Cheese Scoring

• 0: truly awful, why oh why did anyone ever make this? (pre-shredded, store brand, or generally poorly made: too much salt, too ammoniated, too propreonic, etc.)
• 1: Reasonable, overall unpleasant, but has some redeeming virtues, what I call "sandwich cheese" (a mediocre version of a standard cheese: Tillamook, etc.)
• 2: I don't like it, but I can see that someone else would. (Lumiere)
• 3: Good, solid standard D.O.P. cheese, par for the course, what you would expect (Parmigiano-Reggiano, Roqufort, Gruyere, Emmentaler)
• 4: Excellent, a very good, very nice cheese with unique and overall pleasant qualities, few complaints (Constant Bliss)
• 5: Supurb, really exceptional cheese, once I start eating, it can be hard to stop, great affection, no complaints (Bonne Buche, Green Hill)
• 6: Out of this world, mind-blowing, perfect in all ways, in line with personal and universal harmonies of flavour (Cashel Blue, Roaring Forties Blue)

Explanatory Note: this is just where I put things. I claim no universal cheese-tasting knowledge nor exceptional abilities. This system is just a tool to communicate what I like.

what cheese am I eating now?

Eureka! I've had an idea. In my attempt to become an ever-more educated cheese-maker I also am working to become an ever-more educated cheese-eater. Given that I have the great benefit of having an excellent cheesemonger here in Atlanta to provide me with a wide and ever-changing variety of cheeses from both near and far, I am starting my first series on this blog: what cheese am I eating now?

In this series of posts, I will let the folks at home know what new cheese is in my fridge, where it comes from, any history or interesting features I can dig up, and of course, how it tastes. This endeavor will also let me practice describing the taste of cheese, which is more difficult than it seems. Just so you know, when I describe something as baby barf or wet hay, I'm not making it up. I'm using a flavor wheel for cheese aromatics. It's a bit of a pseudo-science, since it depends so heavily on the individual taster, but it's good to work within a framework of agreed-upon terms rather than to just make something up.

Additionally, I will give the cheese a rating. I cooked up this scale a couple of years ago when I first started journaling cheeses, and I like it:

0: truly awful, why oh why did anyone ever make this? (pre-shredded, store brand, or generally poorly made: too much salt, too ammoniated, too propreonic, etc.) 1: Reasonable, overall unpleasant, but has some redeeming virtues, what I call "sandwich cheese" (a mediocre version of a standard cheese: Tillamook, etc.) 2: I don't like it, but I can see that someone else would. (Lumiere) 3: Good, solid standard D.O.P. cheese, par for the course, what you would expect (Parmigiano-Reggiano, Roqufort, Gruyere, Emmentaler) 4: Excellent, a very good, very nice cheese with unique and overall pleasant qualities, few complaints (Constant Bliss) 5: Supurb, really exceptional cheese, once I start eating, it can be hard to stop, great affection, no complaints (Bonne Buche, Green Hill) 6: Out of this world, mind-blowing, perfect in all ways, in line with personal and universal harmonies of flavour (Cashel Blue, Roaring Forties Blue)

Again, this is just where I put things. I claim no universal cheese-tasting knowledge nor exceptional abilities. This system is just a tool to communicate what I like.

Our debut cheese is Sampietrino:

When I was visiting Star, Tim (my local, wonderful cheesemonger) presented me with a huge, square brick of cheese. He suggested building a house with it. It's brick-like structure is where this cheese gets its name. Sampietrini refers to the cubic pavers used in typical Italian roads.

I am always entertained at how the Italians name foods after the appearance of commonplace things. I'm thinking of cappuccino, the coffee drink named for the Capuchin monks, who wore a brown robe with a white hood, called a capuccio. The visual analogy is clear in both cases. Indeed, there's nothing fancy or pretentious about these names. They just happen to be old and foreign and in need of a bit of context. I often quote Tim, who says, "it's just cheese!" Part of what makes him such a good cheesemonger is the fact that he does his part to divest us of any misconceptions we may have about cheese being an elite food. The other day, Tim was lamenting the fact that a local cheesemaker gave one of their cheeses a German name. The farm is not in Germany, it's not a German-style cheese, and the cheesemakers aren't German. It's pretty much a way to make the cheese seem fancier. As Garrison Keillor writes in this month's National Geographic, "nothing that is farm oriented or pigcentric is even remotely upscale." It's preserved milk, after all, and the process comes with all the dirt and grime and body fluids (after all, what is milk but a body fluid?) that comes with raising livestock. Cheese is about place, it's about where it's made and the folks who live there and who got to eat it first. If your cheese looks like the bricks used to pave your local streets, why not call it that? If it smells like the pigs who live at your neighbor's down the road, name it after the neighbor. But I digress.

Tim cut in and let me try a few thin slices. It was fantastic. The texture is really beautiful. It's a semi-hard aged cheese, but its cross-section looks like a bloomy-rind: creamy near the rind that becomes dense and slightly crumbly towards the center (the picture does not do it justice). It's a combination of cow and sheep milk, so it's got a lovely, super-creamy mouthfeel and is quite complex. The rind is nutty and strongly grassy with quite a bit of barnyard and some ammonia. The cheese itself is sweet, mildly salty, and lactic in the center, and becomes more complex in the creamier outer areas where there are flavors of cooked cabbage and leather. It's also got some pretty serious umami going on. Very, very delicious. (4)

Blueberry & Melon Salad

I harvested my garden's first melon this week. It was perfect. This recipe is a bit of a mutt. It was inspired by a desert served at the CSA Members Potluck Saturday of blueberries, melon, and mint, mingled with a few ideas lifted out of Star Provisions' peach and mint salad. I was pretty pleased with the results. I know you're thinking "pepper and fruit?" but go with me here. The mint and lime make it refreshing and cool while the black pepper balances it all out by paying a kind of homage to summer's heat:

I perfectly ripe, orange-fleshed melon (like cantaloupe)
1 pint fresh blueberries
2 or 3 sprigs of fresh mint
juice of one lime
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp fresh-ground black pepper
a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil

Remove the mint leaves from the stem and cut into slivers (my favorite technique is to stack the leaves and roll them up like a cigar, then cut the roll horizontally). Put in a bowl with the lime juice, salt, black pepper, and olive oil. Give the mixture a little stir and let the flavors marry while you get on with the fruit. Remove the rind and seeds from the melon. Cut the melon into small cubes, about one centimeter and toss into the mint and lime juice mixture. Add the blueberries and mix well. I enjoy this dish best at room temperature, but it's lovely cold as well. Serves 6, generously.

The Benefits of Boredom

Since Spring of this year, I have spent most of my Wednesdays sweating and getting dirty on the farm. Being on the farm one day a week keeps my weeks grounded as I plough through GIS maps, charts of per-acre milk production, and try to contemplate the concept of cash-flow analysis. Put plainly, working here among the vegetables keeps me aware of the much harder work that is still ahead of me, as well as its benefits.

Last Wednesday, Brandon, Natalie, John, Jordan, Jen, and I spent the morning in healthy competition picking blueberries. Paige divided us into two teams. The goal was for each team to pick at least 40 pounds of berries. Awesomely, the two teams gathered a total of 96 pounds of fruit! Now, one blueberry typically weighs under an eighth of an ounce, so for each pound, a body has to pass its hands across some 200 individual berries. So for a total of 96 pounds, we collected a whopping 19,200 blueberries; that's around 3,200 berries per picker. The point of these calculations is not so much to illustrate the volume of fruit collected, but moreover, to draw attention the the intensely simple and repetitive nature of the work. The first farm I ever did any kind of work on was on a high school field trip to Nicholas Donk's farm in Athens. I remember feeling so excited that I was going to get to work on a real organic farm for a day! This was at the beginning of the renewed interest in organic farming. The first Whole Foods had just come to Atlanta and Carlo Petrini's name was for the first time on the lips of more than a small handful of Americans. Beautiful changes in agriculture were afoot in the world! I recall, however, my disappointment when all we did was pull up the remnant stalks of Jerusalem Artichokes and dig around for any leftover tubers. I had expected so much more. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but it was certainly more than dead stalks and a handful of dirty roots from a plant I had never even heard of, much less eaten. It was boring. I wanted something sexier, I had this feeling that farming was somehow much, much more interesting than this. The truth, though, is that is isn't. Sure, there are great wonders in the biology of the formation of a tomato, huge challenges to growing the perfect carrot, and a vast, dynamic, and wonderful world that unfolds on a farm. But the day-to-day is simple, quiet, and just plain boring. You're planing seeds, one row after the other, the same motion, the same intention; you're weeding, grabbing, tugging, removing roots from the ground; you're harvesting blueberries, looking for the ripest, pulling apart branches, and plucking every, single, berry, 3,200 times.

But, there are benefits to this boredom. When we were picking last week, occasionally (or sometimes more than that) we would sample the product as we went. As I repetitively picked, a berry would call out to me, asking to be eaten then and there. Each of these sampled berries possessed its own unique qualities of flavour and texture. Some were just plain soft and sweet, others firm and tart, still others were shriveled and had a slightly fermented taste, but every now and again I'd hit the perfect one: soft, with the skin taut from the juice within, deep blue, and with the perfect taste of blueberry. This was no ordinary blueberry, this was the idea of blueberry. It is the flavour those folks at Jelly Belly aim to capture in their blue bean. It's sweet, but also more; like when you bite into a cardamon pod and you get this overwhelming, heady experience of flavours that are all floral and sweet: nectar and burnt sugar, jasmine, with the slightest hint of fresh, wet soil; at once earthy, but somehow heavenly. Ah! I wax poetic. It is this moment, the opportunity to experience such a blueberry, when farming transcends the boredom. There is space to meditate in the boredom; after an hour, I could close my eyes and the image etched in my mind was the berry. While working, there was nothing I was responsible for but blueberries, and surrendering to that one thing silenced my mind, allowing me to pay attention to what is wonderful and romantic and sexy about picking blueberries and giving me space to know the perfect one when it crossed my path and to know why we bother to pick at all. The repetition and boredom opened space to play and imagine for us. One of my co-pickers told me that he could see himself in the old days, as a migrant worker picking for pay, and for a time, could nestle into what such a life was. I imagined myself as a bird, flitting about the bushes, hunting greedily for the best, fattest fruits efficiently, but also peacefully, as if this is the only thing there is in the world to do; a practice that is becoming as elusive as that perfect, ripe berry.

I was reading an article in the New York Times last week that helped toconfirm my theory that this kind of work is not only good for the mind but may also be good for the body beyondthe benefits of exercise. Theauthor, a cancer survivor,describes the odd feeling he had when he would feel better and return to normal life after treatments. He calls itthe "post-treatment letdown." He describes chemotherapy as"the professional yet intimate laying on of hands each day" and writes that during hislengthyresting periods between treatments he"reveled in the most minute of details: the black pads of my dog’s feet as smooth as a baseball glove, the wet-cellar smell of a vintage science fiction paperback, fireflies winking and waning at dusk… I wasmuch more interested in discerning the small miracles embedded in each moment than I was in catching the 9:03 Midtown Direct to Penn Station. And there was a part of me that was disappointed when the time came to once again catch that city-bound train." As I read this article, Irealizedthat I wasexperiencingthe same kinds of momentspicking blueberries, planting melons, or weedingonlyI wasn't sick, I was working. The author lamentslosing the stillness his treatmentallowedhim. "Don’t get me wrong," he continues, "I was glad I felt well enough to return to work, glad that I felt strong enough to navigate the hurly-burly of New York City. But in returning to work, I was also trading in a certain depth of perception. Cancer and surgery had slowed me down, made me look and listen, smell and touch with the eagerness of an explorer entering uncharted territory. Midtown Manhattan doesn’t quite encourage that kind of dawdling." Most of us have lives that don't allow much dawdling; theonly time we are allowed to stop being busy andreflect for a moment is when we are sick. The sick are allowed to slow down becausehealing requires it. We feel betterwhen we rest, not onlybecauseit allows our bodies to heal, butit allows our minds to shift away from immediate and pressing needs andgive pauseto gainthe "certain depth of perception" that perhaps also works to heal.

As an aspiring farmer who knows how overwhelmingly busy this work can make a person, I am learning through my work at Serenbe Farms how to use theboredominherent in farming to my benefit. Because of my Wednesdays on the Farm,when I think of my own farm and imagine themonotonyof milking 300 ewes, the tedium of watching for flocculation and coagulation of milk, the repetition of carefully turing 400 wheels of cheese by hand, every day, I am neither discouraged nor intimidated. I know that there are benefits in thatboredomthat few other vocations can provide.

Jefferson, Kalman, and a theory of idleness

I ran across this today, which made my heart leap for joy. Maria Kalman, who is undoubtably one of my favourite writers/ artists in existence did a piece for the New York Timeson her trip to Monticello. Wowza.

My favourite frames in the piece:

and,

The image of the chart made my heart skip. Here was some sort of proof that Jefferson was a farmer that linked to me. I too have this chart, torn from a local organics magazine, posted in my kitchen. It's not hand drawn, and it has colours and graphics and an all the trappings of modern printing, but it's fundamentally the same: seasons were the same for Jefferson as they are for me. A stones' throw into history and there it is, people eating asparagus in April, melons in August, eggplant in October, and carrots almost year-long. Jefferson bothered to make a chart of what was at market and when. This was important information that somehow we have collectively forgotten to take note of until very recently, and it's only the smallest handful.

The second image, the one of Jefferson's daughter, gets me at a very personal level. I think it amusing that Jefferson outwardly seems to deplore idleness in this quotation, considering the fact that it is only by idleness that he was able to accomplish so much. The best teacher I ever had regularly quoted Cervantes' address to his audience in the prologue to Don Quixote, "Desocupado lector, " idle reader. For my teacher, idleness was an incredibly important idea. Only the idle have time to read. Idleness, in essence, my teacher defined as time not spent in the pursuit of survival. He interpreted this idea slightly differently than I do. For my teacher, idleness is created when we don't have to hunt or gather or farm or make clothes; it is the work we do when there is no work that we must do. For my teacher, idleness is the product of a refined society that allows for "idle pursiuts" such as reading and writing, inventing algebra or triple-sash windows. Of course, this idea begs the argument that the whole reason we have people who can be idle and who can engage in idle prsuits is because others cannot afford to; that there are some who must always be working in order for others to be idle. Let's use Jefferson as an example, who, despite his intellectual passion for agriculture, had slaves to work his fields. Because of their lack of idle time, Jefferson had an abundance of it, in which he could walk and wonder at the world and do things like make charts of when things were growing. In essence, the reason some can is by the fact that others cannot. This is a problem. Yet, if we had no idle people, we would not have symphonies, epic poetry, the calculus, film, newspapers, iPods, indeed any of the great and small creative endeavors that make us human.

I would therefore, like to posit a slightly different philosophy of idleness. In essence, it is this: Only when we as human beings become fully competent at what we must do to survive can we fully create and enjoy the things we must do in order to be human. I often consider the moment in Masonobu Fukuoka's One Straw Revolution when he describes how he found bits of poetry tucked into the walls of his old farmhouse; he exposits that the farmers of the past did not toil endlessly in the fields, rather, they had time for poetry as well as time for the growing of crops. Fukuoka suggests that in our contemporary effort to make agriculture more productive, we somehow make the work less efficient for the farmer and his or her quality of life suffers tremendously as a result. When a handful of farmers work all day and all night so that others do not have to work the soil at all in order to eat, their time for idle pursuits is co-opted. Fukuoka shows us, however, that it does not have to be this way, he thinks, as do I, that there is room for both, indeed, there must be room for both.

Jefferson would have undoubtably loved Fukuoka. Indeed, when I am asked what historical figures I would like to have dinner with, it would, without question, be these two men; mostly because I believe Jefferson would have been fascinated by and learned tremendously from Fukouoka. The way Fukouka learned from the land, the way he watched and mirrored nature in order to let her do most of the work of farming, in essence, the way a little bit of very hard work and careful observation and interpretation of nature could yield plenty of food as well as plenty of time, time that allows for both survival and idleness, without the moral uncertainty that plagued Jefferson (at least in this one respect) would have be a marvelous discussion to overhear.

Fukouka, and those precious few farmers out there like him are fully competent at what they do, have time, time to write books, give lectures, cook meals, teach their children; they have time to consider new inventions that will make their lives a little easier, they have time to walk, time to participate in politics, and as Jefferson exhorts, time to think and time to wonder at what they do all day. The fully competent farmer must know how to do a bit of absolutely everything. We have sadly relegated farming into the realm of specialization, but specialization, we are wisely told, is for insects. There is nothing that can't be learned through farming for it keeps us "always doing."

what to do with a willing worker and English major: a responce to the New York Times article "Many Summer Internships Are Going Organic"

I've been meaning to write for some time about an article that appeared in the New York Times several weeks ago, in which I discovered that I now fit into a box. Apparently, there is an influx of liberal arts majors, English majors, in particular, who are choosing to abandon their books and potential Ph. D.'s (at least temporarily) and search for a "real experience" working on a farm.

Armed with copies of "The Omnivore's Dilemma," the article tells us, internship-seeking students offer farms little more than the educated and impassioned where what the farmers really need are "farm hands". I take farm-hands to mean folks who know how to work hard and fast with little complaint and whose intentions are to do a good job for a day's wage. Conversely, it seems, these liberal arts students are interested in pursuing a Pollanesque ideal. Clearly, the article sets up a certain tension that looks like there's a world of "real farmers" and a world of "wannabe farmers".

It's true: there are many saber-rattlers in the organic/local/ethical food movement who have raised the battle cry for good food and who have made eating into a political act (and rightly so). The present young and educated, like their 1960's counterparts, are perhaps the most prone to answer this call. But, the fact of the matter is that farming is more than politics and ideals. It's a lot of sweat and sleepless nights. People like Michael Pollan and Barbera Kingsolver are not farmers. They are writers. It is their job to use words to convey ideas and ideals that are meaningful and important that fall into our logical framework and that pull strongly at our own pathos. And yet we wonder why English majors are suddenly attracted to food and farms?

But I also wonder about the farmers themselves; those folks who break their necks making ends meet. . . the folks who get sweaty and dirty not for the experience, but because they have to; because it is their lives and livelihoods (to say nothing of the success or failure of this movement towards sustainable agriculture) on the line. But are these farmers not themselves idealistic? Something the Times article simply does not address is how is it that the farmers themselves came to farm. Sure, many farmers inherit their farm, they grew up doing the work, and maybe for some it was the only option. But not all. Some folks choose to farm. Indeed, every farmer out there made the choice to do the work he or she does on some level, and no choice is ever purely practical. There is inherent, incontrovertible romance in the desire to farm. If there weren't, why on earth would we keep doing it? We would all own vast acres of corn and soybeans in Nebraska if it was simply about putting calories on American tables. Put plainly, it would be a job. I don't believe that farming is just a job. No good farmer would ever tell you that. It's a vocation, it is something that must be done for our survival and so a desire, a calling to do it must occur.

It seems from the increase in interest among the young and educated that Pollan has propagated, that there are some who are being reacquainted with this fundamental call. And yes, “these are kids who are not used to living in a small trailer or doing any kind of work. . . most of them are privileged and think they want to try something new. They need structure." Indeed, they need to be taught. They need to learn what it is to work hard and get dirty and, moreover, they need not "trade poetry books for sheep." Liberal arts students, perhaps, are better prepared to be farmers than the agro-economy student. These English majors have minds that are prepared to make the link between poetry and that which creates poetry: experience. These students need to learn how to use their understanding of poetry to better understand sheep and worms and poop, sweat and sore bodies. They need to be taught the hardest lesson; that poetry comes from suffering, it guides us and shows us how to do things better and helps us to understand why we do them at all. Once a student can marry the suffering of life with thinking about the suffering of life, the world will get a worker and a farmer more willing and more capable than any merely working for a wage.

It seems that some farmers who hire interns expect free labour. But you get what you pay for. Students are passionate, but unskilled. If a farm needs farmhands, hire farmhands. Pay them a good wage and expect them to work hard and achieve results with little input. But an intern is a different thing all together. It seems that some farmers think that the work itself will provide the experience. It will, but not without creating tension on the farm. It is the job of the farmer who puts interns on his or her farm to turn the students' desire for experience (perhaps born as much from the poetry they read as from the saber-rattlers) into a desire for education, and then to fulfill it.

I worry that this lack of distinction between "farm-hand" and "intern" is driving a wedge in this new agricultural movement. There is a tendency to shun the young and enthusiastic intern who would, "report her organic farmer for using antibiotics on sick sheep" rather than to teach her and to use her passion for the benefit, rather than the detriment of sustainable farming. Indeed, if education is how we best preserve our culture, and we, as farmers and as eaters want a world with good farms and a culture that values our work, we must use the flames that Pollan has ignited and direct that passion (and sometimes cool it down a bit). We do this through teaching.

I know this all sounds like one more thing farmers have to do; teach a bunch of spoiled, inflamed kids about farming; but honestly, the work of the farmer is just this. Farming is about more than the cultivation of crops; seed to table, though an ambitious and difficult goal in and of itself, is not enough. It is about the cultivation of people. Farming is not only science, it is not just botany, biology, chemistry, and economics; it is an art. It is the interplay of all disciplines of knowledge and is a singular tool for teaching and learning. And these interested young, willing workers with their liberal arts degrees are a valuable crop too few farmers are cultivating.

Shelburne Farm

Ross and I are up at VIAC this week finishing up some cheese chemistry courses. We took a most welcome field trip after class today to the beautiful Shelburne Farms. Let me preface by saying that the farm is located in an exceptionally beautiful area of Vermont along Lake Champlain. The weather also helped to greatly enhance the already-present beauty. Everything is this vibrant, living shade of green. The very wealthy or very lucky (perhaps both) have homes set on the hills, which gently roll into the Lake, framed by a view of the Adarondacks. The cool, bright afternoon was the antidote to a day spent sitting in a cramped, dim classroom looking at slides.

The Farm itself sits on 1,400 acres of Vanderbilt family land. It is committed to farm and education programmes that encourage sustainable agriculture, and according to their website, they aim, "to cultivate a conservation ethic in students, educators and families who come here to learn." Right up my ally. We went to meet their cheesemaker, Nat Bacon, and to see their facility. They milk 125 Brown Swiss ladies who are fed on pasture. They turn their milk into a variety of cheddar cheeses that are really nice. The facility is great: one huge, rectangular vat that can hold 3,000 pounds of milk, a couple of other make rooms, a packing room, and one gigantic aging room, and that's it. It was cool to see cheesemakers using the things we have been talking about at VIAC; the importance of pH and TA measurements, moisture and salt content, records, hygiene, the whole bit. Nat stressed record-keeping and how the chemical properties of the cheese affects how they plan to age the cheese and when they will sell it. It's such an intensive process to get a really good cheese and get it consistent in taste and texture every time that it really is impossible. From this necessary impossibility, Nat taught us an especially amusing and practical lesson in marketing. They make a cheese called "Tractor Cheddar":

The label reads: Strong or unusual flavors that keep engines running! Taste and texture can vary greatly from block to block. The engine this cheese keeps running is the economic engine of the farm! This label demonstrates exactly how you sell your "mistakes" so as not to waste them. Sure, it's not going to win any prizes, but chances are that somebody out there likes your funky cheese, so why not keep the wheels of your operation turning as much when you fail as when you succeed? It's an interesting idea.

We spent the evening enjoying the formal gardens (with some HUGE hostas) around the inn and ate a lovely meal made from local meats, vegetables and cheeses from the farm, and excellent wine; all while we watched the sun set over the lake and disappear behind the mountains. What else is there?

Harvest.

So, I haven't had a garden since I left my parents' home some eight years ago. D'avignon radishes were my first harvest from my new garden, my new house, my new life. Small, delicate, sweet, crisp, spicy, just wonderful. I put a jar up to savour this ephemeral and long-awaited moment.

For those who want to know how to put up radishes: just slice the radishes however you like, heat enough vinegar to fill the jar (I used white distilled, but you could use apple cider or rice vinegar) and about 1/4 cup of sugar, or until you just begin to taste it. I also dropped in a bay leaf, just because it seemed like a good idea. Heat the vinegar until the sugar dissolves and pour into a hot, sterilized jar. Seal according to the manufacturer's instructions. The vinegar-sugar solution should turn this gorgeous pale pink. Let sit in a cool, dry place until you feel like eating them (at least 2 weeks).

I'll let you know how they are. . .

It's here. . .

The latest in the Quatrano-Clifford empire is here, at long last. . . Ross and I are up in Vermont at cheese school this week, but you can be sure that the Tuesday evening we return, we will be dining at Abattoir. I'll post a review. . .

The Veggies Are Here!

Tonight I made a pile of veggies from my CSA share that was spectacular. It's not an all-local meal by any means, but it was a good use of the new bounty that late spring puts in my fridge. Check it out:

Veggies:
A few ample handfuls of sugar snap peas
One head Chinese cabbage
As many shiitake mushrooms as you like
about half a stalk of an onion flower
1 head broccoli
a little peanut oil and rice vinegar for sautéing

Simple peanut-ginger sauce:
1/3 cup good-quality peanut butter (none of this sugary stuff, but plain, ground peanuts)
2 tbs rice vinegar
2 tbs tamari or soy sauce of choice
1/8 cup peanut oil
2 fat cloves of garlic
a one-inch piece of ginger, peeled

One bundle Soba noodles

Here's what you do:

Cook the soba noodles as directed on the package and set aside.

Cut up all the veggies into little slivers. Be sure to take the stems off the mushrooms and the snap peas. Toss into a pan with a dash of peanut oil and rice vinegar, maybe some tamari if you like. Sauté over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until the cabbage is wilted and the snap peas are a bright, vivid green (about 10 minutes)

While the veggies are cooking, make the sauce: toss all the ingredients into a food processor and add a little water (about 3 tbs or so). Whizz together and add water as needed to reach the desired consistency (you want it thick, but more liquid-like than paste-like).

Once the veggies are done, turn the heat to low and toss the noodles and the sauce into the pan. Stir everything together until the sauce has been incorporated fully.

Garnish with a few slices of onion flower stalk or garlic scapes if you like and serve hot. Makes enough for two.

Article: The Smartest Farm

The other day my mother-in-law dropped off a copy of this month's Garden and Gun. Now normally I find this publication a little, how shall I say, self-absorbed in the pleasures of Southern culture, but I was overall really impressed with this batch of recent articles, especially with this one. Sure, it's a little romantic, with its references to Jeffersonian ideals, off-grid energy sources, and good, old-fashioned American self-reliance. But like any good relationship, romance is only the beginning of what can become a person's best work. Clearly, these folks are doing it right.

Starting to Make Sense.

It's been seven, count them, seven months since I last wrote anything of substance. Inexcusable, I know. Especially when you consider how seven months ago I wrote the words, "You all will be hearing a great deal more about my teaching adventures in coming posts (which will be much more regular, henceforth)." Ha! But remember what else I said seven months ago, about how we're finding our way? Well, over the past seven months the way is finding its shape in some pretty awesome ways. We are shaping what we want to do with our lives here. It's no small potatoes and these things take time. Ross and I have been some incredibly busy bees with big, bright plans. Let's dive in, shall we?

I will begin in January: On January 20th, two very important things happened: we got a new president, and I got to work. I watched the inauguration with some 20 high school students on my first day of my teaching internship. This internship is largely to blame for the long absence of posts. I've never done so much, so fast, in such a short space of time in my life. To call it draining would be an understatement. For 10 weeks I got up at 5:00am, taught three 90-minute class periods of English, finished up around 4:00pm, went to class twice a week until 7:00pm, and often did not get home before 9:oopm, in time to grade papers and revise lesson plans. Fun, right? I was exhausted by the end of it. The first thing Ross said to me when I finished was that I was never allowed to do anything like this ever again. He's right, and I won't.

Throughout my masters programme, I learned a huge amount about teaching, what children need in order to learn and grow, and they myriad ways they are and aren't getting those things. But what I learned about myself was equally important. I cannot work a "day job." The parameters of normal employment, and frankly working for someone else is simply not my cup of tea. I don't do well with other people's rules and expectations when those rules and expectations don't make any sense. It drains my spirit. I often joked during this internship that I was loosing the will to live; but really, it was only a half-joke. The moments I had with my students that really lit me up inside did not outweigh how sad and disheartened I am with the whole framework of how we educate. Don't misunderstand me, there are brilliant teachers and terrific schools; I am the product of both. But it  seems to me that there are better ways. To put it more simply, in this programme I was handed the box and told how to get inside the box. I was not told how I might get out of the box and take as many kids with me as I could. . . which is what I want and what many of them need.

The point is, I came home every day and felt deflated, no matter how awesome the lesson went. Maybe I missed some key aspect of the art of teaching, maybe the skills to find they ways to love it every day in this context would come with practice over months and years, but I'm making other plans.

Sheep. Let's talk about them. Antoine de Saint-Exupery (yes, that Antoine de Saint-Exupery) said, "If someone wants a sheep, then that means that he exists." We agree. There is something about them that just feels good and right. Plus, they taste good, and more importantly, so does their milk: so we're gonna make cheese. When I start talking with folks about these cheesemaking plans, I typically get one of four reactions: 1)wow, that's awesome, I love sheep's milk cheeses! 2) You can milk a sheep?, 3) There are sheep's milk cheeses? or 4) Oh, so you're going make goat cheese! That's awesome!

In point of fact, the best cheeses in the world are made with sheep's milk cheeses (Roquefort, idiazabal, manchego, roncal, ricotta, feta, shall I go on?). Sheep's milk has the highest butterfat per litre content of any ruminant. Therefore, sheep efficiently turn grass into the highest quality of the stuff you need to make cheese with the least amount of waste (whey). Also, because of the high-quality and rich taste of most sheep cheeses, they fetch the highest prices. Plus, lamb, the natural by-product of dairying, is delicious.

At the advice of a fantastic cheesemaker in New York we met at ALBC a few years ago, Ross and I have been attending cheese school up at the University of Vermont's Institute for Artisan Cheese, meeting all kinds of farmers and cheesemakers, business planning, researching, and experimenting in the kitchen. We know a lot about milk chemistry now, and we're pretty darn excited about it.

However, at this point, I feel the need to add an explanatory note. A lot has been happening over the past few months and years that to an outsider, may seem like an odd trajectory; that somehow, Ross and I are scattered or directionless; winding along a meandering path of un-connected dots. All this, this is a winding road: me the medievalist and English major turned camp counselor for a wilderness school turned farm intern turned teacher, now writer, entrepreneur, farmer and cheesemaker; and Ross, who appears even more disconnected: the computer geek/ technical theatre buff/ urban designer/web-content consultant and trainer/farmer. Every time I tell my story to a passer-by I feel so self-conscious; I feel like I look scattered to them, directionless. Quite the opposite. I want to make good food, and I want to teach through that context. I want to think every day, make connections, solve tremendously complex problems, and remain, as ever, deeply intellectually and spiritually stimulated. And yes, this is a very medieval thing to do. My friend Brandon, an intern on the farm here for the year issued a similar complaint to my own. When he told one friend his story of how he came to want to be a farmer, the friend told him, "You are a polymath." For Brandon, that makes him feel, not directionless at all, it makes him, "feel like a farmer. "

Lately, I've been feeling a push to explain what I'm doing to folks, to somehow make my choices, hopes, and aspirations into something that makes sense to them. Really, the path I'm on, my way, it's mine, and to quote Brandon, "it makes sense to me."

spring. . .

Spring is coming, if you're quiet, you can hear the sun in the soil. . . shhhh. . . we walked through a grove of pink lady slippers today. . . we're eating herb salad and green cake. . . things are happening. . . more, very, very soon. . .

Farm Restaurant, Calgary, Alberta... Canada

Quick post. Just got back from a trip to Calgary, AB, and found the most awesome restaurant in the city, Farm: http://www.farm-restaurant.com/. Farm-to-Table with a cheesemonger in the back. The cheesemonger actually came first, and she started the restaurant. Anyway, completely awesome: * Lamb Sweetbreads with Tomato Chili Aioli (the whole thing was just a spoonful) * Pickled Lamb Tongue - Housemade * Clear Soup: Braised Lamb with White Beans & Root Veggies * Duck Breast, Celeriac Puree, Brussels Sprouts, Balsamic Reduction * Colston-Basset Stilton

All paired with a great array of wine and sherry.

Finding Our Way

So, during the long absence of posts, the Dirty Way has been gettin’ cleaned up and gettin’ its act together. Ross and I had an epiphany shortly after we came back from Arkansas. This wasn’t working. There was something about isolation we learned in Arkansas: it’s not good. Isolation makes a person a little wacky in the head, and not in an endearing, Jack Sparrow sort of way, more like a scary I have a shotgun now-get-the-hell-off-my-land way. Ross and I realised that though we craved freedom, peace, and quiet, solitude was not at all what we craved. It is an easy thing to mistake solitude for peace. We realised all this while visiting a farm south of Atlanta called Serenbe. Actually, the farm is a part of a a larger community called Serenbe, based on principles of community, design, and environmental ethics that are pretty amazing (all without being a “commune” or land-trust). We spent the morning with Paige, the farm manager, tending to seedlings, “weeding out” the smaller plants to allow the bigger, healthier ones to grow uninhibited.  As we drove away, Ross and I both said: the hell with everything else. This is what we want. We don’t want to be interns, we don’t want to wander: we want to settle. We want to be in a place, to get to know exactly where we are, through and through; a place to orient from, a place to call home. We decided that community was a part of what we want for our lives: to create it and to be a part of it. Transience is not a feature of genuine community participation and creation. So, we are building our home at Serenbe and we are orienting from it. Ross has taken a job for the present, using his technology skills to meet people, make connections, put food on the table, and generally to have a good time. I am enrolled at Emory University getting my masters in teaching. Yes, teaching. You all will be hearing a great deal more about my teaching adventures in coming posts (which will be much more regular, henceforth). Some may argue that it is a long leap from farming to teaching, but I could not disagree more. In farming, you are raising and cultivating plants and animals for the survival and perpetuation of human-kind. In education, you are raising and cultivating children for the survival and perpetuation of human-kind.  The two are inexorably linked. And believe me when I say that education is a dirty job. It is at the core of the dirty way.

In essence, over the past five months we have closed the doors; we have begun to give shape to our path.

Brooding and Hatching

Sorry for the absence of posts, gentle readers. Ross and I have been scurrying around the country looking at different farms and different opportunities. We just got back from a week-long trip to Eureka Springs, AR to visit Patrice Gros at Foundation Farm. What a terrific little farm. Really. Patrice runs an excellent no-till very successful and tightly organised vegetable production. He grows some of the happiest, most beautiful basil I’ve ever seen. We spent a morning with him mixing up granite dust he got from a local quarry to prep his beds. It was a lot of wet, cold, messy fun. Patrice and his family were really great. Patrice’s wife Karen is a francophile who runs a small catering business, so the food they fed us was a real treat (see recipe below). It is always wonderful to stay in someone else’s home and receive the same level of hospitality you would give to your own guests. And their two children are precocious, bright, and generally wonderful. We spent the rest of the afternoon at Little Portion, a Catholic-based monastery just outside Eureka Springs. It is a beautiful and peaceful place. The members there run a small farm complete with a meat-poultry operation. They work with Patrice and house some of his interns at the monastery in exchange for a bit of work on the farm.A year ago I would have cut off an arm to work here, but. . . something just didn’t feel right. I think the tension of self-reflection I was feeling was palpable to everyone around me. And it didn’t help that Eureka Springs is like a bigger, scarier Gatlinburg, TN. I’ve been in a kind of black-hole of unknowing for the past three or four weeks, a brief but strong dark-night-of-the-soul kind of experience. Every day I have changed my mind about what I want to do with my life about four times. I have taken to writing Ross little notes with the prevailing career path of the day written on it. We thought maybe after a few weeks we could count them up and see which thing I felt like doing more times than the others. Sometimes, instead of writing a sentence about what I wanted to do with my life I would write a quotation or a maxim that would express how I felt: things like, “the job never started takes longest to finish” when I felt stagnated by my possibilities and their possible successes and failures. The popular Nelson Mandela quotation came to mind many times, you know, the one about our greatest fear is not that we are inadequate, but that we are powerful beyond measure. I even took to reading my horoscope almost daily. I felt the overwhelming reality that I could go anywhere and do anything. Many people might consider this a good place to be, a “world of possibilities.” In reality, such a world is too much. It is pathless. I have come to understand that the closed doors are as are are as important, if not more so, than the open ones. The point is, I am in a very different place now than I was a year ago, or really have ever been in my life. For many years I believed that it was in my best interest to live a life separate from others. I believed that the world was somehow broken, full of stupid people with stupid ideas and misguided motivations that was constantly damning itself. I still believe that; the part about stupidity. What I no longer believe is that I have to somehow separate myself from it. I thought it would be great to have a farm somewhere out in the woods where I could be self-sufficient and left alone. But after being on a farm, not even that far away from a city, I see just how isolating that life can be. It is less fun and way less romantic than it sounds on paper. I mean, this is the dirty way, after all. It’s about getting down in with the nitty gritty, the unpleasant realities of being a person in this world, absorbing them and separating the ones that must be from the ones that don’t have to be at all (i.e. we will always eat meat, but there doesn’t have to be factory farms; there will always be death, but there doesn’t have to be murder; people will get hungry, but they don’t have to starve, etc.). Arkansas taught us something really important: a farm cannot be a island. You cannot be isolated out in the boonies, by yourself. You need other people for yourself for the success of your farm and for the awareness ad prosperity of agriculture as a whole. People need to know where their food comes from. They need to see it and be near it. Isn’t that what food is all about; bringing people together, getting them to talk, creating community?

So we are busy little bees, sitting in our lair, brooding, hatching some very big, very different plans. . .

A Country French Supper for Two

Here is a lovely and simple recipe based on a superb meal we were served by Karen Gros at Foundation Farm in Arkansas. It is classic country French cooking at its best. I made a few alterations, for which I hope she will forgive me. You are welcome to make your own puff pastry, which, though challenging is well worth it. I achieved the feat for the first time in a college dorm kitchen, so I say to you, if it can be done there it can be done anywhere. Otherwise I highly recommend Dufour Puff Pastry which can be found at your local Whole Foods or specialty market. Do not substitute phyllo for puff pastry. They are NOT the same thing. Mushroom Napoleon:

Puff pastry, cut into two 4x4 inch squares 1lb shiitake mushrooms 1/4 lb crimini mushrooms 1/4 cup cream 1 tsp fresh ground nutmeg 1 tbs dried thyme 1 tsp sea salt 1 tsp fresh ground black pepper 3 tbs butter 1/2 1 large shallot

Sauté the shallots on medium heat with the butter, thyme, and salt until golden and caramelised. Add the sliced mushrooms and cook until tender. Add the cream and nutmeg and stir. Leave on heat, stirring occasionally, until the mushrooms and cream have emulsified. Meanwhile, put your two pieces of pastry into the oven around 350 degrees. Bake until puffy and golden. Do not underbake, otherwise they will collapse.

Slice each pastry square in half lengthwise and place a bit of the mushroom mixture onto the pastry so as to make little sandwiches. Serve immediately with the soup below.

Broccoli and zucchini soup:

1 litre veggie stock 1 large head broccoli (about a pound) 2 medium zucchini 1 tsp sea salt 1 tsp fresh ground black pepper 1/2 1 large shallot 2 tbs olive oil

Roughly slice the zucchini and broccoli, discarding the main stem of the broccoli. Sauté the shallot in the olive oil over medium heat until translucent. Add the vegetables and salt and pepper and cook until tender. Pour the stock over everything and allow to simmer and meld for about 20 minutes. In batches, pour the veggie mixture into a blender and blend until smooth. If the soup is a little thin add cream to taste. Serve piping hot with a dollop of the horseradish butter below.

Horseradish butter: 1 cup best salted butter 1/4 cup best fresh horseradish

Allow the butter to come to room temperature. Put the horseradish in the butter and blend with either an electric beater or with a wooden spoon. Serve spread over meats, vegetables, bread, whatever suits your fancy.

Little Things Take So Long or Death By 1,000 Pin-Pricks: How We Made a Shack that was Unfit to House Livestock a Cozy and Comfortable Home (sort of)

If you're wondering why you may not have heard from us for a while, why we don't seem able to return phone calls, answer e-mails, remember birthdays or generally what day of the week it is, or recall if our underwear is right-side-out, there is only one thing to blame: THE HOUSE. It is the great culprit that has been stealing of all our time, energy, health, and sanity. It is best to begin at the beginning.When we first took this job, part of the agreement was that Spring House Meats would provide our housing. A few weeks before we were scheduled to begin work, we went up to the farm to figure out our housing options. At first, we thought we would live in a house on the hill with our fellow farmer, Erin Kirley, but another house had become available. Malanyon, who had worked on the farm for some time, decided to move on, so the house he had been occupying could be ours. Great, I thought. We went to look at it. What we saw would have sent any sane person running. At first impression, the exterior of the house looked cute: a typical well-worn, maybe even care-worn, little old farmhouse. The interior, however, was less forgiving. The word squalor comes to mind or maybe something stronger, a word that could strike at the very essence of filth. The disrepair was beyond words. The "living" room was blanketed in rat droppings that crunched like gravel under our feet. The metal sink and shelves in the kitchen were rusted, and rats had pilfered through every cabinet leaving plentiful evidence. Many long, thick snake skins decorated every crevice in the ceiling. Red wax dribbled down the walls in places. Unholy black dust fell like atomic snow from cracks in the ceilings and could be found behind every floorboard. The wood stove had been used as a trash can, filled with chip bags and coke cans and, as we later saw, a half-burned pair of men's underwear. You shouldn't be surprised at this point, but parts of the ceiling were rotted through. The floor in the kitchen could have been a trampoline. Window panes were missing and would fall out at the lightest touch, and spiders ruled the four corners of every room. Some insane person had put, and by "put" I mean nailed and stapled, greenish-yellow shag carpeting in the kitchen, where Malanyon had left peanut butter and canola oil open for God knows how long. The house looked as if its occupant had been abducted mid-way through making a sandwich. What was our response when we saw all this? "Great! Oh, this will be great, sure, we can do this, it's cute, it's got potential, it's just dirty, sure Jamie, we can clean this up. We can knock this out in two or three weeks!" Oh, oh, the naïvety! It's almost painful. No, it is painful. Call it excitement or blind enthusiasm, for blind it was. The fact of the matter is, we were out of our effing minds.Fortunately, Amy had Malanyon do the initial clean-up. When we got to work on the house, the rat-droppings were gone, the carpeting ripped up, and all of the appliances were removed except for the fridge. The pictures here begin with the house as it was when we started working. Sadly, or perhaps blessedly, all record of the way the house first looked is lost. We began with bleach. Lots and lots of bleach. Then, demolition. We tore out everything we could. Sheetrock, flooring, cabinets; did I mention we were insane to do this? When the carpeting was pulled out we found two layers of pre- World War Two linoleum underneath in various states of decay. We did well ripping it out with our gloved hands and respirators (asbestos is fun!) but we eventually had to go at it with a shovel. We found that the windows were not so much "installed" as they were "set" in their rough openings and held there by the trim. We tore out the mouldy sheetrock in the bedroom to find lovely beadboard walls, but they were so full of cracks and holes that no amount of wood epoxy could repair them. It should also be mentioned that the primary problem with the house is the fact that it does not have a true foundation. "A ship of ancient beams on a sea of moving stone" is how Ross describes the problems. Typical of the period the house was constructed, the foundation is pier and piling, which are wood beams and stone piles set on the ground. Trouble is, after about 100 years the ground and thus the stone and wood tend to move around a bit. The floor of the house is a visible arc. If you are in the bedroom you have to walk uphill to get to the living room. If you're in the living room you go downhill to the kitchen. As a result of all this pushing and pulling walls have separated from each other and from the ceiling and floorboards have pulled apart. All these factors plus no insulation rendered the house a sieve. So, in the process of filling in as many holes as possible with the amazing wonderful thing that is Great Stuff, we insulated. How, you might ask, does one insulate into walls that already exist without tearing them down? Why, with a hole-saw drill-bit, a rented insulation machine from Home Depot, duct tape, the top of a water bottle and lots and lots of cellulose. Insulating the house is a good example of what just about every day of housework was like.It begins with a trip to Home Depot. We probably spent a total of 30+ hours over the past two months inside Home Depot. Ross went to rent the 200lb insulation machine and purchase insulation, I went to get other things we needed for other projects: Rustoleum, masking tape, duct tape, drywall screws, etc. An hour later, we loaded the machine and everything else into the back of Jamie's truck and drive back to the farm. By now it is about 10am. We look around the house and see that part of the wall needs to be shorn up before we can start drilling into it. Then we discuss the relative merits of putting a vapour barrier up before we re-sheetrock. Then we get a phone call that the pigs have gotten out and help is needed to herd them back in and fix the fence. It is now 2:00 in the afternoon. We stop because we are both starving and drive to Trout Lily to pick up a sandwich. We set up the insulation machine after we call Home Depot to let them know we will need the machine for an extra day. We find an empty water bottle, cut it in half, and affix it to the insulation machine hose with duct tape to use as a spigot between the hose and the hole in the wall. We drill the first hole. The beadboard gets stuck in the hole-saw drill bit and we cant get it out. We spend half-an-hour getting the wood out and deciding if we need to go get a new drill-bit. We decide not to and keep going. We stop because the insulation we are blowing in is blowing out the "naturally-formed" holes in the walls and ceilings. We duct tape them shut. We continue. We stop. There is a flow problem in the hose and air is blowing but no insulation is coming. We spend an hour with the hose, a flashlight and a metal yardstick loosening the insulation so that it flows again. It is now 6:30pm and we have to stop. Only one wall is completed. Everything. I mean EVERYTHING, we did to this house went like this. Nothing was simple or straightforward, nothing could be done right the first time, nothing could be done right efficiently. One-hundred years of neglect and "git-er-done" attitude had taken its toll on this house to its very core; we fought back tooth and nail, blood, sweat, and tears. I couldn't begin to document and discuss every task we tackled on this house, but I took pictures of quite a lot of it, which is as good a way as any of showing you what we did.

Here is the house as it was when we started working:

 

This is the kitchen and laundry room

 

Open the door and see The Bathroom

 

The brightest room in the house, The Living Room

 

And the Bedroom

Notice the thick layer of grime all over everything. Let’s move on to the demolition. Here is the bedroom again:While Ross and Clay tore out a lot of this sheetrock, I spent the day working on the kitchen sink. The sink had not been cleaned. It was still covered in rat feces that had to be Shop Vac'd out before we could take it out of the house. It’s a really old, beautiful, retro metal sink, but it was so rusty and nasty. Armed with gloves, tarp, a respirator, a steel-brush, and about 7 cans of rustolium, in 7 hours, I restored it:

 

On another day, we got up under the house to check things out. Only, we couldn’t because there was about $90 worth of scrap metal in the form of old farm equipment parts, chairs, and a pair of shoes under there.

After most of the demolition was completed, we started insulating and putting things back together. Here is the old, filled-in fireplace. We removed the mantle from the old, filled-in fireplace and pulled out some of the rotten sheetrock. Now, generally, sheetrocking is something that, once you know how to do it, it’s pretty easy. Not so here. This house slopes. It slopes a lot. The ceiling sags. Each. Tedious. Individual. Piece. Of. Sheetrock. Had. To. Be. Custom. Cut. And. Measured. Within. One-quarter. Inch. Then mudded and taped. Then primed. Twice. Then painted. Twice. And that’s just the walls.One night, Tim and Clay came by to help out. The four of us were consumed with replacing the fixtures in the shower. It required copious amounts of sawing, lots of hair pulling, and about 4 hours: just to remove the old fixture! (picture)On one occasion, coming home from Home Depot with floor and ceiling trim in the back of the truck, the wood chewed through the polytwine and $60 flew out the back of the truck and can still be seen (update: a state convict crew has removed the wreckage) in all its many bits and pieces on where 74-A intersects with I-40. Shall I go on? The glazing on the windows was crumbling away or gone completely. Ross and I stood outside for hours in the cold wind and snow on top of a ladder putting sub-zero window glaze and new panes in. We masked and painted every wall and ceiling we could get our hands on. We tore out all the kitchen cabinets. We went to Ikea and spent a week rebuilding and installing new ones. We bevel-cut trim and hung it. We replaced rotten floorboards. We put in two new windows. We used expanding foam everywhere. Ross spent two days under the house rewiring in a crawl-space that over half of is too short to even belly-crawl into. We put in new plugs and light fixtures. Then, after all that, we had to move in. Actually, we had to move in before the house was done, which is a whole other story. . .We should have torn the whole thing down and started afresh.The thing to know, to really keep in mind about renovation is that you may have what looks like a very reasonable list of things to accomplish, but you may never get past the first task. You need, as my mother’s favourite piece of Engrish from an instruction booklet suggests, to “get some people to help you.” Or, as the epigraph on one of the renovation books we used states (or perhaps cautions) the old adage, “Many hands make work light.” But in our case, many hands we seldom if ever (forgive me) on hand. And so, after many weeks and several months, the house became what it is today. It is as if it feebly approached the “charm” I had hoped for —and then gave up. It is way below our normal, acceptable standard of living, and constantly dances the line between habitable and uninhabitable. I cannot imagine the house without insulation as I watch little bits of grey cellulose blow in onto my bedside table from where the house is separating from itself. We are making do, which sometimes, is all you can do.My hope is that this house is in no way a foreshadowing of our future as farmers. What I mean is this: after lots of thought, it has occurred to me that in our aspirations to become outstanding farmers, we may have bitten off more than we can chew; there may not be enough people to help along the way, and the end-product may be less than satisfying. But then, the reality becomes clear: this house does not have to foreshadow anything so long as it is a source of learning. Ross and I now both know what it takes to change something that is both old and broken. We know just how much work it can be and we know what it demands of us. We may yet be able to change the practice of farming, but mark my words: we will never renovate again.

Greener Pastures

So, Ross and I have made an executive decision, we’re leaving the farm. Not farming. Just this farm. We are not leaving because we don’t like farming or don’t enjoy the work. We do. But as we have been in the farming world we see that there are needs that go beyond what this particular farm can help us fulfil. We are searching for a new opportunity, one that will help us to best use our talents and that will help to garner new ones in the pursuit of a new and better agriculture. One that, if you have read the previous blog post you will know, invites others to join the process rather than deters them with the persistently menial, mediocre, and disorganised. We are looking to learn a way of growing food that is more interested in agriculture for what it is: full of beauty and joy and pride of work. Maybe we are much too idealistic. Really, we just want to learn to grow vegetables and raise animals in tandem with one and other. A surprisingly difficult thing to find considering how much sense it makes. Oh, and we want to teach kids, too. The point is, we’ve got a lot to learn if we’re going to achieve any of this and we’re not learning what we need to know here. So, we’re off to find greener pastures. We’ll keep you posted.