I've always been passionate about food. I remember my neighbor Leon teaching me how to make grilled cheeses with fried cold-cuts when I was 9 or 10. My dad is a self-proclaimed gourmet/gourmand and spoiled the family with bountiful trade options throughout his years in the radio industry. We got to eat out a lot, not that the food at home wasn't great.
When it came time to get a job in high school I started bussing tables at Bodean Seafood in Tulsa, OK. My only job before that was working at a Maggie Moo's ice cream shop in Nashville, TN, where I spent 9th grade. Working at Bodean's with chef Tim Richards my palette was expanded to include raw ahi tuna, beef tartare, wild boar, foie gras, and Long Island duck breast. Oh Long Island duck breasts.. I worked there for the last 3 years of high school. It was a great job with reliable pay. I learned about Mise en Place and the Chaine des Rotisseurs, hoity toity restaurant stuff. Bodean Seafood is an institution in Tulsa, OK, where good food is few and far between or at least it was when I lived there (2000-2004). It was opened in 1963 by 4 San Francisco transplants looking for fresh seafood, in Oklahoma. Supposedly they changed the way seafood was shipped seeing as Oklahoma's fish resources are limited to catfish. Nothing against catfish, but Bodean's specialty is fresh fish from all over the world. It was an anomolie to find some of the freshest fish in the middle of the country. Quality control was high there and the product was always treated with such great care.
Somewhere in the mix of doing the Master Cleanse and being a curious high-schooler I decided to go au natural and started shifting a majority of my diet to organic foods [via trail mix]. I even spent a week as a fruitarian somewhere in there. That period of experimentation was just a taste test of what has come to be one of my top priorities, organic foods.
In college I helped found a sort of underground pizza delivery service called [neat pizza] which was a great experiment with food. Basically we delivered Thursday - Saturday, 8pm - 4am. Inspired by Mary Jane's Pizza of Tulsa, OK, and the Underground Pizza Man of Hattiesburg, MS, we sought to fill that fourth meal with something wholesome. We tried delivering on bikes which only lasted about a night, but we kept the budget small no less. We printed our own boxes, made our own sauces, and doughs from scratch. We started simple with a Plain Jane pizza. Our pizza was "Pizza from the cosmos" being that we were located at 303 Apollo Dr. in Murfreesboro, TN. The experiment was not necessarily financial solvent, but a successful foray into small business and cooperative action. About 5 of us pitched in $100 and bought some pizza screens, tupperware, and pizza boxes. We kicked the business off with a huge free pizza party, and promoted by flyering on campus. We delivered hundreds of pizzas in the 9 months we were open. I never owned a car during that time, but relied on the help of friends to get the pizzas out there. We sold our pizzas to college kids, screen printers, bands, and professors. Ultimately a call from the Health Department ceased our operations. Those were the days.
Later in college I tried working on the line at a seafood restaurant in Charleston, SC. The food was great, but the atmosphere was a little too stressful with 300 - 400 covers a night. Not to say that I'd never try cooking on a line again, but it wasn't a good first experience.
After college I worked at a clothing store for a almost a year. Somewhere in breaking up with my girlfriend of 5 and a half years and forming a new relationship I wanted to get back to a more simpler time. I quit smoking a pack of cigarettes a day and started saving my money to make a big move. A slew of friends had already found jobs and internships on farms which intrigued me. I had a small container gardener on my porch which grew plenty of basil and some big tomato plants. At the Charleston farmer's market I got to meet some young farmers Riad and Rita of Rita's Roots who gave me some final encouragement to pursue farm life.
Where we, my girlfriend Celie and I, ended up wasn't exactly farm life, nor was it like any other life I'd yet to experience. We found our jobs at the Moby Dick Hotel and Oyster Farm in Nahcotta, WA, on ATTRA and we worked out an arrangement to work in the hotel and garden in exchange for stipend and housing. We spent a little over 4 months there learning how to harvest potatoes, plant garlic, and weed, weed, weed. We didn't get out in the garden as much as planned being that we were responsible for housekeeping and cooking breakfast, and the measly weather of Washington in late Fall. Ultimately we split ties earlier this year and headed to Whidbey Island where we found a cheap cabin in the woods. Eventually we found our current jobs at Shipki Farm Organics through the ATTRA website. After checking out The Raven and the Spade, Willowwood Farm, and doing some work for trade at Bur Oak Acres, we decided that the biointensive, small scale approach was the closest to our hearts. It's low impact farming with no tractors or tillers. We farm by the book, How to Grow More Vegetables by John Jeavons, that is.
