Making a Living, Building a Life

 Making a Living, Building a Life

By: Sandi Tomlin-Sutker

Local, Natural, Organic, Sustainable, Slow, Delicious!

You’ve probably heard these words a lot recently. More and more, when we think of our food, we want it grown closer to home, fresher; food grown in ways that honor the soil and water, and the farmers who plant and pick it. A recent study done in Tennessee and Virginia found that 40% of those surveyed would spend between 30% and 50% more for locally grown products. Reasons given: it supports the local economy, the food is fresher, it’s better for the environment.

I met with Burnsville farmer, Julie Laramie (who happens to be my daughter!) to talk about her motives and inspiration as she and husband, Chip Hope, (along with Lily, 10 and Eli, 6) build their dream of a sustainable farm. Julie says that she has wanted to raise animals “ forever. When I was about nine I got a horse and from then on I wanted to have a farm. We lived in Savannah in a communal household on the outskirts of town. That’s how I spent my time, out with my horse, riding. I’ve always loved animals, and that’s really the baseline, wanting to be able to care for them and treat them in a way I feel they should be treated. When Lily was in pre-school and we put in a garden for the kids, many didn’t know that carrots were a root, or that peas came off a vine: they just came from a store. The idea of my kids growing up, knowing where their produce comes from, and the reality of the cow: it gives milk so you get to keep the heifer, but all the boys get to be eaten (at least, that’s the theory!)

It’s important to know where your food comes from. “For a long time I’ve been into gardening. Really not so much vegetables; I actually started out wanting to make things beautiful. It was so meditative for me at the time; I really needed to be able to be still in myself and the gardening helped me do that. The agriculture part started when I went to Blue Ridge Community College where I learned to grow food and got really excited and passionate about all the old varieties, particularly of tomatoes, that are being lost. And when you find old varieties of seed there are stories that came through the family, going back generations. Now maybe it’s the fifth generation saying, I still have some of those seeds. There are so many hybrid seeds now that you can’t save; you have to buy new ones every year.” And the number of varieties has been shrinking steadily over the years.

The idea of preserving genetic diversity in our seeds is an important one; there are numerous companies like Seed Savers Exchange or Seeds for Change or SavingOurSeed.org that are all good places to find unusual seeds and learn about seed saving. “Our company, Appalachian Seeds, is working with the Slow Foods movement in Charlotte to provide seeds to farmers all across the country, using our seeds from Cherokee Purple and Radiator Charlie’s Mortgage Lifter, to test those varieties in a number of climates and varying methods. At the end of the season we’ll come together for a taste test and get the results in terms of diseases, size of crop, etc.

“There’s a big movement right now that’s very exciting where people want to know where their food comes from. We started a CSA this year (Community Supported Agriculture, where folks buy a share in the crops and receive a certain amount of produce each week throughout the season.) Some of our people came out last week to see the greenhouse, see all the little plants started, help feed the new lamb (its mother rejected her.)” Depending on the season, the farm will produce, for the CSAs, salad greens, chard, kale, snow peas, okra, kohlrabi, turnips, beets, squashes, beans, peppers, lots and lots of tomatoes and cut flowers. Julie tells me that they want to make a living from the farm and to feed themselves. “Right now we have to pay for the farm so we need to make money from it. Chip has had the seed business for over 10 years [he was instrumental in starting the Organic Growers’ School at Blue Ridge, which has grown into a major event in the past several years] and we’ve been out here on the farm for about 4 years. We started with the tomatoes and have branched out to medicinal and culinary herbs and bedding plants. All the things we grow for sale are open-pollinated. That’s really our focus; to bring people’s awareness around to the importance of that.”

One big focus Julie has is in edible landscaping. “Say you want a vine to grow over your mailbox; why not try scarlet runner beans, or hyacinth beans. For people who don’t have a lot of space or don’t need a big garden and they happen to like blueberries, which are an incredibly beautiful plant; or they need a great groundcover and strawberries are edible. “Recently, it’s gotten to be a big deal for us to feed ourselves. If something happens and we can’t get things from the store, we can have food canned or dried, even frozen. And when people are interested in feeding themselves, they’ll also be interested in locally grown food. And for the farmers who aren’t growing tobacco anymore, who are growing sweet corn, there’s a market for it. And it doesn’t have to be shipped from Chile or California.” There’s still a lot of education to be done to help people realize the importance of locally-grown and naturally-grown food.