Ivanhoe, NC, population 311, doesn’t have much of a downtown scene or a place to get an organic fair trade hot chocolate or even one of those traffic light things, but it does have Black River Organic Farm.

The first time I visited the farm was back in 2003. I had been dealing with Stefan, the farm’s owner/operator, for about a year at that point. I was buying produce from him for a small organic produce buying club that I ran out of the basement of my house. Every other week I supplied about 50 families with a large box of produce that I bought from various sources. Stefan was one of those sources.

On my first visit to Black River I went with my friend Daniel, who was my predecessor as produce manager at the co-op. We went out to hand cut some kind of wheat or rye cover crop that Stefan grew. The only things I really remember about that trip was picking a billion dandelions and raking up a bunch of wheat stalks to haul home for mulch. Oh, and Daniel running over an irrigation line and causing a flood in one of the fields. We left in a hurry, mainly because we didn’t have much help to offer in fixing the broken pipe. Stefan kind of shrugged it off, but I could tell he was fairly irritated at the situation.

It wasn’t until the middle of this year that I actually went out and got a tour of the farm as a whole. During that trip, Kristin and I picked a few handfuls of elephant garlic that had gone feral around some walnut trees, snacked on just ripening blackberries and watched Stefan’s dog Bunny swim back and forth across the Black River.

There was also some grazing on sungold tomatoes from one of the greenhouses and some searching through the withering strawberry plants for that one last fruit. It was what I envisioned as the perfect day off on a small farm - a swim, a walk, a bit of foraging and maybe a little planning for the week ahead.

I envisioned our next trip back to be a bit more focused and intensive, for me anyway. Of course that always falls apart at some point, the point on this trip being when the goats showed up with their beards and their waddles and their urgent needs to befriend anyone on two legs. That sort of thing takes a good hour to get over, and by then the focus of the rest of the visit is more or less hazy.

My only goal for this trip was to dig up some sassafras root for tea. The taste and smell of sassafras is something that I love; my favorite drink right now is brew it as a tea with some mint and honey and add it to ice. I also recently made some root beer using a small handful of sassafras, some fermented ginger and some maple syrup from The Stash. Kristin, Danielle, Noel and I dug up enough of the root to last for quite awhile.

After the digging, we walked through the fields of eggplant, peppers, corn and beans, Kristin eating some corn and me searching the sun beaten bean rows for that last handful of yellow and green.

At the mid-point of the walk, we all ended up at a patch of sweet corn at the far end of one of the fields. We all selected a few rows to scout for and pick what would amount to several pounds of corn smut (Ustilago maydis). Corn smut is a fungus that grows on individual kernels of corn.

It is edible even though it looks like some crazy stuff. I wasn’t about to eat it, what with my corn allergy and my general aversion to mushrooms, but I would pick the infected ears until the sun went down if I had to. Picking any type of produce or pulling weeds is a bit therapeutic for me these days, but I’m sure that would change if did it all day every day like I used to.

As with every visit to Black River this year, we ended up bringing home more than we intended to. Thrown in the back seat of the car were a jar of yaupon, a bag of unwanted koji rice, a bunch more feral garlic heads with their flowers, a large bag of sassafras and a larger bag of corn smut.

Kristin ended up cooking the corn smut with a bunch of onions, peppers and garlic then making it all into a curry with rice. She served it to some friends who all seemed to enjoy it. I will post the recipe soon…

One of the first things I did when I started this project was bike down to Stoneground Bakery to ask for a bit of sourdough starter. Their starter has been alive for at least a year and has acquired what I think is an awesome taste.

Once at the bakery, I asked Danielle about the possibilities of buying a cup or so. She came back with Andrew, one of the bakers, and a pint container of bubbling starter. After a few quick questions on its care, I brought the starter home and outlined the possibilities.

I could make bread…All I had for flour at the time was the graham flour from Anson Mills. I had read that this flour needed to be mixed with some more refined flour in order to get a good bread, but I ignored all that since I didn’t have a source for a basic regionally milled white flour. (Thanks to Jessica at Fresh Thinking - Living Local in Wilmington, NC, I now have a source with Southern Biscuit flour.) After a few miserable attempts at making bread with the graham flour I decided to move to other recipes.

I attempted sourdough biscuits using the same flour. They came out as hard as doorstops and about as easy to eat. It was obvious that baking this flour wasn’t going to net me anything resembling bread, so I fell back on the idea of pancakes.

I like the result I came up with.

I have been making sourdough pancakes for the past three or four Sundays. The pancakes are very tangy and are pretty fluffy. They are also easy to make and easy to freeze for later, which is especially good for me to use for weekday breakfasts. The pancakes go along great with my rice and honey in the morning.

I won’t get into how to make a sourdough starter from scratch since I cheated and bummed some from a bakery. Which is what you should do anyway. Step one on the road to sourdough pancakes is to find a bakery that makes sourdough bread and ask for a cup of starter. If they are decent folks - which they most likely are - you’ll walk away with a starter that will last your lifetime and more if you take care of it properly.

For the pancakes, you will need to know a day in advance that you want to eat them. Sounds easy enough, but you are out of luck if you forget. Without exception, the mixture in Step 1 needs to ferment overnight.

1 - Add 2 1/2 cups of flour (any flour) to 1 cup of sourdough starter and 2 tablespoons of some sort of sugar. I use honey, but you can use plain granulated sugar, brown sugar, agave syrup, maple syrup, whatever. Just don’t use fake sugars or Stevia. They don’t have what the yeasts and bacteria in the starter are looking to eat.

2 - Mix until smooth. Cover lightly and let sit overnight.

3 - In the morning, mix up an egg, two tablespoons of oil (if you have it) and 1/4 teaspoon of salt. Salt inhibits the fermenting and adds to the taste.

4 - Stir this mixture into the batter and mix until smooth.

5 - In the same bowl you made the egg mixture (why dirty another bowl?), add a teaspoon of baking soda to a tablespoon of warm water. Mix well.

6 - Carefully add this mixture to the batter. Fold the batter instead of stirring. The batter should begin to rise and bubble. Let it bubble for a few minutes.

7 - While you are doing all this mixing, you should have turned the heat up on a large skillet. The pan should be pretty hot when making pancakes.

8 - Pour pancake sized drops of batter on the hot pan, flipping when large bubbles appear on the surface. Keep finished pancakes warm in the oven or try to keep up with eating them as they finish. This might work better if you have a bunch of people.

9 - Finish up the batter by making one giant pancake in the shape of an octopus.

10 - Top with honey and preserves.

Recipe adapted from various online recipe sources, Wild Fermentation and my observations of the process.

The most important part of this process is to replenish your starter. To the original starter, add one cup of flour and one cup of warm water. Stir and let sit lightly covered overnight. Put the starter in the fridge until you need it again being sure to warm it up and stir it before using it in a recipe. Your starter will last indefinitely as long as you feed it.

If you are not going to use the starter frequently, you should still feed it at least once every two weeks. Dump out and compost about a cup and a half of starter then add equal amounts warm water and flour. Stir, let it get bubbly at room temperature then put the starter - covered - back in the fridge.

I am hooked on Duplin Burgundy wine. It’s weird. I like warm red wine, not ice cold sort-of pink wine. After an initial encounter with Duplin’s Scuppernong wine, I was confident that my store bought alcohol days were over. Seeing the word “dry” on the Burgundy label had me intrigued, mainly because it was the over-the-top sweetness of the Scuppernong wine that made me not like it. Dry to me means less sweetness and more of an aged flavor. This turned out to be right, and now I’ve found a 100 mile wine (actually 49 miles) that I can honestly say that I like.

From the Duplin Winery site -

“Burgundy is the driest of our red wines. It is made out of the Noble grape, picked early in the season. Our Burgundy has a great complexity that can be only be achieved with careful bottle aging. This full-bodied dry wine is a perfect complement to red meat and cheese.”

My previous love was Pabst Blue Ribbon, a nice cheap beer that, while Union Made, comes from 1,032 miles away. Oh, Wisconsin and your retro-cool, hipster beer… As for local beers, it turns out we have several breweries here in Wilmington including Front Street Brewery and Azalea Coast Brewery.

I tried the Azalea Coast India Pale Ale recently. I received a $10 coupon for being the first to complete all the required staff trainings at work, so I blew it on some Nature’s Way mozzarella and two bottles of Azalea Coast IPA. In the last few weeks, I have also bought a few growlers of Front Street Brewery IPA and Scottish Ale.

The Scottish Ale is my new favorite. It is dark, a bit heavy and strong.

Back to the wine - North Carolina has many, many wineries and is quickly becoming one of the largest wine producing states in the country. According to their website, Duplin Winery…

“…is the oldest winery in the State of North Carolina. Producing close to 175,000 cases of wine annually, Duplin Winery has become the largest muscadine winery in the world. Founded in 1976, the winery continues to hold fast to its Southern roots, strong religious beliefs and a commitment to family.

Duplin Winery, located in Rose Hill, NC boasts a 5,000 plus square foot Retail Room, complete with a 40 foot tasting bar. We offer banquet facilities, a dinner show theatre, and daily tours and tastings. We have visitors from all over the world that enjoy our Southern Hospitality and savor our sweet wines. We are also the home of the Bistro Restaurant at Duplin Winery.”

I have yet to try any of the other wines from this region, mainly because I have not seen any more with the “dry” label. If I find another I’ll let you know. For now I’ll stick with the Burgundy, the Scottish Ale and work on some of my rice and honey ferments. Chhang anyone?

When I was vegan, I twice took what folks might call a “meat holiday”. Both occasions involved my grandparents and a meal prepared by them. My grandparents were always deniers and misunderstanders of my vegan diet, and would only prepare foods for me the way they always had. When visiting one summer I was presented with some venison sausage, which I ate without a complaint. One holiday visit they made a meat lasagna, which I also ate without complaint.

The basis of the meat holiday or, in my current diet parlance, the exotic food holiday, is to recognize that the idealism surrounding certain food choices can be transcended by the enjoyment of food in a social context. Instead of arguing with my grandparents about factory farming (I saved that stuff for my parents), I would simply act as if everything was normal, eat a small portion of venison, and continue to enjoy an evening visit.

And so it goes with the local foods paradigm. My world revolves heavily around food - its selection, preparation and consumption. The preparation and consumption are very often done with good friends several times a week. While everyone is aware of my self imposed dietary restrictions, there are just certain events where it wouldn’t seem right to bring my own food while everyone else eats something different. A friends recent birthday dinner was a good example, as I ate a bit of guacamole, bagged carrots (though they were technically expired and free), a cupcake and coffee. In the context of the situation it didn’t seem right to be in the strict local foods mode. To understand the importance of a gathering of friends is to get to the center of the project - community.

Another recent example was an out of town picnic for farmers, produce buyers and interconnected folk. The vast majority of the food was not local, probably not even close, but I ate what everyone else ate. Again, it was the community atmosphere. The subject of local eating didn’t come up once, and I was pretty glad for it. I’m not into defending this diet as the end-all, “save the planet now” thing to do just like I was never one for vegan proselytizing. I am taking on this project to show the possibilities, not to dwell on the restrictions.

Just like everything else in my life, Cricket Bread will evolve into what it has to be, what it was meant to be. The 100 mile boundaries will most likely come and go, the foodshed changing as I move about the state learning more about the farmers around me and their practices.

I’m still learning, still exploring, still looking at a plate of meat lasagna when all I want is a nice salad. I’ll figure out the best ways to implement the structure of a local food system in the correct contexts, the most appropriate ways to teach others the benefits of swimming shallowly in the food pool.

But I’ll get to that after my friend blows out the birthday candle, and I finish my cup of coffee.