GREENSBORO -- Before
every Boston Tea Party, every spontaneous
uprising, there is always a Stamp Act — one last
straw, one final outrage that's too much to
swallow.
At J&S Farm Stand, John Marshal can no longer
count the last straws on both hands. Mad cow.
Bird flu. The spinach scare. Green onions. The
peanut butter recall. Genetically modified hog
feed that happened to get into corn chips.
And each day brings a fresh scandal about
Chinese exports, in which contaminated pet food
was the tip of the iceberg.
"People don't trust corporate America anymore,
but they trust mom and pop," says Marshal, whose
stand at Piedmont Triad Farmers Market stocks
organics from about 50 local producers — eggs,
milk, flour, chicken, lamb, even dog food.
"They want fruit that was ripened on the vine
and picked last night down the road. Not
harvested green or pink, shipped 1,000 miles and
then 'ripened' in a CO2 chamber."
A gradual trend toward natural, local food has
long been dubbed "slow food." Up close, it seems
a slight misnomer.
That's because one glimpse inside the Piedmont's
widening network of farmers who pick their
crops, truck them to local markets and sell them
before they are 24 hours off the vine, and one
word that hardly comes to mind is "slow."
The field, 5 p.m. Friday
A lunch break of fried okra wasn't until 3 this
afternoon. Work, on the other hand, started at
0-dark-30, before the sun peeked over the ridge
and climbed high enough to burn the mist off the
bottomland.
Friday is a "pick day" at Snow Creek Family
Organics, and that means everything else has to
wait. Everything but cabbage and cucumbers,
carrots, purple-tinged okra, butternut squash,
muskmelons and eggplants.
All organic, these are the stockpiles of the
homegrown revolution. And up in Stokes County,
five minutes from the Virginia line, Methura
Spradling, 31, is the advance guard — a field
marshal in dusty brown Crocs and a pony tail,
with just one battle plan today.
To pick.
If the wind whips up, he'll pick. If a soaking
rain comes and electricity crackles in the air,
he'll pick. There is no time to lose because
tomorrow is a market day.
Within 12 hours of harvest, Snow Creek's crops
will be loaded into Spradling's faded blue GMC
van and headed south to Greensboro.
Some will go to the Farmer's Curb Market, where
vendors will be massing at sunrise, and 3,000
people will have crowded into the old
barn-shaped building by the time the market
closes at noon. Other products will be unloaded
at East Carolina Organics warehouse in Pittsboro
to be distributed fresh to restaurants and
stores across the region.
And there is a third, little-known outlet
catching on by word of mouth: The pick of
Stradling's fields also goes to individual
customers who made a lump cash investment at the
start of the season, and now receive a weekly
delivery.
The arrangement is called "community supported
agriculture." But John Hendricks, a Greensboro
engineer who has bought a share of Spradling's
produce for three years, has a plainer name for
it.
"I just call him my farmer because,
theoretically, that's what he is," says
Hendricks, who picks up a $25 bushel of assorted
produce each week at Deep Roots co-op, then
splits that three ways with friends. "It's very
affordable. And it's good to have that personal
connection with someone who's growing your
food."
Meet the new face of North Carolina farmers, and
their customers. It's an intriguing, complex
portrait.
Part of it is familiar. The ox-drawn plow
Methura Spradling's brother-in-law uses to turn
hard soil under. The spring freezes that shrivel
the buds and summer droughts that wither the
vegetables. Heirloom seeds and gnarly, ugly
fruit more flavorful than the supermarket
version.
But it's also a face we haven't seen before.
Weekly e-mail alerts announce what's ripe and
what time to get it. Intricate delivery networks
run on retreads and 16-hour days.
At heart, it's a battle of time and distance —
an awareness that something is on the brink of
perishing. Something bigger than a van full of
watermelons.
As a drive down many a two-lane road attests,
North Carolina leads the nation in loss of
farmland to development. Meanwhile, food sources
are concentrated in the hands of larger, more
distant farms.
Slow food proponents argue that local farms
offer sustenance not only for the body, but the
community as well.
"This is for future generations," Spradling
says, surveying the field where his work is done
— until he rises at 5:30 a.m., bathes, loads the
van and heads to market. "I don't want to leave
behind a bigger problem than the one I found."
The market, 8 a.m. Saturday
A chef chooses produce the way an artist chooses
colors. Decisively. Quickly.
Poker-faced behind sunglasses, Beth Kizhnerman
will walk the length of both outdoor pavilions
at the Piedmont Triad Farmers Market before
buying so much as a cherry tomato. Then, she
walks it again.
Trained in France, she apprenticed in food prep,
spending 12 hours at a stretch on a single task
— peeling garlic, say, or separating the red
mesclun leaves from the green ones. Giving the
owner of Bistro Sofia and Smith Street Diner
what you might call a practiced eye.
"They're hard as rocks," she says of a cart of
imported peaches, not needing to feel them. A
peck of wrinkled chili peppers: "They're
hydrating. They've been out too long."
But the watercress from Mount Airy: "Perfect."
Randolph County cantaloupe: "Oh, that's good." A
Carthage-grown canning tomato she holds to her
nose, smelling the stem, then scooping up a box
for $6.
"It smells like dirt. It smells like a tomato,"
she says as she loads the diner-bound carton
into the trunk of her Prius. "A supplier would
charge $15."
But as with any household, it's a delicate
balance. Even at her French-style bistro, with
linen tablecloths and a wine list, Kizhnerman
has to keep within a budget to stay afloat: Food
is a third of her costs.
Organic local lamb is a cut above, but out of a
small, independent restaurant's range. The local
organic dairy has excellent products, but the
bistro is no longer on its delivery route.
Making that connection is hit-or-miss, and it's
not every day that a chef on a restaurant
schedule can scout bargains.
Likewise for households, nothing can compete
with the convenience of a 24-hour supermarket.
Still, local farmers are little by little making
up the difference in quality and price. In
season, for example, organic tomatoes sell for
$2 and $3 a pound, less than they fetch at chain
grocery stores.
And it's a better deal for the farmer: Even
though roadside stand prices are cheap, farmers
get to keep what they take in. Selling to
wholesalers, in contrast, farmers get pennies on
the pound, and the wholesaler, the packager and
the retailer get the profit.
A case in point is Randy Bettini, a slow-food
farmer who supplies lettuce and greens to Bistro
Sofia in both summer and hothouse winter months.
A part-time farmer specializing in shiitake
mushrooms, Bettini waits for customers to come
to him at the farm stand he mans each afternoon
off Summit Avenue near Bryan Park.
"I don't have to buy all those chemical
fertilizers and pesticides, so I can afford to
sell zucchini for 50 cents a pound," Bettini
says. "Pick it at its ripest point, cook it and
eat it. It doesn't get simpler than that."
The kitchen, 5 p.m. Saturday
There's a lull before the dinner hour, a pause
between the all-day chopping and grinding and
trimming, and the moment the gas range at Bistro
Sofia fires up again.
Nothing is left to chance, and "simple" is
easier said than done. For instance, tonight's
special: "Flounder in papillote with a julienne
of summer vegetables, pearl pasta and Bistro
garden herb butter."
The fish is line caught, instead of trapped in
big nets. The difference? Less trauma, no long
rigor mortis. It filets easily. It tastes
better.
Earlier, sous chef Steven Tholkes ducked out
back to snip thyme, basil and tarragon from the
garden. In a week or so, the tomatoes will be
red — and on the menu.
Tholkes went to the American Culinary Institute.
He learned the chemistry of it.
He can buy a bag of chanterelle mushrooms from
who knows where, reconstitute them in hot water
and add stock to make them taste the way they
should. Or he can buy them from 100 miles up the
road, sauté them in butter and get that
incredible flavor.
It is all in a sunset-to-sunset journey. From
the afternoon when Methura Spradling harvests
his crop, to the dewy morning Beth Kizhnerman
sees the sweet, clean Yukon Golds at the market,
to the evening when sous chef Steven Tholkes
carefully arranges the rack of lamb and potatoes
"daupinois" on the plate, it all leads up to one
moment.
That's the moment Barbara Davis, sitting at her
regular table near the bar, unrolls her napkin
and picks up a fork.
She was a chef in Napa Valley, and makes a
living writing today. But at times, there are no
words. Rack of lamb is one of those times.
"That lamb — so simple," Davis says, then pauses
to describe the potatoes — a casserole of
Gruyere cheese from Virginia, local shallots, a
pinch of nutmeg. "Oh, my God, those potatoes
were good."
Contact Lorraine Ahearn at 373-7334 or
lahearn@news-record.com *reprinted without permission |
