Eating Locally

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle written by Barbara Kingsolver details the authors one-year experiment to eat only locally grown food on her childhood farm in Appalachia. While many people do not have access to a farm nor the ability to take a year off to grow their own food, Kingsolver's book inspires people to think more locally about their food.  She also includes recipes in her book that are practical, delicious, and transferable to normal cooks across the country. Her book made me think about how we can incorporate local eating in Cache Valley and I researched several business that are devoted to this concept.  I hope this research will inspire you to support local agriculture.

Central Milling

 

Central Milling is located at 122 East Center Street in Logan, Utah.  The company began milling in 1867 and remains one of the oldest businesses in Utah.  Central Milling buys its grains from Western farmers and produces organic flours using hydroelectricity.  Several local businesses use Central Milling products in their efforts to bring the farm to the table. You can learn more about this company and its products through this link Central Milling.

Crumb Brothers Bakery

 

Crumb Brothers Artesian Breads crafts its delicious bread from organic flour largely produced by Central Milling. Located at 291 South 300 West in Logan, Utah, the bakery occupies the first commercial building in the city designed to use geothermal heat which reduces energy consumption.  A visit to the café and bakery is well worth the time. The atmosphere is inviting, the staff helpful and the commitment to community important, You can learn more about artesian bread, the café, and the local businesses it supports through this link Crumb Brothers Artesian Bread.

Gibbons Green Gate Farm

Gibbons Green Gate Farm is an operating farm that began by selling local grown beef.  They have since added a family-atmosphere café that quite possibly makes the best farm breakfast in the valley.  Operated by the Gibbons family, customers are greeted like old friends, and in addition to the farm breakfast, the cook supplies different specials each Saturday morning.  The waffle and peaches special was divine.  The farm uses local companies including Central Milling in its amazing menu.  Everyone should experience a breakfast on the farm.  You can find out more information about the products and services offered at Gibbons Gibbons Green Gate Farm. Green Gate Farm located at 4680 North 800 West, Smithfield, Utah through this link Gibbons Green Gate Farm.

Farm Breakfast at the Carriage House on Gibbons Green Gate Farm.

 

Cache Valley provides many opportunities to join the eat local movement and the companies listed above are a few of the businesses that incorporate local agriculture.  Everyone who visits the valley soon discovers its amazing link to dairy and cheese products.  A future post will look into the amazing local dairy products available.

Grandma Mort's Ginger Snaps

 

The original recipe in Grandma Mort's writing.

I am of the opinion that the best food in the world comes out of a farm kitchen.  As we near Thanksgiving and Christmas, my mind turns to the cookies I made with my Grandma Mortenson. The thoughts of a warm kitchen, the smell of spices, and the image of her beautiful arthritic hands rolling balls of dough in sugar feed my soul like nothing else can.  Her coveted cookie recipe is posted below.  Take the time this season to make some memories with someone you love.

 

Grandma Mort's Ginger Snaps

 

1 1/2 cup shortening
1/2 cup molasses
2 eggs
2 cups sugar
2 tsp. cloves
2 tsp. ginger
2 tsp. cinnamon
4 tsp. baking soda
1 cup flour

Mix together and roll into balls the size of a walnut then dip into sugar.
Bake at 375 degrees for 7-10 minutes.



 Maddie & Tae's A Girl in a Country Song

 

 

 

Farmer's daughters and country girls know what its like to be stereo typed as "hotties" without brains.  Maddie & Tae address the issue with some amazing lyrics, a great beat, and a message for the male artists in the country music business. I'm all for Twitty and Straight (6th verse) because they did know how to treat a lady.

 

Well, I wish I had some shoes
On my two bare feet
And it's getting kinda cold
In these painted on cut-off jeans
I hate the way this bikini top chafes
Do I really have to wear it all day

Yeah, baby

I hear you over there
On your tailgate whistlin'
Sayin', "Hey, Girl"
But you know I ain't listenin'
'Cause I got a name
And to you, it ain't "pretty little thing",
"Honey", or "baby"
It's driving me red-red-red-red-red-red-redneck crazy

Being the girl in a country song
How in the world did it go so wrong
Like all I'm good for is lookin' good for
You and your friends on the weekend, nothin' more
We used to get a little respect
Now we're lucky if we even get
To climb up in your truck
Keep our mouths shut, and ride along
And be the girl in a country song

Well, shakin' my moneymaker
Ain't never made me a dime
And there ain't no sugar for you
In this shaker of mine
Tell me one more time
You gotta get you some of that
Sure, I'll slide on over
But you're gonna get slapped
Ha, these days, it ain't easy bein' that

Girl in a country song
How in the world did it go so wrong
Like all I'm good for is lookin' good for
You and your friends on the weekend, nothin' more
We used to get a little respect
Now we're lucky if we even get
To climb up in your truck
Keep our mouths shut, and ride along
And be the girl in a country song

Yep, yep, yeah, baby

Aw, naw, Conway and George Strait
Never did it this way
Back in the old days
All y'all, we ain't a cliche
That ain't no way
To treat a lady

Like a girl in a country song
How in the world did it go so wrong
Like all I'm good for is lookin' good for
You and your friends on the weekend, nothin' more
Whoo! We used to get a little respect
Now we're lucky if we even get
To climb up in your truck
Keep our mouths shut, and ride along
Down some old dirt road we don't even want to be on
And be the girl in a country song

I ain't your tan-legged Juliet!
Can I put on some real clothes now?
Aw, naw
*giggling*



It's a Girl Thing

The view from the hayfield.
 

The first five children in my family are girls. We grew up farming and working alongside the men in my family and the need to cultivate the land runs in our blood. My younger sister Cindy owns an alfalfa farm and operates it with her three daughters. I visited her farm and interviewed her about the role the land and farming plays in her life. Our interview, along with pictures of her farm, follows.

Q. Why did you decide to become a farmer? What did you like about the way of life?
A. Because I love the type of work and the way of life. What I like most about the way of life is that the profession is family oriented. I like working a long side my husband and children. I like being able to teach them to work, that we don't quit working until the job is done. I like that every day I get to do something different. I like the seasons. There is a good variety in the jobs that have to be done and in the skills required to do them. I like pushing myself to accomplish all that has to be done in a day and to be able to look at my work and see that I've accomplished something worthwhile. I like that farming is variable, risky and requires hard work. That keeps it fresh. I love to be outside.

Q. Do you do what some people would consider men's work? If so how do you view that work, as gender specific or just work?
A. Yes. And yes I view it as gender specific because men and some women remind me that it is men's work. I don't let that stop me from doing what I love. I hate it when someone tells me that I can't do something because its a man's job. I hate it even worse when they assume I can't do it. I view the work as a challenge. I think there are some types of work that men are better at than women and vice versa. Other than men having more physical strength I haven't come across a farming job that I think women couldn't do.


Swathing the hay.

Baling the hay.

Q. What has farming taught you?
A. Farming has taught me to be a hard worker. To have determination, persistence, faith and optimism. It has taught me to be a better conservationist. To always keep learning and expanding my knowledge base. To take risks but to be conservative also. It has taught me that I can do anything that I set my mind to. Where there's a will there's a way. It has taught me not to procrastinate. It has taught me to appreciate the small things in life and to enjoy the moments and to live the journey. It has taught me to appreciate the good days and trudge through the bad.

Q. Can farming support you economically? If not why?
A. No. Because it takes more $ than you make.

Q. What do you hope to pass on to your daughters about farming and their legacy?
A. I hope that they will have a very good work ethic. That they will learn to love family, the land, the livestock, God and that they can do anything.

Q. Does farming give you a sense of place meaning do you feel a greater tie to nature or the land? If so how?
A. Yes. Because without the land and the renewable resources required to farm you don't farm. You have to manage it correctly to sustain it. Choices made today are going to effect outcomes not only tomorrow but years down the road. 


My farming nieces.

 

WEEDS: A FARM DAUGHTER'S LAMENT

 

Authors Note: I wrote this piece as part of my final paper for a graduate seminar on Western Memoir at Utah State University taught by the exceptional Dr. Melody Graulich.  I wanted to include a portion of it on my blog because it is this book, and Melody's sincere belief that I had stories to tell, that sparked my interest in the study of women and farming.





My farmer father made no secret about being disappointed that God didn’t give him sons.  After having five daughters in a row, he was convinced that he was a modern day Job.  Instead of accepting his fate, he decided to play the hand he was dealt by making his daughters into farmers. While he never tired of telling others about how the Davis girls were “top hands” and worked harder than most of the boys in the county, he never praised his daughters for their hard work and spent most of his time instructing them on how to do it better.  Somewhere in the back of my mind, I think I always knew that no amount of work, no level of perfection, would ever make up for me not being born a boy.  This idea influenced my identity and fueled my desire to succeed but what I didn’t understand until recently is it did the same thing for other farm daughters. I made this discovery when I read Weeds: A Farm Daughter’s Lament written by Evelyn Funda for an  graduate seminar on Western memoir. Her experiences as woman in a rural farming community were hauntingly familiar and I was instantly taken with her prose.

In her memoir, Funda writes about her life as the only daughter of an Idaho farmer.  She shows her reader how being born a girl on a farm shaped her personal identity and confronts the role gender bias played in her life.  Funda titles her chapters after types of weeds found on her family farm in Idaho and uses their characteristics to echo her life experiences and her identity as a farm daughter. The metaphor effectively sets her apart as a living organism rooted to a land that was never meant to embrace her existence.

This methodology is readily apparent in the first chapter of her book titled Dodder. It is here we learn how family convention kept Funda out of the field, confined to traditional female farming roles and influenced her early identity. Funda reinforces her use of weed as metaphor when she recounts emptying out her childhood home after the death of her parents. During this process, she comes across an information pamphlet written for farmers about the noxious weed dodder. “I was a grown woman before I discovered that the word for dodder, the brightly colored Medusa-headed weed my father righteously battled on our farm, was not spelled, as I had always assumed, d-a-u-g-h-t-e-r” (8). She goes on to provide a botanical explanation of dodder as an indestructible parasitic plant incapable of independent existence.  The survival of dodder is solely dependent on the nutrients it sucks from its host plant.

Funda’s passage about the physical characteristics of dodder further engrains the weed in the mind’s eye as part woman. “With its brilliant curling tendrils of gold and auburn and strawberry blond, dodder does have about it a fiendish, feminine beauty” (10).  It is easy to imagine the weed as a wild woman’s wayward locks. The complexity surrounding these images increases when you consider that the common names for dodder, such as maiden's hair, witches' shoelaces, lovevine and witches hair are also rooted in the feminine.

When I think of dodder in terms of imagery, I see my great-grandmother bent double over the galvanized steel tub we used to pluck the chickens in during the fall butchering season.  Her hands are moving so fast I forget she is 80 and struggle to keep pace. Her hair, once thick and deep auburn, is now thin and white and tendrils are escaping her bun.  I look at her and watch the wind unwind her curls as tiny pin feathers float around her.   This is my Grammy’s witches hair. I’ve often thought about this scene because I recall it with perfect clarity.

Grammy was a farmer’s daughter too. She married a farmer and gave him a daughter, my father’s mother.   Did she feel inadequate because she was a girl? Was she disappointed to have a daughter? Did she know, like I did, that her existence was a disappointment? It may be difficult for people born outside of rural communities to understand the complexities of the weed/woman metaphor but Funda explains it beautifully with the following line “Yet that essential misconception of equating dodder and daughter, however, unfounded it was, has long ago engrained in me an analogy I found hard to shake, one where the boundaries between two things, weed and woman, are permeable and fluid” (9).

What contributed to the formation of this analogy? We may get insight into this when Funda discusses the gender bias that exists between fathers and daughters on farms when she talks about her birth as told by her father.

Whenever my father spoke of my birth, he never failed to begin the story with the words of his own father.  With something strangely akin to pride, he used to say his father Frank has admonished my mother when she was pregnant with me, “If it’s a girl, you send it back!” My father would laugh then add, “But once you were here, he wouldn’t have traded you for the world. (12)

Men wanting sons to carry on their names and legacies isn’t new, but on family farms this need seems more urgent.  As Funda recounts the frankness in which her gender is discussed by the men in her family, the reader can’t help but sense that her birth as a female was somehow marked by disappointment.  The idea that being born a girl to a farmer somehow makes a daughter “less” is woven into her personal narrative before she even draws breath and plays a key role in shaping her personal identity. The place of women in the daily operation of farm life also influenced my personal identity.  Farming communities embrace the roles of men as bread winners and women as bread makers as essential aspects of American family values.