FARMHOUSE
WOMAN IN FARMING TEACHING TRADITION DINNERS ON THE FARM
EDITORS’ NOTE In modern times we have reached a movement that focuses on the importance of the local and sustainable foods that reach our mouths and our family’s mouths. Farmhouse was born to educate people on how to obtain this food year round in an effort to keep sustainable careers for local farmers. Farmhouse is for those who see the benefit of living off of the land and knowing what is on their plate. We feature families month to month to encourage our readers to explore the land around them. Farmhouse exists for the public who is interested in where their food comes from and how it is brought into their homes.
Sarah Blankenship
Libby Lang
Matt Ryan
2 FARMHOUSE · SEPTEMBER 2015
SEPTEMBER 2015 路 FARMHOUSE 3
FARMHOUSE SEPTEMBER 2015 Editors Sarah Blankenship Libby Lang Matt Ryan
4 FARMHOUSE 路 SEPTEMBER 2015
Contributors Krystina Beach Macy DiRienzo Beth Rooney Casey Toth
CONTENTS 6-13 Woman in Farming 14-21 Teaching Tradition 22-29 Dinners on the Farm 30-37 Families that Farm
SEPTEMBER 2015 路 FARMHOUSE 5
Alyssa Webb, 28, of Pomeroy, Ohio ties Indian corn in bunches of 3 to sell. Her son Porter, 3, stands behind her.
6 FARMHOUSE 路 SEPTEMBER 2015
Alyssa Webb is a twenty-eight year old farmer from Pomeroy, Ohio. She wants to challenge the typical definition of a farmer. A typical farmer is generalized to be a man who works long hours, gets dirty, and works through the cold and heat. She would like to think that she can do all of those things and she is sure that she could show any man up. Alyssa explains,“Times are changing and women are very capable of doing any labor intensive job. It’s possible for anyone to do that: any age, any size, any type of girl can do it.” With a 3 year old son and a husband that is away for long periods of time, Alyssa is here to prove that a woman can do all of this dirty work just as well, or better, than a man. This story features photos by Macy DiRienzo.
SEPTEMBER 2015 · FARMHOUSE 7
8 FARMHOUSE 路 SEPTEMBER 2015
LEFT: Alyssa uses the dead corn stalk on her farm to sell to people who will buy it and turn it into homemade decorations for the fall season. TOP RIGHT: Alyssa’s farm boots sit outside of the house on the front porch along with her son Porter’s and her husband Philip’s. MIDDLE RIGHT: Alyssa carries Porter inside for a nap after a long day of helping his mother on the farm. BOTTOM RIGHT: Alyssa shucks Indian corn that she grows to sell; in the fall she uses the corn to build corn mazes.
SEPTEMBER 2015 · FARMHOUSE 9
TOP LEFT: During pumpkin season, Alyssa looks through rows of corn and pumpkins to pick for sale. TOP RIGHT: Alyssa’s friend helps her on the farm by loading pumpkins to the off-roader to ride back to the house. BOTTOM: After collecting the pumpkins, they are priced and put on display in the Webb’s front yard to be sold.
10 FARMHOUSE · SEPTEMBER 2015
SEPTEMBER 2015 路 FARMHOUSE 11
12 FARMHOUSE 路 SEPTEMBER 2015
Macy DiRienzo Born in Pittsburgh and raised on all things Italy, Macy is a lover of NHL hockey and Tom Petty. She is a junior at Ohio University studying photojournalism and social media. Macy is a lover of independence, travel and experience. Her immense passion for multimedia, visual storytelling and creativity definitely shows in her work. This past summer Macy traveled to New Zealand for an internship and she fell in love with the scenery. She is the secretary of Ohio University’s Multimedia Society and will be the president in the upcoming school year. When she graduates she just wants to be somewhere new where she is happy.
LEFT: Alyssa and her family reside in this farmhouse that is right down the road from Alyssa’s parent’s dairy farm.
SEPTEMBER 2015 · FARMHOUSE 13
Growing up on a farm in Coolville, Ohio Hannah Harper learned how to raise animals, grow her own food, and the importance of canning. From a young age she learned how to utilize the land around her and she now passes those lessons on to her son. Hannah stresses the importance of living off the land she cares for herself saying, “It teaches you how to cook and how to work and how to take care of yourself.” This story features photo by Krystina Beach
14 FARMHOUSE · SEPTEMBER 2015
At seven in the morning, Hannah and Chris pull coolers full of beet pulp for the animals out to the car. They make the five-minute trip to the farm twice a day to feed the animals and do chores. SEPTEMBER 2015 路 FARMHOUSE 15
16 FARMHOUSE 路 SEPTEMBER 2015
SEPTEMBER 2015 路 FARMHOUSE 26
LEFT: Sally Hutchins, Hannah, Beau and Chris all sit down to share Sunday dinner. “We cook, not every single night, but at least four or five nights a week and then we make enough [that] we have leftovers.” TOP RIGHT: For Sunday dinner Harper prepared lasagna, garlic bread, and a garden salad. The main items they buy from the store are things they cannot grow or make themselves. BOTTOM RIGHT: “I don’t want to keep from anybody else what I don’t need,” Hannah says, but on Fridays she takes food the Friends and Neighbors pantry wants to get rid of before it expires. These foods go to her animals. SEPTEMBER 2015 · FARMHOUSE 17
The numbers change frequently, but between her home and the farm Hannah currently has a dog, ten cats, five hens, six roosters, 11 horses, a heifer, and she cares for the neighbor’s horse, two cats and 11 ducks.
18 FARMHOUSE · SEPTEMBER 2015
Harper bought the pig for $50 and raised it for about a year and a half in preparation for slaughter. She could have bought a pig ready to butcher for $47 at a stock sale, “but we also use the pig as a garbage disposal, so it works both ways” Ackley says.
SEPTEMBER 2015 · FARMHOUSE 19
Krystina Beach Krystina Beach, originally from Doylestown, PA, is currently a junior at Ohio University where she studies photojournalism in the School of Visual Communication. Krystina allows her camera to serve as an icebreaker between her and her subjects and a way to further communicate with people. When in need for some inspiration, Krystina attends presentations by other photographers. She says she always leaves with more inspiration and always learns something. In December of 2014, when asked if she could photograph anything at all, Krystina said she would like to focus on a farm-to-table restaurant and its process of getting started. She has a yearning to travel the U.S. and explore farther west. When she isn’t shooting, Krystina enjoys cooking for herself and for others. She even admits her guilty pleasure of ‘watching too many cooking shows.’
RIGHT: “I know!” Beau, 8, calls to his mother Hannah after she yells for him to keep the breadcrumbs on land for the ducks. From the time he was three, Beau has helped out in the garden, planting seeds, and gathering green beans and potatoes.
20 FARMHOUSE · SEPTEMBER 2015
SEPTEMBER 2015 路 FARMHOUSE 21
22 FARMHOUSE 路 SEPTEMBER 2015
Praire Fruits Farm, Illinois’ first farmstead cheesemaking facility, hosts dinners on the farm throughout the growing season. The meals feature all-local ingredients, and emphasize the diversity of food grown in central Illinois. The idea for the dinners began with the idea of using the ingredients grown on the farm and found in central Illinois, and have people experience the food, in its prime, prepared simply and beautifully done while eating outdoors on the farm. One thing the farm’s owners, Wes Jarrell and Leslie Cooperband, try to achieve with these dinners is to show people the amazing diversity of products and exceptional farmers in Illinois. They strive to help show people their is so much more than corn and soy beans their area. This story features photos by Beth Rooney.
Prairie Fruits Farm is located in Champaign, Illinois.
SEPTEMBER 2015 · FARMHOUSE 23
24 FARMHOUSE 路 SEPTEMBER 2015
TOP LEFT: The dairy herd consists of Nubian and La Mancha goats. BOTTOM LEFT: Molly, a chef and cheese maker at the farm, picks flowers for the tables before dinner. TOP RIGHT: Leslie Cooperband, co-owner of Praire Fruits Farm, carries tomatoes to the kitchen. MIDDLE RIGHT: Alisa, the head chef at the farm, helps plate the herb and watermelon salad. BOTTOM RIGHT: House made pickle plate: heirloom cucumbers, golden beets, beans, carrots and radishes from the garden at the farm.
SEPTEMBER 2015 路 FARMHOUSE 25
Guests share a cheese course featuring three of the farms’ cheeses. Served with farmstead honey and quince preserves.
26 FARMHOUSE · SEPTEMBER 2015
A guest shares a sip of her white wine with one of the goats from the farm’s dairy herd.
SEPTEMBER 2015 · FARMHOUSE 27
Beth Rooney Beth is a photojournalist based in Chicago, Illinois. She is especially drawn to documentary work for the opportunities it affords to make an extended study of various groups, cultures and lifestyles. She also enjoys photographing food to convey the importance of food traditions and culture in today’s society. A graduate of Ohio University’s School of Visual Communications, Beth has worked for various clients including The Chicago Tribune, The New York Times, Saveur, FADER, Time Magazine, and Lawry’s Illinois Tourism Board. Her work can also be seen in the cookbook Chicago Chef ’s Table, published in 2012. To view more of Beth’s work, view her portfolio at bethrooney.com.
RIGHT: Sunset on the farm.
28 FARMHOUSE · SEPTEMBER 2015
SEPTEMBER 2015 路 FARMHOUSE 29
30 FARMHOUSE 路 SEPTEMBER 2015
Casey Toth Casey is a photographer and filmmaker that was born and raised in Cary, North Carolina. She graduated high school a semester early to spend six months interning at the Raleigh News and Observation. She went on to pursue a degree in Environmental Studies at the University of North Carolina at Asheville. It was during her internship for the Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project where she found her passion for documenting agriculture and it’s relationship with the environment. Casey is now studying photojournalism at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. She says that the issues she cares so deeply about haven’t made their way into the textbooks yet. She is excited to grow as a photographer and a human being during her next couple years at UNC.
Families that farm is our monthly feature on family farms that are worth mentioning. This month all of our families are from the Tar Heel State, North Carolina! Learn about the Clayton’s farm focused on improving their land using farm animals, the Butlers farm, which seeks the benefits in an agriculturally supported community, and the Kirstein’s farm based on educating the community youth.
TOP LEFT: Matt and Eliza Mae Clayton from Wild Scallions Farm play in the leaves together.
Renee and Matt Clayton, and their daughter Eliza Mae Clayton, are the owners of Wild Scallions Farm located in Timberlake, North Carolina. The farm includes over two acres of cultivated fields broadly terraced on the slope of Mount Tirzah and slightly beyond. While working on their family owned farm, the Clayton family tries to listen to their land and intermix perennial crops, small orchards, wild lands and song bird habitat amongst their fields. They also have a large concrete chicken sculpture on their property, which houses a tangle of rusty barbed wire that enclosed the farm when Matt’s father, Russ Clayton, owned it.
32 FARMHOUSE · SEPTEMBER 2015
The Claytons are constantly trying to improve their land. They practice crop rotation, cover cropping, minimal tillage, and include many farm animals to help them in this effort. They grow vegetables and flowers yearround with the aid of their two hoophouses, plastic covered structures only heated by the sun. All produce at Wild Scallions Farm is grown sustainably, with no pesticides, herbicides, or chemical fertilizers for healthful foods from healthy fields. Along with their vegetables and flowers, the Claytons have chickens, dairy goats, honey bees, and composting earthworms on their farm.
SEPTEMBER 2015 路 FARMHOUSE 33
Green Button Farm wants to be known by their food with an address, and not a barcode. Ryan, Alicia, and their three boys: Jackson, Gates, and Finn, have built up their farm in Durham, North Carolina and are so proud of everything that it stands for. The mission of Green Button Farm is to be a year-round local source for high quality produce, pasture raised poultry and beef grown at their farm using sustainable and responsible principles that result in safe, chemical and antibiotic free food and a healthy environment. Ryan has a seemingly innate ability to care for animals and increase soil fertility. He finds it extremely rewarding to grow food for people he loves. All while Alicia manages day-to-day operations, personnel, farm communications, and keeping the three boys from flooding the chicken coop. Their trusty friends, Trent and Cortney Morgan, help them keep the Green Button Farm running smoothly. Trent is extremely
34 FARMHOUSE · SEPTEMBER 2015
handy, hardworking, and has a keen interest in sustainable agriculture and protecting the environment. Cortney teaches third grade by day and wrangles the 3 Butler boys by night. Ryan and Alicia have high standards for their farm and try their best to make Green Button Farm a part of their community. They feel that Community Supported Agriculture helps build community around the fundamental act of eating. They donate over 15% of the farm’s yield to food relief organizations and churches in the greater Durham area. They believe that they could not be successful farmers if they did not believe in hard work. The demands of farming tend to be constant and multi-faceted. Plants keep growing (even during the weekend) and must be taken care of on their schedules. Some would say that they work too hard, but they feel that it is worth it because of their passion for the importance of what they do!
SEPTEMBER 2015 路 FARMHOUSE 35
Adelbert Farm is an educational farm in Fairview, North Carolina, located 20 minutes outside of Asheville. Run by Joe, Kimberly, Joshua, Harrison, and Thomas Kirstein, Adelbert Farm has been in the family for over 100 years still has some of the original apple trees it started with when it was just known as an apple farm in an era of depression. Kimberly was a middle school teacher when she met Joe, who always referred to his family property as “the farm.” Together they raised their three boys there. Now, Adelbert Farm has animals and gardens with camps and classes to educate
36 FARMHOUSE · SEPTEMBER 2015
the public. Adelbert has provided over 25 years of math, science, and homeschooling to the classes taught there in an outdoor setting. Adelbert Farm believes in letting children explore the world they are naturally curious about, the more they wander the more questions they will have—driving them to have a more meaningful learning experience. Adelbert strives to have their students spend as much time in the natural world as possible with nature hikes, creek stomps, free exploration, and outdoor projects, allowing the students enough time and opportunities to find the answers to their own questions.
SEPTEMBER 2015 路 FARMHOUSE 37
!
scribers
sub for print
Our tablet edition is available on Go to farmhousemag.com to subscribe!