I spent the weekend in Banner Elk, not far from Boone at Maverick Farm. I was there as a participant in CIRA’s Sustainable Development and Poverty Reduction working meetings on building local food systems. We didn’t carpool in my biodiesel wagon–the ideal carpool caddy for a sustainable develop road trip–because I’m selling it to pay off no-insurrance health bills; we have to be proud of our lived absurdities. CIRA is a collaborative project between the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and community activists in three regions across the state: the Tillery area, the South East, and the Highlands. That’s all a mounthful, so I’ll just share the outside edges of the meeting . . .
Crashing at the farm was offered to all the grad students and I’m still giddy from kickin it in the kitchen of Tom and Alice Brooke and Hillary’s homeplace. Sweet farm, sweet house, and serious foodie hipsters. Nice. We got to the farm Friday night and Hillary and Tom were making the world’s largest bowl of potato salad–their own potatoes, own shallots and garlic–for the local lunch provided at the meeting on Sat. But Friday night, we ate Tom’s spicy blackbean soup and a little raw milk cheese from the piedmont, drank an assortment of NC wines, and finally made ourselves crash, in our own bedrooms, around 12:30.
Saturday was an early morning and the day was a mix of update and ponderings on potential projects–most inspirational was Hillary’s work with BLAST, a youth leadership project by The Food Project folks, and most concrete seemed the local food assesment being driven by the Blue Ridge Women in Agriculture. Now that they’ve traveled to all the participating regions, CIRA participants will reconvene in July to put some live projects together. At the close of the meeting, the whole CIRA crew caravaned off to the ASU student farm where Christoff den Biggelaar has built some serious student devotion from the stories I hear. Christoff is working in Madagascar at present, so Tamara MacNaughton gave us a magnetic tour through permaculture, french intensive, agro-forestry, passive greenhouse, wetlands, and more. Our collective then went to Maverick Farm for tour two, including the huge passive solar green house being built on work-exchange by Holly and Rob. Most of the CIRA folks dispersed after a spirited talk about the impact of development, race, and class on small farmers, locally and everywhere.
Alice Brooke radiates farmer energy and ingenuity, coordinating conferences and pursuing her PhD while writing grants for energy projects on the farm. Tom, on top of farming and cooking, writes freelance and is on staff for Gristmill. Hillary is a student at Warren Wilson and the rock-star who taught all of the the true ins and outs of farming. The three of them–plus a few other cohorts–sell to resturants, support a CSA, and are building an Farmer Incubator and Growers program, ala FIG. As on every small farm you know, they keep it running on a shoestring.
The shift between the CIRA discussion on the deck over looking the creek and the early arrivals for a party that night was seemless. The party was a fundraiser for Lula, Holly’s dog, who was injured in a hit and run by a construction truck barreling up the gravel road to the 250 house development up the hill. Lula is an inspiration and a story on her own, but that’s another blog . . . A keg of NC brewed Duck Rabbit was wheeled in and potluck dishes started appearing on the kitchen table. Every other person walking down the drive carried an instrument, and some of the best old time I’ve heard in ages went on til 5am, in as many as four different circles at one point. The farm was a hot-bed of music when Alice Brooke and Hillary’s parents ran the farm, and some of those original friends were present. The kids got music in the house and food in the fields, i.e. are they are keeping traditions alive.
Not just alive, growing . . .
In the morning while Dana, my friend and another grad student who’s been a participant in CIRA since its origins three years ago with Dottie Holland, and I washed dishes, Holly and I talked sprouts and homemade dog food. Lingering musicians who had crashed in corners of the house kept appearing, so Tom whipped up a potato salad frittata (Mavarick Farm chickens, of course) and Holy made spelt biscuits. Alice Brooke let me hitch a ride back to the flat lands with her, and we spent the ride laughing at how hard the car shook at certain rpms, and talking about Chatham Marketplace in Pittsboro, NC (ala home) and the Park Slope Brooklyn co-op on the way.
And I’m now waiting for Tom’s kiefer mother to grow some babies, so he can pass one on to me.
