Southern AND Sustainable?!

I first heard of Dan Barber's book The Third Plate on NPR the other day. The fact that Southern food was singled out as the only truly sustainable American way of farming and eating was exciting. No, not the Foodtopia and epicenter of sustainable everything in the Pacific Northwest. Yes, The South. I have yet to see Hoppin' John on a menu west of the Mississippi.

In the American South, it was beans, collards and some ham. "In a dish, you had everything that supported that ecology," he says.

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A view of Dan Barber's Stone Barns Center field and barns in Pocantico Hills, N.Y.

Nicole Franzen/Courtesy of Blue Hill Farm

But American tradition has fallen out of touch with the land. "There's no cuisine you can point to that has a 12-ounce center cut protein for dinner. ... That is an American phenomenon," Barber says

From an article in The Atlantic, I read Dan Barber's explanation of how farm-to-table practices in America aren't enough to be truly sustainable. The only place within the United States that has actually had a cuisine that fit the ecology of place was in the South.

That meat-centric plate is a great disservice to our soil, and to our ecology. It’s also a disservice to the rest of the world—because we’re exporting that model in a way that, in the truest sense of the word, is unsustainable. But we can find an alternative—what I came to call the Third Plate.

You find that in Southern cuisine, too. Hoppin’ John—a quintessential southern dish—is rice, but it’s also cowpeas. That leguminous crop was so important in the south, because it allowed the southerners to preserve their soil well enough to get them rice. Then, they mixed in collard greens, because collards helped desalinate the soil. (And some bacon, because pigs were also part of the agriculture.)

Last weekend I read a review of the book in the WSJ in Eugenia Bone's article "The Future of American Eating." Of course, it being a newspaper based in New York (damn Yankees), it doesn't mention this Southern connection. But what he does mention relates to my life in wine country. In the first of four sections in the book, "Soil"

Explores how some farming practices deplete the soil of nutrients by killing microbes and how others build healthy soil by feeding microbes. He compares industrial versus organic approaches to weed control and explains the role of grazing animals in soil health. 'How soil is managed,' writes Mr. Barber, 'and how a farmer negotiates weeds and pests, is the single best predictor of how food will taste.'

I've recently started a new job at Omero Cellar's in Carlton, Oregon, and I interviewed our new winemaker, Mr. Chad Stock about his winemaking philosophy in order to write a press release. What he said deeply related to what Mr. Barber is saying.

Stock explains that transparent winemaking, “allows wines to speak for themselves in a pure and true fashion. Pinot noir is all about nuance and it’s extremely adept at showing the subtleties of place.  Personal style preferences and winemaking additives blur the natural expression of the vineyard.“

Organic, and more importantly, biodynamic principles are important to Stock and the trajectory of Omero wines. He clarifies the joint importance of farming organically and implementing biodynamic principles in the vineyard and winery: “A vineyard is above and below the earth, so we want to farm the soil. We seek to show the significance in soil types and express the soil differences in the Willamette Valley. I’ll show you what your vineyard tastes like.”

By working without additives, using organic and biodynamic principles, Stock and Omero seek to create wines with distinctive character, authenticity and aromatic complexity.

While I am relatively new to the biodynamic farming and winemaking philosophy, I'm really eager to learn more. Like the John Muir quote that originally inspired Barber,  I find that everything is connected, from ideas to dirt:

When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.

Everyone Has Her Morning Ritual

My morning ritual begins with Morning Edition on OPB, Oregon's NPR station. I guess it's the closest thing I have to "broad and shallow," as mentioned in my last post The Future of News. For me, NPR is eerily spot on with news that's imminent and pertinent.

While we were pedaling around in the PNW philosophizing on the future of news, people in the deep SE were feeling the very present problems facing our consumption of news. How apropos. The story is "'A Morning Ritual': New Orleans Fights for Its Paper." Four newspaper in Alabama and Louisiana are laying off hundreds of reporters, and they are ceasing daily publication. In New Orleans, the Times-Picayune is moving to an online focus with only a 3 day print publication. The story ends with a man hoping that an entrepreneur can find a way to get us our daily news. Wow, has all of our technology brought us to this?

For the past few years, I have been teaching a college prep class to students, and one of their assignments was to choose 3 books from a theme and compare them. One of the themes was Hurricane Katrina. Students could select from several books, but the most relevant to this article concerns Chris Rose's 1 Dead in Attic. Chris Rose was a reporter for The Times-Picayune before, during and after Hurricane Katrina, and this book is a compilation of his published articles concerning the aftermath. For his journalism, he won a pulitzer. His commentary is raw, real and community focused. What would have been lost had this suspension of daily news and dearth of reporters happened during this crisis?

I was in Venice during the September 11th tragedy. This was when I started reading the New York Times online. I wanted to know what was going on in the city, written by people inhabiting and experiencing that place. I've continued to read it, because many of the stories are compelling and cover a broad range of topics.

My entire family in South Carolina reads The Post and Courier, and I enjoy reading it when I visit. It gives me a sense of place, not to mention the crossword. Speaking of ritual, give us our daily word puzzle. Because I no longer receive a daily paper, I no longer do the crossword. This is a great tragedy; however, playing Scrabble and Words With Friends on Facebook helps. Growing up, I can remember watching my mom drink coffee and do the crossword. As I got older (and smarter), I would occasionally offer a little help. Then one of my brothers would eventually look on and fill in some blank spots. Before the end of the day, the puzzle would be complete. Family bonding. When I'd visit my grandmother in college, I can remember doing the crossword with her. It breaks my heart to think of all those grandmothers and mothers and father and brothers and sisters in Alabama and New Orleans (where else?) not having a daily newspaper to do the crossword. Perhaps that's not the biggest implication, but at this moment it's the most poignant. I tried doing the crossword online. It's a farce.

Should a citizen of the U.S. necessarily have Internet access to be able to read the news? Is this fair to our older and poorer citizens? How can we support our journalists? I don't think a total breakdown into niche news markets is a wise direction to take. Newspapers give us marriages, deaths, crime, sports stats, and information on new ventures in our community.

Incidentally, I was at the monthly Friends of the Library meeting, and we were discussing the results of the levy vote in May. Yes it was successful. Yes it continued the 89 cents per $1000 assessed property value, but we still had to close the libraries on Mondays and reduce staff. If we hadn't continued the levy, most of the 18 branches would have had to close and the remaining ones would have reduced hours. Libraries and newspapers.

Necessity is the mother of invention, so I have every faith that we Americans will find a way. And so. All things must change. To every season. Nothing stays the same. Nothing endures but change. It's kind of exciting to imagine the future of news. I also think I'm pouring some of my morning coffee out to Ray Bradbury.