Georgia Farm Culture

Cali - FORN - I - A (part un)

2008-10-29T18:48:00.015-04:00

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

2008-06-25T21:40:00.004-04:00

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

2008-05-13T20:59:00.004-04:00

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

2008-05-13T17:27:00.007-04:00

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

2008-05-03T00:27:00.003-04:00

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

2008-04-29T23:19:00.003-04:00

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

2008-04-27T20:21:00.004-04:00

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

2008-02-27T12:40:00.001-05:00

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

2007-10-15T19:48:00.000-04:00

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

2007-10-09T14:32:00.000-04:00

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

2007-10-07T01:20:00.000-04:00

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

2007-08-28T23:00:00.000-04:00

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!

2007-06-28T12:56:00.000-04:00

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

2007-04-08T15:13:00.001-04:00

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!

2007-03-21T12:55:00.000-04:00

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.

Mission Accomplished - The Big Wrap Up

2006-11-17T23:29:00.001-05:00

The Source of Sustenance

My coast to coast bicycle journey in search of how to preserve America's family farms has successfully been completed. After having a few pictures taken of dipping my front tire in the Pacific Ocean I arrived in Astoria, OR on Friday, October 27^th with a big smile on my face. Riding a bicycle from one ocean to another, across ten states, covering 5,000 miles, visiting nearly 80 farms over the course of four and a half months is not an easy experience to summarize in a few words. The first word that comes to mind is “fortunate.” I was fortunate that God put into my mind the desire and the conviction to carry out such a thing, and that I was physically and mentally capable and determined enough to complete the effort. My final day began with a walk along a secluded beach, listening to the sounds of the ocean and filled with a rising sense of thankfulness. I never went hungry, I never suffered injuries, was never harassed (save the occasional honking of a horn), and was never turned away when in need of assistance or a place to stay. Perhaps calling it “good fortune” minimizes the significance of my well being during these last months to a sort of cosmic fluke; an uncanny roll of the dice. Perhaps a more accurate description of how I'm feeling at the end is superbly blessed.

The final dipping of the tire in the Pacific Ocean at Cannon Beach. (Goonies rock in the distance)

The accomplishment itself, of overcoming all the psychological and physical obstacles and completing a hard won goal, has strengthened my faith and confidence in my own abilities. This is a new perspective for me, and one to be cherished. About two-thirds through the trip I began hesitantly mentioning to people that I wanted to write a book, but I wasn't quite sure I could do it. “If you can ride your bike across the country,” they responded, “you can do anything you set your mind to.” That statement coupled with a now tangible achievement has lifted the limits I formerly imposed on myself. When plagued with doubt I can always remind myself, “If you could ride your bike across the country, why not this?”

I have never learned more in a shorter period of time than I have these last few months. First and foremost, I will never be able to look at food the same way again. All food has an origin, and I will enjoy food best when I have an understanding and a respect for those origins. There are lots of ways to raise cattle, to grow an apple, to plant and harvest wheat, to operate a dairy. All food is not the same; there is a story behind our sustenance. A farmer's philosophy, practice, and knowledge greatly determine the nutrition of the food, the well-being of the animals, the integrity of the landscape, the character of the family, and the culture of the community. When we buy food at the grocery store we rarely know any of these things. In the midst of our so called “information age”, we have never known less about the origins and the impacts of the food we consume everyday. If my journey was in part a search for more enlightened living then my next steps are too seek out locally produced foods, indeed, even encourage them. My food dollars spent at the grocery store just don't support the things I care about anymore.

To say that I've developed my interest in agriculture the long way around would be an understatement. I grew up in a suburb of Birmingham, Alabama. I'm certainly not ashamed of my roots, but I also recognize that city life deprives the human spirit of a deep understanding of the source of all things. For the urbanite, our sustenance in the form of food, water, and even fresh air is generated in some mysterious manner on lands unknown. We take for granted the processes of nature, or the labor of our fellow man that keeps us alive, and as a result we make poor decisions. These decisions have had consequences to the health of our bodies, and to the health of rural communities.

I am grateful that after so many years, my ignorance about food and how it is produced is slightly less complete. The ground feels a little more solid beneath my feet as a result. But it has been the means by which I have acquired this knowledge that I now recognize as so unique. How fortunate I've been to study one of the most basic aspects of our daily nourishment; not in a classroom, not from a book, but directly from the farm families whose very lives provide something for the rest of us to eat. I witnessed hundreds of little snapshots of mankind's relationship to the land. As I learned about wheat, or cattle, or peaches, it was always within the human context of an individual, a family, a farmhouse located in a particular valley, situated in a particular state. As I roll over the trip in my mind, each farmer had a unique story to tell, and because I was looking, some wisdom to share. Before the printing press, before radio, before t.v., and before the Internet, our knowledge of the world was exchanged orally, directly from individual to individual. This form of communication differs from the others in that it requires no technology, it is direct, it is personal, it is interactive, and it is relational. In the process of my search for knowledge and understanding, I ended up gaining friends.

It hardly seems possible that in the course of a few hours I would make such strong connections with total strangers. I think it had something to do with the bicycle. A bicycle traveler is easier to trust. If we were up to no good, we sure hadn't devised a very good get away plan. And because of our vulnerability, the human heart is called to assist. By riding thousands of miles on a bicycle to see them, and asking them sensible, important questions, I often sensed my hosts rediscovering the significance in the way they lived their lives, and the value of their contribution.

“So what is it going to take to keep farmers farming?” This was but one of many ways I asked the question at the heart of this trip. An easy answer never materialized. What did materialize, in my heart and mind, is a deep appreciation for the land and the beautiful way in which God and nature have allowed us to provide for our own nourishment. The diverse, and often inconsistent answers to my question may come from farmers themselves, from more enlightened consumers, from farmers markets, from alternative food sources, from public policy, or from rural communities that can take charge of their identities and their future. But the starting point for such grand undertakings are simple enough. Each individual will have to pause a moment, examine their life, and make a conscious decision to rekindle a relationship with the source of their own sustenance.

Thank you to everyone who has experienced this journey along with me. I received so much support and encouragement throughout the adventure, and as a result I never felt alone. It also inspired me to push on during the rough patches. Without the prayers, the kind words, and yes, the donations and t-shirt purchases, I don't believe that this trip would have been the success that it has become. I owe an impossible debt to a great many generous souls out there. My only hope for repayment is to continue down the strange path of discovery I've now found. I promise to share some stories along the way.

I think this has to be my favorite photo from the trip. It's me and Susana Lein posing American Gothic style in celebration of our efforts to rescue her delicious Bloody Butcher cornmeal corn. Our tools were simple....stakes, twine, and a small sledge. Doesn't everyone use these tools when growing corn? One of us is taking our re-enactment a bit more serious than the other.

2006-11-03T22:55:00.000-05:00

Final T-shirt entries

I sure enjoyed all the t-shirt entries I received. I'll try and compile them all on one page and let folks decide which is their favorite. Anyone ever come up with any bright ideas for an award?

Now this was what I was hoping for. Farmer models looking sexy in their lettuce. Awesome. Big thanks to my good friend Noelia Springston for sending this photo of her husband laying in a bed.

My handsome and intelliget cousin Harris Blackstone supporting the cause.

Thanks again to everyone who purchased a shirt. I wouldn't have been able to do the trip without your contribution. I'll try and compile a list of my benefactors.

MORE >>

Posted by Justin Ellis at | | |

11/7/2006 9:06 PM Rebekah wrote:
I think the award should be a copy of your published book...
Reply to this
11/7/2006 11:05 PM vicki pense wrote:
I think you should write a book. I have enjoyed all your writing so far and when my daughter-in-law read your blog for the first time she kept on commenting.... He is such a good writer....
Reply to this

Message from a stranger

2006-11-03T04:30:00.000-05:00

I received this e-mail message after my final day of riding....

Hello,Props to your wonderful, inspiring efforts. I admire yourdetermination and feel honored to live in the city that you celebrateyour journey's end. I was driving home and noticed how gracefully youglided up the quite steep hill outside our house on Franklin Ave.Most cyclists are huffing and laboring up it, but I sensed there musthave been some experience in your pedal strokes. Looked up the siteon the bike trailer sign and found such an inspiring endevor that gaveme a few shivers as I beheld the beautiful pictures of your journey.I am totally behind you and your mission. I often wonder what willhappen to the farms that so many people identify with as their roots.They may have some ancestor that was involved in some form of lifesustaining ariculture or might remember the neighbor's field of melonswhich has now gone to land developers. Where will we be when we areno longer identifying ourselves or at least acknowledging that withoutthis connection with the land we live on, it may give way beneath us?I had a short experience with the joys of farming in my years inhighschool at a self-supporting school. Some of the most memorableyears of my life were spent there dividing studies and work during theday. The work, the most enjoyable part of the day, was on the smallorganic farm which supplemented the schools income and also thecafeteria menu. There was also a small flock of wool sheep that Ipersonally tended to each day as a part of my duties. The wonderful feelings of scooping up freshly plowed earth in your hands, pulling upthe first tender carrots, the ache of the whole body after anafternoon of hay bucking. None of this can be adequately described inwords.

The joy all of these memories give me hope that one day my husband(whom I cultivated a friendship with while working on this same farm)and I will be able to try our hands at sharing life with the land.Thank you for reminding me of how precious our country's agricultureis and for your valiant efforts to remind the rest of the country ofthe same.Congratulations and hope your trip home is peaceful and safe.

Sincerely,
Carrie

My reply: Thanks Carrie!

Scenes from Oregon part 2

2006-11-02T23:06:00.001-05:00

Even the bus stops in Oregon are cool. Not to mention that this bus stop is out in the middle of the country. That's a field next to that bus stop. Oregon is cool.

Travellling through the Willamette Valley during fall harvest was one of my numerous lucky breaks of the trip.

Jim Calkin of Heavenly Harvest Farms is a mastermind of agri-entertainment. This was my first encounter with a corn cannon which fires whole cobs one hundred feet using compressed air. Jim's daughter comes home everyday from school and practices her pneumatic riflery. A shot inside the barrel wins $50.

A rain storm drove me inside this barn for lunch. This old Farm-All tractor had personality.

I desperately wanted the whole trip to be able to visit a full scale dairy operation. My wish came true just three days before the end of the trip in a little town called Hebo, OR. I had stopped and asked for a place to sleep at the Hebo Christian Center and they graciously arranged for me to visit fellow member Tony Hurliman the next morning. Tony was fantastic. Completely enthusiastic about the dairy life and just a good natured human being. He loved his cows as much as a man was ever intended to love a cow. And they loved him. As we stood in his pasture talking his entire herd came to gather around him, and nuzzled him, begging to be petted.

This was Tony's father and a heckuva character. The day was his birthday and he was 85.

Press on the Trip

2006-10-28T15:11:00.001-04:00

Good Press was a difficult thing to drum up on this trip. At the early stages I just didn't feel like I had a firm enough grasp of what I was doing to try and talk to reporters. And of course there was the time factor. In addition to riding 50-60 miles a day I was trying to visit farmers, write a weekly newspaper article, take notes, take photos, find a place to sleep each night, and make sure my family wasn't freaking out. So I didn't have a lot of time to look up local newspapers and tell them my story.

Then a good friend Michelle Blackwood set up an interview for me with Kingman Leader-Courier while I visited her families farm in Kingman, KS. Michelle had seen my entry entitled Problems Abound, and generously offered to help with a few of them.

The interview was hilarious. When I took a step inside of the office headquarters it was like walking into a paper from 50 years ago. The place smelled like old newspaper, primarly because all the old copies were kept in a disorganized clutter in the back room. Talk about a fire hazard. The editor/publisher did the interview and asked all about what kind of food I ate at night, where I slept, how long I'd been on the road.....and then....that was it.....the interview was over. We had spent about 5 minutes talking about his son who had lived in Georgia and then about 5 minutes on the interview. Nothing about farms. When I told the Kinsler's (Michelle's family) about the interview they laughed and said, "it'll be a miracle if any of the informaiton you gave is correct". A few weeks later my sister called and said she had received a copy of the paper in the mail. They had taken a couple of pictures of me. One of them was actually on the front page, and then the second photo was also included inside the paper with the second half of the article. The pictures were virtually identical. Once I get back I'll type it up and publish it because based on my sister's reading it should be quite entertaining.

Shortly thereafter I wrote a press release and started sending it to a few larger papers a few days to weeks before my arrival. No one responded. I even called a few. Often I never even talked to anyone who had seen the press release. Given my limited time, I pretty much gave up on the idea and focused on more fruitful pursuits. Then every once in a while I'd jet a few out.

Finally I got an e-mail from the Nugget Newspaper in Sisters, OR from Jim Cornelius.The interview was at 10:30 in the morning, but it was a cloudy, groggy day, and Jim invited me into his office which resembled a bear's den. It was completely dark and he sat in the shadows and began to interrogate me. It just wasn't the kind of environment that elicited inspirational vocabulary. After each question he would kind of sternly peer into me as if to see if anything interesting could possibly fall out of such a dull story. In all fairness, Jim was very helpful in suggesting I visit the Small Farmer's Journal before leaving town.

So here is the result of what I thought was a miserable interview.

Before you read it I should add that I had a couple other encounters. One was a story in the Wyoming Livestock Roundup, a real live ranchers paper. I can't imagine the conversations it must have stimulated. I need to ask for a copy of that story as well. Finally, just yesterday a young woman named Shasta with the Tillamook Headlight Herald stopped me while shopping for fruit at a roadside Farm Shop called Bear Creek Artichokes. She had just graduated from college in Eugene and this was her second week on the job. She saw that I was bike touring and asked if she could interview me. We sat on the hood of her car and for about twenty minutes all the ingredients of my trip began to come into focus. I don't know what she'll write but I told her everything from Thomas Jefferson's agrarian vision for the nation to statistics on the percentage of American's incomes spent on food relative to our past and to every other nation in the world. I loved it.

Without further ado....here's that Nugget article.

Cyclist takes pulse of U.S. farming

By Jim Cornelius
News Editor

Justin Ellis is nearing the end of his cross-country bicycle trek. photo by Jim Cornelius

Justin Ellis' business card lists his occupation as "Seeker."

It's a pretty good job title for a young man who spent his summer trekking across the United States on a bicycle, visiting farms to discover the state of American agriculture.

He's visited 60 farms in his trek and has discovered - to no one's surprise - that farming as a way of life is under stress in America.

"People... are skeptical of future prospects," he said.

Farmers feel a reduction in the pride and respect accorded to their way of life, and many are not sure they want to see their children carry on what has been for many a livelihood and culture spanning generations.

Ellis saw evidence of this before he even started his trek, in his home town of Clarksville, Georgia.

The community is rapidly changing, with an influx of newcomers with no connection to the poultry farming that has been the town's economic mainstay. The sense of common values is eroding.

"There was a lot of division in the community that wasn't there before," Ellis said. "You just didn't have the same community dynamics that you did. The community ceased to have pride in (its farming heritage)."

That kind of change was a common phenomenon across the nation. Ellis chose the bicycle largely in order to get a closer view.

"I thought I'd understand it better if I visited these farms by bicycle instead of the rapid pace of an automobile," he said.

His seeking has a purpose. Ellis is in a master's degree program at the University of Georgia, heading for a career in shaping agricultural policy. He hopes to craft policy that will support small farming.

"I needed to understand the playing field better," he said.

The picture is not all bleak. Ellis noted that many farmers and ranchers are finding local niche markets with high quality, specialized products. The model of Oregon Country Beef, which seeks local markets and partners with restaurants such as Sisters' Depot Deli, may hold out real possibilities for farmers.

"The farther apart the producer is from the consumer, the less viable it is for the farmer," Ellis said.

The cultivation of local markets may be an antidote to the erosion of farmers' ability to make a living.

"People are seeing hope in that," Ellis said.

Comments

10/31/2006 7:54 AM Rebekah wrote:
The article and picture turned out to be impressive.

Scenes from Oregon part 1 - Wintergreen Farm

2006-10-28T06:27:00.002-04:00

Since I have a little more time on my hands, and my experiences in Oregon were so rich and varied, I'm going to dedicate this one entry to one farm that was a real treat.

The farm was called Wintergreen Farm in Noti, OR and it was one of the first places I visited upon reaching the Willamette Valley. Of course Noti isn't exactly in the Willamette Valley but it's pretty darn close. The Willamette Valley is an agricultural mecca and one of the richest agricultural valleys in the country. Beginning at Eugene, OR and flowing north to Portland where it joins the Columbia River, virtually everyone in Oregon recognizes the Willamette Valleys economic significance and are able to describe aspects of the grass seed, hazelnut, or christmas tree farming that lend the valley its distinct identity.

Wintergreen Farms, co-owned by two families, Jack Gray and his wife Mary Jo Wade and their partners Wali and Jabrila Via, has been in business since 1980. They operate a large and diversified farm that is both organic and biodynamic, supporting CSA members, multiple farmers markets, wholesale vegetables and herbs, and grass fed beef cattle. Once again my timing was impeccable as I was set to visit during their Fall Harvest Celebration in which they invite all their CSA members to pick their own pumpkins, drink fresh apple cider, go for a ride around the farm on a hay wagon, and generally absorb the good energy of farmlife.

I took lots of pictures so here goes...

This is the apple mash after phase 1 of preparing apples for the apple press to make cider.....grinding. Next the mash will be pressed releasing the juice from the slats in the bucket.

After the juice is pressed, and poured throug a strainer to catch any chunks or debris, its time to bottle it up for storage....or in our case for subsequent consumption in about two minutes. The juice turns a nice rusty color as part of the natural process of oxidation.

Then it goes through your lips and into your tummy....yummy!

Then after you've had lots and lots of cider. You visit this renovated grain silo which isn't really a grain silo at all anymore.

Enough about cider. Time to pick out some taters from the tater crate.

Some people just present photo opportunities everywhere they go. I was particularly fond of this gentleman and was extremely happy to make the acquintanence of his gal here. Nothing says luv like the belly rub.

Afro pumpkin kid....thanks for being you!

Meet the Hanson Family Singers. Incredibly talented members of the community farm, they were coaxed into performing some incredible harmonies from Battle Hymn of the Republic to yodeling. Yes, I know. All that farming culture and singing too. It was a blissful day.

The youngest member of the Hanson troupe, Daniel was so talented he practically brought the scarecrows to life. His yodeling prowess was impressive. Included in the repertoire was the catchy little number from the Raising Arizona movie. Yeee yeeee yee uh ah yee yee yee. Yes, he is singing into a ball point pin. He's that good.

No farm day would be complete without an appreciation for the John Deere tractor. It was a happy, beautiful day and one that made everyone feel closer to the land and thankful for its bounty. Feel free to cry onto your computer at your own discretion.

A few final entries to come.

--Justin

The Changing Culture of Agriculture

2006-10-27T19:09:00.000-04:00

The Changing Culture of Agriculture

As the days remaining in my trip dwindle down, the memorable encounters once again accelerate. I knew that Oregon would offer ample opportunities to experience interesting agricultural operations and perspectives, and I've not been disappointed.

Just before my last steep ascent to just above five thousand feet at McKenzie Pass I made an unplanned stop at the Small Farmer's Journal in Sister's, OR. The owner and founder, Lynn Miller was gone for the day, but his story, received second hand, made his near legendary status even more memorable. Lynn started the Small Farmer's Journal in the 1970's; a beautifully bound thick chunk of a paper, designed with the pastoral idyll in mind and wrapped in a brown cover with Lynn's artwork adorning the front. Holding it in your hands made one feel as though the year was 1920 and you've just received the latest catalog of modern farming implements and practices. The primary content, and Lynn's unique area of expertise is that of horsefarming; or in other words, the use of work animals for performing farm work such as plowing, cultivating, bailing and the like.

After having visited an Amish community in Kentucky and witnessing horsefarming in action, I was fascinated to discover that there was a resource for the preservation of this traditional practice. Lynn had grown up in California and witnessed the loss of pristine farmland close to his home. After gaining a master's degree in art, he made the unconventional decision to support his family by starting to farm. He purchased property in Oregon, then discovered that given his minimal resources he would have to build his farm without the typical investments in expensive machinery. The old time locals offered advise and support on how to run his farm using horsepower and inexpensive, perhaps outmoded farm implements. Farming with horses became a passion for Lynn, and he decided to start a newsletter to help spread, and gain knowledge on the subject. There were 300 subscribers that very first year. Lynn's artistic abilities gave the magazine a unique quality that even non-farmers appreciated, making its rustic by-gone character popular as a coffee table or conversation piece. The magazine now has 17,000 regular subscribers.

Today, Lynn is recognized as the premiere horsefarming authority, and his books on the subject are utilized as formal textbooks at Universities in Idaho, Colorado, and Maine, where the topic is a formal part of the agricultural curriculum. As society begins to reevaluate the utility of a non-petroleum based economy, I speculated that the unique knowledge they have preserved may be increasingly in demand. For now, it is encouraging to know that such arts have not been completely lost from our culture, or reserved for the dedicated Amish who still practice such traditions as an expression of their values.

Within a few days of this fascinating visit with a visionary guru of horsefarming, I encountered a different sort of visionary in the form of Jan VanderTuin, the man who introduced the concept of CSA's to the United States, and now a powerful voice for alternative transportation. Jan is the owner and founder of the Center for Alternative Transportation, and though loosely affiliated with agriculture, he has made a significant contribution to the viability of small, local farms.

Back in the '80's Jan was living in Europe and actively studying aspects of European culture that held promise as alternatives or solutions to problems he had observed in this country. His two primary interests were in alternative transportation, specifically unique bicycle designs as an alternative to the American ultra-dependence upon the automobile, and alternative economic systems to prevent the accelerating decline of the American small farm. He discovered an unusual practice in Germany, where several unique farm cooperatives required customers to purchase an advance share of that year's harvest from the farmer. The farms produced a wide array of farm products including fruits and vegetables, eggs, and sometimes dairy and cheese products. The farmer would utilize the capital from the advance sale of shares to buy the seed, plant the crop, hire labor to gather the harvest, and deliver a share of that year's harvest to each investor. The system worked well, because the investors and producers were sharing in the risk. Because the transactions were direct between consumer and producer, the farmer was able to keep more of the profit, and the transparency in the true operating costs of the farm allowed the investors to understand the realities of their food, from fair wages for labor to food production practices.

Jan was struck with the community benefits of this system, and the support that area farmers received from their local communities. Upon returning to the states, he campaigned for the adoption of such a system in the U.S. Perhaps it was his non-farming background, or his preference for oral versus written dissemination, but Jan found his early campaign, “brutally painful.” He named this new framework for a small farm economy “Community Supported Agriculture”, and farms that utilize this tool are now commonly called CSA's. He sought audiences with the proponents of biodynamics (the predecessor to organics), and John Rodale of the Rodale Press (who singlehandedly launched the organic movement with the Organic Gardener magazine in the 1970's). Eventually, Jan decided he needed to prove his method with a case study, and began working with a farm in Massachusetts that was willing and interested in applying the practice to their farm.

Today CSA's are one of the most practical tools utilized in an alternative, local food system. After leaving Jan, I visited one of the most established CSA's, or community farms in Oregon, Wintergreen Farms. They had invited me out for their Fall Harvest celebration, an occasion where all their shareholders bring their families to the farm and pick out pumpkins, ride on the hay wagon, and help operate an old fashioned cider press, drinking up the yummy apple cider. Watching these families as they learned how the crops were grown that had fed them all season spoke volumes about the benefits and the values of a community supported agriculture, especially when contrasted with standard grocery store shopping. The shareholders were able to visit the place and the family that their food dollars supported, and the farmers were able to share their knowledge and connection to the land with individuals desperate to re-establish such connections.

The literal definition of the word “agriculture” when broken down to its Latin roots simply means the “cultivation of the field” (ager – the field, cultura- cultivation). When viewed as a world system the magnitude and significance of agriculture is frequently described as mankind's greatest invention or the backbone of modern civilization. Yet, when viewed as the centerpiece of rural economies, I think many have lost sight of the meaning and values that agriculture once played. One way to define “agriculture” at the local scale is simply as our “culture of the land;” the traditions, knowledge and value systems that instruct our relationship to the lands that sustain our needs. All three of these most recent visits, from the preservationist of a horsefarming tradition, to the pioneer of a new small farm economy, and ultimately to a community farm maintaining relationships with consumers hungry for healthy food and deeper connections; each represent different aspects of a changing “culture of the land” in communities across America. And yet, they represent what is currently a fringe element in an agriculture; indeed a whole culture, that has little to do with healthy relationships with the land.

Only Miles from the Finish Line

2006-10-27T19:07:00.001-04:00

Well I hope this entry isn't anti climatic. As I write this entry, I am exactly 27 miles from my last stop of my trip, Astoria, OR. I'm sitting at Fultano's pizzeria in Cannon Beach enjoying some free wireless internet. I had a gigantic salad for lunch, and a slice of pizza. I think this is the town where Spielberg shot those scenes in the Goonies where the pirate ship comes floating out past those big rocks in the ocean. I've been having Goonies flashbacks all morning. God must want me to end this trip on a highnote because it's sunny and in the '60's today. I slept at a state park in Manzanita last night and had an entire peninsula totally to myself where I could contemplate the fact that I had pedaled my way from one ocean to the other.

In about five minutes I'm going to walk over to the beach and ask someone to take my picture dipping my front tire in the Pacific Ocean, officialy marking the completion of my coast to coast epic adventure.

I couldn't be happier. And there are so many things that I haven't had the time to share. I'm not even going to try right now. I'll be posting several more entries since I'll be able to relax before I fly out on Monday.

I've been hestitant to say this out loud, but I think I've just lived my first book. I think that the living it was the easy part, and the writing it is going to be even more challenging....maybe downright arduous....but after giving it some thought these last few weeks, I've realized that there is a story to tell. Even without me as a reluctant protagonist, the stories of the people I've encountered along the way are just too remarkable....and even fit together in an odd sort of way. It should be a lot of fun practicing this art of storytelling. I don't expect it to come easily or to do the stories justice, but it's worth a try.

There are literally hundreds of people that I've spent time with that I've never mentioned here. The reason for that is that I haven't had the time to give them justice so I haven't attempted to throw something shoddy up there. If you are one of the people I spent time with.....you're just going to have to wait and see if I actually finish this book to see how badly I butcher your story. If you want to know how inaccurate I can be, just call one of the people I have written about and I'm sure they'll tell you. But it's too late now. You can't take back the time you spent with me. (Insert evil menacing laughter ala Dr. Evil).

OK. Time to go.

Here's one picture I promised to get on the web. It's the kids at the Center for Appropriate Transport. I forgot to mention that Jan runs an alternative school where he teaches kids how to be bicycle engineers, as well as newspaper writers and editors, podcast producers, gardeners, and a host of other "hands on" skills.It was one of the more memorable stops, and one of the few where I was able to spend time with some promising youth.

COMMENTS

10/27/2006 10:53 PM Autumn Daily wrote:
I am moved by you. I want to send my warm congratulations on the completion of a victorious chapter in your life. I am very proud of you. We all are. And...preservationists, conservationists, farmers, ranchers, naturalists, and just the simple people all thank you for going across this nation in support of your nobel cause. Bless you!
10/28/2006 7:14 AM Glad wrote:
Oh my! How happy I am to hear you've accomplished your trek... and we'll welcome you back home to North Georgia... you're life will be forever changed and you'll inspire us as well. Hugs and kisses!!!
10/30/2006 4:00 PM vicki pense wrote:
GREAT JOB!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
CONGRATUATIONS!!!!!!!!!!!!

You made it - that is so fantastic. Can't wait to read the book!
10/31/2006 7:48 AM Rebekah wrote:
In a way, I feel like I was on the bike ride with you all these months. In a way, it is kind of disappointing that it is over. I enjoyed reading your travel blog and viewing the places you visited and the people you met along the way. I was living through you. I hope to meet you in the future and look forward to reading your book! You inspire me to push through to achieve my goals. Congratulations, Justin! I'm proud!

John Day to Dayville to Mitchell

2006-10-15T19:11:00.000-04:00

John Day to Dayville to Mitchell

October 14, 2006

I'm in Mitchell, OR tonight. I ate a dinner of beef and potato stew, with half a can of pineapple and three fourths a bag of peanut butter M and M's (the big 12oz. bag). Doesn't feel like it's going to get too cold tonight. The SYSCO thermometer I found on the road that is now attached to my handlebars reads 50 plus degrees. Let's see, in Celsius that converts to 10 degrees I think. More or less.

I finally looked up the formula for converting Fahrenheit to Celsius. First you subtract 32 from the Fahrenheit number. This is easy to remember because this is my age, as well as the freezing point of water. Then the tricky part of the equation is to multiply this number by 5/9ths, which is about .555.

I'll have to give this some practice as I ride these next few weeks. Then I'll be able to add a new skill to my repertoire of useless skills.

So yesterday I pooped out super early. I had spent the night at John Day, right next to the Hahn Wong state park or something, and hadn't slept that terrific due to the cold. I waited for the sun to warm the earth a little before stirring, whereupon I discovered that a mouse or other rodent like critter had climbed into my BOB bag and helped themselves to quite a bit of my loaf of French Wheat bread. I had been hoping to live on that bread for the next day or so. The last few pieces were salvageable so I made a breakfast sandwich of peanut butter, banana and honey. I draped my tent fly over the monkey bars to let my respiration dew evaporate into the morning air. After loading up I went up the block to the Methodist Thrift Store which opened a bit early, just before ten a.m. I needed to replace my left spoon from the El Dorado in Baker City. I picked out a beautifully ornate strong spoon with a medium size scoop. What do you call that part of the spoon for goodness sakes?

I decided to stop by the library before leaving town, but they didn't open until 1pm. On the way there I passed the strange landscape guy in front of the Dairy Queen who had given me directions. I said hello, and he barely knew how to respond. On the way back from the closed library I decided to hunt up an outdoor store and get a new fuel canister for my stove. The downtown hardware store also carried hunting equipment and I decided they were a likely place. Bingo, they had it. As I was leaving downtown I noticed my reflection in the shop windows and thought I must look pretty odd in my sleek all black outfit. I had my new Northface pullover on and my black rainpants. I know it's silly, but I was staring at myself in the front window reflections as I pulled down the road. I was curious how that grey back on my sweatshirt looked. It seemed to look pretty good so I smiled and headed towards the Thriftway.

I needed more bread to replace my rodent ruined loaf. I went in the store and this time got some whole wheat rolls for sandwiches with the roasted red pepper hummus I had bought the night before and the organic romaine hearts, the red pepper and the tomato. Lunch was going to be good. I needed something to crunch so I got the Garden of Eatin' nacho cheese organic yellow corn chips. Then I wanted to go ahead and plan for dinner so I picked up a box of beef chili. I reckoned I could add the rest of the tomato and red pepper to it.

By the time I hit the road it was nearly 11. But it had warmed up pretty good and that makes the riding easier these days. Mount Vernon was only ten miles down the road. By the time I got there it was nearly lunchtime and it had been awhile since I'd had that banana, peanut butter, honey sandwich. I passed the local park which had everything I wanted. I wished I had camped there, because it was only just starting to get dark when I pulled into John Day the night before.

I entered the park from the back street and set up for lunch. A black dog on the other side of the street started begging for a handout. Meanwhile there were kids playing in the playground. The oldest of the kids was a young girl, maybe 7 years old. She caught my attention because she was wearing a long black cape, the kind you might wear with a Halloween costume. She also caught my attention because she had a quite beautiful quality. Her hair was sandy blonde, and she carried herself in that unique fashion that is the mark of a young lady who will grow up to become a striking young woman.

It was a beautiful day. I charged my phone, looked to see if there was an internet connection, fed the dog some corn chips, and ended my meal with a few square's of a Hershey's Symphony bar (the one with Almonds and Toffee) dipped in Organic Peanut butter. My sweet tooth has grown larger and larger as the trip has gone on. Maybe it's because I've all but eliminated soft drinks.

After only another 25 miles, I arrived in Dayville. I stopped for another snack. It was just 2 pm but I wasn't feeling so well. Perhaps it was the cold and fitful night from the night before, but I felt flushed. I looked at the map and it was about to be a steady ascent almost to Mitchell which was forty miles away. I might have gone for it had I not picked up a Dayville brochure while in the bathroom that mentioned a church hostel. I began considering my laundry needs. When I asked a woman at city hall if there was a laundry she said, “You should stay the night at the church, they've got laundry, a kitchen, plus it's all uphill from here, and the traffic is bad this time of day, you should just wait until the morning.” This made sense to me. I was ready for a break. I'd been wanting to take a half day off and read my Michael Pollan book for awhile.

The evening was pleasant and uneventful. The church was quite comfortable. They had been hosting bicyclist's ever since the first Trans Am tour back in '76. This was one of those legendary stops, and I just about missed it. Claudine was the parishioner that welcomed bikers. She lived in the assisted living homes located behind the church. When I walked up the hill to find her she was visiting a neighbor. I saw that she was in a motorized wheelchair and she was coming down a super steep grade on a gravel driveway.

Those newfangled motorized wheelchairs are something else. It had little wheels just for such situations. As the chair tilted forward, it simply rolled onto those extra wheels. As I walked around behind her chair thinking I would help her down, it was odd to realize that she was completely in control of her descent. That chair could just about climb mountains. We chatted for just a few minutes and she said she'd come down to meet me in a little while, but I should go ahead and make myself comfortable.

The first thing I did was open all the doors and windows of the church. It was simply frigid in there, but the day had warmed up nicely, so I let all that refrigerated air disappear. The church was indeed well equipped. There was a full kitchen where I went ahead and refrigerated my left over lettuce and hummus. The bathroom had a shower, and a basket filled with little hotel soaps, shampoos and of course, entirely too much lotion. Then there was a washer and dryer in the closet. Both the sanctuary and the dining hall had pianos and I thought I might enjoy stretching the fingers a little later. In a corner of the sanctuary was also a television, VCR and DVD player. Behind these was a library of books and movies.

Claudine came by and we had a nice long talk. Claudine was diagnosed with COPD which is chronic bronchitis and emphysema, just a few years after her mother and father died of the same conditions. All of them had been lifelong smokers. Claudine had thus inherited the motorized wheelchair her father had used, called a scooter, but had recently upgraded to the power chair she was using now. A tank of oxygen lay on the small ledge at her feet. She was ecstatic that her doctor had finally approved a lung transplant. She was eagerly awaiting the call that would tell her to come to Washington to begin the two months of physical training required to strengthen the abdominal muscles which would support the new lungs. The lungs would be donor lungs from a healthy but deceased donor. Both her parents had donated their bodies to science, which can be a bit odd for the family she said. There are no graves, or ashes to sprinkle. No place to go to remember them.

I told her that I myself had quit smoking and she agreed that it was the best decision I ever made. Interestingly, the next time I went in for my Drivers License I checked DONATE ALL on the organ donation sheet. The donation of an organ may be the most important thing an individual contributes in their life. Though I hope all my organs are old and shriveled up before that day comes.

I read some of the my Michael Pollan book, took a nap, took a shower, started my laundry, cooked chili with a salad and wheat bread for dinner, watched one of the church movies, then found a copy of “I heart Huckabee's” next to the DVD. I loved that movie the first time I watched it. Upon watching it again I found it interesting, but surprisingly hollow and meaningless in the end.

I played the piano and found that my fingers were still agile. My dilemma is that I don't actually know how to play, or how to read music, so ultimately I am just assembling somewhat monotonous little rhythms that still bring me a great deal of pleasure. I slept beneath the alter that night, and read the first couple of chapters of Billy Graham's book entitled “Just as I am.”

Next day, I awoke to find I had nearly been poisoned by that chili. My stomach was in knots. Needless to say I didn't get going very fast, and walked out of the church around 10:20, feeling much relieved, but a bit dehydrated. I headed down the road to the John Day Fossil Monument. Apparently this area is one of the richest paleontology sites in the world. I've never been a big fossil hound, but I did find the man who first realized the uniqueness of the area quite fascinating. Thomas Condon was a preacher who came to Oregon during the Gold Rush days in the late 1860's to serve the rough and tumble miner's who were constantly, well killing each other, robbing, drinking, and basically not living very Godly lives. Condon was extremely successful in building congregations and then he would move on to another area of need. He was Scottish born, and his father had been a stone mason. Condon developed an early interest in geology and fossils. When he began making discoveries around what is now the John Day area, he sent many of his findings to the Smithsonian. His lectures on the state's geology, and his reassembling of the geologic past of the state was so impressive that he was asked to become Oregon's first state geologist. He ended up a professor of Geology and made a rather impressive statement about the religious interpretation of the evidence for evolution. “The Church has nothing to fear from the uncovering of truth.” He firmly believed that science and religion were not antagonists in their search for the truth, if they both remained open minded.

Before hitting the road I made another stop at the Cant Ranch, where they had kept 1500 head of sheep during World War II. The shearing for wool was quite important to the war effort and the ranch was immensely successful for many years. I went to look at the shearing and lambing pens with Lia, the cute but shy NPS interpreter. The barn was filled with the same horse drawn equipment I had seen in operation on the Amish farm several months ago.

It's been a long, wild, and wooly trip. And this is the longest most drawn out entry imaginable. Hope it didn't crust up your eyelids.

COMMENTS

vicki Pense wrote:
Wow! Oregon! You are doing great. I love reading your postings and following your journey. Keep a goin' Justin all the way to the Pacific!

10/25/2006 1:22 PM Rebekah wrote:
Brent and I broke up, but I am still following your journey! Keep it up! Just about finished now...

Scenes from Idaho and Eastern Oregon

2006-10-12T19:13:00.001-04:00

I should have posted these earlier, but I haven't been spending very much time blogging lately.

After leaving Missoula (nearly a month agon) I spent one glorious week in the beautiful state of Idaho. Problem was, after taking a four day break, I just pedaled my tail off those next few days and didn't stop to take many pictures. This is a crying shame because the Lochsa River Valley on the other side of Lolo Pass was some of the best scenery of the entire trip. Oh well, I'll have to paint a picture.

I realized my mistake on my last day of riding through Idaho and took these photos of the Brownlee Reservoir.

This was my first glimpse of the canyon on my way from Cambridge. It was a Sunday morning and a rather interesting one at that. The night before I had pitched my tent in the crook of The Church of Latter Day Saints building, because the winds were super strong and cold. I actually didn't know that the Church of Latter Day Saints was the Mormon faith. Next morning, I got up, packed up and decided to attend church there. I'm not exactly sure at what point it dawned on me that I was in a Mormon church, but I knew there was something a little odd. On the first Sunday of the month, rather than a standard sermon, members of the church are encouraged to give their testimony. Perhaps it was the thanks and blessings being offered to the prophet Joseph Smith that clued me in. Anyway, after about the first 4-5 people I decided that I should give my own testimony, despite the fact that I'd never even cracked the Book of Mormon (though I had at least seen a few in hotel room bedside tables over the last few weeks). I was all dressed in a black North Face expedition series pullover and my hair was matted from sleeping in a fleece hat. When I approached the podium, some sort of mechanical elevator operated by a remote control raised the little pulpit to to my height. I told my story about my trip, and my experiences and what I've learned, and how my faith has been strengthened. Despite our differences the congregation was warm and friendly and after the service I was given my very own copy of the Book of Mormon. Woohoo!

Ooooh, pretty picture!

So this is a wheel line irrigation system. You see these everywhere throughout the West. The reason I wasn't familiar with them before is because they are primarily used to irrigate pasture and hay land. Well in the East we get so much rain that the grass grows really well without irrigation (though not to the satisfaction of our urban yards I'm afraid) so we don't have elaborate expensive systems like this. A farm I visited in Hamilton, MT actually used one of these to water their produce.

This is a pivot head on the wheel line irrigator. There is one pivot head in between each of those big wagon wheels, and it works the same way your front lawn sprinkler works, spraying in a circle. with a stutter lever to interrupt the stream in order to scatter the drops evenly across the stream. Like you didn't know how this works. But I had to put something here.

The sagebrush was in bloom and I found it quite beautiful.

Eastern Oregon had a rather unusual fence post design. I never got around to asking about it. There are plenty of unsolved mysteries from this trip.