Top Ten Reasons Charlotte is My Favorite Airport

10. Giant aircraft mobile.
9. Sushi.
8. Hardly anybody working there speaks English.
7. A man playing a grand piano.
6. Trees inside the airport.
5. Natural light through huge south-facing windows.
4. Electrical outlets for charging my laptop.
3. Unlimited free internet.
2. Very clean restrooms with complimentary mouthwash and breath mints.
1. Always an available rocking chairs.

Kings, Queens, Popes, and Jesters

We have all heard that George Washington was offered the position of king, and turned it down. Of course historians debunk this notion as flatly as the idea that the young George “could not tell a lie,” and confessed to chopping down a cherry tree.
And who doesn’t remember Camelot? I wasn’t born until 1967, and yet the images and rhetoric from the Kennedy presidency have been so prevalent in print, film, and text over nearly 50 years that I feel like I remember the actual events.

We are fascinated by the idea of royalty. By holding on to Washington’s myth, he somehow becomes much larger, grander, wiser to us. The same goes for Kennedy. When his widow Jacqueline described her husbands years in the White House as being a period of hope and optimism–an American Camelot, the media jumped on it and we embraced it, and as a result Kennedy’s legend has become…well, just that, legend.

It is not hard to see how easily that happens. We want to believe in people at their unbelievable best. Want a Moses to part the water, a King Arthur to rule benevolently, a Robin Hood to take care of the poor.

Problem is that such extreme greatness never seems to happen in our lifetimes or even in the verifiable past. So many of our religious leaders have affairs, or abuse children. we have seen not-for-profit charities being dishonest in their financial dealings. And don’t even get me started about our presidents.

But Americans have never given up on having our own royalty, so in the absence of the leader or hero to crown, we must look elsewhere for our kings and queens. Because with royalty comes wealth, we have a tendency to confuse the two, mistaking wealth for royalty, but wealth, even when coupled with humanitarianism doesn’t seem to be enough.

If it were, we would be crowning Kings Ted Turner, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, who remain largely above the tabloid fray and try to use their wealth to better our world. Or, if royalty were more about power than benevolence, we need look no farther than the largest corporations–Walmart, Exxon, Chevron and the like, but again, the American people don’t view them in that light. Nobody wants to put a crown on the head of Exxon’s Director Michael J. Boskin. Who even knows his name?

No, American’s don’t look for power, kindness, or morality in the ones on whom we place our crowns. Money seems to be important to us, but when it comes to granting royal status, we tend to turn away from the more kingly traits and place the castle jewels on the jesters.

Just yesterday I heard a reference on a popular NPR radio show to  “American Royals, the Kardashians.” When Glamour Magazine polled it’s readers as to whom they consider America’s royal couple, along with the names Kennedy, Clinton, and Obama, were Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, and Beyonce and Jay-Z. And a recent poll by Public Policy Polling recently declared Green Bay Packers Quarterback Aaron Rodgers King of Wisconsin. I don’t know which is more frightening, that a quarterback would be crowned king or that time and money were spent determining which quarterback should wear the crown.

I could go on and on with my list, but I think you get the point. Americans want to be entertained, and we worship those who entertain us best. We would sooner crown a jester in all his pomp, buffoonery, and scandal than a wise, benevolent, even altruistic leader, which brings me to the clown who got me thinking about all this.

On Christmas Eve in his homily, Pope Benedict XVI came down on the commercialization of Christmas and suggested to his followers to “ask the Lord to help us see through the superficial glitter of this season.” Later in his address, he spoke of the barn in Bethlehem believed to be the birthplace of Jesus, and of the entrance to the chapel on the site with an opening merely one and a half meters high. He suggested that this small opening–much smaller than the original–was “above all to prevent people from entering God’s house on horseback. Anyone wishing to enter the place of Jesus’ birth has to bend down.”

I couldn’t help but ponder such words from a man whose house and real estate value over 900 million dollars, who rides around in a specially-designed one-of-a-kind car, whose wardrobe eclipses those of Elton John and Elvis, and who appears to his followers from a high balcony overlooking a massive courtyard.

It all seems a bit hypocritical to me, but it also fits the American model of royalty. He is wealthy beyond belief, his business is riddled with sexual scandal and coverups, he dresses like Liberace, claims a special relationship with God, all the while espousing the nature of Jesus–a man with no business, no house, no money, by all accounts morally pure, and who preached that his followers could do greater things than him.

It makes perfect sense then that royalty-loving Americans would be big fans of the Pope. He brings it all to the table. Step aside Kim Kardashian. To the sidelines Aaron Rodgers. By American standards, Pope Benedict is more king-worthy than either of you. And he has one more qualification–birthright. I’m pretty certain that Brad and Angelina’s parents weren’t royal, and there is no guarantee their children will amount to anything, but this pope, the last pope, and the next pope will certainly come from the same Vatican fraternity–the college of cardinals.

Makes me wonder…if the Vatican sold all its holdings, and the pope were left  with one humble outfit, a single pair of sandals, and a bowl, would anybody care what he has to say?

Crossing the Road–A Chicken’s Journey

While I’m posting old articles, I thought y’all might enjoy looking back at this one–also from the Pulse.

 
“The ground was frozen solid so I couldn’t bury her,” she began slowly. “It was during that week of sub-freezing weather…” Her voice trailed as she thought back to the trying morning in question. “It took awhile,” she continued. “But I managed to break open the compost and bury her there… underneath a cushaw cross…”

Candice Dougherty, assistant manager at Crabtree Farms in Chattanooga, went on to explain how she had been the only one at the farm that morning—a “snow day,” she called it. She worked in the office for a while before deciding to check on things in the greenhouse. When the big white chicken she lovingly called “Chicky,” didn’t meet her at the door, she began to worry. She scanned the greenhouse. She didn’t have far to look. On her left, a few white feathers stuck over the edge of a fifty-gallon water bucket.

“That bucket is big—about two-and-a-half feet tall.” Dougherty said, her brow furrowed with disgust. “She had to put some effort into getting up there, but she couldn’t get back out…she was stiff as a board. I saw her and just started cussin’.”
I wondered how a fat and awkward bird like that could get to the top of such a big bucket, so I asked Dougherty if she ever saw her fly. “No, not really,” she responded. “If you’d walk away (from her), she would scream. “I’m comin! I’m comin!” She went on to describe a big bird with a wobbly gait that would run after her, flapping its wings, never getting off the ground.
Around the corner from us, Farm Manager Joel Houser was listening to our conversation. “We went from being repulsed by her to falling in love with her,” he added.

“Chicky” went by many names in her last 30 days, but most folks called her Chicken Little. Her odd way of wobbling when she walked, the curious way she cocked her head and looked up at folks, and the way she followed farm workers and visitors around like a puppy made her irresistible to almost all who met her.

Chicken Little’s journey to Crabtree began on the morning of December 3rd, 2009. Allison Fellers was driving home from taking her son to school. It was 7:45 and the self-proclaimed “not-a-morning-person” was still in her pajamas when she saw something wobbling around in the middle of the road. “It didn’t know if it should go right or left. It was stuck there in the road…” When a man in a minivan slammed on the brakes, narrowly missing the confused bird, Fellers pulled over, turned on her flashers, ran to the middle of the road, knelt down in her multi-colored, polka dot flannel pajamas and down slippers, said a prayer, scooped up the chicken, and ran back to her car.

Chicken Little was “near death” and “covered from head to tail in chicken poop” When Fellers found her lost in the middle of Broad Street in front of the Pilgrim’s Pride processing facility. She put the chicken in the front seat, but it immediately jumped to the floorboard where it sat, unmoving, eyes closed, all the way to the farm.

Chickens were not new to Fellers. Before she and her husband John moved from Signal Mountain down to the Southside neighborhood of Cowart Place, they kept egg-layers for a while, but this was unlike any chicken she had ever encountered.
“It didn’t have the natural shape of a chicken. I don’t know if it was the lack of feathers…” Fellers recounted how her whole car reeked of chicken feces and how the chicken was “practically bald with just a few sparse feathers here and there.”
Speaking of factory farm chickens in general, Mike Barron, greenhouse manager said, “They have a tough time standing on their own. They are bred for muscle size but don’t develop strength.”
In spite of the fact that Crabtree is a vegetable farm and doesn’t raise any animals, Chicken Little was not the first chicken dropped off at the urban farm. “Someone brought us a rooster that didn’t like kids,” Said Joel Houser, farm manager. “We fattened it for a few days and then ate it, so when (Fellers) called, we thought, Great, another one to eat! When we saw it, though, we knew we couldn’t eat it.”

When the folks at Crabtree first saw (and smelled) the disheveled chicken Fellers delivered, nobody thought it had a chance at survival.  Dougherty opened the passenger door and looked down at the smelly mess in the floorboard. The chicken didn’t even open her eyes as she reluctantly wrapped her arms around it and lifted it out of the car. Eager to distance herself from the filthy bird, Dougherty immediately set it down in the parking lot. Looking for a response, she poked it. The chicken fell over. According to Dougherty, “You could touch her eye and she wouldn’t even blink.” The crew had plenty of reservations, not the least of which was disease. But since the farm had no resident chickens whose health they needed to worry about, and since they were certainly in a better position to keep her than was Fellers, they let the sickly bird stay, and despite their less-than-positive expectations for the pitiful-looking fowl, they decided to do their best to care for it.

“We put her in the greenhouse to protect her from Hawks…put in a bowl of water and a winter squash, and she didn’t touch it. She didn’t know what real food was. Didn’t recognize it,” said Dougherty, clearly disgusted by the state of the chicken.
For the first couple of days, the poor, disheveled and disoriented chicken hunkered under the protective cover of the greenhouse without eating a thing and barely moving. Then Dougherty decided to try something different; she scattered a little multi-colored popcorn on the ground in front of Chicken Little and the bird immediately went for the yellow corn, devouring it but ignoring the other colors. “Must have looked like whatever they fed it where it was raised,” Dougherty reasoned.

With limited feeding success now under her belt, Dougherty gained some hope and started experimenting. She offered a worm, but even when she draped it over the chicken’s beak, it wouldn’t eat it. Then she put some popcorn on a cushaw squash. Chicken Little ate the popcorn and when bits of squash stuck to the corn, she quickly discovered she liked that too.
Realizing that the chicken had the capacity to be taught, Dougherty waited for a sunny day, then shooed now-named “Chicken Little” out of the greenhouse. Again, she tried showing her an earthworm. This time, the more alert and less hungry chicken saw the wriggler and pecked it right up, so she gave her a handful of soil filled with worms. It worked…to a degree. Chicken Little watched the dirt and pecked out anything she saw moving, but she made no effort to scratch at the dirt, to uncover more food.

Dougherty started leaving seed, a squash, an apple or some popcorn out in the greenhouse at night. During the day they let her out, gave her free-range access to the farm.After being introduced to her new menu, Chicken Little started following Dougherty around the farm. Surrounded by enough quality food to feed an army of chickens, this one was interested only in what Dougherty would give her. One day, while weeding, Dougherty found a slug. Since her friend stood by looking for a treat, she tried tossing it the slug. The chicken took one sideways glance at the pest and pecked it up. Dougherty realized that she had a great tool on her hands and encouraged to chicken to go everywhere with her.  She took her in the hoop house (a plastic sided, tunnel-shaped greenhouse for winter growing) and Chicken Little followed along, eating whatever she threw her. Dougherty made the mistake of tossing a wilted piece of kale to the eating machine.  She loved it and couldn’t be stopped from eating it, so Dougherty imposed a new rule on the chicken with the growing appetite. No Chickens in the hoop houses! Chicken Little didn’t seem to mind the imposition, though. Dougherty taught her to eat clover and as long as she kept talking to her, the bird followed along outside hoop house, waiting for her friend to emerge, all the while stuffing herself on clover. By the end of a long day, Chicken Little’s crop looked like a baseball. “Overnight, her gullet would shrink, but the end of the day, she would be fat again,” Houser observed.

It was the following Wednesday when Dougherty says she really fell in love with the bird. The crew was pulling privet (an invasive European hedge that thrives in edge habitat) at the margin of the property. Chicken Little was right alongside. She was awkward at first in trying to eat the berries that are a favorite of songbirds, but she soon learned to scratch at the berries to reveal the inner seed. What little Chicken Little didn’t know was that she was doing the farm a huge service because unlike songbirds who spread the invasive plant when they eat the berries, then drop them in scat along power lines and fencerows, Chickens are able to totally digest the seed so that it comes out as rich fertilizer, no longer viable for reproduction.

As the chicken continued to gain strength, she started taking care of herself, too. For the first time they saw her preening—slowly transforming her previously caked feathers. “We didn’t clean her, but by the time she left here, she was beautiful and white,” Dougherty said with a proud smile. “She had cleaned herself up…her beak was a mess though—all covered with dried squash.”

I learned firsthand what a quick study the new mascot was on a visit to the farm in the middle of December. At the end of my stay, several of us chatted under an oak tree in the gravel parking lot. Chicken Little heard Dougherty’s distinctive laugh and came running over. She turned her head, pointing one of her eyes up at her companion. When Dougherty didn’t respond with an expected treat, Chicken Little just hung out with us.

Surprised the chicken wasn’t scratching the ground for food, I asked Dougherty why her chicken wasn’t eating the smashed acorns that were all around us. “Too sour?” I speculated. “No. She just doesn’t know its food,” she responded with a chuckle.
That’s all I needed to hear. Kneeling down, I picked up a broken nut and crumbled it in my hand, which I then extended towards the chicken. After the same sideways look she had given Candice moments before, Chicken Little pecked the seed bits from my palm. I pointed to the ground to show her that there was more where that came from, but she just gave me that same look. Again, I crushed up a seed in my hand. After a few of these offers, I let Chicken Little see the nut, then dropped it at her feet. That was all it took. As she ate the one I presented, her little head jerked to one side and then the other as she began to recognize the smorgasbord at her feet.  For the rest of our conversation in the parking lot, Chicken Little was fat and happy in acorn heaven.

According to Houser, Chicken Little maintained her love for acorns. A few days after the acorn discovery, he pulled in the parking lot to see a flock of doves under that same oak tree, foraging for nuts. In the middle of them, one odd, white bird stood out, towering over the rest of the smaller gray birds. “She was one of the flock,” he said with a smile.

Reflecting back on the relationship she forged with her companion, Dougherty commented that she “didn’t know chickens could understand like that… She learned the sound of my voice.” And Chicken Little didn’t just recognize her voice but “knew when she was being called.”

Dougherty told me how they were out taking pictures of the farm in the snow, and she called Chicken Little so they could get a photograph of her. “As soon as she heard me call, she came running.”  The next morning Dougherty stood in the door of the greenhouse, calling for a friend who didn’t answer.

I called Pilgrim’s Pride in an attempt to learn the prehistory of Chicken Little. I wanted to ask them how she might have come to wandering around in the middle of Broad Street, covered in feces. I wondered how a chicken could live to maturity without learning what “real food was.”  I had a lot of questions.

My first call, to the corporate office in Texas, resulted in the voice mailbox of Ray Atkinson, where I left a message. I tried the local plant.

“Hello. Pilgrim’s Pride.”

“Hi, my name is Jim Pfitzer. I’m writing an article about a chicken…”
    “I’ll transfer you.”

“Hello, Rick Bailey.”
    “Hi, my name is Jim Pfitzer. I’m writing an article about a chicken…”
    “I’m sorry, but you’ll have to call Ray Atkinson. I can give you his number”

“He’s in Texas, right?”
“That’s right.
“But the chicken is in Chattanooga…”

“I’m sorry, but you have to call Mr. Atkinson.”

“But he’s in Texas…”

“Correct.”

“But Chicken Little is right here in Chattanooga. It’s a feel-good story about one of your chickens, who got a new lease on life. I was hoping…”

“Sir, you have to call Ray Atkinson His number is…”

“But Ray Atkinson hasn’t met this chicken. It’s in Chattanooga. Perhaps you have. If I could just have a minute of your time….”

“I’m sorry sir, but it is company policy.”

“Pilgrim’s Pride has a company policy dictating that community interest stories about Chattanooga chickens can only be addressed by Ray Atkinson in Texas?”

“That’s correct, Sir.”

“You won’t talk to me at all?”

“No Sir. It’s Company Policy.”

“Can we talk about…”
    “No Sir. We cannot talk about anything.”

Perhaps it’s just as well that they wouldn’t talk to me. According to their website, Pilgrim’s Pride has the capacity to process 45 million birds per week. Even if he had talked, I doubt … would have been able to tell me about one, specific bird.
After our non-conversation, I drove over to the intersection of Main and Broad, just a half block from where Fellers and Chicken Little first met. Looking at the flatbed trailers stacked with thousands of chickens in tiny, individual cages, I couldn’t help noticing how they all looked alarmingly like the poor white bird that was saved by Allison Fellers on that chilly morning in early December, and I remember something Fellers told me about how that little bird affected her. “I changed my route taking my son to school because I can’t stand to see the trucks with all those chickens packed together…” She was quiet for moment, then added, “They’re like children. They’re innocent. God made them to do certain things…scratch in the dirt and eat bugs.” Before driving away, I thought about how different Chicken Little looked after just a couple of weeks of good food and sunshine.

Dying alone in the middle of the night, in a bucket of cold water is certainly a horrible death for a lovable bird that became the mascot of an urban farm, but at least this one bird out of 45 million found some redemption in her final days. It is certainly safe to assume that she was the only one of those millions who was loved enough to have an obituary.

In an email to friends and admirers of Chicken Little on the afternoon after her death, Joel Houser eulogized her this way: “After many trials and tribulations, Chicken Little succumbed to a bucket of water in the greenhouse. She was a tough chicken, full of personality, who loved company. After being raised by the devil, rescued by a woman in pajamas, she found herself in her later weeks. She may not have come to us a chicken, but she died a chicken.”

A Locavore Thanksgiving

Last year about this time, I was asked by the Chattanooga Pulse to write a cover story for their Thanksgiving issue. I thought it might be nice to re-post that article here. I hope you find inspiration for a great local Thanksgiving dinner of your own.

A Locavore Thanksgiving

In 2007 Ben Zimmer, editor of American dictionaries at Oxford Press, announced their word of year, and a movement that had been building in little circles all around the country became known to the world. The new word was “locavore,” and it referred to people who make conscious efforts to eat as locally, as minimally processed, and as natural and preservative free as possible. “It’s significant,” says Zimmer, “in that it brings together eating and ecology in a new way.”
According to www.locavores.com, our food “travels an average of 1,500 miles before ending up on our plates.” Some of the effects of this are obvious, such as the high carbon footprint left behind by all the trucking necessary for Tennesseans to eat California tomatoes, and the amount of preservatives and processing needed to prevent spoilage, not to mention the vast scale of agriculture, that has lead to the collapse of family farms, and the sterilization of lands under the burden of monoculture. Other costs aren’t so readily clear, however, such as the reduction of the nutritional value of foods, the government subsidies that prop up farms, and the once small-time farmers that have become nearly enslaved by the huge corporations that contract them. And how about the alarming fact that many school children cannot tell you where a chicken come from or even that strawberry is more than just a flavor? And what about flavor? If your tomatoes aren’t local, vine-ripened, and chemical free, you might ask yourself what a tomato tastes like, because there is a good chance you don’t know. Or, if you are under a certain age, you might have never known.

Given the current agricultural situation, just how realistic is it to actually eat locally? Can you buy local at the grocery store? For this article, I set out to answer those questions by preparing the most locavore Thanksgiving dinner I possibly could. To help me in my task, I enlisted local cook and author of annsfoodletters.blogspot.com to help me out. Before tackling local, I asked Ann Keener to ponder Thanksgiving for me.

“There is something very special about Thanksgiving. There are no gifts to buy, no candy to gorge on, no church services to attend, no candles to light. There are simply two things: Family and Food. Thanksgiving has amazingly lived through the 300-some-odd years of our culture, from the first musket ball to the latest tweet on Twitter without being adulterated or changed. There are no new gimmicks to buy and nothing more to NEED, just the basic human desire to share the seasonal harvest bounty.

“The meaning of Thanksgiving is this: There is one day out of the entire year that, no matter how busy we are, we will stop and go home for a large, warm meal shared with friends and family. It is a deep-rooted autumn harvest festival, along with the deep-rooted desire to sit down for a long luxurious meal. It is the most amazing holiday because it is not amazing at all. And yet, the simplicity of sitting down to eat a meal lovingly prepared with seasonal ingredients like sweet potatoes and collards might just happen once a year for some folks.”

It seemed to me that at the core of locavorism is the family and food of which Ann spoke. For our experiment, we had the family part taken care of. It was Ann’s sister-in-law’s birthday, so our pre-Thanksgiving feast for twenty would honor her.
All we needed was local, minimally-processed, preservative-free food. I poked around a bit to find out what locavore experts considered to be “local.” The 30 Mile Meal Project of Athens, Ohio has a self-evident opinion, while the USDA considers 400 miles or within the same state to be a “DGD” or day-goods-distance. Others say fifty or a hundred miles is local, With such a broad range of opinions, I turned to the Taste Buds Local Food Guide, a publication of Crabtree Farms that showcases “local foods, markets, farms and food-crafters” Their focus kept them within a 100-mile radius of Chattanooga, so that is the target we adopted.

With the 100 mile goal in mind, we were ready to shop.
We would complete all shopping in one day, buying only what was available at the moment—fresh food, no pre-orders, no deliveries. We would spend the next preparing the food and serving the meal. This meant that planning the meal would happen as we shopped and while we cooked.

Shopping began with the two grocery stores I am most familiar with. At 2.5 and 2.2 miles from my house, Greenlife Grocery on the north shore and Bi-Lo in St. Elmo were pretty darned close. To make my shopping easier, I found a knowledgeable employee upon entering each store. Unfortunately, people in management at both stores informed me that because I was writing an article for publication, they were not allowed to talk with me. Bi-Lo gave me a corporate phone number, while Greenlife made the call for me and said they would get back to me when they had a response. Four days later (and two days after our meal) I have yet to hear from them.

Fortunately, not having corporate permission did not prevent me from shopping and speaking unofficially with employees of both stores, and I have to say that each had their locavore benefits. At Greenlife, I found beautiful collards, kale, and a few cuts of lamb grown right here in Chattanooga at William’s Island Farm, and a handful of meat offerings from Sequatchie Cove. Outside of those two farms, however, I found mostly a plethora of veggies labeled “U.S.A.”
Bi-Lo, while not offering anything as close as Greenlife, did stock a wide variety of vegetables in their house “Walter’s” brand, all of which are grown in the Southeast, and some of which were even certified organic, but the southeast is a big region and best I could tell, all the produce was trucked to South Carolina for processing and packaging before being trucked out to my neighborhood store, pretty much ensuring that any produce grown in Tennessee, was first shipped out of the state only to be shipped back again.

As for the centerpiece of a traditional Thanksgiving dinner…Turkeys at Greenlife were from Pennsylvania and had to be ordered, and Bi-Lo Turkeys of unknown origin were scheduled for delivery the day after our feast.
We were not off to a good start and our one shopping day was half over. Fortunately, we had one more stop on our list: The Main Street Farmer’s Market—a weekly two-hour gathering of farmers in a vacant lot just a few blocks from my house on the Southside.

With bags in hand, Ann and I made the rounds.

The first stop: Pocket Farm, located in McClemore Cove, nine miles south of Chickamauga. According to their website, Pocket Farm “adheres to organic farming practices and offers naturally grown produce free of commercial pesticides and chemicals.” And they are 25 miles from home. So far, so good.

Several bright red-orange pumpkins caught Ann’s eye. “Let’s get some of these red kuris.” Having no idea what a red kuri was, I asked her, “what for?” to which she replied, “soup.” It was clear that I was out of my league here, but excited to see what other ideas my partner might come up with.

After spending $17.00 on several of the red kuris, we moved on to Signal Mountain Farm to buy some organic green tomatoes from Thomas O’Neal. Two booths, and the miles our produce had traveled average of about 23 miles—a pattern we would see throughout our shopping spree.

In fact, every stand we visited represented a farm that was well within the hundred-mile goal we set for ourselves, with most being much closer. And along with produce, we even found corn meal for stuffing and whole-wheat flour for gravy.
When I asked Brad Swancy from Riverview Farms how far his cornmeal traveled to get to market he laughed. “From the field to the bag it was only a mile, then about 55 miles to get here.” And what makes his corn special? “It’s heirloom, non-GMO from our own seeds so we know what we are growing,” he said matter-of-factly. “And it’s stone ground, which does not generate heat, saving enzymes.”

At the River Ridge Farm stand we chatted with farmer Dave Waters about the thirteen-pound turkey he provided. He told us about turkeys who were out of the brooder and on pasture by the time they were six week old. “We use a certified organic, whole grain, soy-free feed with no by-products,” he said. When I lauded his turkeys for being so much closer than the Pennsylvania birds available at the grocery store, Waters was quick to explain that although his farm is only fifty miles away, he did have to drive them all the way to Bowling Green for processing—the closest place available, and a problem that he and other farmers are addressing.

We chose an after dinner drink from Andrew at Velo Coffee Roasters—decaf coffee roasted in a small batch to guarantee freshness twenty-four hours before purchasing. To top it off, he delivered his beans by bicycle. Talk about carbon footprint!
At the booth next door to Velo, Tom Montague told us about his Link 41 sausage. “We use pork from River Ridge and Sequatchie Cove, and our spices come from alchemy spice—all vendors at this market. That way we know that the pork is raised well and spiced with fresh spices. And our shop is right here on Main Street, so we are serving the neighborhood.” We picked up a couple pounds of Sorghum Baconage—a sausage with extra  bacon pieces added to the regular grind and a little bit of sorghum for sweetness.

As I was leaving the Link 41 booth, Montague stopped me and asked that I turn the tape back on. Looking back towards Velo, he began talking about his neighbor.

“An important aspect of purchasing locally is that you have a concentrated effect on a community,” said Montague, “which is easy to see in our local community, but Andrew is having a specific effect on another community.” Montague was referring to the way Gage buys his beans from a broker who knows how specific farms are growing their beans—whether they are organic or not, how sustainable they are. This attention allows him to target specific growers with specific practices instead of purchasing from the industrial complex.

From farm to farm, the stories were largely the same. Organic, sustainable, pesticide-free, and heirloom were words used over and over again to describe what we put into our bags. Unlike at the grocery stores, our problem was not in finding enough local food, but in deciding what to leave behind. By the time we got back to the kitchen we had winter squash, kale, collards, sweet potatoes, peppers, fennel, green tomatoes, sausage, garlic, broccoli, corn meal, flour, arugula, sunchokes, beets, coffee, a leg of lamb, and a turkey; and we purchased every single bit of it at the farmers market. Although we did not keep an exact count, we estimated spending around $215 with an estimated average distance from farm to table for the fresh meat and produce of around 30 miles—local by any standard!

We began our cooking around 12:30 the following day, figuring out what to do with our raw materials on the fly. We stuffed the turkey with a cornmeal/squash/sausage dressing, salted the skin, brushed on a little bacon grease, and left it to do its thing in the oven.

Ann came up with a mixed winter squash soup with just enough hot red pepper to give it a little kick.
Beets were chopped and roasted, sweet potatoes were mashed with butter, garlic and a couple splashes of Pritchard’s Tennessee Whiskey (from only 60 miles away), greens were wilted with garlic and balsamic vinegar, broccoli was steamed just enough, lamb, plugged with rosemary and garlic, roasted alongside the turkey, green tomatoes were diced and glazed to make a sweet salsa, and an amazing thin gravy was cooked down from the combination of drippings in the oven.

Finally, twenty people showed up with wine, beer, whiskey, and homemade chocolate cage and brownies for dessert.
When we sat down to eat, little needed to be said; a toast was unnecessary. Plates were piled high and spirits were even higher.
As I picked up the pieces of my house the day after the big meal, I reflected back on my conversation with Tom Montague at the Link 41 booth the day before and how he took time to share an important part of the Velo coffee story. Perhaps this is where the locavore and Thanksgiving themes overlap. It was important to Montague to make sure his neighbor was shown in the best possible light. Tom makes sausage. Andrew roasts coffee beans. Kelsey raises lambs. Miriam grows peppers. Brad grows and mills corn. Dave raises turkeys. Thomas grows tomatoes. Robin grows wheat. Noah grows greens. Ann cooks. I tell stories. And I could go on and on. I know all this not because I researched them to write a story, but because we have all chosen to engage locally and that means much more than just selling at a farmers market, it means being an active part of a community. When I was hearing about Andrew from Tom, I could just have easily been hearing about any of the twenty or so vendors at the market from any one of them. They are part of a truly local, food-based economy—something I failed to find in either of the chain grocery stores, and something that is about so much more than just a carbon footprint. The vendors at the market are a part of each others businesses and lives as well as a part of their customers’ lives; they are a community, something to appreciate and be thankful for, and something Ann had more to say about.

“Giving thanks for the most precious and basic gifts of humanity should not only happen once a year. We should give thanks to every lettuce leaf, every tomato vine, and every red beet that is pulled from the soil each time the season rolls around. We should open our homes to our friends and families often and mound their plates with the most delicious things we have to offer. We should give thanks for our grandmother’s gravy, our aunt’s soft white rolls, and our mother’s smashed sweet potatoes more often. Thanksgiving should not be the only day out of the year where the meat we are eating is more important than the cars parked in the driveway. It should not be the only day that we celebrate the hands that grew and cooked our food, and it should certainly not be the only day that we enjoy each other’s company around the dinner table.”

Thanksgiving is coming up next week, and it isn’t too late to celebrate locavore—we are blessed to have a rich bounty of local farmers and food preparers using products from those farms.

Thanksgiving is all about family and food, and we found that by turning to the local farm community for our food, we reached a little farther to be a part of a bigger family.  This Thanksgiving, before you hit the grocery store, check out your local farmers market wherever you are. See what you can buy locally, get to know your farmer, support the local food economy, and see if you don’t have a Thanksgiving dinner that can’t be beat!

Soup, Scotch, Whiskey, and Beer! (Oh My!)

I received a text from my host in Minneapolis yesterday afternoon informing that she would be later than planned by an hour or so.

“Shall I make supper?”

“Sure!”

My offer came without much (any) thought. Tracy had been out of town for a week prior to my arrival, so I was pretty certain there would be little in the way of fresh foods other than the handful of things we had picked up together the day before at the Whole Foods.

I rummaged through cabinets, making a mental inventory of my findings. A box of organic chicken broth sat next to a back of dried Northern Beans. With highs in the forties this week, hot soup sounded perfect! I would not have time to soak the beans overnight as I prefer, so I did a quick two-minute boil, then set them off the heat to soak for an hour.

In the spice cabinet I found rubbed sage and rosemary, in a bowl on the counter a yellow onion and a head of garlic, and from the fridge a couple carrots, a bunch of parsley, some lime juice, and the magic for my creation: Link 41 bacon I brought with me from home!

I went back to my computer for about an hour then jumped into action. I cooked the bacon to a slight crisp and removed it from the skillet, poured off half of the grease into the old fashioned aluminum grease can with which I travel, leaving enough for cooking the onions and carrots, then drizzled a tablespoon or so over Riker’s food. (Nothing makes a quicker friend out of a standard poodle than bacon grease!)

Since I was now getting into the real work, I retrieved a Bancreagie Peated Scotch Ale from the fridge and got down to business. (If you don’t know this Minnesota beer, look for it! Medium malty flavor, peaty smoke overtones, great head, and just a hint of wheat in a beer that one would expect to be much heavier than it is. Delightful!)

I put the beans back on the burner, added the chicken broth and turned up the heat. Meanwhile, I chopped the bacon into ¼” latitudinal strips. When the beans and broth neared a boil, I turned it back down to simmer and added the bacon. I then diced up the onion and added it to the remaining bacon grease. While the onions softened, I chopped up the carrots, adding them when the onions were nearly translucent.

Before the carrots became too soft, I dumped the contents of my skillet into the soup, shook in a little rosemary and sage, and retired to the couch for some writing and the rest of my beer. A half hour later, the kitchen smelled wonderful, but I wasn’t finished. Knowing I wouldn’t be turning the heat back up, I diced up a huge garlic clove, the equivalent of four or five average cloves (making me wonder what the hell they feed their garlic in Minnesota) and added it.

I went ahead and chopped up a fat handful of cilantro and left it on the counter with the limejuice for later, then gave the broth a taste. The bacon gave the soup a nice subtle saltiness, leaving no need for more, but I did add a modest dash of black pepper before getting back to my writing.

When the beans were soft enough to enjoy, I threw in the cilantro and limejuice—I’m guessing the equivalent of one juicy lime—and let it simmer for another 20 minutes or so. Served with a simple salad and a second beer, this soup was perfect for an early winterish day.

After supper and conversation, we ended the evening with a Caol Ila 12 Year Islay Single Malt Scotch that brought the smokiness of the bacon right back and complimented the Bancreagie perfectly.

From opening the bag of beans to serving, total cooking time was about 2 ½ hours, but actual work time probably wasn’t more than 30 minutes—an easy feat that impressed the hell out of my host. As the temps drop, give it a try. Your family and guests will love it and I’m pretty sure it will make great leftovers too!

Writing about that meal reminded me of a recipe I concocted about this time last year that I thought folks might enjoy.

Here is my Sweet Potato, Cheese, Whiskey Soup!

Dice a medium-large onion.

Saute the onion in a large soup pot with lots of butter, copious amounts of pressed garlic, and one chopped fennel until onions are translucent.

Chop up two humongous sweet potatoes and add them to the mix.

Fill nearly to the top of the potatoes with stock or water, increase heat to boil, then turn down a tad to simmer until potatoes are soft.

Reduce heat even farther.

Mash it all up.

Stir in chopped parsley and as much Sequatchie Cove Cumberland Cheese as you can afford.

Splash in enough Pritchard’s Tennessee Whiskey to sweeten it up.

Add a little more whiskey. 

Salt and pepper to taste. (Don’t over do it; it doesn’t need much.)

Simmer on very low heat for a half hour or so.

Lock the door, lower the shades, turn off the phone, pour yourself a dark beer into one of those tall, sexy glasses, and enjoy.

Here Comes the Goony Bird, and I say… It’s Alright!

The boat mustn’t have been more than sixteen feet long but from my perch in the bow, my father who sat on the rear bench, his right hand on the steering arm of the fat green Johnson Outboard with the Cadillac-like wings, could not have been farther away. The drone of the motor made conversation at anything less than a shout impossible and kept my morning song to myself.

The song, always the same, repeated over and over as the fiberglass tri-hull slid smoothly through the epidermis of the until now unspoiled morning water.

Little darlin’ it’s been a long, cold, lonely winter. Little darlin’ it feels like years since it’s been clear…

The air was still. A scattered mist hanging low and flat curled away behind us as we disrupted the calm. Pockets of warm air, unseen, seemingly random and without explanation, fleeted too quickly. My only harbor against the chill between, a heavy flannel buttoned to the neck. Tucked beneath my thigh, a narrow brimmed fishing hat chosen to look like the one my grandfather wore was of no help. My ears were cold.

Rounding the bend towards the Lee Pike Bridge a first glimpse of hope splintered through pines.

Here comes the sun, doo-dum-doo-doo. Here comes the sun, and I say, it’s alright…

Daddy eased back on the throttle and angled the boat towards the shore. I stopped singing and looked back at him. “Look,” he said. “A goony bird!” He was pointing ahead where a snag had fallen into the water. Up the log and almost hidden by shoreline vegetation, the goony bird was in charge like the turtles who were sure to take over the next shift in their own midday sun worship. Like a turtle on alert, the goony bird’s head was pulled in close to his shoulders, nearly belying the longish neck folded beneath. A slice of the morning sun, generously released by the pines (for this very purpose I believe), highlighted bright yellow legs.

As we glided too close for ease, the neck appeared and the goony leaned forward, lifted its wings and awkwardly lifted itself away from the shore with strong stiff beats and banked away from us. I smiled at Daddy. He smiled back.

“Let’s troll for a while.”

“Okay.”

The motor idled with just enough fuel to keep it running—a little faster than an ideal trolling speed, but the best it had to offer. I flipped a roostertail behind us, closed the bale on my reel and hooked the six-pound line with my finger. The spinner engaged and the rod bent as if under the load of a fish. Daddy cast a balsa minnow out the other side of the boat and we followed the lake’s marge around the contours of the land. Somewhere beneath us under fifteen feet of water the bank of Possum Creek, buried for thirty years by Chickamauga Dam, made the same shape.

“Did you see the crane back there?”

“Yeah,” I answered, smiling.

“I don’t know why they keep flying ahead of us. You’d think they would make one flight around us and land back where they were instead of flying forward a little bit, letting us catch up, then doing it again, and again.”

“And again, and again, and again.”

“They must be related to the goony bird.”

“Yeah, they’re goony alright.”

“You’re goony.”

“I guess I am.”

Countless were the mornings that began with a near-dawn tap on the shoulder, a quick quiet dress so as to not wake the rest of the family who would likely still be in bed upon our return a couple hours later.

Just Daddy and me on the lake we called a creek that would team with ski boats shortly after breakfast, but which for the precious time that bridged first light and first meal of the day, was ours.

It would be a few years before I would paddle a canoe with binoculars and bird guide on the same water, re-identifying the goony and the crane as green-backed and blue herons and feel pity on my father for his lack of knowledge.

But now, as I look through the back window of the log home lived in by Nina Leopold Bradley for thirty-plus years, and browse Nina’s meticulously kept phenological records of everything that bloomed, crawled, flew or otherwise resided in her yard on the edge of the prairie, I find myself slightly chilled by scientific Latin and field guide perfection, and longing for the days of goony birds and cranes.

There is great purpose and affect in these records—indications of changes over time reflecting results of climate change, habitat destruction or degradation, over-hunting, predator extirpation, and the introduction of invasive species. Records like these give proof and ammunition to scientists looking for answers and solutions. Without them, who knows what countless species might be lost and habitats destroyed.

But for the romantic, the artist, the impassioned observer who might not know a white-throated sparrow from a great egret, but for whom a morning call of “oh-sweet, Canada-Canada-Canada,” the evening aggregations of great long-legged, brilliantly bright birds flying to their roosts, and the early spring blooming of the three-leafed, three-petal blood-red flower inspire poetry and song, eases stress, and beckons as powerfully as to any Darwin, Latin terms and proper names would only sour.

Back in the days of fishing Possum Creek with Daddy, he had a habit when faced with uncertainty of saying “I’m just going to do something, even if it is wrong.” This sentiment frustrated a young boy trying to follow the tenets of his grandfather’s religion that left little room for wrong steps, much like the records of the biologist leave no space for incorrect identification.

I open up Nina’s once impeccable journal, now kept haphazardly since her death a few months ago, and begin a list of the birds I see: cardinals, downy woodpeckers, purple finches, goldfinches, titmice and blue jays at feeders, nuthatches, juncos, and white-throated sparrows gleaning beneath, a pileated woodpecker and waxwings on the edge of the woods, Canada geese and sandhill cranes flying overhead, and in the yard robins and… a little sparrow-looking bird with some chestnut on either side of the crown and a dark patch behind the eye. I want to make a guess, to write something down. Rufous-crowned sparrow perhaps? Seems I remember a sparrow by that name in Arizona. I look through the house for a field guide with no luck.

I hold my pen, staring at the page, then at the yard where the little bird was browsing seeds at the edge of the prairie a few moments ago. It is gone and I try to remember—clear breasted or streaked? Was there an eye streak or a patch? Wing bars? It must have been a rufous-crown, I think, looking back to the page.

Rising from my seat at the window, I walk to my bag on the couch, retrieve my personal journal, and sit down to write. October 13, 2011, Baraboo, Wisconsin, Nina’s house—entry number one: rufous-headed fluff bird. Record complete, I walk outside, scattering birds in all directions and head across the prairie towards the pond in search of the elusive goony… and I sing.

Little Darling. I feel the ice is slowly melting. Little Darling, it seems like years since it’s been clear. Hear comes the sun. Here comes the sun, and I say… It’s all right.

eddying out

I don’t see these friends often. Most of them I only visit with for about twenty-four hours each fall when we gather for an overnight paddle on the Wisconsin River between Baraboo and Madison, WI. All men, all paddling solo canoes, the 12-15 of us make quite a caravan on the river. We begin around 4:00 in the afternoon and most years we paddle through the sunset and continue for a while after dark until we come to a sandbar where we camp for the night. The next morning after breakfast, we continue down river for several hours before taking out and having a late lunch at a roadside restaurant or tavern.

Each year presents its challenges. Two years ago was the snowy trip with nighttime temps in the low teens and daytime highs that felt nearly the same. Due to some warm-weather paddlers on that trip, we cut it short. Last year, high, fast water forced camping into the woods and caused three folks to dump their boats and swim. This year the biggest hurdle was a ferocious upstream wind. Gusts were easily over thirty miles and hour and some estimated them to be forty. The river appeared to be flowing backwards! We ended up paddling upstream on the first day, then back down on the second. The jury is still out on which direction was more difficult.

For me, two of the highlights of the trip are the potluck meals we prepare evening and morning in camp. Some of the all-star entrees have included homemade tamales, beef and garden fresh veggies wrapped in foil with all the right seasonings and cooked over the fire, cocoa encrusted goat cheese on artisan crackers, stone-ground grits slow cooked in a cast iron Dutch oven, and homemade biscuits baked in a fireside reflector oven. My contribution this year was Italian sausage from Chattanooga’s own Link 41 which we grilled over the fire then diced and added to the grits.

Over breakfast, I thought about the food, the visits, and the stories and memories we share on these trips, and I realized what really makes them special. For this brief time, we form a community without phones or internet, without automobiles and fossil fuels, without television or radio, without calendars telling us where to be or clocks reminding us when. We take very few processed foods. We cook in camp, over a fire, and eat whenever it is ready. We do things slowly, deliberately, and intentionally; each contributes something and all receive a bounty. Most of the foods we eat can be traced back to personal gardens, local farmers markets, and CSA’s around the country.

Nothing about our time is fast—we travel by canoe, we cook over a fire, we tell stories, and when needed, we take care of each other. We reach our destination right on time because we are on no schedule; our food is delicious and nutritious because it is made from the best ingredients and prepared with love; our visits are priceless because they are without agenda; and nobody is disappointed because there are no expectations. We haul each other’s boats, set up each other’s tents, serve each other meals. We are a community because we choose to be.

When we came off the river and stopped at a little tavern for lunch this year, we were told that we would not be served. There were too many of us. “You will ruin our afternoon,” they said. We left confused by the notion that giving them business or that serving us could have such a ruinous affect. In the next town, the local tavern greeted us with a smile, treated us warmly, served us the way we had been serving each other all weekend. In the end, we were pleased to have been kicked out of the first place and took our time eating, sharing stories, visiting—extending our slowness as long as we could. When we handed our server a wad of cash—the biggest tip I have ever seen—as we left, I thought she might cry, and we felt great.

With the dawning of a new week, consider how you might slow down a bit. Set aside an evening to visit with a friend over preparation of a meal, then take your time eating. Take time to appreciate what you have and with whom you share it. It is amazing how, when we deliberately slow down, time seems to slow with us! We have a choice in the matter. We can get caught up in the current flowing around us and race on with the pack, or we can slow down, eddy out, pull up on a sand bar with friends, and watch the world go by for a while. Give the latter a try. You might be surprised what you find.

Eating on the Road

The sun is setting as I leave my hotel room for a bite to eat. After ten hours in the car today I was determined not to drive any more. I will walk to supper. It is pleasantly chilly—a perfect evening for hoofing it in Peoria, IL, but I’m hungry and tired. I don’t want to walk far. Up and down the street neon lights beckon passersby, hawking too-familiar bites—Panera, McDonald’s, Olive Garden… I needn’t go on. You know them all from every interstate exit, shopping mall, suburban strip, and sadly damn near every downtown in the United States. I am in Nowhere, America, and there is nowhere I care to dine within sight.

At home I eat veggies from the CSA and my own garden. I enjoy meat, eggs and milk from local farms, and honey from a local beekeeper. My sausage and cheese are made with local ingredients by local artisans, and my bread from a local baker. When I want fish, I catch it.

Now I stare down a neon lane wondering where I will find my food.

Behind the hotel is a Kroger. Without a kitchen my options there would be limited, but maybe in the deli, I think. The parking lot is packed with cars and I don’t look forward to the throngs of shoppers stocking up for the weekend. Inside, customers with carts piled high stand four and five deep at every register and down every aisle, more carts and drivers negotiate passage. I turn left and follow the perimeter of the store through the produce, past the bakery, to the deli.

This end of the Kroger is empty. From the deli counter I scan the bakery and fresh produce departments. Beyond the bread, a woman peruses wines. She is the only other customer in sight. While my hard salami and smoked gouda are being cut, weighed and wrapped by a young woman who is very confused by my lack of interest in having either sliced, I sort through a rack of fresh bread for a loaf of rosemary and olive oil loaf. Looking one part apologetic and one part confused, the deli worker hands my cuts across the counter and I head for the mustard aisle.

As soon as I round the corner away from all things fresh, a sea of cart jockeys engulfs me. I look back. The south end of the building is still empty. Moving deeper into the crowd, I am surrounded by carts overflowing with all manner of processed, canned and boxed foods.

I wind my way through the crowd until I find the mustard. Accustomed to mustard that is homemade by a dear friend, today I will settle for Jack Daniels brand. At least it is from Tennessee, I think.

As I reach the front of the store, I overhear an express checker turning back a fully loaded cart. I slip in as she turns away, obviously disappointed. The checker has me rung in a matter of seconds. “Please, no bag,” I say as he reaches behind him.

“You sure?”

“Save a plastic tree.”

“Huh? Oh, yeah. Have a good night.”

“Thanks. You too.”

A soft glow from a sun I guess must be over the Pacific warms the horizon as I walk back to the hotel. Sitting in the bed, I  turn on the television—a luxury I only allow on the road. I open my penknife and carve into supper. The sausage and cheese aren’t bad (the mustard makes them a little better)  and the bread is passable, but I miss home.

Morning Dilemma

At 7:00 in the morning, with whippoorwills calling, dew on the grass, hot coffee on my desk and ideas in my head, whether to go for a walk or to continue writing is no easy decision to make. I weigh my options.

Two days ago, about this same time of morning, a light rain falling, I walked the farm to assess the condition of the land post nine inches of tropical depression rain—a gift from the gulf delivered by a storm called “Lee.” On that morning, drainages dry for months surged heavy from overflowing ponds, low spots in the meadows held ankle-deep water, cattle troughs I had not filled in two days sat brimming and untouched. Four large bucks, not yet driven apart by the scents of ready does and still sporting velvet only the largest of the four had begun to scrape, bedded together in the thicket east of the far pond, and bolted at my approach to the shallow ravine and shelter amid the young willows. A kingfisher cackled and hovered over the pond. These things I remember as I sip my cup.

On my computer screen three new documents vie for attention as my thoughts skip and jump: Jeffersonian revolution, my beloved whippoorwills, and random thoughts about late summer crops await coalescence and molding into something resembling a farm newsletter… Precious are these moments when the ideas, plentiful, find words that flow into streams rare and coveted. How easy and luxurious to spend the morning at my little writing desk next to the open window!

The whippoorwill calls again, making my decision. I reach for my jeans, dig for wool not worn in months, and don my hat. Even through my sweater, a slight chill not felt for months greets me at the porch where I sit to lace my boots prompting a smile and silent thanks for the wise counsel of the mysterious, unseen birds.

John, the owner of the seventy acres I temporarily inhabit, having been away during the storm returned last night and joins me on the porch. Glad for his company (and for his early morning coffee making) I am also a little sad that this walk will include conversation certain to be at the same time stimulating and distracting. We begin our walk with a look at recently seeded gardens, now soaked, germinated and sprouting—greens, the great fall harbinger on the southern farm!

Through a paddock heavily rooted by pigs then heavily packed by two horses and a donkey we enter the woods to survey the two large oaks fallen victim to Lee and are pleased to find among the inoculated logs once leaning on the great trunk but now strewn about or pinned beneath the uprooted giant, a single shiitake. I cut free the harvest and pass it to my companion for safekeeping in his vest pocket. We express our gratitude that the trees missed the small cabin nearby and for the season’s firewood so conveniently presented for saw to section and maul to rend before the season turns.

Down the fencerow, a third victim either missed on my previous stroll or having fallen in the day since, rests on stretched but unbroken barbed wire—a gift from the neighbor’s forest to our fuel coffers—more to cut and split and with it fence repairs that must be done before moving the cattle. Noted. We move on.

As we emerge from the canopy at the dam below the shallow east pond, the gentle curve of a horn turning up from leaf litter beneath a young tree catches my attention. I point and John confirms. He put it there, and it is ready. I push aside low branches to retrieve the perfect skull and long horns of Connor, one of his bulls. I shoulder the weighty remains and we cross the dam, stopping to admire the high water and question how long it will last.

Following deer trails around the pond, we stop at the old coyote den. It is impossible for me to visit this part of the farm without a stop here, always with hope of fresh digging or tracks to signal the presence of a new pack. As with other recent examinations, the dirt is untouched and still littered with the curled shells from long-hatched and emerged turtles whose opportunistic mother took advantage of the already disturbed ground for her own purposes. I chuckle but keep to myself thoughts of coyote pups cocking their heads sideways at newborn sliders, as foreign as any alien, appearing at their threshold.

Above the pond, we cross a spongy marsh that last week felt as solid underfoot as the old horse paddock where our walk began. We look for water bubbling from the ground as we climb the other side of the shallow draw that feeds the pond but find none. I pause to shift my load from left shoulder to right, prompting the emergence of long stored information from my Yellowstone days decades ago, that the head of a large male bison can weigh up to three hundred pounds, and wonder the weight of these remains which grow heavier with every step.

It is now a short walk across a pasture with pauses to appreciate abundant emerging clover and discuss the problem of pine bark smoothed by scratching cattle and in need of protection, and back to the house.

I carry Connor to the woodpile and introduce him to Jenny before resting him there, next to his herd mate and matriarch—an homage to the stately highlanders whose lives we endeavored to honor with succulent pastures, shade and abundant fresh water, and whose deaths filled our freezers, plates and bellies—more for which to give thanks on this sacred morning.

Boots left on the porch, my writing time spent, it is time for a shower and a trip to town where after early commitments, if I am lucky, I might find a second cup and a re-tapping into the early morning inspiration abandoned in favor of my walk.

September Thanks

It is September in Tennessee and, unlike in so many of our northern states where the sumacs have been bright red for a couple weeks already, we are still in the dog days of summer. Temperatures are still routinely in the nineties and summer crops, after months of oppression, have mostly given in. If we didn’t take the time to can, tomatoes we were so recently deluged with are gone until spring. Any summer squash remaining in the field is filled with bugs. Basil stands tall, woody and full of seed. For one lacking vision around the corner, looking across a vegetable farm field in September can be a wholly depressing endeavor.

It is a hard time for farms. The farmer tries to milk all she can out of this growing season–stretching it farther than is rational, while sometimes putting fall crops in the ground earlier than she should in hopes of closing the gap between summer vegetables and winter greens.

It is no less difficult a season for the CSA member to trudge through. So recently, a bulging box created wonderful challenges–how to eat it all before the next one arrives, or how to find time in the week for canning, dehydrating, or freezing. Now we look into our lightened boxes and wonder how we will supplement this small yield.

This is the nature of things when relying on farming for sustenance. In his Sand County Almanac, Aldo Leopold posited a “spiritual danger in not owning a farm…the danger of supposing that breakfast comes from the grocery.” How fortunate are we who have the luxury of buying into a farm and having the great reward of someone else’s hard labors throughout the seasons with only a small investment up front! And how much more blessed are we to have the convenience of farmers’ markets with a variety of farmers’ specialties, and grocery stores with trucked in produce to fill in the gaps during these “tween” seasons!

Beginning the season, the CSA farmer projects a value on the weekly yield and tries to meet that week in and week out. There are the occasional boxes that nail it, but the reality is that through most of thee season, and especially when the season is in full swing and crops are bumper, our boxes are nearly always valued greater than the investment we made all those months ago. Unfortunately, it only stands to reason there will be weeks where the value drags behind. I think we can call that time, “September.”

If you question my assertions, do a little experiment next season. When you pick up your box, weigh and list everything in it, then go to the health food store (because you cannot directly compare the quality of the produce in your box with what you find at a conventional grocery store) and figure up what it would have cost you to buy it there. Add that up over the season and compare it to your initial investment. Or, trust me when I tell you that the return is well in your favor.

With that in mind, how many times when your box was full of five or six varieties of tomatoes, heavy with summer squash, or overflowing with kale and collards, did you take time to thank your farmer for giving you so much more than you paid for? I am sure some of you did, but I suspect many of us never really thought about it.

And now it is September and the boxes are thin, but the farmers are still working as hard as ever. So let’s thank them now–now when they must be wishing more than you and me there was more to harvest. Now after working so hard all season long to keep things going. Let’s remember that while we have been able to drive our air conditioned cars from our air conditioned jobs to pick up our food, they have been getting up at the crack of dawn all summer long to plant, prune, harvest, wash, sort and box our food, and they have been doing it without the luxury of climate control. They do it in the rain, in the oppressive heat, in the humidity, in spite of drought, insects, sweat, and fatigue.

Yes, folks, it is September, and I for one am very thankful to still be able to pick up a box of food every week despite all the forces working against that happening.