What would make seasoned California farmers move to a historic farm in Athens, Georgia, with severely degraded soil, and harbor a dream so big that they would, in five short years, have a three-pronged model that is on the forefront of what's happening on the best of farms today? I was a CSA member their first two seasons, before they stopped distributing to Atlanta. It is in large part because of them that I am who I am today regarding my support for local food systems. And I wanted to see how the vision had taken root and grown.
"We are unlike any other farm in America," stated Jason Mann, founder of Full Moon Cooperative, a community-owned farm, president of the LLC that owns Farm 255, a brick-front, reclaimed-wood restaurant with one of the hottest addresses in the bustling university town of Athens, and a PhD student at the Agroecology Lab at the University of Georgia.
1. First, there's the biodynamic farming techniques on the seven acres of fields surrounded by 93 acres of forest and pasture land. There are five species of animals, including grass-fed, pastured, heirloom pigs and cows as well as chickens that are moved several times a day a la Joel Salatin of Polyface Farms, and the 100 members of the weekly CSA who pick up either at the farm or at the restaurant.
2. There are the Agroecology Lab experiments happening all over the farm, applying adaptive management techniques that are intended to provide innovative, science-based farming solutions that would have broad applications throughout the region. In addition to those conducting research, more than 5,000 Agroecology Lab students pass through the farm each year.
3. And there's the restaurant, just four miles away, which features the big, fat tomatoes that I just saw hanging from the vine, that Jason and his partner Laura Brams picked and loaded into flat crates that we just carried in the restaurant door. The beef, the chickens, the pigs, the veggies, they are all on the ever-changing menu, as well as cheeses and grits and local shrimp and tuna and ending with coffee roasted locally. An outdoor stage on the patio hosts live music each night as local as the food. This is not a restaurant where the chef has a little kitchen garden. This is a restaurant where the farmers have a kitchen.
Wrap community events, outreach, education and advocacy around this package and you have one of the most dynamic farm, food and community stories not just in Georgia but in the United States today.
Why did these farmers come 3,000 miles away to hot and humid Georgia with its notorious red clay soil? One visit to Full Moon Cooperative and Farm 255 and you no longer need to ask.
Click here to find out more about Full Moon Cooperative. See today's menu at Farm 255.
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1 comments:
Farm 255 is always good! They often have live music and there is a place to site outside. I always en up getting some kind of vegetable where I don't know what it is, but it is always really good!
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