The Dirty Way

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. . .

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 4×4 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.

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. Continue Reading »

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.

In case some of you were wondering why a pair of urban intellectuals such as ourselves ever became interested in farming, I have found a wonderful visual aid. The agricultural publication Dairy Today has, for the duration of its time in print, subscribed to the norm in its appearance. Most agricultural publications, or really any “blue collar” interest magazine wears a nondescript face:


In this cover from 2005 we see a very straightforward design. No bells, no whistles. Really no design whatsoever. There are a few choice words on the cover that might, or might not entice you to buy this magazine. If you did want it, your reasoning would be purely cerebral. The image chosen is really what gets me: the dirty cows and insane perspective of filthy face-first bovine really peaks interest in the field of dairying, doesn’t it. I mean, come on! He looks like he’s ready keel over and die in a wasteland of mud and stink. Who’s for ice cream?! This kind of cover represents the standard of farming magazines, and to a large extent, farming in general. Ask the average person what farming is, ask what it looks like, what kind of work it is, and this is what you’ll hear: hard, drudgery, dirty, laborious, and gruelling with little reward. Indeed. And most farmers will tell you that that is not far from reality. There is, in farming, a kind of glorification of a lifestyle of self-induced poverty and satisfaction with the mediocre. I say self-induced because I do not believe that poverty and mediocrity are inherent traits of agriculture. Someone chose the image on Dairy Today, someone chose that typeface and those colours, someone chose to make it look so uninviting you would have to be desperate to want to take any interest in it. Worse still, this magazine’s appearance is either appealing enough or (more likely) totally irrelevant to the farmers who keep the magazine in publication. Ok, fine, maybe the articles are really good and that’s the attraction. But the point here is not the content of the magazine but rather, the content of an image presented of a dying and essential practice. The assumption of this cover is that one would not actively choose to farm unless it was the only option presented to you, or at best, there was some familial link that you take pride in. The point is that farmers are content to think of their profession as lowly. There is no desire to make it attractive, no desire to make it interesting to the average person, who, by the way, cannot live, that is live: breathe, work, play, make art, write songs, save lives, study aerodynamics or medicine, or literature, invent calculus and do all manner of worldly pursuits without farmers and farming. And farmers think of themselves as lowly, mediocre, humble? Can you imagine the panic if farmers were to go on strike? And you thought having to go without fresh episodes of SNL or Lost is rough. How can we ask people in this modern world, who take almost all of their food, sustenance, and means of survival for granted, to take pause and consider where their food came from and how it tastes when the farmers take themselves for granted?

Well, it seems that Dairy Today has caught on:


Hello, and welcome to the 21st century. Welcome to a world that has the ability to appreciate art and aesthetics, which, by the way, farming has a stake in. Look at this cow! She’s beautiful, she’s got personality, she’s got her tongue in her nose! And check out that typeface and setting. Wow. I love that the dot on the I of Dairy is the dot in the dot com of the website. How very edgy. Hell, I would pick up this magazine regardless of the articles. What do you see in this cover? Whimsy, maybe. There’s something about the baby blue here with the cow and the big Dairy at the top that makes me think ice cream cone. Plainly, this cover is sexy. It plays on eros: our desires. I desire this cow. I desire dairy products. I desire food. I desire to slip off the cover of this magazine and see just what’s inside. And hopefully, just maybe, I desire to look under the skirt of agriculture and see just where and how food is made. I mean, how different is it to ask how babies are made? Everything in agriculture is sexy. Come on, udders? How do you think those udders got so big and full of milk? Well, little Johnny, when a mommy cow and a daddy cow love each other very much. . . you catch my drift? Farming is all about reproduction, regeneration, and recreation. There is such joy in being a party to that process, such joy in being in a position to assist in and engender that process. Farming is not inherently unattractive, it is inherently attractive. This new cover is more telling of what farming actually is than the old one. And why not bring the inherent sexiness of farming into the bright light of day? We’ve been doing it with cooking for a good while now. Hell, my copy of Nigella Lawson’s cookbook Forever Summer depicts the author, beautiful and busty offering up a gorgeous clutch of round, red, ripe tomatoes. Food, not sexy? Huh? If there is an art of cooking and an art of eating, God Almighty, why not an art of farming? Look at that tongue!

And so, I return to my question. Why would a pair of urban intellectuals want to go into farming? It’s self-evident.

For more on Dairy Today’s new look and an awesome video of how to art direct a cow, check it out.

The other day I moved a pig waterer. I moved this pig waterer all by myself. Let me elaborate: a pig waterer is a large, pill-shaped barrel with a box of valves that, like a toilet tank, is capable of refilling as it empties to ensure a constantly full tank. However, because swine use this device it takes on a whole new level of nasty that no human-used toilet could possibly hope to achieve. Pigs like to wallow. They like to wallow where there is water because water makes for mud. Pigs go hand and hand with mud. Perhaps the most unfortunate aspect of a pig is its proclivity to relieve itself with reckless abandon and total disregard for the other uses of an area. You see where I’m going with this? If you’ve never smelled swine urine before, try soaking a loaf of mouldy bread in ammonia and spreading Roquefort all over it. Let it sit and continue to funcktify outdoors for several weeks, and you start get the idea. And, of course, to top it off, somehow a large quantity of wallow slop managed to find its way into this waterer, making it absurdly heavy. So, there I am, standing in a pig wallow, holding my breath away from the ammonia that so wants to burn my lungs, contemplating why in the hell I am doing this. The pigs already have another waterer in their new field. It functions perfectly. It satisfies their needs. Why, oh why, am I here? And thus, I ponder all the oddities, and shall we say, idiosyncracity of this farm.

A few days prior to this messy situation, I had a kind of breakdown of frustration. In that moment, I felt like all the things I have thus-far learned in my time here, the list of what not to do towered over all other knowledge gained. I was frustrated by my feeling that the whole operation seemed to magically run on nothing more than a wing and a prayer. Yes, I was having an emotional freak-out, but I knew there was truth in my feelings. Don’t mistake me: what the Ager’s have done is amazing; they run a sound, ethical, and functional business, but  organisation and systemisation of regular tasks is much needed. I often find myself walking around being very critical of my surroundings, which is not a healthy or happy place to be.

I have found among farmers, as well as business owners in general, there is limited incentive to change as long as what’s in place works, however inefficiently. Please, don’t misunderstand; this is not an attack on the farm or it’s infrastructure. I remind myself that this is not my farm. By this, I mean that I do not pass judgement on the Ager’s operation. I still have a lot to learn; what they are doing works for them and there are many lessons in their experience. Every farmer finds for themselves the ways that work for the particular circumstances on their farm. That is, in essence, what farming is all about. But one of these lessons is a lesson I am teaching myself. These moments of frustration are serving as a frame for creating my own philosophy and attitude towards farming.

Every day, I find myself gravitating towards an attitude of farming akin to that of Masanobu Fukuoka, what he calls the “do nothing” way of farming. The idea is the observation of natural systems as the text by which a farmer learns to create and nurture these systems so that nature does most of the work. Such a framework can take so much of the “drudgery” out of farming. One thing I am learning from my frustration, as well as from readings (both historical and current) and conversations among other farmers, is that the reputation for drudgery that farming has is the result of a lack of innovative thinking, observation, and implementation of self-sustaining systems. In short, the prevailing attitude of many farmers is that if it works, do it, and don’t change it. I say different. I say always try to make it better, make it easier, make less work for yourself, make the land more healthy, more productive. Some farmers would say that there’s a line between practicality and idealism in farming. I also disagree. I believe that the two can go hand and hand. In order for a system to be ideal, it also has to be practical. There are ways to do this and it is imperative as a new generation of farmers that we do do this. We must make the innovation of self-sustaining systems a priority. It is no wonder that no one wants to farm. We are so culturally blessed in this era; life presents so many amazing opportunities: time for art, travel, and leisure. If we are to continue to have good food in future generations, we must allow the farmers time and space for pleasure. The only way to do this is to cease the “micromanaging” of our food-systems, from on the molecular level of industrial farming all the way to the most organic and sustainable of farms. I want to work to find the ways that are easy, but no less effective. They are there.

So, after a few minutes contemplation and the surrender to the fact that “this is not my farm” I heaved the pig waterer out of the wallow, emptied it of sludge, and with every muscle in my body lifted it three feet in the air onto the truck bed and, with a pleased sense of accomplishment, drove it to the new pig field, where I couldn’t hook it up because there is no system for hooking up waterers. Each one has a different set of hoses, joints, and valves that is a new lesson in plumbing every time one is set up. And there I was, again frustrated, but ready to learn.

As with so many things that have been worthwhile in my life, there is a certain love-hate relationship that develops. This farm is no exception, which is encouraging.
I think the part I hate is the part that pushes me, and what I love is the feeling of when I push through. I get frustrated, then I put on my big-girl-panties and do it anyway. I think this is one of the best lessons of what farming is, no matter how many systems you have, no matter how easy and productive you could possibly make it, there is a push and a pull, a love and a hate, a mix of frustration and ease. It is a whole new kind of job satisfaction. Here, I am learning, for me, what farming is through what, for me, farming is not.

It has occurred to me recently, that of all the things that happen on this farm, the pigs seem to attract the most attention. Rarely do we ever discus how the cows did something crazy, or how the sheep kept us busy chasing them for hours. No, it’s all about the pigs. Pigs are prima-donnas. A case in point: yesterday evening, after a long day of fence-work, Kirley and I went to move the pigs. Sadly, a young pig had died in the back of one of the pig-houses. Less sad and more disgusting, it had not died recently. It’s crusty, wrinkly skin held what might have been jell-o squishing inside its bloated body. Need I bother to describe the smell? Ikk. Kirley, who was far braver than I (who wanted to go get a shovel and a wheel barrow), borrowed my gloves, grabbed onto its four feet, and carried it through the pig field and tossed it into a ravine. I would like to take this moment to let everyone out there know that Erin Kirley is amazing. After that, the two of us took the evening off early. I tossed my gloves into the washer with lots of bleach, cooked and ate pork ribs (the very recipe below), and thought to myself: it wouldn’t be worth it if they didn’t taste so damn good.

I’m a fan of ribs, low-country mustard, high-country tomato, I just love slow cooked meat infused with hot, vinegary flavour. Ribs are wonderful for a July 4th picnic, and are a destination for my husband and his family every summer at Sweatman’s Barbecue in South Carolina. There’s something about the spiciness of ribs that intensifies the summertime; like somehow, the utter embrace of heat on top of heat makes the southern summer more sultry than stifling. But in the cold winter months, I crave a different kind of heat; something deeply warming rather than sweat-inducing. These ribs are my answer to this urge.

Note: I’m generally a big proponent of what a marinade can do for meat, but I don’t always have the time. Then again, ribs aren’t exactly a fast-food, but to allow for spontaneity, you can drop the ribs in the marinade for an hour or two before you are ready to cook it, just give it a roast in the marinade alone for the first half-hour of cooking.

For the marinade:
3-4 lbs pork spare ribs
1 cup apple cider or juice (not apple juice that’s more sugar than apple, but the real stuff)
1/2 cup dark molasses
1 tbs chilli powder
3-4 cloves garlic, crushed
1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
2 tsp salt
2 tsp pepper
dash of Tabasco, or a couple of slivered hot peppers, if they’re handy

For the braising sauce:
1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
1/4 cup soy sauce
4 tbs of your favourite Worcestershire sauce
4 tbs dark molasses
1 tbs ground ginger
2 tbs ground cinnamon
2 tbs ground dry English mustard
1 tbs chilli powder
1 lemon, plus juice
1 tsp coriander seeds
1 tbs bourbon or whisky (I use Southern Comfort or Maker’s Mark)

Make small incisions on both sides of the ribs and put the bits of crushed garlic inside them. Mix all the other ingredients for the marinade together and rub into the meat. Let sit overnight, or for a couple of hours (see note). Bring meat to room temperature and drop it with all the marinade dregs into your roasting tin. Then mix together all the ingredients for braising sauce, and brush onto both sides of the meat. Roast for about 2 1/2 hours at 350 degrees. If you have more time, turn the temperature down to 250 and give it another hour or so. The longer the meat cooks, the more tender it will be. You could cook it for 6 or 8 hours at around 200 degrees, but despite my inner slow-foodie, practicality rears it’s head. About every 20 to 30 minutes brush meat with the braising sauce. After the first hour of cooking, turn the meat and roast the other side, remembering to faithfully brush this side as well.

Allow to sit for a few minutes before cutting and serving. Serves 4, generously.

Stuffed shells were a staple of my childhood. I spent many hours helping my mother stuff the gooey, spinachy ricotta mixture into pasta shells. She always covered hers in her amazing, home-made tomato sauce that would infuse itself, after a day or two, into the ribs of the pasta in a way that is still miraculous to me. We would have them year-round, it was an ordinary dish in our house, and yet always a special treat. This take on stuffed shells is quite different, but no less comforting. It’s rather heavier, I certainly wouldn’t have it in the summer as the rich béchamel evokes a queasiness in just the thought of August heat. Nutmeg is wonderful in anything creamy: it lends the shells a warming, earthy quality that is perfect for a cold, blustery evening.

24 oz fresh Ricotta
1 lb fresh spinach, washed in two changes of salted water
2 eggs
11/2 tsp salt
16 oz large shell pasta
1 1/2 cup whole milk
1 cup heavy cream
1/4 cup butter
1/4 cup flour
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1/2 cup grated Fontana cheese
generous pinch fresh grated nutmeg
salt and pepper to taste

Cook the shells in salted water until al dente, about 5 minutes. Mix the ricotta, eggs, and salt in a mixing bowl. Chop and add the spinach and mix well. Set aside and make the béchamel. Melt the butter in a saucepan, add the milk and cream, then whisk in the flour, a little salt, the nutmeg, and the grated cheeses. Allow to bubble gently but not boil. Add more flour or milk to achieve the desired consistency. Your béchamel should not taste floury.
Generously stuff each cooked shell with the ricotta mixture and snug up in your 9×9 baking pan. Pour the béchamel over the shells and pop in the oven for 25 to 35 minutes, until golden and bubbling.

Allow to sit for 15 minutes before serving, or make the day before; it’s better after it’s sat overnight. Serves 4-6.

You hear it over and over that pigs are the most intelligent farm animals. People often say pigs are smarter than dogs. Intelligence comes in a lot of varieties, however, and the pig’s greatest talent is for stubbornness. Now, I’m not just slandering the species because of my constant frustration with escaping swine, though they have a Houdini-like proclivity for moving through electric fences. The stubbornness of a pig extends even beyond its own best interests. You can open a gate, sixteen feet wide, and the pig will still try to root up and ram through the fence two feet to the right of the gate. It prefers to move in a straight line, obstacles be damned.

But unfortunately, even as a member of the species that claims to be wisest of the wise, I can’t claim that we are above such singlemindedness. Names and faces have been changed to protect the innocent: Continue Reading »