasture and put into a pen on the back of a pickup. Each bird was then stuck into an upside down traffic cone which was affixed to 2x4 across two trees. The top of the cones had been cut off so that the birds head was sticking out of the bottom. In such a position the birds can't move their wings and get very still and quiet. The most difficult part of the operation is the kill itself. It's done by simple grabbing the birds head and cutting their main artery on the side of its neck. This may be the hardest part of the procedure because the bird's don't die instantly. Cutting their artery allows the heart to continue to beat removing the blood from the body which can leave a bad taste to the meat.

Once bled, each bird (now dead) is removed from the cone, and it's fit put into a pulley situated over a vat of hot water at 145 degrees. The bird is then dipped / submerged into the hot water repeatedly for 1 minute. This loosens the birds feathers for plucking. Rather than hand plucking, they are placed into an apparatus that resembles a large salad spinner with little rubber fingers with grooves in each finger that grasp and remove the feathers as the bird is spun around and around. As they spin around a mist of water continues to clean the bird.

Once the feathers have been removed, the birds now are starting to look like food. They are placed on the cutting table and the head is simply pulled off. The feet are removed at the joint, leaving the end to your drumstick handle. The oil gland above their tail is cut off, then a cut is made at the neck to seperate the esophogus and the crop. To eviscerate a small sideways cut is made above the anus (or the "vent" is a nicer way to put it). Enlarge the opening and then scoop out the organs in a scooping motion. The trick is not to break the intestines or especially the gall bladder (a bright blueish green organ that secretes bile to the liver). The lungs kind of cling to the rib cage and have to scraped out, then the anus is cut out, and a hose is used to wash to wash the body cavity clean. That's it. Throw it in a tub of ice water to cool the body down and it's time to go home and eat chicken.

I spent about 5 hours on the farm that morning with my other excited co-horts. I stopped at one point to exclaim, "This is fun!" And it was. My real job was expecting me so before we finished all 100 birds (we were over half way there) I had to head off.

It was about noon and as I drove back into Athens I felt like an adventure. There was a fresh whole chicken in a ziploc bag on the seat next to me. I went in my apartment and threw the bird in the fridge while I took a quick shower to rinse the smell of chicken fat from my skin. I put on clean clothes, grabbed my laptop, jumped on my bike and headed towards campus. As I looked around at people walking down the sidewalk I thought how lucky I'd been to have spent the morning on a farm just out of town contributing to the cycle of life. It was Monday and it had officially become the Week of Chicken.

The first day I had Thai Peanut Sauce stir fry chicken breasts and tenderloin with bok choy, brocolli, onions and garlic. The remainder of that meal I had for lunch today. Day two was baked Jamaican jerk chicken legs cut into slices and put on a sandwich of locally baked sourdough bread, and some organic lettuce from California probably, a little Grey Poupon and Mayonaisse. Third night I used what was left to make my mother's famous chicken casserole. You're going to pass out when you hear the ingredients. One can cream of chicken soup, 8 oz sour cream, 3 breasts of chicken, butter the dish, crush one whole pack of Ritz crackers on top, drizzle butter on the crackers. I can't believe I didn't die of heart disease eating that way growing up. But it's delicious and this week is the first time I've ever made it myself. The family recipe is alive and well.

The only way I can get closer to my food now is to get my own farm. The temptation is growing.

Till next time,
Justin

The Blessing of Food

One of my best friends made a dramatic decision a few years ago just shortly after a very brief stint working for the Howard Dean presidential campaign. For reasons unknown and mysterious to me, he decided to become a farmer.

My friend had always been a bit unconventional, which is probably apparent considering his devotion for Howard Dean, but he’d obtained a bachelor’s degree from a very respected liberal arts college and shortly thereafter landed a job as Executive Director of a small non-profit tasked to defend a very grand resource; the Coosa River Watershed. The job followed a canoe trip he had completed of the entire Coosa / Alabama River system, a voyage lasting three months beginning in the mountains of Georgia and ending in the Gulf of Mexico at Mobile Bay, Alabama. Our friendship was born of our mutual passion for rivers, and most of our get-togethers involved paddling, fishing, hiking and camping adventures all across north Georgia.

One of the great pleasures of making friends with eclectic and determined individuals is the opportunity to watch them as they travel down winding and enriching new paths in life. He called me after returning from Iowa and a thoroughly disappointing experience on the campaign trail and informed me that he was going to start farming. After one year of intense training, living and working with a farm family in the hill country north of Asheville, North Carolina, he returned to Georgia and worked out a deal to set to work on a piece of river bottom land near Ranger. What followed was nothing short of miraculous.

For the first four months he lived in a tent underneath a tarp, cluttered about with all his earthly belongings. He had a phone line, and he’d convinced the power company to install a meter so he’d have power, even though there was no house associated with it. Other than that there was nothing but bare ground, a vision, and a whole heap of work. Many hands make light work, and my friend had a knack with people. He’d maintained close ties with his college community and as a result was rarely alone on his little patch of soil. If you dropped by for a visit, he’d have a job waiting for you.

Within just one year the farm was cultivating fruits and vegetables on about three to four acres. He’d invested in a tractor and a beat up pickup, erected a 100 foot hoop house, a seedling greenhouse, and with a lot of help from friends had constructed a pole barn house roughly 30 by 40 foot and 16 feet high with a tin roof. The fact that he had built a house in a matter of a few months impressed me the most. The design was unconventional, but practical and inexpensive. He’d put in subflooring with insulation underneath, and heated the home using a wood burning stove set dead center with the pipe going straight through the tin roof.

His most ingenious idea was constructing the walls of the barn out of inexpensive vinyl billboard sheets. Billboard advertisements are printed on heavyweight, weatherproof, vinyl sheets. He was able to purchase two of these for a couple hundred dollars and fasten them as his walls. When sitting inside the house one of the walls featured a floor to ceiling picture of a Shoney’s Big Boy hamburger and another wall featured a Chrysler 300 sedan. There was no indoor plumbing but there was a wash basin with a bucket underneath. Hot water had to be heated atop the wood burning stove. There were two bedrooms which were actually 8x10 foot lofts sitting above my friend’s library/office on one side and living room on the other. He had an internet connection, and a television, VCR, and stereo. It was one of the coziest, cutest little homes I’ve ever been in, and it was a happy place.

My visits to the farm had a deeper impact on me than I realized at the time. One of the first things I noticed was that the foods my friend was eating were a lot different from the foods I typically ate. The breads and cereals were always whole grain, and often fresh. I remember thinking that the flavors were a lot more complex, I wasn’t sure that I liked them at first, but I could certainly tell that there was a density to these foods that I didn’t feel when eating white bread. Most of the folks on the farm were crazy about salads, and I was exposed to a world of greens I never knew existed. A lot of thought went into the food eaten on the farm. One of my more exciting visits occurred a few weeks after I had hit a small deer on the highway, taken it home and cleaned and dressed it, then carried some of the hams to the farm to be ground up into hamburger meat. It was fun to swap food and swap stories. A woman who lived nearby would bring her farm fresh eggs and trade for fresh strawberries out of the field and other produce of the week.

One of my first visits after the pole barn had been completed, there were about four of us there including my friend’s girlfriend, and we had all pitched in to prepare this great meal of fresh foods now spread out on the table. We were about to sit down and eat when my friend paused and said, “Let’s bless this food.” It was the first time I’d ever heard him suggest such a thing. The brief prayer that followed will always be a moment that I will remember. In a short period of time farming had affected a deep change in my friend’s life. His generous spirit, his strength, his humility, his calm all came into focus in his life as a farmer. I felt so happy for him, so proud of him, and so inspired by his example. Little did I know that moments like this would ultimately penetrate and influence the course of my own life just as deeply.

As his words of thanks put a blessing on the meal, the moment allowed each of us to reflect on the importance of our simply being together and sharing in good work and good food and good company. I’ve thought a lot about why that blessing, that meal, in that house, with those friends was so poignant to me. Since then I’ve sought the occasion to bless a meal. It’s a practice I fail to do everyday, but in the seeking I’ve opened a whole new world of meaning and relationship with the people who daily cooperate with the earth so that the rest of us can have something to eat.

Here we go Again!

Hello folks.

I'm back. So after a gentle respite from writing I have decided it is time once again to force the issue by committing to a blog format. I have learned that you write more when people expect you to write.

Beginning in April and ending in November I wrote extensively about a cross country cycling adveneture to discover America's Farms. You can find that Blog at www.farmlandconservation.org. That experience has led me onwards to a whole new world of exciting challenges and experiences with farm policy, local Georgia farms, opportunities in sustainable agriculture.

I have learned from my prior writing experience that you simply cannot retain nor make sense of your experiences unless you are capturing them along the way, all the little quotes that people say, your impressions at the time. They make a huge impact on the value of those stories. Well I don't won't to allow any more of them to be lost than already have so I'm going to begin sharing them again here.

This is just the warm-up. I'm a little out of practice already but I'll be back up to speed soon.

Thanks for coming back.