Thoughts From the River, A story by Jim Pfitzer

Thoughts From the River

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 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 without question 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 trip 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 and that serving someone could have such an affect. We went somewhere else and were greeted with a smile, treated warmly, served lovingly. We were all 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.

When you pick up your box of food this week, consider how you might slow down a bit in your enjoyment. Set aside an evening to visit with a friend over preparation of a meal, then take your time eating. Take the 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.

Pig Roast 2011, A story by Jim Pfitzer

Pig Roast 2011

Or, Free Beer For the Children

(No, the children don’t get the beer, the children just get the benefits of the beer.)

Okay, I can see that this headline is not going well… just read the article!

In his book Ravens In Winter Bernd Heinrich wrote, “There is no greater pleasure than eating roasted moose while sitting under a spruce and contemplating ravens.” I often quote Heinrich to express my delight in the simple, quiet, solo times, and to remind myself how important those experiences are. But my friends will tell you that I also often repeat my own words: “There is a reason there are more than one of us on the planet,” and let’s face it, sometimes we need to be out in the open, eating our meat in public, conversing with old friends, meeting new ones, and scaring away the ravens with great music. I can think of no greater reason for there being more than one of us on the planet than The Crabtree Farms Pig Roast 2011.

This year’s roast promises to be loads of fun and delicious with music from The Dismembered Tennesseans and The New Binkley Brothers, healthy local food prepared by Greenlife Grocery, and of course mounds of slow-roasted BBQ! To wash it all down and help get your feet shuffling to all that great music, Chattanooga Brewing Company is throwing in Free Beer! And of course for the vegetarians, vegans, pigaphobes, Californians, and Martians there will be plenty of non-pig food on hand as well.

And for those who fancy themselves to be BBQ chefs, there will be a Hittin’ the Sauce Contest! Amateurs and professionals, backyard saucers, restaurateurs, individuals, and teams will be competing to win fabulous prizes including a feature in the Chattanooga Times Free Press. Sauces will be judged in a blind taste test by those in attendance at the Pig Roast. In other words, you get to decide the winners! The deadline for entering your sauce has passed, but now is the time to scope the competition and begin working on your own recipe for next year!

As easy as you may be enticed by music, food, beer, and sauce to buy a dozen tickets to the roast for you and all your cousins, there is a more important reason to come out to the farm next weekend: your ticket purchase supports Crabtree’s much-needed Community Education Programs and Services. Throughout the school year, children visit the farm, often getting their first ever, genuine farm experience. At Crabtree they might learn where their food comes from or how to make a salad. They may get to see how mushrooms grow or hear an inspiring farm story. Or make a farm journal. Or do a farm-related craft project. They might even get to pick their own blackberries! And none of that can happen without raising some funds, so buy your ticket now!

The Pig Roast kicks off at 6pm on October 8th.
Supper is from 7:15-8:30pm
The Roast will Rock ’til Dark!

Click here to purchase tickets online.

A visit from one of Crabtree Farms’ neighbors

Robert Neal remembers growing up near the property where Crabtree Farms is now located. Now 83 years old, he still lives right next door to the house he was born in, and his backyard runs right into the farm. He visited us for the first time today since Crabtree opened over 10 years ago.

Mr. Neal told us about going down to the creek next to the farm and hunting for crayfish, and hunting rabbits where our Shiitake mushroom logs are now. He also recounted stories about the people who lived and worked here ago, and how there were even horses that grazed here. It was fascinating to hear his stories and about the history of the land we grow on! We are very honored that he stopped by!

September Thanks, A story by Jim Pfitzer

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.

Build It and They Will Come, A story by Jim Pfitzer

A year-and-a-half ago Benwood Foundation, through its newly formed Gaining Ground project, awarded a number of grants to local farms, farmers, and market as a first step in supporting local food economy. One of the grant recipients was a newly-formed cooperative hoping to find ways they could share resources to meet needs too great for one small farm alone. One of the issues on the table then and now, is the need for a local USDA processing facility for poultry. This week I sat down with Dave Waters of River Ridge Farm to find out how he manages to provide chicken at local markets in spite of this great need.

Build It and They Will Come

When Dave Waters of River Ridge Farm in Ten Mile, Tennessee needed to process some chickens recently, he rose at three o-clock in the morning and drove nearly 200 miles to Bowling Green, Kentucky. When he arrived at the USDA approved, family-owned facility he assisted in the work, and by the time the chickens were processed and packaged, Waters had been working for twenty hours with a return drive still ahead. When he finally made it to bed in the wee hours of the morning, he could only sleep three hours before getting up to milk the cows. He drives that far because there is no USDA inspected chicken processing plant any closer.

Dave and Verlinda Waters With a Few of Their Laying Hens

I asked Waters why he would put up with such grueling hours every few weeks. After all, he doesn’t depend on the few chickens he raises to make his living. “I’m crazy,” he said at first, only half jokingly, before following up with, “I want to get clean food to people, and some folks want chickens.”

When Waters speaks of “clean” chickens, he means not only birds raised on organic feed, but pastured birds that are able to forage and hunt insects, birds that aren’t raised in packed warehouses like the organic chicken you find at “health food” stores like Whole Foods and Earth Faire.

Federal laws allow for farms processing fewer than 10,000 birds a year to slaughter and package them on the farm for sale to restaurants and individuals, but Waters questions what farmers have the time and resources to undertake such an endeavor, not to mention that some folks simply get squeamish about that kind of work. Plus, it would take him about a half hour to take one bird from pasture to refrigerator doing it himself and he raises around 350 birds at a time. Pretty easy math puts that total process at about 175 man-hours not including the setup and clean up involved. So Waters makes the eight-hour round trip drive with twelve hours of hard slaughterhouse work in between.

Pitching in saves Waters a little money, keeping the added transportation cost down to two dollars per bird passed on to consumers. Of course the man who does this “to bring clean food to people” does not pass on the cost of his own labor.

He is convinced, however, that if there were a local USDA facility, then more farmers and homesteaders would raise broiler chickens. He believes that the demand is there, that if folks could raise chickens the way they want to and have a place nearby where they can drop them off alive one day, and pick them up the next ready for the market, they would.

With a local processor says Waters, “We could get local chicken in Earth Faire, Whole Foods, and other markets” that currently truck in less responsibly raised chickens from around the country, and bring better food to more people.

Waters says that when he first started making the run to Bowling Green, he thought that eventually things might get easier, that maybe someone nearby would step up to open a USDA certified plant. Waters’ hopes haven’t panned out yet, but he hasn’t given up hope and for now he keeps on plugging along.

I also chatted with Butch Tolley of the Cooperative of Chattanooga Area Sustainable Farmers. Until recently, the farmers co-op was open only to farmers for membership, but according to Tolley, they are now asking non-farmers to join as supporting members. Memberships are inexpensive and support the efforts of these local farms as they work to better serve our community. If you are interested in becoming a member, or are simply curious about what they are up to, please visit their new web site at: www.chattanoogasustainablefarmers.com. You can also contact Butch directly at butch@cloverwreath.com.