Category Archives: Local Food

Waiting on the Egg Man

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History may not repeat itself, but it does rhyme. — Mr. Twain

Light on the farm from the setting sun, after a storm.

Our phone has been ringing off the hook, again, and we are glad. But now I have some questions without ready answers.

In the wake of the 2008 Great Recession, small farms did, if not actually thrive, at least fare better than they had for some years before. The population, already primed by Michael Pollan and Food, Inc., deluged us with requests for sides of pork, quarters of beef, whole lamb, chicken, eggs, and produce. We held workshops on foraging mushrooms and raising hogs. We conducted classes on butchering chickens that had real estate agents lined up next to home-school moms, waiting to wield a knife on a live chicken. The job loss, the foreclosures, the crash of the banks — the societal disruption was such that virtually everyone feared being relegated to living a quasi-medieval life before that year or the next was out. For the first time in a long time people thought and acted local. That lasted for a few years.

I have been thinking about that time in this current crisis: What does the future post-COVID-19 hold for small farms? Where will the small farm fit into the economy, or, more to the point, which economy will the small farm fit into? Because, like history, an economy ain’t static.

A recent NYT article mentioned offhandedly that Americans eat 75 percent of their vegetables at restaurants. That stat shows the outsized impact of our consumer economy on what used to be a family or communal experience, that is, whether it be sitting down to shell beans or break bread. We have, in one generation or two, outsourced the love and care of food preparation and delivery to businesses. (Which begs the question of what the heck is in those veggieless home-cooked meals.)

Dan Barber, in his 2014 book The Third Plate, spent several hundred pages eloquently reimagining the dinner plate of the future at his elegant Blue Hill restaurant. One of the questions that still rattles around in my brain is, Does a future knocked from its pedestal by global catastrophe —pandemic, climate change, collapsing resources — really allow for high-end restaurants? Or, indeed, for restaurants at the scale we have today?

A local producer’s economy (or as it is now fashionable to say, the maker’s economy) remains only a twee option in the global consumer economy. I’ve written too many times about the customer seeing “local” as a consumer’s choice: “I bought some lovely pork chops from Winged Elm Farm, honey. Run to Costco and pick up the rest of the meal’s ingredients.” While that “choice” continues, most small farms will be but a rhetorical flourish for the politician, the food writer, and the conversationalist at the restaurant dinner table, a footnote on the farm-to-table menu that proudly announces sourcing local ingredients “when available.”

Small farm culture simply is not relevant in large-scale capitalist or command economies. Indeed, it exists in the margins of most economic models; it endures, in moments of time, as a particular cycle of history expands or contracts. The census used to have a category for the “self-sufficing farm,” an entity that produced the majority of a family’s needs and bartered in a primarily cashless economy for the remainder. That model, while not so sexy to policy planners, politicians, or, frankly, you and me, is closer to how most small farms have existed across the centuries, across the continents. Perhaps the small farm thrives when there is minimal choice?

One day next month or next year, this particular crisis will pass, no doubt. But it has left exposed the limits of global supply chains. It is encouraging that those limits are now being questioned. Yet, I do not hold my breath that good questions or good answers will change our trajectory as a species. Just as likely is that the planet will make the choices for us. Then the question becomes not Where does the small farm fit into the economy? but instead, How does the larger population learn to live a life of reduced choices?

Older farmers in this valley recall that growing up, an egg man used to come around twice a week to collect eggs. He would take them to sell to the family-owned grocery store in the nearest town. He provided some much-needed cash for the farms to buy what they did not themselves produce.

Maybe that is the best outcome we might hope for. When the clearest sign that we have launched ourselves on a new and better course is that one fine spring day, as we are hoeing in our gardens, we hear the sound of the egg man coming up the drive, once again.

B&J’s: revisiting an ode to the meat and three

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B&J’s in Darien, GA

This past week I was passing through Darien, Georgia. A hard scrabble fishing village on the coast with plenty of character. A town, in my opinion, that was lucky enough to have been passed by in the scramble to reinvent those Southern coasts into one undistinguished and overdeveloped theme park of high-rise condos and golf courses.

Since it was lunchtime, I pulled off the highway in hopes that B&J’s was still in the meat and three business. It had been ten years since I had last visited. But they were still open, and they were packed.

Once inside the restaurant, I found a chair open at a crowded long communal table and sat down. They had catfish, fried chicken, meatloaf, and chicken livers for the meat choices. I settled on the fried chicken with sides of green beans, collards, mac and cheese, and banana pudding for dessert.

The crowd was local and knew each other with plenty of “hello’s” bouncing around the room. And, although I didn’t know anyone, I still received my honey fix. As in, “Honey, would you like some more sweet tea?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

The classic presentation (at B&J’s)

Which all reminded me of this piece I wrote some years back on the topic. I hope you enjoy it and it inspires you to go find a similar spot to have lunch this coming week.

The Ode

Oh, how I yearn for the return of the meat and three. The simple joy of knowing that with a quick turn off the highway, any small town in the South yielded a diner that served up the sacred trifecta — that assurance brought comfort to restless, dark nights.

The daily break for lunch, the communion with one’s people. They have given way to the blight of Hardees and its ilk, the shuffling herd inching forward at the drive-through, devouring at the wheel, afterward pitching leftover hamburger wrappers out the windows. Our collective soul has been starved, even as our collective waistline has expanded.

We were a people of the garden once, the content of our favorite diner’s lunch fare reflecting the abundance of the seasons. Served in modest portions that allowed us to eat healthy, but not to excess or somnolence, the choices were varied and yet consistent: two or three meats, perhaps six or more vegetables. The daily decision was made while waiting for the iced tea to arrive.

The chicken was a smaller bird, the cuts done to maximize the number of servings. Each breast was cut in half, and when it was served on a small plate, it did not dwarf the other choices. The meatloaf was divvied into small squares, the country ham shaved in modest slices, the vegetables simply prepared with minimal seasoning.

“Yes, ma’am, we are ready to order. Hmm, I will get the chicken today, dark meat, please. And let me have the okra and stewed tomatoes (which still counted as one side), turnip greens, and the crowder peas. Roll or cornbread? Cornbread, of course. Yes, ma’am, that is all today, no dessert for me. Peanut butter pie? Oh, that’s tempting, but, no.”

Y’all have a good day. We’ll see you tomorrow.

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Reading this weekend: Wide as the Waters, the story of the English Bible and the revolution it inspired (Bobrick)

A Peace and Ponce Christmas

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The annual Winged Elm holiday gathering was last night, and the event was notable for its complete lack of politics. Nary a divisive comment heard nor nasty post tweeted. Progress. Even the field of plate-and-bottle debris was modest when compared to years past. Still, like a glacial moraine deposited across a Vermont landscape, the remains could last for eons, all depending on our energy level in the coming day.

The spread of food was fairly pork centered. Among the evening’s meaty delights, a mound of home-cured ham (prosciutto), slices of ponce (a stuffed and smoked pork stomach), various salamis (some home-cured, some store bought), prosciutto-wrapped dates and cream cheese, a homemade potted ham (pâté), and a tray of boudin that lay forgotten in the refrigerator (ignored in the pre-party rush). There were also platters of cheese and cheese balls, relish trays, endless homemade dips, cookies enough to induce a diabetic coma for the entire valley, and, to provide the merest illusion of balance, fresh veggies (with the ubiquitous ranch dressing).

To wash down the massive amounts of food presented, our nearly 40 guests imbibed a proportionally massive quantity of wine, beer, hot mulled cider, soft drinks…. (Fortunately, my gifts from a guest — two bottles of outstanding home-distilled products, one a grape brandy aged in French oak and the other a corn whiskey aged in American oak — survived the evening intact and undetected in their hiding place.)

At the gathering was to be found a good mix of farmers and gardeners, beekeepers, horse people, and cattlewomen, small farm and small town, rural and urban. Halfway through the evening, a fellow farmer caught my eye across the room. Her arm extended and a grimace on her face, she twinkled her fingers as if searching for something. A mislaid lamb, perhaps. An earnest group of listeners surrounded her, all nodding. “I’ve been there,” I imagined them saying, but I couldn’t hear anything over the din.

The beekeepers took over the kitchen at one point, confabbing, I suspect, over the latest method of treating varroa mites. Although it may simply have been the homemade cinnamon ice cream one of them doled out parsimoniously that kept the colony near. Or, maybe it was their hive instinct that caused them to remain clustered on a cold East Tennessee evening.

In the front room, our Charlie Brown Christmas tree was on display. A scraggly cedar cut from the farm, then dressed up with special ornaments acquired over the years, it anchored the corner next to the crowded deacon’s bench. Underneath, among assorted presents, were jars of freshly rendered lard, gifts for our departing guests. Each one sported a label designed by Cindy, with the tagline, “Good lard, it’s tasty!”

The evening came to a close past our usual bedtime, but not before a late-night trek by guests to the hoop-house for bouquets of turnip greens for the deserving. We tidied up (It really wasn’t that bad considering the number of guests, food, and drink) and retired upstairs to read for a while before enjoying some well-earned rest. I dreamed of a breakfast of fresh scones with double cream and lemon curd left for us by a friend, and slept soundly.

Fall: A Season of Salvage

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I spent Saturday off the farm attending to personal business. So I leave you with this seasonal post from 2015. Enjoy!

There is a day each year. A day when you find yourself in the kitchen slicing the last of the season’s ripe tomatoes, a moment you have lived before, knew was in the cards. A day when the vines are still heavy with green tomatoes. A shortened day in which those green tomatoes will never fully ripen, destined instead for frying or making chowchow. How did that unstoppable summer deluge become a trickle and then a drought?

So begins fall, a chance to cherish what is passing before the weather turns to ice and snow — both too soon to dream of the fallow winter, when the cold months spoon next to the season of rebirth, that bare season, stark in its absence of greenery, when our native imagination colors in the palette of the riches to come, and too late to partake of the fresh bounty of the summer season just passed. The in-between season.

Fall is the season of salvage, of scouring the fields and paddocks for useful leftovers. In modern parlance, it is the sustainable season. A rush to harvest the last of the fruit to preserve in jams, jellies, chutneys, and wines. A time to take stock with some soul searching of Aesop’s Fables significance: Do we have enough firewood? Did we use our time well last winter, spring, summer in preparation for the next year? It is a time of movement, cattle to new pastures and forage to shelter. A time to glean the excess hens and roosters, butchering for hours to stock the larder for the gumbo and chicken and dumplings that will get us through the cold months to come.

Fall is a time of hog fattening. The cruel reward for an ability to gain 300 pounds in nine months comes with a knife wielded the week after Halloween. The bounty is delivered to us in sides of bacon, salted hams, corned shoulders, butcher’s wife pork chops, hand-seasoned breakfast sausages, headcheese, pates, and bowls of beans with ham hocks.

Fall is also sheep-breeding time. As the days and nights cool, the ram has his pleasurable work cut out for him, making sure all ewes are bred. We, servant-like, make sure the ewes are conditioned for lambing, in good health, hooves trimmed, attending to their every need. Meanwhile, last winter’s lambs are grazing in their own pasture, fattening before they fall under the butcher’s sword in the remaining months of the year.

Fall is the season of coming face to face with imminent and unavoidable death. It is the fever of the dying year, the mumbled words from the patient in the bed trying to get his affairs in order, to make amends. So much to do and so little time.

It is a season of contrasts, when we eat a ripe tomato while composting the vine it grew on, feed a pregnant ewe while fattening for slaughter her year-old offspring, crush grapes and pears while sipping the wine made last year. Past, present, and future are jumbled in this most hopeful season, when we weigh the year to come to see what is left in the balance.

Like a culture that prepares for a future generation, this work is undertaken for a year not yet born.

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Reading this weekend: On Homesickness: A Plea (Donaldson), an odd little beautiful book.

Making Pimento Cheese and Duck Confit Sandwiches

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Just another farm dinner: shredded confit on crowders, tomato and cucumber salad, cabbage and carrot slaw.

I should be outside mowing the lawn. Claiming that the mercury is climbing is really not an excuse or a reality. For it is a beautiful Saturday afternoon with highs in the mid-80s and lowish, for us, humidity. That the morning was productive — a gutter cleaning, the daily harvest of crowder peas, weed-eating around the day’s rotation of trees, vines, bushes, and outbuildings — seems to matter not. Through the open window my mower’s kin call gaily out to mine from up and down the valley, “Come out and play.”

Slamming the window on their siren song, I determine to focus my considerable energies on more fruitful projects. An hour later, a handful of computer chess game victories under my belt (All praise the Undo button!), I continue to wrestle with my work avoidance and open the refrigerator.

A little snack to fortify my willpower for the afternoon is called for in this moment. Before me, in a dish gifted by my 99-year-old aunt, lie salty duck legs buried in white glistening lard. Beautiful confit! (The result of another work avoidance project tackled earlier in the week when I should have been completing a memorandum for something or other.)

I reach past the various salads and grab a hunk of cheddar. In mere moments, it is turned into a lovely shredded mound. A few simple steps more: a bowl, a small jar of pimentos, drained, then tossed with the cheese, freshly ground pepper and a sprinkle of salt, a healthy dollop of Blue Plate mayonnaise, a wooden spoon to mix and mash and I’m done.

Now, if you are from regions less enlightened than the South, you may already have stopped reading. Good riddance! For it is truly depressing to the soul that there are depraved and deprived individuals who have never and will never eat a pimento cheese sandwich. So be it. I pledge, henceforth, to drop this messianic desire to convert. To never exalt in the blended perfection of extra-sharp cheddar and piquant pimento is a sad existence indeed. But it is yours — welcome to it.

There are moments in life, genius moments, that strike us all. Ford had his assembly line and Edison his lightbulb. It is in these moments that the gods hold their breath: “Will he???” With generations of can-do pioneers coursing through my veins, I answer with a resounding “Yes!” I will take that hill and scatter the naysayers. Give me that ceramic of confit and be quick about it, sires!

Two slices of sourdough, a heap of pimento cheese on top and shredded duck confit on bottom, assembled into one glorious sandwich. I stand out on the porch, my masterpiece in one hand and a cold beer in the other, and dare the world.

But wait, fortune smiles on me this Saturday afternoon. Do I see gathering clouds? They do look like they could carry rain, might even, in time, develop into dangerous thunderstorms. Should I dash out and mow and risk certain death … on the admittedly random chance of being struck with lightning?

Nay, I head back inside, unwilling to hazard depriving future generations of these awesome insights.

You are welcome.