Civil Eats

Step out of the realm of thought, get on your hands and knees and start building. Set poetry in motion. You can start your first draft and I promise the poem will grow increasingly interesting.

My poem is about a tiny farm I’m starting for a couple of farm smitten NYC non-farmers who own a restaurant, cafe and grocery store in Brooklyn, and who want to grow some of their own produce. My goal is to set in motion year-round, efficient, ecologically sound and manageable growing systems to help them reach their goal of farm to table. Oh, and to keep the seedlings alive. Without the challenge of turning a profit this first year, and with support for low-budget experiments, I’ve landed in a great place to learn and grow alongside my adventurous employers. Read More

The tilling and planting work is done for now. The irrigation system, a vast network of drip lines and timers and snakes of multicolored hoses, is up and running. Trees are pruned, weeds are pulled, deer fencing is enforced, and the huge job of removing crowded tan oaks is done for the time being, unbelievably. We await the massive, juicy results that will soon burst from the vines, stalks, branches, and stems. We planted everything we could think of, and everything we had saved in our seed box, some in their third generation. Where dirt reigned on the ground there is now something edible growing; the places I always thought would just be overgrown tangles of poison oak and dry twigs have transformed into beds of tomatoes, radish, lettuce, tomatillo, peppers, carrots, cucumbers, squash, onion, and too many herbs to list. Ongoing maintenance of the orchard, planted by Margaret, the homesteading single woman who lived here before us, will hopefully keep presenting an abundance of figs, apples, plums, grapefruit, Meyer lemons, hazelnuts, chestnuts, and pears. The only thing to ponder now is why did we plant all of this, and who is all this food for? Read More

As has been reported here before, choosing to farm sustainably is not a call to forsake technology, lower your productivity, and mortify your flesh. Far from “returning to the 19th century” (the straw man that some critics love to first erect and then tear down), contemporary sustainable farming methods are rooted in a careful balancing of the old and the new. In other words, we will no more blindly accept tradition than we will heedlessly race after the newest fad, simply because a someone swears that the latest model will solve all your problems and wash the dishes too. Read More

We Americans can be notoriously self-centered when it comes to, well, everything. In the environmental and food-justice movements, voices from Europe or Africa struggle to be included in the American discussion. But as a young country, we would do well to learn from other countries who never stopped plowing, harvesting, and eating in a sustainable way.

Recently I joined 200 other young people to participate in a pilot agriculture-experience program in Japan. Read More

One of the complex questions I have been living is the question of education. This is a question that has grown within me from my own education in the public school system and now ripens as I have the stewardship of nurturing my own four daughters. For their sakes, I have waded through the war-zone of educational philosophies with the cross-fire so thick that I could not clearly see who was wrong or who was right. At last I came upon a place of peace, where Dewey, Montessori, Steiner, Mason, Rousseau and Froebel all seem to call a truce. I have found a place where public schoolers, home-schoolers, and private-schoolers can amicably co-exist. This higher-ground is in the garden. Read More

Last month I reconnected with my southern roots and traveled to my hometown, Atlanta, Georgia for a week’s immersion into the current developments around the local food movement and school garden education, particularly with my family’s organization, Seeds of Nutrition. My trip, however, was filled with much more than a visit to a few school gardens. I would soon be surprised by the South’s progress in the sustainable food movement. Read More

For farmers up and down the West Coast and for many more across the country, Eco-Farm marks the arrival of the new year. Some call it a conference, though you won’t find any dark suits or laser pointers or cafeteria food. I call it a three-day wonder. Read More

Many of us never meant to become farmers. We had ambitions to enter the world as accountants or lawyers or teachers or some other clean, respectable professional. We never really thought about the origins of our food; we always knew that the supermarket shelves would fill themselves, that food came in boxes or cans ready to serve and that farmers were simply one dimensional photographs in the mix of a hot new marketing campaign. Read More

I had my first apprenticeship the summer before my senior year of college. I had just returned from a tumultuous year abroad in South America and was ready to get back to “the simple life.” Map in hand, I scrolled through description after description of idyllic farms that participate in the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners apprenticeship program. I dreamed of crates of blueberries, bundles of fresh cut flowers and baskets full of newly laid eggs. Needless to say, the excitement and possibility of a new adventure completely ran away with me. Read More

I must admit, as with many seminal choices in my life, I came to farming as much by chance as by design. I was surfing through the Georgia Organics website for a grower who might supply me with the trappings for a haggis; I stumbled across the posting for full season apprentices at Serenbe Farms; I thought to myself, “now THAT could be a great way to spend next year;” and life somehow fell into place. I do not think that most haggis quests end quite so fortuitously. Read More

Greenhorn is a word I expect I’ll hear fairly often in years to come. A greenhorn, according to Severine von Tscharner Fleming, Paula Manalo and Zoe Bradbury – authors of the newly released second edition of The Guide for Beginning Farmers is “a novice, or new entrant into agriculture.” To be precise, it is a certain kind of new entrant into agriculture: one who was not raised to farm and who has no family farm to inherit but who is unconventionally and some would say irrationally choosing to become a farmer, no matter his or her lack of education and resources. Touches of madness are not uncommon among greenhorns. Gutfuls of passion aren’t either. Read More

In his nomination acceptance speech at the Democratic Convention in Denver, Barack Obama told us, “America, we cannot turn back. Not with so much work to be done… Not with an economy to fix and cities to rebuild and farms to save.” The group of about 20 of us who were listening to his speech on a laptop as we got ready for the “young farmers seed swap” about to take place at Slow Food Nation stood straight up and smiled. “Did he say farms? Does he mean that?” As 80 other young activists, students, cooks and farmers streamed into the room, that phrase – “farms to save” – swam circles in our ears. Obama was confirming what we are all beginning to feel is mission of our generation: saving farms, rebuilding the food system, digging back into the land. He didn’t mention what kind of farms we have to save, but he did imply that the future of the economy and of our cities is bound to the future of agriculture and that the security and livelihood of our nation depends on our ability to grow food. That’s an old-fashioned idea, but it’s still a big one—even to young people. Read More

The myth that our food is grown on Old McDonald’s Farm is true in one respect: the “Old.” In 2002, the U.S. Agricultural Census reported that the average age of American farmers is 55 years. Generations of farmers’ sons and daughters have seeped out of rural communities in search of more prosperous lives. The next food crisis is fast approaching: we need millions of new farmers, food artisans, distributors, cooks, retailers, educators, agrarians and activists. We need them all to be creative, eco-literate and socially responsible, because they’re going to have to fix our broken food system and steward our ailing planet back to good health. Read More