How I Came to Live in a Barn: Part 7

Ladies and gentlemen, you've made it––or you've cheated, respectfully––but either way, you've arrived! This marks the seventh and final installment of "How I Came to Live in a Barn," the series that strives to connect drinking to farming as relevantly as humanly possible.

If you're just tuning in, as a quick preface to this series, from April to December of 2010 I lived in a barn. No electricity, running water, losses to Morehead State in the first round of the tournament (Sorry, Cards fans), or losses to West Virginia in the second (Let's go, Jorts!). During that time I worked on a legitimately (though proudly uncertified) organic farm in Southern Kentucky. This series is about the many whims, fascinations and revelations that eventually inspired me to drop everything and go farming. This preface appeared at the beginning of the entire series, so I guess this marks the end of that, too. sad-face emoticon. Anywho, y'ready? Wunderbar

How I came to Live in a Barn: The Barn edition

You know how they say, "Don't put all your eggs in one basket?" Well, anyone who says that simply isn't romantic enough for me to listen to. I liked what I'd read about the place and confidently, I put all of my eggs in the their basket, never once looking back.


I learn best by experience, so immediately I ruled out going to farm school. I'd found Bugtussle on the internet, wishfully searching for biodynamic farms in and around Kentucky. Luckily, being the lush-ass area it is, natural farms abound in this part of the country. One word in particular appeared regularly in my searches––"Bugtussle"–– and the more I read about the place, the more it appealed to me. I wanted a farm either close to Louisville or close to Nashville; I wanted it to be diverse including both animals and vegetables; and I wanted to learn from someone doing something similar to what I wanted, and time and time again, my search results rendered the same farm.

Hoping for the best, I filled out the application, sent it off, crossed my fingers, and waited anxiously. I was in the book store when the phone rang and it was Bugtussle. Running out onto the busy streets that surround Union Square I nervously chatted with Eric over the sirens and horns. I couldn't believe how nervous I was, but I was also happy to be so; it meant I wanted this gig bad enough to know I could screw it up. We got along well, and he said that they required a farm visit before they could take anyone on, which I suspected, was fine with, and prepared for. After we got off the phone I booked myself a trip to Nashville, and this was that farm visit.

The driveway is a solid quarter mile of rocky dirt road, distinguished in the forest by a single, hand-made cedar mailbox. It looks nothing like any farm I'd ever entered. Guided by a thick tunnel of trees, you cross two low water fords––low most of the time. About halfway in, you pass a high tunnel on the left now, however at the time I passed its skeleton. There was a cow in my path that moved along unconcerned and leaped back into the neighbor's pasture when it saw me. As I pulled down the driveway, I could see smoke billowing out from the cabin's chimney, an outdoor kitchen and a stack of shiitake logs that told me I had chosen the right driveway in the middle of nowhere. Whew.

It didn't take long for me to warm up to the family. Eric and Cher are welcoming, intelligent, and curious, as are their 3 children. Eric and I had already spoke on the phone many times, and I had read most of what he'd recommended, including Joel Salatin's "Everything I Want to do is Illegal," and Gene Logsdon's "The Contrary Farmer" among others. We had some lunch, then set out to do chores––moving the livestock and such––then headed back down the hill to the house to warm up. It was January, and it was cold. That night it was supposed to get down to 20 degrees, and I can attest to the fact that it definitely did so.

He started me a fire in the wood-stove in the barn, where I'd be staying. My space is two rooms––one up, one down––a desk (down) and a bed (up). That's about it, besides the cookstove which was what I had to rely on for heat, that, and my ability to keep a fire going, or lack there of. At first, it was raging hot, then it was raging cold, and it stayed that way until 5:00am when Eric came over to the barn to get me. We had to move the chickens before sun-up, I was a solid block of ice. Despite my sleeping bag, layers and long-johns, it was still the coldest night of my life. I had failed at bundling, or keeping the fire going, two things I could do proficiently in New York (where the landlord keeps the fire going by law). Needless to say, when Eric came to get me, I was excited to get the blood flowing.

After we moved the chickens, we headed down to breakfast. Eric always says that you feed the animals before you feed yourself, and we never strayed from that. After some oats and fresh maple syrup, we tackled a few things on the farm––there was a snow storm coming and though he never feeds his livestock hay, he didn't want to starve them if the grass was inaccessible. So I tossed him bales for the first time in my life, and it was truly (and and little sadly) difficult. I lacked any and all form of farm muscle, the baling twine slicing through my soft, wine-shop-reared hands, and the simple act of tossing a bale off of a stack from about twenty feet up was just about enough motion to send me with it. Farming, he would tell me, is the materials handling business. I learned on the farm that you move a bunch of stuff around all day long and somehow, at the end of the week, food pops out. It's physical, then it's a miracle.


For lunch that day we had roasted pork with sweet potatoes and kimchi––all from the farm. I sat there at the table quiet, admittedly more exhausted than I wanted to admit. Eric ran out of the house and returned with a bottle from the cellar and sat it next to me. "Persimmon wine" he said, and smiled. This, I have to say, was the proverbial moment I moved into the barn. I made the kids a plate, then Cher, then Eric, then myself. Eric poured the wine. They wanted to know what I thought, and I, being a nerdy wine nerd, couldn't wait to taste it. It was unctuous, slightly oxidized and a little funky: like riesling, sherry and pears all had a feral son and it was called Persimmon Wine. And it was great. Alongside the pork roast, it was perfect even. I was elated, and (way too) excited that they drank––a legitimate fear I had going into this farming world. After lunch, they offered me the internship and they offered me that room in the barn if I wanted it. I said yes to both, then the six-year-old introduced me to all 200 hundred of his fish paintings and we spent the rest of the evening hanging out. 

When I left, I took with me both soreness and enthusiasm as a souvenir. I also took with me the fact that this was going to be harder than it was in my dreams. The gravity of moving away from New York City was compounded by the gravity of how incredibly different this lifestyle would be. And how incredibly difficult. And not just for a few days like this farm visit was, but nearly 8 months to a lifetime. Between the food, and the wine, and the return to my homeland, however, it all spoke to me. I had no idea if I was going to survive it, but I was sure as hell going to give myself a chance to die trying. That April, after nearly four years at September, three and a half years after my obsession with natural wine, and a year and a half after Hervé and Éric, I was moving into my barn. I passed 8 hard fought months in that barn, through the heat, the cold, the bugs and the bites, and come April 6th of this year, I'll be fighting 8 more, eating like a king daily. When Eric offered me a second year internship, I couldn't resist. The first year I dedicated to the experience, but I still have a long way to go. The second year will be dedicated to the education, which I'll do my best to apply to the rest of my life.

I like to think that my family––generations from now––will look back fondly on the story of how crazy ol' Grandpa Fraust decided to go farming all those years ago. Hopefully they will be reminiscing over a glass of persimmon wine, or paw paw wine, or blueberry wine from the farm I willed them, and hopefully they will still be farming it. Even if I didn't really have a damn clue how to farm when I moved into the barn, and it wasn't in my family to do so, I knew it had to start somewhere, right?

So that, my friends, is how crazy ol' Grandpa Fraust came to be, came to Kentucky and came to live in a barn. In a weird little nutshell.

I want to thank you all for reading, and to say go Cats (sorry, it's March, but seriously, go Cats!)! Thank you, and happy growing.

-Fraust

How I Came to Live in a Barn: Part 6

Welcome to Friday and another edition of "How I Came to Live in a Barn," the series that strives to connect drinking to farming as relevantly as humanly possible.

If you're just tuning in, as a quick preface to this series, from April to December of 2010 I lived in a barn. No electricity or running water, but all the paw paws, persimmons and passion fruit you could eat. During that time I worked on a legitimately (though proudly uncertified) organic farm in Southern Kentucky. This series is about the many whims, fascinations and revelations that eventually inspired me to drop everything and go farming. Once we catch up to the present, I'll use the occasion to explain what I'm up to now, beyond the blaug. Is this preface going to appear at the beginning of the entire series? You Betcha. Ready? Wunderbar.

How I Came to Live in a Barn: The New York, Tony Coturri, and one fateful year edition

By facilitating this whole fiasco, New York City became the unsung hero of my barn life. It introduced me to the shop, that introduced me to the wines, that introduced me to the people, who introduced me to the idea that I might one day want to be a farmer. New York is quite possibly the only entity inspiring enough to inspire someone to move out of New York City. I remember when I returned there, after my adventures with Éric and Hervé, I had a theretofore inconceivable thought: in one year, I'm gonna jet.

My goal was to commence a winemaking education by April of 2010, but I would be forced to define what that meant, and how and where to go about it––New York City not really an option. Every move up until then had been a simple, semi-logical reaction to something else––like meeting winemakers because I liked their wines––whereas this decision, I feared, required actual decision making. To make it worse, there was an offensive array of options: France? California? School? Winging it? I would spend the following year chewing on numerous ideas and spitting out the unreasonable, until I eventually landed upon the one with the most resonance. But said resolution did not come easily, until I tackled all the of the existential challenges of what do I want out of this? 

I was relatively sure of two things: 1) I wanted to end up in Kentucky, my homeland, and 2) I wanted to make wine. My worries mostly fell to whether or not there would have to be concessions made to have both. Could one make good wine in Kentucky?––I feared not. Or at least that's how I felt at first, but one unexpected consequence of having to make these decisions was that I had inadvertently became obsessed with all things fermentation over that year––kombucha, kimchi, wine, cider, beer, etc.––for its social as well as medicinal attributes. I had inundated myself with nerdy wine books, leading to an obsession with microbiology––one I'll kindly spare you––but which proved to be invaluable in aiding my eventual decision. When I redefined wine, I redefined my possibilities.

An idea began growing in my head, mid-way through that year, that I could see myself simply on a farm––it didn't strictly have to be a vineyard. When we were talking to Hervé Souhaut he had said something interesting: "Wine people are almost always food people, but food people aren't necessarily wine people." Cooks aren't obliged to like wine, whereas most wine people––like myself––find the two inseparable, and I didn't really want to pursue one without the other.

Wine-making is simple––grapes, crush, ferment, right?––at least in theory. Perhaps I could teach myself, I thought, because what really intimidated me, was that I hadn't a clue about how grapes or vegetables grew, save for what I read in books. If I couldn't produce the fruit, I couldn't produce the wine. I began casually researching farms in Kentucky at the same time I was talking to winemakers in France. Food, I decided, was to remain central in my plans, no matter what I chose. Weighing the ease with which I could start my training in Kentucky (where I spoke the language and didn't require a visa) against the bureaucracy and foreignness of France––staying in the states seemed rather appealing. I remained incredulous however until one fateful night when I met biodynamic winemaker Tony Coturri in Brooklyn, and unprompted, he validated the idea.

Tony is a calm and intelligent personality, garnished with an impressive beard and an incomparable knowledge of natural winemaking. Coturri's wines of California are among some of the most pure in all the land, and I greatly respect and seek his opinion. That night, Tony suggested that he didn't think they should focus so intensely on growing grapes in the south, that it's not a grape growing climate. He added, "There's so much good fruit there––you can ferment anything," and boom. Here was one of my favorite winemakers in the world telling me that it was possible to have my cake (Kentucky) and eat it, too (fermented). That was all I needed, his words confirmed it for me. I was sold on staying in the states, on going to a farm, and teaching myself to make wine... once I learned to grow the raw materials. Now I just had to choose a farm, but luckily I had one in mind; one in Kentucky; one I'd been eying with more than just passing curiosity. So the next day, my correspondences with France stopped and I printed the application, filled it out and sent it off. A few days later, I got a call from the farmer, and next week, we'll conclude the series with a trip to Bugtussle and the glass of wine that changed it all.

Until next week, friends, cheers.

Farm Stories: Shelter from the Storm

“In actual fact, people seldom remember things they have no use for.”
- Daniel Quinn

Two massive floods hit the farm last year, and right now the moon is in roughly the same position and constellation that it was for both floods. But the third storm in three days is passing over head right now, and I'm watching it from the safety of my house and I hate how little it's going to affect me.

I notice nature more since the farm––storms and temperatures and such. It means more to me than it used to. A storm doesn't just pass, and it's gone. A storm is an event on the farm and it lingers. You have to sprint up to the shade-house at three in the morning to save the new transplants from being demolished by pounding rain; or kayak out onto the creek to rescue bags of peat moss that floated away in the flooding; you have to clean up any fallen trees blocking the road; then a few days later you have to cultivate all the germinated weed seed. Storms are what nature lives by, and yet we fortify ourselves against them.

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One week we went for it. We planted a bunch of things that needed fertility and a lot of water, even though it had been dry and hot, but we needed to. It was a gamble. We were exhausted from the rough, long harvest that Friday and none of us had much energy for transplanting but knew it needed to be done and persevered. Then, that afternoon, as I was lying on my bed in a sore heap of fatigue, I heard the rumble of thunder, then the sound of rain drops across the tin roof of the barn and I cheered. I'd never cheered for nature before, it felt good, and god dammit, we needed that rain.

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And now here I sit, like most of the country, sheltered from the storm. If we're out in it, we're bitching about it. If we're inside, we're ignoring it, waiting for tomorrow when the storm will be gone and we can talk about how nice it is to see the sunshine. Most of us (writer not excluded) will never think of this storm again. While for others, it might have been the rain they were waiting for, or possibly the rain that washed away some topsoil. Either way they're rarely ruined by it, as they're always in a position to reap the benefits of storms, not just the catastrophes.

Biodynamic Preperations

I reckon I should probably at least touch on the subject of biodynamics going into Friday's post, yes? I don't want my blog to become so esoteric that it will lose that HBO-like, suspenseful, edge-of-your-seat feel I've been creating. It feels like that, right? Just let me know if it gets too... Soprano's-ish.

There are a lot of things that go into biodynamics, but I'm not going to go nuts here: knowing the basic principles, or the theories behind them––which I admit is a hard thing to pin down––is a good start. Historically, the man credited with the creation of biodynamics is a man by the name of Rudolf Steiner (also known for his work in Theosophy and Anthroposphy). In the 1920's he gave a series of lectures which formed the foundation of the agricultural practice we call biodynamics. He was considered by some to be a "seer" and he believed in a very special relationship between the cosmos and life on earth. He saw the effects of the moon and the constellations as more than just gravity, but forces; he saw the earth as a living organism; and he saw the earth as in need of healing and humans to be the stewards of it. The lectures can be hard to read, but if you ever get a chance to hear someone talk about the subject, go. Leave behind any pretense though, understanding biodynamics takes an open mind.

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Bugtussle 2010

One warm April evening, Eric and I were reflecting on the day near the upper garden, as we were want to do at the end of most days. Soon we would be planting it with our main-season tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, etc., and he suggested we spread some barrel compost, a biodynamic preparation developed by Maria Thun.

Out of a little box he pulled a slightly measured handful of dirt and put it into a five gallon bucket full of water. Now, this garden measures about an acre. Five gallons of water, I asked, are supposed to fertilize this whole acre? He explained that biodynamics isn't about substance, it's about forces. It's about intention. Then we stirred the water/compost mix with our arms for twenty minutes (though people will go for upwards of an hour), 30 seconds in one direction, creating a vortex, then stopping the water and going the other way, creating chaos. The Vortex brings the forces in. The chaos helps oxygenate and enliven the preparation. When twenty minutes had elapsed we grabbed a couple handfuls of rye grass, our own buckets and went out into the garden, dipping our rye switches into the water and gently slinging the mixture into the air. The reason you do this at night is because nighttime is when the earth is "breathing in," pulling moisture towards itself (dew) and we utilize this natural rhythm to "impregnate" the dew with our compost preparation.

Eric laughed and added, "Anything you can do to make your neighbors think you're crazy is probably good, too."

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Hopefully this story illustrates the idea that there is definitely something different about biodynamic agriculture than, say, conventional, or even just organic. And I'll be dammed if those tomatoes weren't amazing and if those peppers and eggplants didn't produce well into November. Literally. Extraordinary vitality. Not to mention how relaxing it was to stir and apply the compost. I have no idea if what Steiner preached is correct, but I have nothing to refute how effective these practices are, or how enjoyable they are to practice.

More later.

How I Came to Live in a Barn: part 2

Welcome to Friday and another edition of "How I Came to Live in a Barn," the series that strives to connect drinking to farming as relevantly as humanly possible.

As a quick preface to this series, from April to December of 2010 I lived in a barn. No electricity, running water, twitter or bagels. During that time I worked on a legitimately (though proudly uncertified) organic farm in Southern Kentucky. This series is about the many whims, fascinations and revelations that eventually inspired me to drop everything and go farming. Once we catch up to the present, I'll use the occasion to explain what I'm up to now––beyond the blaug. Is this preface going to appear at the beginning of the entire series? Almost definitely. Ready? Wunderbar.

Part 2: Natural Wines

In last week's post I gave a shout-out to September Wines, the shop I helped manage for nearly 4 years. Their selection is made up of small-production, organic, biodynamic, and sustainably produced wines and it's where I was introduced to the subject of this week's posting: natural wines. Isn't all wine natural? Well, the most concise answer is... sorta. A lot can be done to remove wine from its natural state. In the same way that root beer was originally made from the fermented roots of Sassafras; the vast majority of wine these days is made more like Barq's than actual root beer. Make root beer someday, it's a very different monster, with health and medicinal qualities I doubt A&W strives to exploit. 

So defining natural wine is simply defining wine itself. Wine, in its essence, is fermented grape juice. It's the combination of grape sugars being consumed by yeast, the byproduct of which is alcoholic fermentation. Under the right circumstances, this results in the fermented beverage we call wine. Famed fermentation enthusiast Sandor Katz once said that fermentation is simply choosing what we want to happen to something. All living things will either rot or ferment––from our perspective, become either compost or preserved nutrients––we're just choosing their destiny. Natural wines are as close to that natural process as possible, without excessive filtration, use of industrial yeasts, sulfides or chemicals. This applies to both growing and vinification. Back then however, I had no idea what natural wines were, or why they tasted better than other wines, I just appreciated that they did.

I had booked a trip to France for the upcoming fall and a friend at Domaine Select had suggested I visit their new champagne producer. He was biodynamic, "right up my alley," he said, and made the appointment.

No wines taste quite like natural wines, and I was rendered endlessly curious because of it. When the opportunity arose to visit one of these biodynamic producers, I leapt at it, hoping to get to the bottom of what made these wines tick. That autumn I met a dude who offered me a more tangible understanding of biodynamics, and a better understanding of how sensitive of an agricultural product wine is. Unexpectedly, like my first experiences with natural wine, this compounded my curiosity infinitely. Next week, we'll tell the story of Bertrand Gautherot's many effects on my world, and how he helped perpetuate my growing love-affair with natural wines; a love-affair that started innocently enough, until one day I found myself living in a barn, more sober than I'd ever been. Ironically, all thanks to wine.

Happy Friday!

How I Came to Live in a Barn: The Series

As you might or might not know, I spent the better part of last year on a farm in Southern Kentucky living in a barn with no electricity and no running water, but the best damn food this side of the Great Salt Lick. Respectfully. Of course, there is a wonderful story behind how this came to be; a story about how someone would go from living in the sky in Brooklyn, New York, to living in the dirt in Kentucky.

Starting this Friday I will begin the series, carrying on until the story catches up. There will be drinking, foreign travel, food, wine and foolishness. Hopefully it will inspire a little, entertain a little, and kill a little time for you while you wait on your weekend. Every Friday there will be a new installment, so set you ICAL, friends, it's gonna be a party.



Cool runnings,
Jesse

Slow Food

<---- Flood line on barn. The window on the right is my room.

I remember the day we got the pigs––I mean, are you kidding, I was pumped. It was a memorable week all around, really. The flooding in Nashville wasn't limited to Nashville––many of our farming friends in and around our little wonderland in zone 6 were effected. One friend lost all the topsoil he'd ever built––something akin to losing your life's work in a weekend. There was 11 inches of water in my room in the barn and I kayaked for the first time that day, directly out of that barn. That next week we got the pigs.

We raised the pigs in what will become the 2012 garden for the majority of the summer, then moved them into the forest to finish them on acorns, hickory nuts, roots and whatever slop we had around. I spent a lot of time with the pigs, preparing their slop with the help of fermentation, and trying not to get too attached to them––a grave mistake I made with the turkeys. The pigs and turkeys both have wonderful stories, and I will get to those in the coming months. For now, however, onto the eggs...

The hens are out on pasture, they follow behind the cows and lamb in the Management Intensive Grazing System, similar to that outlined by Michael Pollan and Joel Salatin in "The Omnivore's Dilemma." The idea is that you keep the livestock in small paddocks to help concentrate their manure and move them to new grass often. If left to their own devices, cows will happily eat only the grass they like––the candy and ice cream, as Salatin describes it––and hang out in the shady treeline where they will drop their manure and fertilize the living daylights out of their lounge spots, not the pastures. In our system, we limit the space they can fertilize with electrified netting, and move them every 12 hours. Every 3 days we pull our chicken shacks (a roost, a feeder and an egg-mobile) behind. The chickens then spread out the manure in search of nutritious, buggy treats, and we collect the eggs daily.










The plastic on the high tunnel was put up this summer, and it was an intensely hot project. Once done, we plowed and tilled it, then planted spinach, chard, carrots, kale, radishes, etc., and kept it cultivated. What irrigation we need comes from a gravity fed pump, and there is no additional heating. I can't say enough about how amazing this project has been, though––not much is growing these days, but I picked my spinach on Monday.

The last piece to this puzzle is the english muffin, which came from Whole Foods, the uncontested birth place of the english muffin. Naturally.

I guess you could call this a summary. A very extreme summary. A small look at the things it took to make my breakfast this morning. The reality is that this sandwich was no less than nine months in the making. Despite how hard the work is, and how hard it is to justify taking the life of a pig (a very controversial topic within myself), I did my best to do all of that justice. If working on a farm did one thing to me (and it did many), it was give my breakfast a story, one I can't help but think about every time I eat absolutely anything,


Breakfast: a sausage, egg and spinach sandwich on an english muffin. But that doesn't tell any sort of story, now does it?

Ist first blaug!

It was about a year ago, almost to the day, that I first met Bugtussle. I flew in from New York, rented a car and drove the 75 miles it is from Nashville to the farm. To my utter amazement, I found the place, then promptly proceeded to destroy my rental car on the road back to the cabin. I'd seen pictures and watched a video about the farm, in an attempt to learn what I could about what I was getting myself into, but only so much about farming can be gleaned from this distance.



It's a ten minute drive from the mailbox to house, that is, if you want your car to survive. On the road back, I passed the skeleton of a high tunnel and a few of the neighbor's cows lounging in the driveway. When I finally arrived, I was greeted by the family I would end up spending the better part of 2010 working alongside. They offered me the internship that next day, and the rest is history, one of which I hope to occasionally cover here.

Yesterday I went back for a visit. I wanted to see the family and the animals and figured I could put in a little work and maybe get a little food out of it. After nine months of naturally-raised vegetables and meat, there is no food that will quite satisfy you the same. I found out my favorite cow died, Darla, love of my life, and my heart broke a little. But death is something you're very intimate with on the farm and life will continue to plug away no matter how sad it renders you. Right now though, it's lambing season, so the life there is even cuter than usual, which helps in the healing process.





I checked in on my musk melon wine, took a sip of maple sap from one of the many jugs hanging on the trees, then ate bacon, sweet potatoes and beans for lunch. When I left, I left with WAY more meat and vegetables than I could possibly eat, including muddy parsnips, leeks, spinach, pork sausage, lamb and pork roasts, kale and eggs, all thanks to the unending generosity of Eric and Cher.

Essentially, with other potent potables, this is my blog––BLAUG!–– as I wish to keep it. It's about farming and about wine and probably occasionally about basketball, but I'll try and be sensitive to the fact that not everyone equates the three. Oh, and I don't speak a lick of german––kein Deutsch––I just like to pretend I do.


Danke,
Fraust