Tag Archives: farming

Nature as Measure: What’s the future of farming?

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Wes Jackson, Wendell Berry, Mark Bittman at Cooper Union
Wes Jackson, Wendell Berry and Mark Bittman at Cooper Union

Tonight, some of the biggest names in the sustainable food movement gathered in the Great Hall at Cooper Union. The occasion? “Nature as Measure,” a talk on agriculture and the future of farming presented by the Land Institute and the Berry Center.

If I had to choose a single cookbook for today’s aspiring home chefs, it would be Mark Bittman‘s How to Cook Everything. He first became nationally known through his NYT column “The Minimalist,” which cut through the confusion to teach healthy, painless home cooking. I used to describe Bittman as my generation’s Julia Child, but he has since moved on to bigger and bolder topics: influencing national food policy. I don’t always agree with his pronouncements, but aside from perhaps Michael Pollan, no other American food writer is as well-loved and widely-read as Mark Bittman.

While Bittman is a relatively recent addition to the food politics scene, Wendell Berry is the elder farmer-poet-statesman. If I were to search my inbox for food-related signature quotes, I’m fairly certain that Berry’s soundbites would be the most frequently used. I also have a soft spot for Berry because he hails from my home state of Kentucky. (Bet you didn’t know that I’m a Southern belle!) Berry has been writing and thinking about agriculture for decades now, and channels the oratorical elegance of Lincoln (another KY native) in many of his thoughts:

“The care of the Earth is our most ancient and most worthy, and after all our most pleasing responsibility. To cherish what remains of it and to foster its renewal is our only hope.”

“Not luxury or extravagance for a few, but modest, decent, sustainable prosperity for many.”

And of course, the simple but profound sentence that launched Michael Pollan’s food journey:

“Eating is an agricultural act.”
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Forty North Oyster Farm: Surviving and Thriving Post-Hurricane Sandy

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In the fall of 2012, Forty North Oyster Farm had just begun planting their first crop of oysters. Mere days later, Hurricane Sandy hit the Eastern seaboard, destroying coastal towns and remaking the shoreline. “Of the 300 or so houses in Mantoloking, 50 or 60 of them were missing after Sandy,” said founder and farmer Matt Gregg. “We were cleaning up plastic and debris for months, and it was incredible how the contents of people’s lives were scattered all across the bay.”

One year later, the farm has certainly gone through growing pains but is stronger than ever after the disaster. Matt is expecting his first commercial oyster crop to go to market next spring, and looks forward to sharing his oysters with diners and chefs. He recently added a new partner to the Forty North team, NYC restauranteur Chris Cannon, who will be opening a new restaurant in Morristown next spring. Located inside the historic Vail Mansion, the restaurant will feature Forty North as the house oyster. It is a well-deserved coup for the farm after a rough year.

Last weekend, the NY Oyster Lovers Meetup took a field trip to Forty North Oyster Farm to meet Matt and his partners Scott and Serafina. The drive to Mantoloking was scenic, though if you looked closely, you could see oddly placed sand dunes and abandoned boats, the reminders of Sandy’s power.

We began with a hike through Forsythe Wildlife Refuge, a network of coastal wetlands and marshes. Hawks flew overhead the flame-tipped trees, as we made our way toward the water. Here too there were souvenirs from the hurricane: random planks, lattice fencing, plastic lids and more.
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Cork Forests: Actually, Money Does Grow on Trees

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Think about the last bottle of wine you drank. Was it sealed with a natural cork? A synthetic plastic closure? A screw top cap? Where does cork come from, and what’s with all the buzz about cork trees being endangered? To investigate, we ventured off to Alentejo, a rural region in south-central Portugal, and one of the world’s largest sources of cork oaks. All told, Portugal produces about 75% of the world’s cork, and about 75% of this goes into wine bottle stoppers. About 33% of all cork trees grow in Portugal, and 95% of these are in the Alentejo region.

At Herdade da Maroteira, Philip Mollet guided us on a tour of his 540 hectare farm. Much of the land is forested, with approximately 2/3 covered by cork forest, 1/3 covered by stone oaks, and some cleared land for vineyards and livestock. Mollet is a 5th generation farmer, whose family originally hailed from Britain. As the story goes, in the beginning there were two brothers who were on their way to Australia. They stopped in Porto to make repairs on their boat and look for cork stopper resources. The brothers ended up traveling to Alentejo, where they found this particular cork farm. One brother continued on to Australia, while the other stayed in Portugal. Later on, the brothers arranged for a cultural swap, with one brother sending eucalyptus to Portugal and the other brother sending cork acorns to Australia. However, the acorns that were sent were sterilized—nothing like a little sibling rivalry to help foment family feuds!
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A Flight of Fancy: France’s Poulet de Bresse

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A month has passed since I was last in France (my how time flies!), but I’m still milking those experiences for class projects. Our trip to a Bresse chicken farm was particularly memorable, so I converted that into a magazine-style piece that I will submit for evaluation.

A Flight of Fancy: France’s Poulet de Bresse (727 kb)

Ferme des Levées: the Happiest Pigs in France

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Anyone who has even briefly investigated livestock production at industrial farms knows that the process is wholly unnatural, with animals reduced to meat-generating machines, forced to live in dirty, cramped conditions.

At Ferme des Levées, owners Anne and Jacques Volatier firmly believe in treating their pigs with respect and raising them with traditional, organic farming methods. Jacques began raising pigs in 2000, and prior to purchasing this farm, he had no farming experience and worked as a civil engineer in town planning. “I don’t know how exactly to describe it, but I had an intuitive sense that I wanted to find a way to help grow the planet and start a project that would benefit the local economy. The intuition has now become certainty and a way of life in the countryside.” He attended an agricultural training program for a year, acquired the necessary capital and decided to launch a pig breeding operation because it was a product that could be raised and transformed entirely on the farm.
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Lessons from a Small Farmer

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Clockwise: aubergine growing in the garden; Barbialla Nuova’s lake; a spider makes its home amidst the blackberry brambles; drawing on the car’s dusty rear window for kids by kids

Over the last couple weeks while WWOOFing, I weeded a pumpkin patch, staked tomatoes, cleaned and revitalized a garden bed, created and turned compost piles, sanded and painted wood beams, and helped measure and construct a pergola. All these were activities I’d never done before. They were only the tip of the iceberg in what I learned while in Tuscany.

The thing is, volunteering with WWOOF is not simply a job or a means of traveling cheaply, it is adopting a lifestyle and exploring a set of values. I did it because I was interested in learning about sustainable agriculture and the rural lifestyle of a farmer, but I ended up getting crash courses on Australian folk music, parenting small children and welding. I was lucky to find a family who welcomed me into their daily routine, included me in meals and activities, and were genuinely interested in getting to know me. And although I initially wanted to live with an Italian family to improve my Italian, I am very happy that my host family was English-speaking because I wouldn’t have been able to connect beyond a superficial level otherwise.

A few lessons from an agrarian lifestyle:
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