Admit it, we Charlotteans have a lot to be thankful for. We have a bustling, sophisticated city to work, live and play in, thriving businesses, excellent universities, professional sports teams, and, most of all, fantastic food! It is the month of Thanksgiving and an appropriate time to be grateful for the quality and variety of foods available to us, foods grown virtually in our own backyard.
For example, a mere 46 miles (but a complete 180°) from sleek, high-tech, steel and glass Uptown Charlotte, there exists an unpretentious 10 acres known as the Grateful Growers Farm. The farm might be the antithesis of our city, but for its inhabitants— the winged and the hoofed alike—it may just be Shangri-la. Here you find a return to the days before battery chicken farming became the norm, and before pigs were confined to concrete habitats. At Grateful Growers Farm, chickens roam free and pigs are allowed to live like…well, pigs!
The farm is the collaborative effort of two remarkable women, , who, through a series of fortunate albeit chance events, found themselves working together in Cassie’s organic lawn care business. It seemed a natural progression to move from the careful growing of inedible plants to the organic cultivation of produce, and the two were up and running, producing lovely, healthy vegetables for local tables.
The story would have stopped here had Cassie not read Mad Cow USA: Could the Nightmare Happen Here, by Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber, a book which questions just how safely our food is being raised. After several sleepless nights, she announced that they (Veres and Parsons) were going to have to do something about the mistreatment of animals, poor feeding practices, and the health-impacting addition of chemicals and hormones to our meats. Natalie had raised chickens for a 4H project in Ohio, but neither woman had ever raised hogs--a slight snag, but not a deal breaker for the determined pair. They were already heavily involved in the organic food movement, and while some industries jealously guard their secrets, the healthy food growers of America do not. Information and advice being freely shared, Veres and Parsons added poultry and livestock to their repertoire and faced an entirely new set of challenges.
The first hurdle was finding space and acceptance. The Grateful Growers needed land enough to support a sufficient number of chickens and hogs to make the endeavor worthwhile, and the land had to have available food and water. Although land is still plentiful in North Carolina, not everyone wants pigs and poultry for neighbors. Since open land within a comfortable driving distance of a major city is always a prime target for development, Veres and Parsons had to choose their location carefully. For the small farm (10 acres or fewer), regardless of length of time in operation, the law offers no protection should new or existing neighbors complain about animal noise or farmyard aromas. The ten acres in Denver were perfect – open pasture, shaded areas, nut-producing trees – everything pigs and chickens could ask for, and enough land on the perimeter of their tract to establish a safe distance between pigs and people.
The next decisions centered around which breeds to raise. For the poultry component, it was a question of which breeds are better egg producers, which are better for the pot; how quickly the birds mature and start producing; how soon they are ready for market. In the porcine arena, the major question was which breeds produce the most flavorful meat.
Veres and Parsons knew they wanted to grow heritage breeds of both chickens and hogs. A heritage breed is an old fashioned strain, grown by farmers long before the industry engaged in genetic engineering. Their rationale was that heritage breeds are much more flavorful and healthier for the consumer. Veres said, “The industry standard is lean, cheap, and fast. What we at Grateful Growers live by is as good as possible, as economically as possible.”
In order to achieve that goal, Grateful Growers raise primarily Cornish Cross chickens, a breed that produces a large amount of flavorful white meat, and Golden Comet Chickens, which are remarkably good egg-layers. The chicks spend two weeks inside before joining the grown-ups in the pasture, where they roam and graze on bugs and vegetation under the watchful eyes of two enormous, chicken-protecting dogs.
The primary hog breed chosen for Grateful Grower production is the Tamworth hog. This is an old-time English breed that is fairly heat-tolerant, thrives in the outdoors, eats forage and grain, has good mothering instincts (important to continue the stock), and ultimately weighs in at 300 lbs. The hogs live in pens and are segregated by size. The pen locations change as needed to maintain a plentiful food supply for the animals, and lots of space in which to root and wallow.
Veres frequently used the terms “renewable” and “sustainable.” Consumers often fail to realize that availability of food is not a given, that unless thought is put into keeping a breed alive, our food supply is one last bite away from extinction. On the Grateful Growers Farm this fact is paramount. The breeds chosen were picked because they could and would, with care, be sustainable. Pastures are changed and nutrients introduced into the soil so that food for the animals will constantly be renewed. And nothing is wasted; even bones are preserved for stock.
Knowledge and appreciation as renewable and sustainable resources are highly valued by Veres and Parsons. Both work actively to educate the public through farm tours, visits to schools, speeches for various group meetings, and even when selling their products at three different farmers markets.
“We still meet people, kids and grownups alike, who have no idea what a pig looks like,” Natalie told me.
The educational efforts of the Grateful Growers were kicked up a notch during the Charlotte Shout festivities. The farm hosted an on-farm dinner, open to the public, made entirely from organic and locally-grown food. This was an opportunity for the local farmers and growers to show, in a most delicious way and right on the farm itself, just how wonderful their products are. But for Veres and Parsons, the highlight of that week was a visit from Alice Waters. Waters is a pioneer in the farm-to-table movement, an effort to create relationships between growers and chefs, and to promote the use of in-season, locally- and organically-grown foods. Named for her highly successful Berkeley restaurant Chez Panisse, the Chez Panisse Foundation has been instrumental in remodeling school lunch programs to bring an appreciation of fresh, well-prepared foods to a population not usually exposed to them.
“Alice Waters, with her participation at Charlotte Shout, and her visits to the culinary schools in the area, has sewn the seeds for building a community where chefs and growers have a direct relationship, where consumers learn from menus about the source of good, wholesome, locally grown food, in season, and where an appreciation for renewable and sustainable raising practices exists,” Veres said while she was showing me around the farm. “For us at the Grateful Growers Farm, it is validation that our hard work is so worthwhile.”
The difficulty of the work was the final challenge, and it was a doozie. Veres and Parsons had to learn all the skills necessary for the day-to-day running of a successful farm. Feeding and protecting the animals was the easy part. It was the farm machinery maintenance, the herding of huge, sometimes stubborn hogs, the bookkeeping, the marketing, the serving as veterinarian to sick, pregnant sows; and then, steeling themselves to take animals they had raised from babies for processing—those were the hard things, and the tasks that make up a day in the life of the Grateful Growers.
“I’m the only full-time employee,” Veres said. “If something needs to be done, I have to figure out how to do it. It has been hard, but really satisfying to find out that skills I’ve acquired in other industries can be adapted to this life.”
For most of us who spend our days in air-conditioned, high-tech work environments, the idea of coaxing 300-pound hogs into a truck on a hot summer day, just to move them a few hundred feet, not only doesn’t sound satisfying, it sounds downright miserable. At least until you talk to Veres and Parsons.
“We don’t need T.V., we have pigs. They are the funniest animals ever. Sometimes we just take a glass of wine and go out and watch them. It’s a hoot,” Veres told me. “And as for satisfaction, well, I worked for a company for eleven years. Not once in that time did anyone say, ‘Natalie, thank you for your hard work. What you’ve done today has made life better for me and for my family. And I’m very grateful.’ Not once. Now I hear it everyday. People really want to know that they’re putting healthy, good-tasting food on the table for their families. I can help them do that. When I work at the farmers’ markets, I love to direct people to the growers who have the products they’re looking for, the healthy, organically grown local products. Cassie is a chef and she likes to help them figure out how to use everything they buy to get the very best out of it. That’s what we’re all about. That’s what makes this such a wonderful life.”
I visited the farm on a very sultry August day, but if the animals were uncomfortable it was impossible to tell. The chickens were calmly walking around the barnyard, the hogs were contentedly wallowing in their self-made mud baths, and the dogs were patrolling the area, on constant lookout for foxes, raccoons, weasels and coyotes—the collective nemesis of the free-range farmer. It seemed to be a little piece of bucolic heaven, and for me that was a major revelation. Having grown up in a city and having seen my chicken and pork only in shrink-wrapped packages, I never actually considered what life was like for my meal while it was still on the hoof. While touring the farm with Veres, I was suddenly struck by the miracle of all this—that as a chef I was privileged to be able to cook with fine, wholesome ingredients; as a consumer I can rest assured that the food I put on my plate will not only be safe, but will be there again and again and, finally, that my dinner was once a living, breathing creature that was cared for, nurtured, and that gave its life for my pleasure and, yes, my sustainability.
As we sit down to the Thanksgiving feast, there is much to be thankful for, and many to be thankful to—small farmers like Natalie Veres and Cassie Parsons, the pioneering efforts of Alice Waters, chefs who are eager to support local growers. Now, thanks to places like Grateful Growers Farm, I’ll also remember, with newfound gratitude, all the pigs, cows, chickens and turkeys that make our meals possible.
~Sue Bartlett
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