Most of the very ripe (and tastiest) will go to the birds in the next few days, but human hands will grab the ones in reach.

The short season is basically defined by the birds’ activity and not so much about how many we pick for our pies and our freezers.

In the above photo you can see Jerry on his tractor discing in some overwintered red clover. It was starting to go to seed, the bees were finished with it and it was time to incorporate the organic matter.

The manure came from an auction stockyard to the west of Siler City. Apparently there are livestock auctions there frequently with all flavors of beasts present. The manure was a mixture of pig, goat, horse and cow as well as plastic bottles, beer caps and empty match packets. Kind of like the leaves we get from the Siler City street cleaners but with more of an ammonia bite to it.

Hopefully this round of planting is able to sprout and grow. Adah and Kat are putting row cover over the seeds and installing some scarecrows. I guess we’ll know in a week or two whether those two methods get the seeds through the first phase and into the next battle – deer.

Kristin and I kept one turkey to eat for ourselves. It was a big one for the two of us, probably 16 pounds. It was the bird that Gray and I practiced the slaughtering process on, hoping that things would go smoothly when it was time to kill the rest of the birds.

There were a variety of sizes, anywhere from 5 pounds to 18 pounds. We had thought that the birds would be much bigger given how long we had them and how much food they ate, but it just didn’t work out that way.

We decided that we would ask that the people who bought the birds to come out and help with the processing. Pretty much everyone was willing, so we had plenty of people out to help and even a few folks who just wanted the experience.

There was a lot of teaching going on as well as a lot of specialization. Rob, Jennie and I did most of the gutting while Gray, Noel and Ben took care of the killing, scalding and de-feathering.

Amber, Chris and Will each processed their own birds.  Jeremy and Matt helped in the gutting even though they would not end up taking a bird home.

The whole process took about four hours, from start to clean up. The entrails went to the pigs to eat, the feathers went to the compost and the birds went home with their eaters.

By the end of the day, the turkey pen was disassembled, all the posts put up and the water and feed buckets emptied.

We raised Midget White and Burbon Red, both heritage breeds.

Hard to believe that we got the turkeys when they were just one day old. They lived in the brooder for six weeks before moving into their “training” pen which we moved every few days.

Usually folks would start with the poults and move to the finished meal, but I think the story does better in reverse. I welcome your thoughts on that…

Gray, Noel, and the current WWOOFers Liz and Tanya gathered apples from our tree, loading up a couple of giant coolers. From there the apples went to a neighbor’s shop and into a janky old cider press. Our neighbor Kathryn started everything off with a quick wash down of the press.

The press is another neighbor’s (Ned) machine. He told that he bought it for $300 thirty years ago. According to a handy inflation calculator, that would be about $800 today. Oh, and it was used when he bought it, so who knows what it originally cost.

Ned oversaw the first few rounds of pressing, staying just long enough to collect a quart of raw cider.

Gray did most of the first pressings, and I took over after that. In the humidity and falling sun, the work was sweatier than it would be in the Fall when folks are pressing their storage apples. Along with all the grass clippings, twigs, bugs and leaves that ended up in the press, I’m sure we added a few drops of sweat during the work.

The way the press works is pretty basic. You load the hopper, a motor drives some metal plates together and crushes the apples into an open wooden bucket. The bucket is made up of spaced slats of wood. The full bucket is moved down to the press, which is cranked down onto the apples. The juice runs down into a small container at the end of the press.

From there the cider is filtered, the smashed up apples removed from the press and the process started over again.

I think we did about 25 gallons that night, finishing up after the light of the day had been and gone.

By then it was time to drink up some samples and head back home.

Transport happens with the Safety 1st kid carrier and the farm bike. The kid carrier has hauled a wide array of items – food and tools on the farm, groceries in the city. I picked it up for free in Wilmington a billion years ago. It, like me, has seen its share of work.

After unloading, Kristin and I shared the view from the barn doors on the upper level.

And I got to act like I was jumping down to intercept Brother…

Floretta had her baby, Madeline, a few weeks ago.  Madeline is growing her horns and is old enough to be separated from mom for the night.  That means milk in the morning for the human animals on the farm.

The milking process starts out easy enough and gets progressively more interesting.  Especially when one of the morning helpers (me) does something dumb.  It goes something like this -

1 – Clean out the milk container and strainer.  A glug of bleach will do it.  Or a drop.  Or a quarter cup.  Or don’t worry about it.  Sources of information vary as with anything else you attempt to research on the Internets and apply to do-it-yourself type situations.

2 – Fill up the feed basket with corn, oats and hay.  Floretta really loves corn, so you have to hide it under the hay in order to slow her down.  That said, she knows where the corn is from the moment it leaves the bag and will be ready for it whenever you are.  And she’s feisty.

3 – Get Floretta onto the scrap wood milk stand.  Fairly self explanatory but not necessarily easy.

4 – Lock the head gate and get the feed bucket ready.  Floretta will want to get to the feed bucket before you are ready to give it to her no matter if she is attached to the head gate or not.  If an eye pops out just stick it back in and put bleach on it.  Or don’t.

5 – Lock in the feed bucket.  Watch your fingers.

6 – Start milking and hope Madeline keeps quiet…

7 – Trace has disturbed Madeline, so she is getting very loud, and Floretta is getting antsy, so Noel milk faster! before she kicks the damn bucket of milk over, oh come on be quiet Madeline, sorry just isn’t good enough Trace, you idiot!

It didn’t really go like that, but it felt like it to me.  Madi got very loud prompting Floretta to get agitated.  The milking was cut short during this little demonstration session.

8 – Madeline won’t shut up.  Reunite mom and kid before something breaks.

9 – Drink milk.  Try again in the morning.

All that said, I have to admit that my local food habits hit a rut when I first moved.  I was eating peanut butter and canned crap for a good four week period before I realized that I was missing out on what the new circle held.  I started eating five mile salads and thirty mile meats.  Locally grown and milled flours, grits and rice made their way back onto the table.  I also found my way back into a box of Carolina Ruby sweet potatoes.

Through Eastern Carolina Organics, I also have access to produce from the entire state of North Carolina, from Valle Crucis to Ivanhoe, Edenton to Hurdle Mills and back to Bakersville.  Occasionally things get culled due to poor quality and I of course get my hands in the boxes just like back in Wilmington.  My scavenging eyes are returning and – without my staff discount from the coop – I am looking for ways to slim down the food budget.

Basically what I am getting at is that I am back in the food bubble.  I am also looking forward to producing more of my own food in the coming year.

Our first stop this time around was Edible Earthscape, about a half hour drive from our land.  Edible Earthscape, home to a one acre farm intensive incubator farm, is also home to the Piedmont Biofuels Cooperative.  Edible Earthscape is farmed by Haruka and Jason Oatis with the help of several interns.  One of the interns, Brandon, gave us our tour.

On many levels, Edible Earthscape is committed to sustainability and biodiversity within their small farm setup.  Their primary irrigation system uses runoff from the greenhouse stored in a series of 275 gallon totes.

All vegetable rinse water is recycled back into the irrigation system through pipes connected to the wash sinks.

Fall cover crops of cowpeas were recently sown among the freshly mulched raised beds.  Adding leaf litter and other mulches gives our primarily clay soils more “spring” and allows for better drainage.  Over time, heavy mulching also helps with everything from water retention to freeing up nutrients that might otherwise become locked up in the heavy clay.

Bamboo is harvested locally and serves as trellising systems throughout the farm.

The farm focuses much of its energy on Asian heirloom varieties with an added emphasis on seed saving.  Burdock root is grown using a small bamboo chute or trench in order to train the root.  Normal burdock root grows deep and is difficult to remove from our clay soils.  The bamboo chute allows easy access to the root for harvest.

Turmeric (in the ginger family) does moderately well in our climate if removed from the ground and placed in greenhouses to overwinter.

Hops also grow well in our climate, the ones in the picture below were recently harvested for beer brewing.

Flowers add to the biodiversity of the farm both by having the flowers themselves and by attracting beneficial insects.

One of the awesome sights on the farm were the huge trellises of beans, gourds and squashes.  Asian varieties of noodle beans, cucumbers and more formed dense walls of green in contrast to the red clay below.

Add in stevia, borage, Thai bottle gourds, Japanese purple sweet potatoes, echinicea…

A diverse farm is also home to plenty of creatures -

Tomato hornworms (Manduca quinquemaculata) are quick destroyers of the leaves of tomato plants.  They can quickly defoliate entire plants in an organic system.  However, braconid wasps (Cotesia congregatus) will parasitize hornworms in the biodiverse system of yarrows, clovers, and lemon balm that Edible Earthscape has created.

The white cocoons on the hornworm are the developing wasps, which have already started the process of eating their host.  Once most of the wasps emerge, the hornworm will be dead or dying.

What small farm would be complete without a chicken tractor?

And finally the wild edibles that can be found in the places where agriculture is not considered a war on the land.  Winged sumac (Rhus copallinum) supposedly makes a decent lemonade type drink.  Kristin thinks it might be a bit too sour though.

“Hi everyone,

 

I hope you are all having a good summer. The garden is resting now and enjoying a little down-time. I planted some tomatoes, melons, and cucumbers, but they did not do well in the extreme heat/drought that we experienced early in the season.

 

I’m getting my ducks in a row for the Fall CSA. Let me know if you are interested in joining again, or if you know anyone else who is.

 

The cost is the same–$200. I think I will shoot for 12 deliveries–October, November, and ending right before Christmas. It depends on the weather, of course.

 

Thank you so much, Robb”

Some of you have contacted me about getting in on a CSA, and here is the perfect opportunity. If you are interested please email Robb or contact me and I will connect you.

I go to the conference every year, and, win or lose, this year will hopefully be no exception. I’m looking forward to hearing Joel Salatin speak and maybe get him to sign my copy of his newest book, Everything I Want To Do Is Illegal. Yeah, I’m a farmer nerd. I’m still wondering where I can get a life size, color, cardboard cutout of Alex Hitt like I saw on the back porch of Eco Farm.

The Eat Carolinas Challenge has been featured in the Wilmington Star News as well as a number of press outlets throughout North and South Carolina. It has brought locavores out of the woodwork, and it is exciting to see that many of the participants have been eating locally for quite awhile.

This challenge will bring some change to the way I eat. I will go beyond the usual 100 mile radius and explore the reaches of the Carolinas. This will most likely mark a transition to a more regionally based locavorism on my part. I had planned to tighten my radius to 50 miles when I move to Silk Hope (finally) next month and be on my way to a nice tight 35 mile radius next Spring. Whether or not that will happen is not really debatable at this point. The idea of living within the smallest “foodprint” possible just makes sense to me in terms of community, energy and work.

More on all that later after I attempt to win this challenge…

Five Year Old Kid (grabbing a pint of blueberries): “Are they ‘ganic?”

Mom: “No, but they’re local.”

Five Year Old Kid: “Yay! Local!”

Maybe there is hope…

Baby beets work great for this recipe.

1 – Remove the tops from the beets. You can use the beet tops in juices, soups or stocks if you want. I haven’t gotten that far with them yet.

2 – Wash the beets and boil for 20 to 30 minutes or until they are tender.

3 – Rinse with cold water and hand peel the skins. The skins will come right off just using your fingers.

4 – Mix up a marinade consisting of a pinch of finely crushed garlic, a pinch of dried oregano, a pinch of dried basil, one tablespoon of oil, one tablespoon of honey, 1/2 teaspoon of dried mustard (if you have it) and 1/4 cup of fruit scrap vinegar of whatever vinegar you happen to have.

5 – Slice the beets and add them to the marinade.

6 – Let the beets marinate for an hour, stirring occasionally.

7 – Enjoy the beets as a side or add to a salad of local lettuces, goat feta and radishes…

Knowing that I couldn’t come up with the full share price – but still wanting to participate – I asked Robb about the possibility of working off part of the share price. She considered it, and last Monday I ended up spending a few hours at her farm.

I pulled weeds, helped roll out row covers and cut up seed potatoes. I also took a bunch of pictures of a hawk that was watching me work. I don’t know if it was hoping I would stir up a mouse or what. It wasn’t interested in the fire ants biting my hand that’s for sure.

My tool of choice was the wire weeder, a light and quick weed killer that slices off the main plant from the roots. It also allows for precise cultivation between plants.

As I said, I put in at most two hours out the farm. From my research tonight, it looks like the going rate for CSA labor is between $4 and $6 per hour. I’ll shoot for the average and ask for $5 an hour. A few hours a week should get some of the share paid off. Even without compensation, the ability to get out of the city, hang out with hawks, hear turkeys and chickens and horses make their noises all around, and put your hands in the dirt…that has to be worth something.

Well, the first delivery came yesterday -

That’s what it is worth.  Yeah!

1 – I started with a bunch of rainbow carrots from Black River Organic Farm (45 miles).

2 – I sautéed the carrots in goat butter with some leeks and kale from Robb’s CSA along with some wild garlic that I picked last summer.

3 – To the sauté I added some ground lamb from Rainbow Meadow Farms (103 miles). This stuff is good, but rather expensive. Good for a once in while meal, which is why I only bought a few pounds of the stuff. I will probably use ground beef for this dish in the future, thus changing its name to Cottage Pie.

4 – Brown the lamb with the vegetables. Add some salt if the butter you use is unsalted.

5 – Add a bit of beef stock or do like I did and add some leftover beef stew.

6 – Simmer with the beef stock until the mixture gets somewhat thick. While that is going on, boil two pounds or so of potatoes and mash them when they get soft.

7 – Place the lamb and vegetable mixture in a baking dish.

8 – Cover the mixture with mashed potatoes. Bake at 400 degrees for thirty minutes.

9 – Serve with mixed salad, steamed kale, bread and goat cheese.

Now that I am back to being an omnivore, I was looking to make a more seasonal stew using local meat. The store started carrying stew beef from Nooherooka Natural farm (90 miles) and I have a bunch of carrots, leeks and cabbage from Robb’s fall CSA. I have never used cabbage in the stew before.

1 – Brown one pound of stew beef in a little oil or bacon grease.

2 – Add several leeks, a few cloves of garlic, two teaspoons of salt, 1/2 teaspoon of paprika (if you have it), 1/4 teaspoon pepper (again, if you have it), four cups of water and a bay leaf.

3 – Bring the mixture just to boiling, reduce the heat and simmer, covered, for thirty minutes.

4 – Stir in lots of carrots, potatoes, green beans and a few cups of shredded cabbage. You can add pretty much any vegetable that is in season or anything you have frozen including corn, celery and peas.

5 – Add a quarter cup of rice, return to a boil.

6 – Reduce heat and simmer for another thirty minutes or so or until all the vegetables are tender.

7 – Remove the bay leaf.

8 – In a jar, combine a half cup of water with a quarter cup of flour. Shake the mixture until it is combined.

9 – Add the flour and water mixture to the stew. Cook and stir until thickened.

10 – Season to taste with salt, pepper, cayenne pepper or whatever you like. Enjoy with a few slices of hot no knead sourdough bread.

I have been getting the boxes for the past five or six weeks. During this time I have received a lot of heads of lettuce, bok choy, green and red cabbage, sweet and bell peppers, carrots, shelled pecans, okra, beets, turnips, green and red kale, lacinato (dino) kale, leeks, dill, parsley and basil. I’m sure I have left something out, but everything has been great. It is great to be able to have a fresh salad every night of the week. The bok choy coleslaw that I made was from cabbage from Robb’s CSA. Last night a bunch of turnips and carrots went into some chicken soup that I pulled out of the freezer.

Yesterday I had a chance to go and visit the farm. Located in Castle Hayne, the farm is a quick ten minute drive from my house. That isn’t far compared to the other places that I buy produce from. Still, Robb had to come pick me up since I don’t trust riding a bicycle on no-shoulder roads.

Robb has tentatively named the farm Oakley Laurel. The farm’s main focus is on pasture management for raising and keeping horses. There are currently five horses on the farm. The pictures are of Eddie, a four year old horse. He was pretty friendly, constantly trying to eat my camera bag. I haven’t really been around horses that much, and I wasn’t sure if one was going to step on my foot or knock me over. I think horses are just a bit too big for my animal tastes. I much prefer goats and their scale. Goats are still friendly, and I think I could block a goat’s kick much better than a horses.

The pastures take up most of the eight acre farm, with about a quarter acre dedicated to the CSA garden. Robb rotates the grazing pasture every so often and removes most of the manure for composting. She also reseeds with various grasses in order to increase the density of forage and reduce the amount of hay she needs to buy.

The garden area is good sized for a small CSA. Robb wasn’t using every part of the plot and planned to expand the beds as the ground is worked. She is dealing with a shallow clay hardpan that has to be broken up before the roots have a place to go.

Robb uses multiple successive plantings to ensure variety in the CSA box. In one area there were mature lettuce heads and in another the seedlings had just been transplanted.

Plenty of cold weather brassicas – kales, cabbage, broccoli – as well as roots like turnips, carrots and beets.

With the drought that is plaguing North Carolina, Robb has taken to setting up a number of rain barrels to collect water from the barn roof. The barrels feed into drip tape and soaker hose run throughout the beds.

Besides the horses, there were also a couple of cats residing on the farm working to rid the place of moles and mice.

If you are interested in finding out more about Robb’s CSA, contact me and I will get you in touch with her.

Not that it was a bad day by any means. Spending four hours at the beach, standing in nice warm water on a cloudless fall day, throwing a line into the depths and simply not thinking about anything in particular; what could be so bad about that?

I am learning more about the salt water fishing thing with each trip. Catch quotas, the types of fish to catch with which type of bait, what would be really nice to catch and what isn’t worth the effort.

As with our first trip, Noel ran the cast net and pulled in the bait fish. Hopefully I can step up soon and earn my own bait. It looks easy enough, but I am still getting the hang of throwing the line as far out as I can. As with everything else, there are baby steps and I am soaking everything up and just letting it wear on me.

Even with a pretty consistent supply of bait fish, we just couldn’t find where the fish were biting. We saw plenty of large fish in the area; they just weren’t interested in committing to an evening on the dinner plate. I learned that sometimes you come home with an empty bucket, and there isn’t a thing wrong with that.

I asked Noel to provide me with his knowledge, and we set out with borrowed fishing poles and a cast net. After a brief stop so that I could get a fishing license ($15, cash only which Noel had to spot me) we were off to the beach. We were lucky enough that a nice person gave us their already paid for parking pass as they were leaving. The pass was good for eight more hours, and Noel passed it along to someone else as we left a few hours later.

We had good luck with fishing as well. After getting the poles set up for live bait, we threw the cast net into the masses of mullet fish, bringing in dozens without really trying. After about thirty minutes of casting around, bluefish started biting and we caught six in a short amount of time. One ended up shaking itself off my hook, so we ended up bringing five home with us. Five was plenty for the day.

When we got home Noel showed me how to clean and scale the bluefish and gave me pointers on where the bones were and what to cut out. It was a quick and easy process, the fish being long dead and fairly stiff. The fish were frying in the pan mere hours after they were hauled out of the water.

Remove the head -

Clean out of the organs -

Remove the scales -

Wash the fish -

Ready to go -

The preparation was simple – flour, salt, pepper and a few eggs for the batter then simply frying the fish for several minutes on both sides. I never really liked fish when I was growing up, but I was basically forced to eat it since it was what was available. I did like this fish though more so since I had caught and cleaned it myself. It won’t be long before I go through the process again now that I know how it is done.

Breading -

Fry -

Enjoy -

After the meal was finished and everyone had gone home, I had some time to reflect on what had happened. To me there was no “well, it’s just a fish” moment. These creatures were just swimming around out there, living, when by chance they ate another fish that happened to have a hook in it. All that swimming around and living ended as they suffocated in a five gallon bucket, so that I and others could eat them. Those fishes sacrifice is important to me. If it breathes oxygen, then pause and thanks must be given when that life ends. I will feel the same with whatever it is that I kill, and I cannot diminish the fact that something gave up their existence so that I could continue mine.

I have made it of primary importance to know where my food comes from, but there is a great difference between buying a frozen and already processed chicken from Grassy Ridge and actually doing the killing and cleaning myself. But it is imperative that I get further into that process in order to understand it and also to proceed humanely and without waste, just as it should be. Thanks bluefish…

Wednesday morning is usually when I expect a “random” visit from Belle and John Shisko, an older farming couple who bring me various things like kale, garlic and jalapeno peppers to sell at the store. Originally from Brooklyn, they bought 80 acres of land many years ago in Holly Ridge, about 35 miles northeast of Wilmington. They bought the land when there was nothing else around. Now their place in the world is being encroached upon by development just like every other rural paradise in America. And John will tell you about it if you’ll listen…

Sometimes the Shiskos will bring me random things to try, give my opinion on or to see if I might like to try and sell the random thing. Sometimes it is a weed such as “wild basil” or various nuts or their very own mutant sweet peppers. They also bring me flower bulbs and other things to plant in my garden at home or in the co-op garden behind the dumpsters.

Despite my best attempts at crankiness, some people can see right through it and understand that sometimes folks like me like to be engaged and sought after. I do like their visits, but sometimes what they bring is too much to handle. So I do my best to accommodate these gifts and attention, giving away many of the things they bring simply because I have no room for them.

If they miss a few weeks coming to the store, I kind of wonder what they are up to, whether the drought has messed with their plants too much or if they are simply done visiting for the year. Such is the give and take, the wonder and excitement in a relationship that lasts no more than twenty minutes at a time, once a week for thirty weeks out of the year.

Today they brought in a bucket of jujube fruit (Ziziphus zizyphus), also known as Chinese date. The variety they have comes off a tree that can grow to forty feet tall, but they try to maintain it at twenty-five feet. The fruit is about the size of a cherry. It is usually eaten when it turns brown, and it has a dry apple flavor. According to John’s folk science, eating a dozen of the fruit before bed will induce restful sleep. The fruit can also be left to dry on the tree and will become the consistency of a date with comparable sweetness.

As I sampled a jujube fruit, nibbling around the hard nut inside the flesh, I asked if the tree could be grown from seed. “Do you want a tree?” John asked. I wasn’t sure how to answer since I have never specifically asked him for something in the four years he has been coming to see me. I managed a “yeah, sure” answer that may have made me look more or less like an indifferent jerk. Nevertheless, he promised to bring me a tree – eventually – and I told him I’d find a place for it.

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…

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?

I had pulled up when no one else was around, but soon the place was covered with older folks, business men in suits, county maintenance workers and a variety of others. Some were looking for deals, others a quick lunch.

The man was excited to see me and everyone else, a trait that I’m sure is part sales and part real enthusiasm about selling peaches and such. I told him I was only interested in peaches, lots of peaches. He told me the small box was $4 (for about 2 pounds) and the large basket was $6 (for about 5 pounds). I told him what I wanted; he thought about it, and then went to the truck for a big crate full of massive peaches. He threw in a “large basket” off the display table plus a couple strays. I called it close enough to a bushel, and he asked for $36.

It is times like this when I would usually insist on paying more money, mainly because I know about margins and such and what it actually costs to grow a peach around here. I felt this especially when other folks at the table were whispering about how $6 was far too much for a little basket of peaches. That basket held a lot of nutrition for $6, but I wasn’t about to argue the point to a bunch of suits and working class folks on their lunch break.

Back to the old argument about how produce is so expensive in, well, the eyes of a majority of people, yet crappy processed food is consumed all day and night for equivalent prices and minimal nutrition. Right now at the co-op you can get a one pound container of ripe red organic strawberries from California for $2.99. At Harris-Teeter you can get a two pound container of white and sort-of red conventional berries, no doubt still coated in methyl bromide, from Chile for the same price. With the later you get twice as many berries, of sub-par quality, from three times as many miles away, for half the price.

Once the trimming is done, a person might get a pound of berries with a quarter of the flavor, yet the organic berries are way still too expensive for most folks. Those folks will make very audible comments about the prices while loading up their carts with sugar sugar sugar, salt salt salt, processed processed processed, blah blah blah. This makes me crazy, especially the part about how far those berries have traveled, and how they are still cheaper than the California berries. This equation is broken, and folks don’t even care what the inputs are. What costs have been passed on into other forms of payment and recovery? We’ll get into that some other time, but for now we’ll get back to the local peaches…

There is nothing like canning when the heat index is 105 degrees. Unfortunately, many of the rules of fresh produce dictate that the preserving happens when the fruit or vegetable is coming out of the fields or trees in summer. When the peaches came home it was time to get to work.

First, the quarts of peach halves. Second, the pints and half pints of peach sauce. Both processes are fairly easy if only time consuming and hot. Instructions coming in the next part…

I have thought many times that Southeastern North Carolina needs to address issues of sustainability during the tobacco transition. To say it again, the key is really diversification in order to beat flooded markets and falling prices. I’m hoping some of these issues are addressed with a new initiative to define and develop regional food systems.

On Monday I went to Whiteville, NC with Jessica, April and Deb from the co-op. The purpose of the trip was to attend a meeting about getting grant funding for regional food systems development. The basic premise is to establish links between farmers and markets and create marketing materials. Growing a product is one thing, selling it is another. Farmers could grow all of the organic fennel they wanted, but without access to markets it would be a pointless exercise.

Markets are plentiful if you know where to look and how to ask – farmers markets, small grocery stores, restaurants, wholesale distributors. The key is setting things up so that there is minimal legwork and marketing for individual farmers. An ideal situation would have a central distribution point run by folks who do not have to be on the farm harvesting all day. These folks can spend their energy on getting the produce into the appropriate market. The grant addresses some of this need but does not go far enough.

What we really need is a centralized cooler facility, with access to graders, boxes and other packaging materials. Each county (there are six counties addressed in the grant) would have access to refrigerated trucks for either delivering to the market heavy counties such Brunswick and New Hanover or picking up from the producer heavy counties of Pender, Columbus, Robeson and Bladen. Large markets such as chain supermarkets could be persuaded to buy local produce if the problems of steady supply and volume were addressed, which would be addressed if enough producers used the centralized storage facility and were invested in the success of the project.

A good example of this type of facility in action is Eastern Carolina Organics in Pittsboro, NC. Without getting into too much detail, ECO acts as the marketing and distribution arm for its member farms. The farmers can focus on growing and ECO can focus on selling. This setup allows this farmer owned operation to sell into larger markets with competitive pricing.

If we were to apply the ECO model in the coastal plain, strong and growing farmer participation would be crucial from the very beginning. This isn’t something that could be started with a few farms with the idea of working on up. A critical mass is required in order to show the markets that the local produce supply is healthy in order for those same markets to abandon their wasteful California and South American food fetishes. And it all comes back to diversity as well. Can we offer the items a supermarket or school needs or can we simply offer animal feed, processed food fillers and sweet potatoes?

Easier said though; easier said. The food systems grant is a start. And simply meeting to discuss regional food systems is an even better start.

My Arrowhead Mills organic four grain hot cereal ran out a few days ago. This cereal has been a staple in my diet for over a year and a half. Consisting of steel cut oats, flax seeds, whole cracked wheat, whole rye and barley grits, this cereal was filling and helped to get my digestive system geared up for the day. Every morning before work I would have a bowl of the four grain with some maple syrup and oat milk. The maple syrup ran out weeks ago, so I have been using honey. I still have a few containers of oat milk, which I now mostly use for cooking.

When the box of four grain was half full, I started exploring my options. For my location, an obvious choice was rice. I focused my attention there and found two places I could buy from, both out of range, but both sustainable in many ways and supportive of heirloom plants and conscious of their carbon footprint. Both deserve support, and I plan to do so.

The first source, Carolina Plantation, is located just over 100 miles away in Darlington, South Carolina. They grow heirloom Carolina Gold rice, a grain first grown in the South Carolina low country in 1685. They also grow aromatic white and brown rice as well as cowpeas and corn for grits. Carolina Plantation is also South Carolina’s first to use Green-e-Certified Renewable Energy.

The second source is Anson Mills, based in Columbia, SC. Anson Mills is well out of range, but important to support on many levels. They buy North and South Carolina grains primarily, mill to order, and are certified organic. They deal with heirloom grains such as Carolina Gold and Forbidden Black rice. They also provide grains with minimal polishing, as well as whole grain wheat and graham flours.

I ended up ordering products from both places. Yesterday my box of Carolina Gold rice from Carolina Plantation arrived in the mail. I ordered it two weeks ago as I dipped below a crucial level of The Stash’s four grain. I expected the rice to come in a few days. Somehow my order became screwed up and the shipment delayed for a week and a half. For my trouble and my patience, the shipper threw in a free pound of aromatic white rice.

My Anson Mills package came today – several pounds of Forbidden Black rice, Carolina Gold grits (broken pieces of rice from the milling process) and 15 pounds of whole wheat biscuit flour. I stuffed the rice in the fridge and came to the conclusion that I may have ordered a bit too much.

This morning I ate rice and honey for breakfast. The Carolina Gold rice is unlike any rice I have eaten in the past. The smell is kind of sweet and the taste is creamy, sort of like special risotto rice. The honey was all the sweetness it needed. I was hesitant about eating the rice sweet instead of the usual savory, but all in all, the whole new breakfast paradigm is just fine with me.

While the oat milk holds out, I plan to start making rice pudding several nights a week and eating that for breakfasts as well. With the addition of eggs and the oat milk, it might make a more sustaining breakfast. With the bounty of rice now on hand I can also start to experiment with rice breads, rice ferments and rice milk. Recipes for the experiments are on the way…

In the crawl of traffic, Randolph asked me a billion questions about growing organically, everything from pest control to “what does organic mean” with a few queries thrown in on my background and where I was from. I answered the organic questions with all the detail I could muster, in a van that was blasting the air conditioning and music that was a little too loud.

Let me back up a second…How did I end up in this van? This local food adventure will take me where it wants, and I thought I was going to check out some land that might be brought into organic production. When Lynn picked me up to go meet with Randolph, I found out that we were actually going to harvest a bunch of produce for distribution to Wilmington public housing residents. I kind of laughed and thought about it. Good thing I always wear boots.

We were headed to Columbus County, the fifth poorest county in the state of North Carolina. We were on our way to Randolph’s family land, where he has a home and a large garden, and also where his brothers and sisters have homes and gardens.

Randolph talked a lot about how out-of-county farmers were planting and harvesting on Columbus County land with no involvement of local folks and how people are putting up trailers instead of homes only to be put in the situation of losing family land to the bank after not being able to pay on loans.

The area we drove through reminded me of my hometown in New York, of the rural poverty of agricultural counties that rely on out-of-county agribusiness to provide farm jobs and a way of life. In many cases, people would have been surprised at the images along the Columbus County roads, but I had seen it all before, in a different culture with different people in different trailers. Yet all of it was the same, and I was transported to the muck in rural Genesee County, NY riding in a van with out of state plates, daydreaming.

Randolph’s family land is near a slave cemetery that he said he is trying to get the State to restore. His family has 30 acres and used to have a 5 acre tobacco allotment, which they sold some time ago. The farmer who bought it never grew tobacco, instead growing soybeans. This year the land was fallow, and Randolph had it bush-hogged. This was where I saw an incubator farm in the future, a place to teach self sufficiency and how to generate an income from sustainably tending the land.

Five acres is a lot of land for an incubator farm. Split into 1/4 acre plots, this land could train twenty new growers every season, or be less ambitious and train five farmers for a career in sustainable agriculture, something that would make this county stand out and deliver the organic produce that the whole country is calling for right now. It just needs a start, some push to bring the neighbors in on the idea.

When we got out of the van, we immediately walked to the end of the garden and set to picking cucumbers. We picked a couple nice bushels, and headed on to the potatoes, green beans, squash and cabbage.

I hadn’t seen cabbage that big in awhile, not since my teen years spent harvesting tons of it every day in the summer. The cabbage we sell at the store is in the 5 pound range. This was 15 to 20 pound cabbage, the kind that – if this were a commercial farm – would end up going off for processing into canned coleslaw, cabbage rolls, and flash frozen stir fry mixes.

We harvested several bags full of produce for the kids to take to their families. Lynn filled a bag with green beans, potatoes and cucumbers and also grabbed a big cabbage. Lynn and I also pulled up a few handfuls of wild garlic, one head of which I ate right on the spot, which Randolph found very strange.

For my help, Randolph gave me a peach tree in a pot and let me cut a luffa gourd to take home. He wasn’t sure what it was that was growing, and he didn’t want any part of it when I explained to him what it was. I’ll probably dry it out and use it…maybe.

As the threat of thunderstorms approached, we loaded the veggies and trees and people into the van for the ride back to Wilmington. Unfortunately, there was a stop at the fast food oasis, which didn’t make sense to me. Here we were picking all this great fresh produce, and we stop at McDonald’s, the vortex of empty food? It saddened me that this was a reward for the kids for their work instead of the reward being at trip to the country and bags full of good food. Lynn and I sat out the McDonald’s detour. I snacked on green beans and thought about the gazpacho sitting in the fridge.

If we’re going to get an incubator farm going in Columbus County or anywhere in eastern North Carolina, we have to get out of the habit of supporting unsustainable, unhealthy and unfullfilling food. We have to appreciate and understand the rewards of produce, meat, diary and eggs from small community farms before we can talk about encouraging new farmers. New farmers aren’t going to sell to fast food places; they are going to sell to us. If we don’t start eating what they produce, we’ll be back in the same situation again, wondering where we went wrong, discussing things over a cheeseburger made with meat from Chile.

I have to bluntly connect the dots, so forgive me if I don’t support certain food choices…