Building a Sustainable Community

BY NANCIE MCDERMOTT

Traveling down Interstate 40 between Hillsborough and Burlington means navigating among roaring double-hitched trucks, through waves of sports cars, sedans, motorcycles and mini-vans. Rushing from Point A to Point B, it’s a freeway blur of radio sound bites, fast food, and glances at the speedometer and the clock. But take the Buckhorn Road exit between Hillsborough and Mebane, and within a few country miles, you’re winding your way up an old, graveled road toward Fickle Creek Farm.

Riding through acres of tall grass fronting deep spring-green woods, slowing down makes sense even without the polite sign suggesting that you do so—you feel the volume coming down, the hurry-hurry being dialed back. A fork in the road offers the choice of a long, low, candy-apple red barn to the left, or a comfortably modern farmhouse to the right, the latter complete with a farm dog gladly serving as greeter. Soon the farm’s owners, Noah Ranells and Ben Bergmann have me settled in at a table on a second-story deck adjoining the Bed and Breakfast accommodations for which the farm is also known. Gazing out over one large pasture and a curving patchwork quilt of smaller fenced areas, I note how inviting the landscape is, and imagine the delight of waking up in Fickle Creek’s B&B abode for a breakfast centered on their famous, farm-fresh eggs.

My first knowledge of Fickle Creek Farm came from an irresistible photograph on Lantern Restaurant’s website, a beautiful image of a perfectly poached Fickle Creek egg on a raft of panroasted asparagus napped with soy sauce and butter. Fickle Creek Farm’s fine and highly-prized eggs attain their goodness the old-fashioned way, coming as they do from free-ranging hens who spend their days pecking and scratching away the time in the fields. These birds live on pasture, nesting and roosting in one of four eggmobiles, the mobile homes that are a centerpiece of sustainable agriculture. The henhouse follows the hens, moved slowly through the farm’s pastures on a bi-weekly or weekly basis, depending on the age and size of its occupants.

The hens retire to their portable chicken coops at day’s end, where the nights can be passed in safety and warmth. The farm crew includes a staff of farm dogs, with a major mission of guarding the hens and other livestock from predators, including foxes, possums, and bobcats. Built right onto a chassis, these sturdy roly-poly henhouses have chicken-wire floors, open to allow chicken droppings to fertilize the fields beneath the coop as it makes its slow passes up and down a given field. During warmer months, Ben and Noah gather eggs three times a day, giving new meaning to the term “farm-fresh eggs.”

In addition to pasturing chickens, Ranells and Bergmann raise other livestock including steers, pigs, and sheep. All are naturally and sustainably grown, unconfined and on pasture, and without finishing them on grains or using hormones or antibiotics. Their animals not only receive humane treatment, they also play a role in developing the farm in a low-tech, nature-friendly manner. To clear the wooded land for pasture, these two farmers enlisted a small herd of goats to eat away the brush and debris. Their flocks of chickens followed along, roaming through the newly opened-up pasture to feast on insects and weeds while dropping chicken manure as a natural fertilizer for the soil. Step three is planting crimson clover, winter rye, or another cover crop, which becomes food for steers and the ever-hungry goats. The final step is planting a vegetable garden on the opened-up piece of land, and after two years of vegetables, they’ve co-created a pasture which is ready for one of their traveling eggmobiles. The goats are gone now, having cleared plenty of pastureland to suit the farmers’ plans. Lots of trees and woodsy areas remain throughout the farm, in contrast to the mainstream method visible throughout rural North Carolina, of clear-cutting land and creating squared-off fields. This choice reflects Bergmann and Ranells’ commitment to minimizing their impact on the environment, and creating a farmstead that works with nature instead of seeking to tame it.

Looking around the farmstead, it’s difficult to believe that Fickle Creek Farm is just ten years old. They bought the 61 acres of land in 1994, while they were both graduate students at NC State. It was an old dairy farm, left to return to its natural state. Trees grew tall and brush had filled in the landscape over several decades; when they moved onto the land only the deeply-rutted road remained, leading to the footprint of the old farmstead. Remnants of the walls, root-cellar, a well, and patches of daffodils are still intact, left as a portrait of the homeplace that came before.

They built their passive-solar home and moved out to the farm in 1999, commuting to their jobs in Raleigh and Durham until the farm could sustain them as their main workplace as well as as their home.

They could grow, both in terms of potential acreage and demand—the phone rings often with pleas from chefs all around the country imploring them to ship out some of those fabulous Fickle Creek eggs, pork, lamb and beef.

The answer to that is a firm “no,” since the cornerstone of all that these two twenty-first century farmers have created is that farming and food production are intrinsically local, thoughtful enterprises which work for the planet and the community when we keep things close to home. Their customer base and business range is all of 27 miles, their furthest reach being to Morrisville where they sell weekly at the Western Wake Farmers’ Market. To do more, they’d need to purchase and maintain refrigerated trucks, and rachet up the egg and livestock production, and to them, that is exactly the wrong way to grow.

For these two farmers, Fickle Creek is a twenty-first century valentine to old-school farming.

Both hold doctorate degrees from NC State University, Ranells’ in soil science and cover crops, and Bergmann’s in plant physiology and forestry. Each of them continues to teach part-time, at NC State, Central Carolina Community College’s campuses in Sanford and Pittsboro, and at NC Agricultural and Technical State University in Greensboro. They teach partly for income, but also because they are clearly filled with conviction and passion for the possibilities of re-creating the way we produce and market our food and the way we treat the physical world in which we live.

Today, Ben Bergmann is the fulltime farmer, while Noah Ranells works half-time as the Agricultural Economic Development Coordinator for Orange County. Ranells’ programs include PLANT at Breeze, a farmer mentoring program and enterprise incubator at W.C. Breeze Family Farm Agricultural Extension and Research Center in Hillsborough. He delights in the fact that with three classes of graduates up and out, members of the first class are already out on farms and selling at the farmers’ markets. Next on the agenda is starting up a value-added farm products incubator for area farmers, the Communal Value-Added Farm Product Processing Center, set to open this fall.

What they teach and promote is what they live on Fickle Creek Farm every day. To them, the concept of farming locally and sustainably needs to go beyond what farmers grow and take to the farmers’ markets. They see a bigger picture and benefit by taking the next step. They buy their feeder pigs and baby chicks from local farmers like Eliza MacLean at Cane Creek Farms and Elise Margolis at Elysian Farm. Their steers come from Chapel Hill Creamery, which has great use for the female offspring of their dairy herds, but little use for the males. The day I visited, they had been over to Hillsborough Cheese Company to purchase whey, a byproduct of cheesemaking, to feed their pigs. To these thoughtful farmers, everything is related, and the takeaway is not Bigger is Better, but how to create and work in an intentional, effective, profitable way. How can all farmers, market customers, and vendors contribute to and benefit from being good citizens of the local, sustainable agriculturally-centered community, while being good, smart stewards of the land that makes it all possible?

Sound like baloney sold direct from a local ivory-tower? It’s not. You see it working and prospering when you stand on the porch of Fickle Creek Farm and observe what ten short years of walking their talk has created. These two farmers are thinking outside the box, and that includes the Community Supported Agriculture box, the Farmers’ Market packing box, and the traditional boxes we tend to check when we measure success. Their feet are firmly planted on the ground, in this case the red clay soil of Piedmont, North Carolina. They know whereof they speak, because they’ve studied it, taught it, researched it, tested it, and worked with success for years on sharing it to everyone’s benefit. They’ve done this through teaching, selling to the public, working with chefs, and hosting farm tour visitors, egg-buying customers, and overnight guests at their bed and breakfast on Fickle Creek Farm. They think about it, work on it, plant it and watch it grow, and as soon as they find success, they’re on to envisioning the future and helping it happen, planting it seed by seed, student farmer by student farmer, and egg by egg.  eP

Born in Burlington and raised in High Point, Nancie McDermott spent three years as a Peace Corps volunteer in Thailand. Her nine cookbooks include the new classic Southern Cakes, Real Thai: The Best of Thailand’s Regional Cooking, and Quick and Easy Chinese. She lives with her family in Chapel Hill.

BY KYLE WILKERSON AND FRED THOMPSON

PHOTOS BY FRED THOMPSON

FOOD STYLING BY KYLE WILKERSON

There is no better summer pastime than firing up your grill, inviting the neighbors or family over, throwing some local beer on ice, and putting flame to protein. The caramelization from grilling adds sweetness to meat, vegetables, and seafood that can’t be replicated in any other way. Couple that phenomenon with pasture-perfect protein and the elevation of flavor is truly sublime. Careful though, these proteins are leaner and need to cook at slightly lower temperatures and usually will cook quicker. Here’s a couple to get your mouth watering. In the haze of smoke comes great eating.

SMOKEY BEEF RIBS

Big beef ribs (not short ribs) can be tricky to cook, but oh what tastebud joy they bring. Low heat and smoke bring out the best in beef ribs, and we fell in love with this recipe. Serves 4.

2 racks of meaty beef ribs, about 6 bones each

1 teaspoon granulated garlic Salt and freshly cracked black pepper

2 small bags of hickory wood chunks or a mix of hickory and apple

20 pounds of natural hardwood charcoal

Soak one bag of wood chips in water for at least an hour.

Start your charcoal.

Remove the membrane from the ribs and season with salt, pepper and the granulated garlic.

Once the charcoal is mostly white, either put it into your side box smoker or set up your grill for indirect heat. Place the wood chips on top and place the ribs on the grill and close the lid.

Try to maintain a temperature of about 200–210° F.

Smoke for 2 hours, replenishing the charcoal and wood chips as needed.

Once off the grill brush with your favorite BBQ sauce or a creamy horseradish dipping sauce.

THE BEST BBQ BOSTON BUTT

There is simply nothing more North Carolina than this recipe. The injection keeps the “ Q” incredibly moist, and you may not even need sauce. We’re not going to get into the “ East vs Lexington” debate on sauce. This barbecue works with both. Usually the first NC BBQ sauce you tasted is your favorite. Serves 8 with leftovers.

Injection

3/4 cup apple juice

1/2 cup water

1/2 cup granulated sugar

1/4 cup Kosher salt

2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce

Mix all ingredients together and stir until salt and sugar dissolve.

1 5-6 pound bone-in, pasture-perfect Boston butt

Kosher salt and crushed black pepper

3 bags of natural chunked charcoal

3 bags of hickory chunks

Get one bag of chips soaking in water for at least an hour.

Inject the pork with the marinade.

Let sit at room temperature for 30 to 45 minutes. Generously rub the pork down with salt and pepper.

Once the coals are mostly white put them into your side box smoker or set up a grill for indirect heating.

Put some of the wood chips on top of the coals. Set the Boston butt on the cooker away from the flame and close the lid. Make sure to constantly keep watch on your fire and temperature. Smoke for about 4 hours at 200–210° F.

Remove the Boston butt from the smoker, wrap it in aluminum foil, and move to a preheated 300° F oven and cook for 5 to 6 more hours, or until the bone slides from the pork butt easily. Pull or chop, and serve with your favorite sauce (and slaw).

Fred Thompson is publisher of Edible Piedmont magazine, writes the Weekend Gourmet in the News and Observer, and is the author of nine cookbooks. Kyle Wilkerson is a chef at Four Square Restaurant in Durham. Kyle Wilkerson and Fred Thompson, our crazy kitchen creatives prove that even in-laws can work together on the grill.

TIPS

When grilling pasture-raised meat and poultry and especially with heritage breeds, you need to make a few adjustments. Use a combination of direct and indirect heat, even for quick cooking items like steak, chops, burgers, and boneless, skinless chicken breasts. Sear these foods over medium-high heat and then slide to a cooler part of your grill to finish cooking. Don’t be afraid to use brines—they give you a “ fudge-factor” on your cooking time. Please don’t over cook. You can add doneness to an item that’s too rare, but we haven’t figured out a way to take doneness away. With larger cuts, like whole birds, pork roasts and the like, use indirect heat and a little time. Again brines or injections are good things, but low heat, around 300 degrees (lower for smoking, 250–275 degrees) will be your best friend. The result will be more moist and with the added flavor from pasture-raised meats and poultry, you will be rewarded

GAI YAHNG GRILLED CHICKEN

This recipe gives you a taste of North Thailand street food. Serves 4 people.

1/3 cup Cilantro Pesto (recipe follows)

2 tablespoons soy sauce

1 teaspoon salt

1 4-pound pastured chicken; cut in half or quarters

Sweet-Hot Garlic Sauce (recipe follows)

Combine the Cilantro Pesto, soy sauce, and salt in a bowl. Rub the chicken pieces in the mixture and marinate for 1 to 2 hours, up to overnight for a bolder flavor. Meanwhile make the Sweet-Hot Garlic Sauce and set aside.

When ready to cook, preheat a charcoal or gas grill to high, for indirect heat. Remove the chicken from the marinade, discarding the marinade. Pat the chicken dry. Place over the direct heat and sear for a couple of minutes per side. Arrange the chicken in the middle of the grill and cook for 45 minutes to 1 hour, turning occasionally. Once the chicken is done (165-170° F on an instant read thermometer), move to a platter and serve hot with the Sweet-Hot Garlic Sauce.

Adapted from Nancie McDermott; Real Thai, The Best of Thailand’s Regional Cooking

CILANTRO PESTO

Makes about 1/4 cup. Make extra—it’s fabulous on grilled and baked fish.

1 teaspoon black peppercorns

2 tablespoons coarsely chopped fresh cilantro leaves and stems

2 tablespoon coarsely chopped garlic

Place all ingredients into a mortar and grind into a fairly smooth paste. If you have to use a food processor or blender, you may have to add a dash of oil to the mixture. Store in an airtight container and refrigerate for up to 5 days.

SWEET-HOT GARLIC SAUCE

Makes about 1-1/2 cups

1 cup granulated sugar

1/2 cup water

1/2 cup white vinegar

2 tablespoons finely minced garlic

1 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoons chili garlic sauce

In a small, heavy saucepan, combine the sugar, water, vinegar, garlic, and salt. Bring to a rolling boil over medium heat. Stir to dissolve the sugar and salt and reduce the heat to low. Simmer until the liquid reduces to slightly thickened light syrup, about 20 minutes. Remove from the heat and stir in the chili garlic sauce. Cool to room temperature.

Edible Traditions

The Southern Foodways Alliance

BY FRED THOMPSON

SFA’s Favorite pastime—eating Photo by Fred Sauceman

Collard greens cooked in a well seasoned “pot likker” with a side of cast-iron skillet cornbread, and, of course, made without sugar, is a microcosm of a place, a culture, a race, and a region. That, simply put, is the Southern Foodways Alliance. From a small group of champions of Southern foods; chefs, (including Ben and Karen Barker) writers and educators, huddled in a conference room at Southern Living magazine, challenged by then graduate student John T. Edge to find the culture of the South in foodways and preserve those histories of the plate, Southern Foodways (SFA) has become almost magical, as well as a dedicated, intellectual, and a far-reaching organization. And for most of its members, SFA gives them the chance to have very personal walks through their ever-changing homeland and the opportunity to advocate local and regional delicacies.

Southern Foodways is a loose federation. Some of the most nationally celebrated Southern chefs sup at the same table with sociologists enjoying local quail in a country ham broth. Food writers swap stories over bourbon and catfish with students of Southern culture. Media giants like the New York Times, Gourmet and Southern Living are entertained by the South’s best professional eaters while debating the fine points of buttermilk, fried chicken and of course Barbecue, the noun. They all hug, learn from, and break bread together with folk that enrich the land, keep up the traditions, and battle the waters to envelope the culinary South. SFA is a scholarly search for the South where instructors have dirt under their fingernails, sun-chiseled faces, and bleary-eyed researchers. SFA is an experience that gleans from fellowship and a common belief. Southern Foodways Alliance “… looks at the evolution of Southern food culture over time. It is not an act of preservation, but one of documentation, which implies both continuity and change,” says now Executive Director John T. Edge.

Local food plays a role in SFA, because local foods are the cornerstone of SFA. Each year, Southern Foodways takes an in-depth look at different local food phenomenon’s whether it be of the land, ponds, oceans and stills, and how they have affected the culture and livability of the South. To understand local food is to drive down a highway of cultural differences together—both white and black, Arab and Jew, Hispanic and Asian, for we all have been on this land and supported one another in some fashion and the creolelization of our foods. Local food becomes the center of rebuilding communities and Southern Foodways has been there to rebuild fabled restaurants in Katrinastricken New Orleans and to provide scholarship opportunities for deeper learning. It has taught its members the reality of local foodways by showcasing the farmer, the seed-saver, the dairymen, the pitmaster, the master distiller, the ingredient-driven chef, and the tamale maker with a reverence for them all. As John T. puts it “this idea of local foods in the South is not pretentious; it is not prissy and it is not something we learned from California.”

Southern Foodways changed my life. My parents, both from the Depression era rural South, transported to city dwelling, at times seemed ashamed of eating out of the garden as they had done growing up. Fatback, collard greens, field peas, and turnips were not the foods for company, but they were the foods we ate and loved as a family. Working in New York City for a while, the fancy and the new, intrigued me, but the Greenmarket system also beckoned me with ramps and heirloom tomatoes, and baby collards. I took great joy in cooking from those markets, and when I was back in North Carolina I sought out farmers’ markets to buy from. But it was my first trip to Oxford, Miss. and the Southern Foodways annual Symposium ten years ago that made me question what was really in my soul as an eater and a person. SFA has given me the roadmap to my own culture and family. It has given me pride. SFA has taught me how all the regional groups of the South relate. It has shown me passion for the people that toil to keep traditions alive, exceptional flavor in our foods, determine smart growth and land use, and products yielding the highest quality results available. All come under a large local banner. SFA has put me in my mother’s kitchen, this woman who travels three hours to pick her collards from the same farm every year, to record her secrets and understand her joy of food. The organization has made me obsessive about local and now through Edible Piedmont, celebrating the faces of local foods in a very public and far reaching way.

My epiphany is not unique among the membership of Southern Foodways. It’s a path that every member has journeyed down in some form or other. Southern Foodways is a community of communities— from the cotton fields of the Delta to the red clay of the Carolinas. SFA not only preaches to the choir, but has taken the gospel of food and community throughout the country—New York City, and Denver to name a few. Through oral history, “Pot Likker” Film Festivals, Field Trips and Day Camps around the South, the Southern Foodways Alliance continues to proliferate the message of understanding through food and celebrates the abundance of locale. But at is core is a membership that practices the Southern Foodways ideals in their “neck of the woods.” This group is indeed a national hero.  eP

Last Bite

BY MICHAEL MCFEE

It was an ugly slab of rough concrete or warped green boards carved and stained by greasy sticky previous picnickers

but still we’d pack the creaking station wagon with hungry relatives and cardboard boxes full of deviled-egg luster under wax paper

and fried chicken’s golden warm aroma and the moist strata of granny’s coconut cake then drive for what felt like forever, starving,

till dad saw a blue sign for one just ahead and pulled off into a shady dirt turnout between the busy highway and some river

where we all waited while meticulous aunts brushed off the crumby weathered surfaces then unfolded a tablecloth of newspapers

which we held down with the now-cooled feast before suffering through interminable grace and loading our flimsy plates with layers

of food as if we never ate at home, as if we didn’t have our own picnic table around which, anytime, we all could gather.

Tourists driving by us might have laughed at this simple mountain clan that had to eat at a borrowed wayside table, too dirt-poor

to afford an inside dining room of their own, just as shoulder-walkers were to be pitied for not having enough money to own a car,

but they’d have been wrong: it was pure holiday to linger in that place, in public privacy between the currents of road and water,

cooled by the luxurious breezes of both as cousins skipped flat rocks to the far bank or waded on shivering legs into the river

and cigarette smoke rose toward the understory and the ripening barrels hummed electric with bees and watermelon seeds shone blackly under the laurels.

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Edible Piedmont is a community-based publication that promotes the abundance of local foods in the greater Piedmont area of North Carolina (Triad, Triangle and Charlotte). We celebrate the growers, producers, retailers, artisans, chefs, bakers, home cooks, and others who energize our community with authentic, locally based food choices.

Edible Piedmont is intended for those who are interested in:

• Eating delicious, locally grown, seasonal foods
• Getting to know the people who grow, produce, cook and sell those foods
• Learning more about what's available in the Piedmont in terms of great dining, day trips, food events, and festivals; great books to read; and great products to try