Wendell Berry On Farms & Food
Wendell Berry first started talking farms & food and about sustainable agriculture over fifty years ago. He probably talked to my Dad, and a few hundred other farmers, who farmed with traditional methods, forever.
Berry’s wrote prose and poetry about taking care of the land over the last five decades. It influenced the way we treat our farmland, our food, and each other. His works, A Place In Time, and New & Collected Poems, are extraordinary. Don’t miss Bring It To The Table written with Michael Pollan. Berry mentored Bill McKibben, the founder of 350.org. McKibben recently published Oil and Honey: the Education of an Unlikely Activist, and Earth: Making a Life in a Tough New Planet. Both of which are must reads. The third of the triumvirate, Wes Jackson’s Farming In Nature’s Image, should also be on your reading list.
Chefs On Farms & Food
Today, there have rarely been more people talking about how to grow food that tastes as it should, using responsible methods. Chef Alain Passard in Paris converted his entire sister restaurant to all vegetables over seven years ago. He now charges $450+ for a tasting menu.
From Coast to Coast, chefs around the world are hiring foragers to gather the best Nature has to offer. And, they’re buying farm land to grow their own produce. Farmers’ Markets and CSA’s are everywhere, and factory farms are being forced to change their ways as the influences of farms like Joel Salatin of Polyface Farm in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley are felt far and wide. Joel believes he’s in “the redemption business.” He’s healing the land, healing the food, healing the economy and healing the culture.
Chefs like Dan Barber from Blue Hill of Stone Barns in New York are now proclaiming that Farm to Table isn’t enough. Chefs across America need to learn how to cook with the rotation crops that nurture the soil in order to grow the best of the most popular fruits and vegetables.
Always More To Learn
This is a constant learning process. One that is fascinating, as we all re-learn what our Fathers, Grandfathers, and Great Grandfathers knew. And, it affects how we treat our cooking at the Wickwood Inn bed And Breakfast.
Read more in the New York Times from Dan Barber about the necessity of crop rotation for great soil.