The case of the leaky cooler

By Cameron Raitliff

[Editor's Note:  In honor of New Year's, here's one of my favorite essays of  2009, posted in June on the Saxapahaw General Store blog and reprinted here with permission. Cameron and Jeff Barney cook elegant locavore cuisine in their gas station-convenience store-natural foods grocery-and-cafe overlooking the Haw River in Alamance County. See Motor Oil and Veal Shanks. --Dee]

In the United States, it seems our democracy, in tandem with our free market capitalism, has come to mean that we are endowed by our Creator with the inalienable right to choose sides. And there are usually two. And most (if not all) are actually corporations. There’s Tar Heel or Blue Devil. GM or Ford. PC or Mac. Visa or Mastercard. Pepsi or Coke. Army or Navy. Democrat or Republican.

This tendency to choose one of a limited number of sides has become deeply ingrained in the American identity. Just think of the sports rivalries we have cared so much about—for the capacity we’ve gained to feel like slugging a complete stranger who’s wearing the wrong color shirt at a sporting event (especially when there’s either Budweiser or Miller available at that event)! It’s almost as though we have a right to be angry at any poor sod who chose wrongly, given a 50/50 split. On the other hand, I’ve actually hugged a complete stranger at the conclusion of a UNC basketball game out of my joy at “our” victory.

Corporations have benefited greatly from our willingness to align ourselves with a team by managing to convince us to identify with one company or another—for superior flavor, a smoother ride, better service, or just a cooler product. Those identifications circumvent our logic, and sometimes even our better judgment. When two well-established companies pit themselves against one another successfully, their customer bases will notch up their loyalty—as though to support their brand against the other guy.

Today I experienced a poignant reminder of this tendency of ours toward a team-like allegiance to a corporate brand when the Coke repair guy visited me. I was baking a cake in our kitchen at Saxapahaw General Store (for a woman who actually preferred us to either Food Lion or Harris Teeter), when a man in a candy-striped shirt peered over the ice cream counter at me. “Are you in charge?” he asked.

“No,” I replied, wishing to avoid what I thought might be a sales pitch. He moved back a little, and I noticed his uniform was from Coke. He pressed on as though he hadn’t heard my response, and said, “You have a leaky Coke cooler.” I paused, and remembered at that moment having noticed water emerging from the soda cooler area of our store earlier that morning. But I hadn’t reported it for service, and I’d never seen this fellow before.

“How’d you know that?” I inquired. He informed me with no small measure of pride that he’d been told of our malfunctioning cooler by his colleague, our sales representative—the other Coke guy—and he’d headed right over to fix it.

Interested in this sudden surge of good service after months of having orders confused, products shoved at me, and signs placed in our store without permission, I directed the guy to the back of the store, where the Coke cooler stands—right next to the Pepsi cooler, in constant, silent rivalry.

Not terribly interested in what the Coke guy found to be wrong with his cooler, I returned to my cake, only to be interrupted again a few minutes later when he practically bounded to the front of the store and triumphantly proclaimed, “Ma’am, there’s nothing wrong with the Coke cooler. It’s the PEPSI cooler that’s leaky!”

He insisted on showing me his evidence—he’d removed the covers from both the compressors to point to the full tray of water in the Pepsi cooler and the bone-dry underside of his Coke appliance. He said, “You might want to get one of your people to empty that.” And he left.

I found this opposition—even between soda coolers—hilarious, particularly in the moment when the Coke guy (he never told me his name, nor asked me mine) seemed vindicated to learn that his appliance was not faulty—it was that other ass-hole’s that sucked.

But I have to admit that, upon further reflection, it’s troubling. That fellow cared not whether our store functioned well, or whether our Pepsi cooler ever worked again. Why would he? As a mercenary of Coke, it was his job to protect their asset and to ensure their brand wouldn’t be tarnished. The better for him, in fact, if the other guy’s cooler didn’t work. And while he didn’t know it, the fact wasn’t lost on me that we recently switched our soda fountain service from Coke to Pepsi because the service had been so bad our customers were becoming upset with us for out-of-stock beverage options (after all, when you prefer lemon lime soda, cola just won’t do). It seemed like some sort of corporate-karmic redemption that Coke’s cooler should be superior this time.

I’ve learned from my experience with the Coke guy, and the Pepsi guy, and the Bud and Miller guys, that this team-ish brand loyalty has led us all charging down a path to mediocrity. The advertising industry—the pied piper of the retail world—has tooted its flute at us, and we’ve been lured by our insatiable desire for preference. We have snuggled in with our fave teams, and the brands we love, and we’ve lined up in opposition to those products we hate and the players who suck and we have neglected to care whether we were actually in relationship with the people who actually make what we buy. And while we’ve been otherwise engaged, the quality of what we’re buying continues to decline—be it soft drinks, or sports, or health care, or politics.

If we keep at it, that privilege we so relish in this country—the prerogative for preference—won’t so much matter. The real choices have been disappearing under the illusion of the marketplace, and they’ve been replaced by a bunch of leaky coolers.

Re-engineering our foodshed

By Carol Peppe Hewitt

I heard a compelling comment by a fellow social entrepreneur recently, hoping to recruit me into his army of foodshed activists, that went something like this:

“Wouldn’t it be great if at a sales meeting of an international food conglomerate, like Kraft, in Pennsylvania somewhere, the sales director pointed to a donut hole on the map of the southern region and said ‘What’s this? What’s going on down there? They aren’t buying any of our cheese, or meat, or much of anything? What the hell is going on?’ This said accusingly to the sales person assigned to our area.”

It’s a great thought, becoming self-reliant on local foods, and less on processed junk, reducing the miles traveled by the food we consume in our community. The idea is especially appealing to someone who escaped from corporate America a decade ago to run a successful small business, and believes passionately in the viability and critical nature of healthy small town economies, local economies, sustainability, and good food.

Like so many, I find myself asking these days, “What can one person really do to impact climate change?” The question now has an answer forming, and it is shaped like a donut hole. And it goes beyond climate change. Reducing food miles means a smaller carbon footprint. Buying from local farmers means keeping that cash, those profits, circulating in our community. The health problems caused by the standard American diet, pizza, mac and cheese, high fructose corn syrup, fried foods, are well documented and include burgeoning waistlines, near epidemics of obesity and diabetes, heart disease and stroke, and climbing cancer rates.

Making this shift would certainly be a challenge, reengineering our local food shed so that we produce and consume a significantly higher percentage of local foods, but I love a challenge. Especially one that involves connecting people to one another for mutual gain, healing the planet, healing ourselves, engages my brain with topics I have an interest in, and sounds both intriguing and fun.

But can it be done? And where do we start?

Farms. We start with more independent sustainable farms. And then we recruit more eaters, and create a structure that connects them to one another. We work out pricing that makes the farms economically viable and makes local foods affordable to the masses. And we provide education on how to make the shift back from boxes of processed foods to eating right out of the ground – real, healthy food are beginning.

Here in Chatham we have a good start. And several new farms have recently surfaced. Duck Run Farm moved to Pittsboro this summer, and offers a creative and diverse CSA along with the cutest ducks in Chatham County. Chatham Mills is launching what may be the first ever “farm to market” venture, creating an urban farm in the back yard of the Mill in Pittsboro that will provide produce for Chatham Marketplace, their anchor tenant and our local co-op grocery store. Shakori Hills, in Silk Hope, NC and famous for the twice-annual GrassRoots Festival of Music and Dance, also has a perfect site for a farm. Farm to festival.

What’s next? Farm to restaurant? Farm to school? Farm to hospital? Farm to church?

Some of these are being tried, some not. But it’s only a matter of time.

For people who know the value (financially and gastronomically) of organic foods, slow foods, strong communities and real friendship, this goal will be a no brainer.

One farm at a time, one eater at a time…. let’s create this donut hole together.

We need a farm manager for the Marketplace Farm, funds for the deer fence, enthusiastic supporters, and eaters. Take your pick. Just let me know.

Are you in?

Local food abomination

By Lyle Estill

Over here at Estill Family Food Labs we like to perform science experiments on live human subjects.  One of our big hits this Christmas season was homemade lemonade from Margo’s Meyer lemons.

Tami made a simple syrup out of some of Rick’s honey and water, mixed it up with freshly squeezed lemons, and it was fabulous.  When children ask for seconds the experiment is deemed to be a success.

Not everything we try goes that way.  One of our subjects, who is 13, refuses to eat the underground tempeh we love.  And also boycotts venison, leaving us to sneak it into lasagna and other dishes.

Our family tends to fall on a spectrum.  Dad is a hyper-local on all things, wanting the cookies to be made from locally milled organic flour, that has come from Looking Back Farm, 283 miles from the table where the cookies are to be devoured.  Wanting things served on plates made from local clay.

Arlo is an “adventure eater,” who will try anything, and performs his own food experiments. Tami could go either way.  She generally humors me, but she is also inclined to include caviar on her homemade cornbread.  And Zafer will go out of his way to consume over processed partially hydrogenated high fructose corn syrup products every chance he gets.

For Christmas this year, he bought his brother a box of Apple Jacks, a box of Corn Pops, and a box of Lucky Charms.  Imagine my horror to round the corner into our kitchen to be greeted by this scene.  The boys have filled the latest Mark Hewitt bowls with Apple Jacks. 

On the table is a plate of homemade cookies, a cooking pumpkin for Christmas dinner, in a bowl fashioned from the old oak tree that fell down in the yard. And a returnable bottle of milk from Maple View Dairy.

I’m not sure how they arrived at the colors for Apple Jacks, since they don’t seem to appear in nature.

Oh well.  It’s Christmas.  Once the horror subsided I sat down and had a bowl…

My New Year’s Resolutions

1) Have more voices on this blog. Lyle – the biofuels baron who hatched an eco-industrial complex that produces energy, worms, compost and food – has asked if he can join in, along with Carol, another fine writer and activist. I look forward to their contributions. I’d also love to hear from other sustainable farmers, foodies, activists and entrepreneurs from the greater Triangle area who have ideas about how to further fertilize our foodshed so it can nourish us all.

Feel free to comment anytime, of course, but if you have a post you’d like us to consider, just send it to me here.  I look forward to hearing from y’all.

2) Keep eating fresh, local, whole food, as close to home as possible. See No More Excuses.

3) Eat gobs of fresh, home-cooked food and lose weight. I know it sounds counter-intuitive, but it worked for me. I finally lost the last 8 pounds I’ve been trying to get rid of for awhile.  I took a page from Mark Bittman (author of Food Matters and the NY Times Minimalist column) and Linda Watson (Cook for Good website). They advise eating less meat (fewer calories, lower carbon footprint) and more fresh fruits and vegetables. They also recommend cooking up a pot of beans every week for high-protein, low-fat soup and chile with fresh veggies. They use meat mostly as a flavor enhancer, which means I can afford the good local stuff raised without pesticides, herbicides and antibiotics. (See A Free-Range Chicken in Every Pot.)  I followed their directions and won the locavore trifecta: lost weight, lowered my carbon footprint and saved money.

4) Buy local or organic whenever possible. The folks at ECO, Eastern Carolina Organics, can explain why.  

5) Patronize eateries that promote local farmers. Sure it’s more cost-effective to cook at home, but when Ido go out, I like to dine at the restaurants that support sustainable agriculture. See My Foodshed.

6) Build a bigger deer fence.  This year I experimented with a small 4 x 4 foot raised bed for tomatoes, squash and herbs. That went well, so I added another for sweet potatoes (see Subterranean Sustenance). Now I’m hooked. I’m ready to grow about six raised beds for peas, broccoli, lettuce, chard, tomatoes, squash, sweet potatoes, garlic, onions and carrots.  I also plan to use season extenders (low-tunnels and hoops) so I can grow year-round, and I plan to move my herbs to a kitchen garden right outside my south-facing backdoor.

Last year I enclosed my two little beds in deer netting. When I expand, I’ll need more serious reinforcement as we have a deer family that crosses my garden space every blessed night. I may have to install  an 8-foot neon Detour sign.

7) Fire up the outdoor pizza oven.  I need to convince Angelina, Joe and friends to host a monthly locavore make-your-own Greek pizza night this summer at the wood-fired oven Joe built on the Central Carolina Community College campus.  I promise to help. Anybody know some good bellydancers? See Joe and Angelina’s Hearth.

Debbie does calendars

I’m beginning to wonder if there is anything our amazing sustainable agricultural agent Debbie Roos  can’t do.  First and foremost she provides information and support (educational workshops, farm tours, consultations, etc) to sustainable farmers all over Chatham County (and just about anyone else who calls). Second, she’s a pollinator pro – seems to know everything about the cozy co-dependent relationships between bees and flowers. She has installed an awesome pollinator garden at ChathamMarketplace in Pittsboro, among other locations.

Turns out she is also an ace photographer, combining her passion for sustainable farming, blooming plants and pollinators with a series of gorgeous four-color photo-illustrated notecards and, now (drumroll) a dazzling wall calendar featuring larger-than life closeups of bees in compromising positions with local flora.

 If you lust in your heart for flowers and bees, Debbie’s monthly calendar shots border on porn.  My favorite 2010 calendar pets appear in February (shapely sweat bee on flaming Echinacea purpea)  and June (purple and gold metallic cloaked beetle nibbling the sweet spots on a dazzling yellow blanketflower).

These are sure to heat up your winter fantasies of spring and summer gardens to come.   No need to feel guilty, though.  Debbie’s calendars are printed on 100% recycled paper with soy-based inks in nearby Sanford and part of the proceeds go to the N.C. Botanical Garden. Calendars are available at Chatham Marketplace in PBO or direct from Debbie Roos at info@debbieroos.com, 919.548.4855, http://www.debbieroos.com.

Learn more about why we need pollinators at Debbie’s newest website, underway at:  http://www.protectpollinators.org.

Slow Food New Year

Here’s a way to start the new year right AND support fresh local food in our local schools.

Slow Food Triangle’s Second Annual Traditional Southern New Year’s Day dinner will celebrate regional culinary traditions, local farmers and artisan food producers. This year’s meal also will raise much-needed funds for a pilot local food project at Durham’s E.K. Powe Elementary School.

Dinner is from 4-7 pm on Friday, January 1, on the 2nd floor of Building 2 in the Golden Belt complex (807 E. Main Street, Durham 27701). Enjoy traditional local collards, cornbread, and hoppin’ john, as well as fresh, hearth-based loaves, sweet potato pie, and more. Admission is $15 for Slow Food members, $18 for non-members, and free for children 10 and younger.  Please BYOB and to minimize waste, bring your own plate. Slow Food Triangle and event sponsors will provide the food and some beverages. 

The E.K. Powe Elementary pilot program is a collaboration between school staff, parents, and Slow Food Triangle volunteers to introduce a “Good Taste Bar” in the cafeteria 1-2 times per month from February through June. Lunch offerings will be prepared using fresh, local ingredients and conform to standard federal school nutrition guidelines. Current menu items under consideration include pizzas, tacos, sandwiches, and a salad bar – all prepared with locally grown and sourced ingredients.

Interested in volunteering? Contact mark@slowfoodtriangle.org.

Sponsors include:  Slow Food Triangle, Golden Belt Arts, Sage & Swift Catering, Anson Mills, The Splinter Group, Scratch Seasonal Artisan Baking, Farmer’s Daughter, Wine Authorities, Docusource of NC, Homeland Creamery, and Counter Culture Coffee.

Motor oil and local veal shanks

More good press for the Saxapahaw General Store.  From a Dec. 16 feature by Andrea Weigl in the News and Observer:

“Along a dark country road in Alamance county, the red and gold stripes of a Shell sign glow in the distance, beckoning drivers.

The gas station is at the Saxapahaw General Store, where inside you can get the usual: domestic beer, cigarettes, a package of Carolina Pride hot dogs.

Or you can sit down to a dinner of veal shanks over mashed potatoes and spinach for $18 or crab cakes with duck-fat fries, wax beans and lemon aioli for $15. Most of it is from local farms such as Cane Creek and Chapel Hill Creamery.

This local foods-focused convenience store is the work of Jeff Barney and Cameron Ratliff, the duo who left Chatham Marketplace, a cooperative grocery in Pittsboro, to open this store and cafe in June 2008.”

Read the rest of the story here.

Read Jeff and Cameron’s Excellent Culinary Adventure here.

Doug Jones named “Farmer of the Year”

Doug Jones of Piedmont Biofarm in Pittsboro  has been named “Farmer of the Year” by Carolina Farm Stewardship Association.  Farmer Doug is famous for growing exquisite chemical-free vegetables year-round, especially heirloom peppers and new varieties through his own breeding innovations.

He has taught at Central Carolina Community College’s Sustainable Ag Program in PBO and he continues to inspire a slew of interns, gardeners, newbie farmers and foodies all across the region. His farm is at the super eco-industrial park established by Piedmont Biofuels, just down the road from the courthouse circle.

You can eat Doug’s produce by subscribing to the Biofarm’s CSA, purchasing his veggies at the farmer’s markets in Durham and Pittsboro, enjoying the free lunch (for real) at St. Bartholmew’s Episcopal Church in historic Pittsboro every Thursday, or stopping by Angelina’s Kitchen  around the corner where seasonal greens often come from the Biofarm.

We’ve written about Doug before, click here to catch up. Congratulations, Doug!

Other winners announced at CFSA’s Sustainable Ag Conference last week are:

• Non-Profit of the Year: Toxic Free N.C.
• Business of the Year: Blue Ridge Food Ventures
• Activist of the Year: Smithson Mills
• Career Achievement Award: Paul Mueller
• NC Extension Agent of the Year: Richard Boylan
• SC Extension Agent of the Year: York Glover

Thanks everyone for all the good work you do to promote sustainable farming and food.

Click here for more details.

Can local food jump-start the economy?

Yes we can,  according to an international study by the  Wallace Center and Michael Shuman’s Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE) , as reported in The Washington Post.  And one of the shining examples is our local Weaver Street Market, the natural foods cooperative grocery and cafe, which started in Carrboro and now has stores in Hillsborough and Southern Village/Chapel Hill.

The study looked at Weaver Street and 23 other community food enterprises in the U.S. and abroad.  Weaver Street is now a 12,000-member co-op that includes three grocery shop/cafes, an artisanal bakery and Panzanella, an Italian restaurant. Its success allowed the market to open an affordable housing cooperative and a locally owned radio station. It also runs a community fund that donates more than $60,000 each year to local schools and other nonprofits.

Its outdoor cafe in Carrboro feels like a daily street fest or a zocalo in Mexico, as people enjoy fresh, organic, local food, shade-grown locally roasted coffee, good friends, live music and even dancing on the lawn.  Kids play, dogs jump, birds sing, what could be better?

A growing base of members and shoppers has built the market’s revenues to $20 million annually and helped to generate $12 million of economic activity,” according to co-founder Ruffin Slater. “Another way we measure our contribution to our local economy is the amount we purchase from local farmers and food producers, which last year amounted to over $2 million,” he told The Post.

 More than a dozen studies have shown that every dollar spent at a locally owned business generates two to four times the income, wealth and jobs than at an equivalent nonlocal business, according to The Post. (Read more about the economics of local foods in an earlier Post post.)

“This is not only a movement about health or taste. Local food offers a sophisticated business model that is becoming more savvy and more competitive,” said Michael Shuman, BALLE’s director of research, principal author of the report, and author of The Small Mart Revolution.

Shuman says all locally owned businesses can help the economy grow. But food businesses are the gateway for many people to rethink their relationship with local stores. People have a closer relationship with food than, say, financial services or energy, he explained. As a result, food is at the forefront of local businesses’ driving of economic growth, providing a model for other kinds of entrepreneurs.

Indeed Weaver Street inspired, and helped mentor my favorite local food co-op/cafe, Chatham Marketplace, less than 2 miles from my back door in Pittsboro. And former Chatham Marketplace stars have helped launch other new community food enterprises like the Saxapahaw General Store just up the road and Company Shops Market, a new natural foods grocery store being developed in nearby Burlington.

Read the rest of the Washington Post story: http://ow.ly/KgWj

More on the Wallace/ BALLE study. See Jeff and Cameron’s Excellent Culinary Adventure.

Not just another nut

The world is full of nuts, alas. But this is about peanuts, folks, and how growing local is worth the trouble after all. My friend Carol recently took up for the lowly goober after she plucked, shelled, and roasted a local crop bestowed on her for an important occasion. Here’s her report, straight From the Pottery Kitchen, her charming blog:

They come in jars, roasted. They come in cans, mixed with all sorts of other more important nuts. They fall to the bottom, they are unassuming fillers. The other guys are bigger and cost more, but the peanuts give bulk to the mix and keep the cost down. They disappear into peanut butter, or maybe they get a bit more attention in the crunchy versions.

I like them all, well enough, until now. Yesterday I was given a present of a box of peanuts, or rather peanut plants. I had expressed an interest to our local biofuels emperor in serving more local foods at our upcoming Kiln Opening. As someone who aspires to eat only foods grown within 100 miles, he took me seriously. He procured what was to become several pounds of roasted peanuts from organic farmer and legend, Doug Jones of Piedmont Biofarm, and an afternoon project began.

First the peanuts needed to be pulled off the plants. The plant matter went to the compost heap and the peanuts filled a large bowl. The shelling was next. This was time-consuming, but we had help, and as usual, especially with farm work and food preparation, many hands made light work. The roasting began as soon as we had enough shelled peanuts to fill a cookie sheet, Then the experimenting began…..

Read the rest of the story, it has a happy ending.