Greetings

carolpeppehewitt

I see that you have stumbled upon this blog where I very occasionally post some bit of writing that seems to need a home. Usually they are sentimental musings about family or friends. The first post talks about the day I learned about Slow Money.

That actually grew my book, Financing Our Foodshed. Which surprised no one more than me.

You can can purchase a copy here, and the book has evolved into a national book tour to spread the gospel.

I am sure we all have several books in us, and hundreds of short stories.

I imagine there is another book on the horizon, but for now enjoy these musings.

Thanks for finding me.

 

“somehow, i never thought it would be so hard to loan money to strangers with no security and almost no return…”

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When this email arrived I laughed out loud. Because the funniest jokes are about things that are true, or at least mostly true.

Jeff, in his generosity, had approached me about finding a local farmer that might need capital. So he drove a few miles down the road to meet with a farmer who lived near him. Jeff was ready to help with a loan to cover the cost of several new raised beds to grow more produce for local restaurants. Jeff offered his neighbor a low-interest loan for equipment he said he needed. But then when Jeff tried to actually make the loan, the farmer had found a way to get along a bit longer without needing to borrow money.

In the larger scheme of things, that’s great. Whenever possible the best course of action is to stay out of debt.

But Jeff is a willing potential Slow Money NC lender. He cares deeply about the local food movement, but he’s having trouble finding someone to help. Luckily he is also a great guy, with a wonderful sense of humor, as you can see by his light-hearted email above.

I talk about this phenomenon in my book, Financing Our Foodshed, in a section called “the seesaw.” Because that is exactly what I find myself trying to navigate!

Some days there are so many farmers and food entrepreneurs who have connected with me about needing a piece of equipment, or some start-up capital, or a walk-behind tiller, that it keeps me up at night.

Other times my challenge is helping folks like Jeff that want to make a difference in their local food system, but just need a way to make that happen.

You would think by now, after catalyzing over 160 direct, peer-to-peer Slow Money loans here in NC to some 98 sustainable farmers and food businesses that support them – that making these loans happen would be like falling off a log.

But social change is never quite as easy as that. After all, we are dealing with people here, and complicated regulations that are not written to make it an obvious or easy road for the little guy – the small business owner. Every day I meet good, extraordinary people, but with their time pressures, and quirkiness about money, and the myriad of details that come into play each time, working out these first-ever-in-history simple Slow Money loans – well, they just take time. And sometimes they become really Slow Money.

But they are each their own moment in history. Each is a radical departure of the money lending of our day. This is money that traditional lenders will not free up, being loaned to businesses that are re-engineering an inadequate and immoral food system. These are loans to the heroes we will celebrate tomorrow but who may too over-worked to hardly look up to receive our accolades.

And so each day I awake to hurl myself against a system that propels corporations ahead of ‘coop’erations, because I remain convinced it does not have to be so hard.

After a bite of Angelina’s Shepherd’s Pie made with local sweet potatoes, tomatoes and beef, two lenders took a huge bite out of the credit card debt that Angelina and her husband, John incurred when they added a seating area to Angelina’s Kitchen, their unique, gourmet Greek restaurant in the small town of Pittsboro, NC.

Those two low-interest Slow Money loans meant that instead of paying nearly $500 a month for interest only, they could pay less than $200, and in just a few years were debt free.

We love making stories like that happen. As we bounce from one side of this seesaw to the other, our soils can become more fertile, our local foodsheds more resilient, and communities stronger and more fun to live in.

We can do this. We can, and we are, and it’s a joy.

Running On Local and Relentless Touring

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Tonight we found our way to Savannah, Ga. This was the ‘odd ball’ on our four-day book tour. It’s a “Running on Local’ conversation that is taking us from Miami, FL back to Pittsboro, NC via Orlando and the coast of South Carolina.

IMG_0233Every evening was booked weeks in advance. Except one – Tuesday, February 25th.

It fell between Orlando and Beaufort, SC – and Savannah, GA would have been perfect.

First I began searching in the local food/local economy space. I looked for friends on Facebook and LinkedIn. I googled every phrase about “local and Savannah” I could think of, but found nothing.  There had once been an active Slow Food chapter, but their Facebook page said they were looking for new leadership.

It was down to the last week before heading South, and I had gotten nowhere.

Then I came acIMG_0232ross my 2014 National Green Pages. Published by Green America, it comes every year, and I have never known quite what to do with it. But that day I checked the index and discovered two listings in Savannah.

The most promising was a coffee shop called The Sentient Bean. Checking their website, I discovered they have live acoustic music, and there was an online form to request to play there.

Perfect.

So I filled it in.

“We’re not a band,” I wrote, “but we’re a dynamic duo that promote local economy. We share success stories and get a lively discussion going on how to do all things local – local food, local finance, local fuel. Carol is a pioneer in the Slow Money movement, and Lyle is a maverick in the alternative fuel space. Both have written books and are great speakers. “

Then I quoted Lyle.

“In a world of doom and gloom,” remarks Estill, “where financial instruments are too complex to understand, and money moves at the speed of light, where governments are struggling to take action, and individuals are at the mercy of faceless global corporations, there are ways to localize all aspects of your life. We know. We’ve done it, and you can too.”

I filled in all the contact information, added a Facebook link to one of other events, and went to bed. The next day I found a reply in my inbox from Kristin Russell, the owner of Sentient Bean.

“Hi Carol,

We’d love to host your tour and I think we’d be a good venue.  Joemy is our events manager and she is cc’d at the email above. She will contact you soon to coordinate.  I’m afraid I’ll be out of town, which saddens me as I’m very interested in this topic but I’ll help promote it through the farmers’ market and the local food policy council I’m involved with.

Thank you,
Kristin”

Wow. Fabulous. I had struck gold, and great coffee. But the date we were coming through town was now only 6 days away! I didn’t hear from Joemy that day, and I was getting anxious. Then I got a reply. It took a few emails back and forth to confirm the date and time, but we had a booking!

“Good morning Carol,

Alright, you are confirmed for Tuesday Feb 25 at 5pm. I will post it on our website and include it in our events newsletter and events calendar. You are welcome to use the attached press contact sheet to send out the press release.

Please send the link to your facebook event page, and I will share via facebook as well.
Thanks,
Joemy”

IMG_0190By now February 25th was only 4 days out, and I was already at the Virginia Key GrassRoots Festival of Music and Dance in Miami.

But I found a quiet spot, got online and went to work. Out went the Press Release to all those media outlets, and Joemy got that Facebook link.

On February 24th we rolled into Savannah. I warned Lyle that we might be the only ones at this gig, but we went on in and confidently set up a table displaying our books. Lyle made friends with an innocent guy on a couch visiting from Missouri, and cajoled him into joining us. That gave us an audience of one.

Then they started to arrive. Two elegant white-haired men who helped start a local farmers market, and Teri, fellow founder and market manager. Folks from the Savannah Urban Garden Alliance. A young woman interested in organic farming, a landscape architect, and a woman in town from Toronto who paid Lyle for a book in Canadian currency. We added an extra table, then another, then another, to fit in about a dozen movers and shakers in the local food scene.

Running On Local Savannah big jpgTo the roaring of the coffee grinder we managed a fabulous conversation. We got a sense of the local economy movement in Savannah, and we shared what we thought might be helpful.

We sold a few books, and we made an appointment to go check out Thinc Savannah, a cooperative office space, the next morning.  Out of that meeting came an offer to bring us back to town for a longer program, possibly as part of a day-long conference in May.

We left Savannah enthralled by the people and the places we had seen.

Lyle says “relentless touring” is the only way you make it as a performer. That means no nights off when you are on the road.  No skipping Savannah.

I was pretty pleased with myself for pulling that gig out of my hat. But once I found Kristen, she really earned much of the credit. And then there was that handy Green Guide, thanks to Green America.

The day of the event I had got another email from Kristin:

“Hi Carol,

I’ve promoted via the Farmers’ Market, the local community radio folks, the coffee party, and a couple other progressive social groups.  I just posted the poster on the Bean’s Facebook (I think!) which is the first time I’ve ever done that:) I hope you have a great, fun crowd and I’m sure I’ll run into you soon somewhere.  Thank you so much for finding us!

Kristin”

And thank you, Kristen.

All that effort for a couple of sustainability vagabonds who were coming through town? Impressive – and I’m grateful.

Kristen is clearly a powerful networker in her community, and I look forward to meeting her. She has a delightful, welcoming coffee shop that serves as a meeting space for folks like us.

Lyle says we got the gig by my “sheer force of will.”  I say we are all longing for a more resilient local economy, and when we find each other, we make good stuff happen.

Thank you Savannah.

I hope to be back in your town again soon.

The Seesaw

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“somehow, i never thought it would be so hard to loan money to strangers with no security and almost no return”

When this email arrived I laughed out loud. Because the funniest things are those that are true, or at least mostly true.

Jeff, in his generosity, had heard about Slow Money and he approached me about finding a local farmer that might need capital. I gave him a couple of names and numbers, and  he drove a few miles to meet with a farmer who lived near him, and he also spoke to another farmer who lived a few more miles away. He offered each of them a low-interest loan for equipment they said they needed. But, then – as it happened – they each found a way to get along without needing a Slow Money loan. Which meant that they didn’t need Jeff.

In the larger scheme of things, that’s great.  Whenever possible the best course of action, especially for any small business owner, is to stay out of debt.

But Jeff is a willing potential Slow Money lender who cares deeply about the local food movement, and he’s having trouble finding someone to help. Luckily he is also a great guy, with a wonderful sense of humor, as you can see by his lighthearted email.

hey carol,
somehow, i never thought it would be so hard to loan money to strangers with no security and almost no return.    [italics added]

I talk about this phenomenon in my book, Financing Our Foodshed, in a section called “The Seesaw.”  Because that is exactly what I find myself riding in making Slow Money ‘matches.’

To clarify, we don’t really lend money to strangers. All of the Slow Money lenders and borrowers have built a friendship, and the trust between them is what these loans are built upon. No doubt Jeff will soon build a relationship with another farmer, and get to make a low-interest Slow Money  loan.

But, in making these matches, some weeks there are too many farmers and food entrepreneurs who have connected with me about needing a piece of equipment, or some start-up capital, or a walk-behind tiller – so many that it keeps me up at night.

Other times I am worrying about folks like Jeff that want to make a difference in their foodshed, but just need a way to make that happen. And I don’t have anyone that is ‘loan ready” that also lives in their foodshed, the area that they live in.

You would think by now, after catalyzing over eighty-five direct, peer-to-peer Slow Money loans here in NC to some 43 sustainable farmers and food businesses that support them – that making these loans happen would be like falling off a log.

But social change is never quite as easy as that. After all, we are dealing with people here, and complicated regulations that are not written to make it an obvious or easy road for the little guy – the small business owner. Every day I meet good, extraordinary people, but with all our time pressures, and quirkiness about money, and the myriad of details that come into play for each and every one of us, working out these first-ever-in-history simple Slow Money loans – well, it just takes time.  Which may be part of why it’s called Slow Money.

But each lender and borrower gets their own moment in history. Each relationship, each loan, is a radical departure of the money lending of our day. This is money that traditional lenders will not touch, being loaned to businesses that are re-engineering a broken food system.  These are loans to the heroes we will celebrate tomorrow but who are too over-worked today to hardly look up to receive our accolades.

And so each day I awake to hurl myself against a system that propels corporations ahead of  ‘coop’–erations, because I remain convinced it does not have to be so hard.

Angelina and John get a great story in the local paper!

After a bite of Angelina’s homemade baklava and with local honey still dripping from their chins, two lenders took a huge bite out of the credit card debt that Angelina and her husband, John incurred when they added a seating area to Angelina’s Kitchen, their unique, gourmet Greek restaurant in the small town of Pittsboro, NC.

Those two Slow Money loans meant that instead of paying nearly $500 a month for interest only, she could pay less than $200, and in just a few years became debt free.

Now Mark is ready to take Big Spoon Roasters, his delicious roasted nut butter business, from his basement to a nearby warehouse and his friend Jane would love to help – if she and I could just get past playing phone tag this weekend and have time to talk about the possible terms of their Slow Money loan.

We are going to make that happen. As we bounce from one side of this seesaw to the other, our soils are becoming more fertile, our local foodsheds more resilient, and our communities stronger and more wonderful to live in.

We can do this. We already have. And we can do this again and again. Not only here in Chatham County, but all over North Carolina, and across the USA and beyond.

8283177608_8c7cbbb94f_b

Carol Hewitt and Jordan Puryear – two of the co-founders of Slow Money NC – enjoying their local coop grocery store, Chatham Marketplace, in Pittsboro, NC

Because it matters. Because it makes a difference. A good one.

To learn how you might bounce up and down along with us you can go to the Slow Money website, or read about these stories in Financing Our Foodshed; Growing Local Food with Slow Money.

Or just enjoy a moment of fun, filmed the day my books arrived in Pittsboro.

And you can join me in  – slowly and surely  – building resilience in our local foodshed.

Solar Sheep Farming

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IMG_4499Solar farms are cropping up all over NC, in fact, all across the globe. And while they are an excellent idea – harvesting energy from the sun – they create an interesting conundrum.

If they are built in a typical field, how does one keep the grasses and weeds from growing up under and around them? Because as soon as the plant material blocks any part of the solar array, it stops producing electricity.

One answer could be to mow, but this is difficult, and might well require more energy usage than the solar farm produces. A net loss of energy makes little sense.

A tote of Roundup to kills the weeds along the fence line.

Another lousy option is to spray the fields heavily with toxic chemicals. Clean energy at the expense of fertile soils. Strike two.

But there is another option.

How about putting sheep on the fields to eat down the grasses and other plants? Another example of solar double cropping – a concept piloted so brilliantly by Lyle Estill and Michael Tiemann at the Piedmont Eco-industrial Plant in Pittsboro, NC. The solar panels on that site are so elevated that they can even farm underneath them.

Turns out that this sheep option is exactly what is being tried in Mt Airy at Jimmy Mundy’s farm, and soon, in many other locations as well. Solar companies might not want to get into sheep farming, but they can, and are, collaborating with farmers to do this for them.

Lyle and I visited Jimmy Mundy and his sheep that were grazing under a 25 acre solar farm belonging to O2 Energies about a week ago. He has a buyer for all the sheep he can grow and process – up to 35 a week – which is way more than he is raising now.

But to efficiently increase his sheep production he needs a piece of equipment that holds the animal and flips it upside down, so he and his son can quickly clean the hooves. “Every animal has an Achilles’ Heel,” he explained. “With sheep it’s their feet. They need to be cleaned. The last time we did our flock it took my son and I three days. With this piece of equipment we can do them all in a morning.”

Enter Slow Money NC.

Lyle is enamored with all things relating to clean energy, and he was quick to step forward to make Jimmy a loan. The terms are $5000 at low-interest, as is the rule for Slow Money loans made in NC. Jimmy plans to make quarterly payments and get Lyle paid back in just one year. He plans to add another 100 head or so to adequately keep the plants down on this site, and even then it will not be a perfect solution. Sheep like the small young shoots and unless they are really hungry, will pass on much of the taller, woodier weeds.

But it is a move in the right direction. Along the crucial trajectory where we keep lowering our carbon footprint, and finding out of the box solutions that preserve a healthy planet for future generations. I suspect this is just the beginning of Slow Money’s role in funding solar sheep farming.

Thanks go to our good friend and Project Engineer at O2 Energies, Rebekah Hren. She told Jimmy about Slow Money and she told us about Jimmy.

It just goes to show, that yet again, Slow Money isn’t really about the money. It’s about the people. Farmers, lenders, local food processors and vendors, people who will eat locally raised lamb, and of course the hundreds of folks that can now turn on their lights, tapping the boundless energy coming from the sun.

Summer Pots and Pizza Party – the afterglow

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July 28th     11:30 pm

I have to say that was an incredible party. For days people have been asking me, “How many tickets have you sold? How many people do you think are coming?”

And I would venture a guess. “Last time I looked we had sold 80 tickets online.” But then there were all the emails from folks asking if they could pay at the door.  And the Facebook event that said lots more were coming than had bought tickets.

But all that is unimportant now. Because the party is over.

Except not quite.  There is a small child’s red flip flop on the back step, and a couple of knives that are not mine on the dish drain.

I have washed up the myriad of pottery plates we used to serve Angelina’s baklava and cookies, Celebrity Dairy’s cheeses, Joan’s chocolate chip and oatmeal raisin cookies, Donna Bianco’s fresh cannolis, and the stack of bowls that served up local blueberries and cherry tomatoes donated from 3 local farms, and two huge platters that had been full of local sweet corn. And the sticky plates that had been stacked high with Mackenzie’s right-out-your-childhood rice krispie treats.

Mackenzie with baby on the way

“I don’t bake,” she told me at the farmers market on Saturday.  “But can I bring rice krispie treats?”

Darling, you can do anything you want to. You and Tucker showed up early, set up your tent, grills, and table, and spent the entire evening over a hot charcoal grill pushing out huge grilled barbecue chicken wings for the crowd. Then you hustled over to pair up with Tucker and run a splendidly entertaining live auction, all with a 5-month baby in the oven…then back to pack up your tent, table, coolers, grill, etc. before finally being the last to leave.  Can you have anything at all that you ever ask from me?  Why yes. You may.

Sage and her beautiful local fruit creation!

Sage and her beautiful local fruit creation!

Now, as I write this, at 11:46pm, the rain has started. It is pounding on the tin roof over my office. The dishes are done, and the kitchen is almost back to normal.

There are still 3 or 4 pop-up tents in the yard and field down by the barn, but they will be fine.

What a wonderful party. I spent my time running from cabin, to the barn, to the house, and back again. Replenishing desserts, or cheese, or calling out raffle winners. I kept getting glimpses of people that I would loved to have had a chance to talk with. To catch up on our lives or to talk about Slow Money. Sometimes I managed to get a hug, or a kiss, and a very fleeting conversation. But never more.

I met new people who had come to the event to talk to me about Slow Money. I hope they will try again. To some of my dearest friends I only managed a wave. But I can’t thank you enough for coming. For showing up at our very first Slow Money NC party and fundraiser.

I put this event in our success column.

First we ran out of name tags – I only bought 100. So I rustled up some more. Then we needed to get the PA in place so we could start calling out the raffle winners. About when we thought the auction was over, Amy stepped up and offered piano lessons, and then David offered fiddle lessons. The generosity just kept coming.

I got out-bid on a tennis lesson by one of the sweetest teen-agers in town, and I was in the barn helping a pottery customer and missed out on his younger brother’s blackberry pie. Maybe next time.

We were woefully disorganized about collecting money after the auction, but folks were very patient. Next year we will be better at this!

Tomorrow I will try to put together a list of all the people we need to thank, but it will be incomplete.  I will no doubt forget someone.DSC_0122

In truth, everyone who ventured out to our house and pottery tonight needs a note of thanks. Some came from over an hour away. I know. We never spoke, but I saw you from across the crowds.

1:30am

I went back and finished cleaning the kitchen, then picked up a flashlight and took out the compost. “Too wet to woo,” came a call from a nearby tree.

A few hours earlier there were nearly 200 people in this yard, but now it’s just me, and the Barred Owl.

What a wonderful day.

Life just doesn’t get much better than this.

One organism, ten logs and seven billion people

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You know what’s kind of creepy?  “These are all one organism,” Lyle said, as we finished up inoculating the last of ten Shitake logs. “These are all part of one mushroom – so when one starts to bloom so will all the others.”

“Really? How can than be?” I said.  That really is amazing, I thought, and bordering on unbelievable.

We had each come home from the Mother Earth News (MEN) Fair in Puyallup, WA in early June with a small bag of little ¾ inch dowels. They were included in the huge gift bag MEN had given all the presenters, which included Lyle and me.

I spoke on the Grit Stage on Sunday from 4-5pm about Financing Our Foodshed, Growing Local Food With Slow Money, the title of my book and the challenge I have somehow, almost inadvertently, taken on in the last few years.

Lyle’s spot had been earlier in the afternoon, on the Utne stage. His topic was his new book, Small Stories Big Changes: Agents of Change of the Frontlines of Sustainablility, and as usual he drew an admiring crowd. And he shared the stage with Bryan Welch and Albert Bates, whose stories are included in his book.

There were lots of other things in the gift bag, some edible, and some too big to get in my small carry-on suitcase.  But it was this small bag of about 100 Shitake starts that captivated me the most. I do a bit of vegetable gardening tilled and planted by my husband Mark. But never mushrooms. These were all it took to make me want to try.

I decided a few years ago we needed more edibles around our house, and so I started planting – 14 apple trees, 5 more blueberry bushes, 2 dwarf almonds, a pineapple guava, and a few Persimmon trees. Now I really wanted to see if I could grow Shitakes.

Thanks to Lyle’s sons, Arlo and Zafar, there were ten logs, about 3 feet long and 5-6” in diameter waiting for me when I showed up at Lyle’s house late one Sunday morning. Lyle had already filled his logs and was happy to show me how to drill holes (we put four rows of 5 holes per log) and gently pound in these little shitake plugs. They were ringed by a soft white substance that made them seem almost like some sort of light brown candy lined with white icing.

Once each whole was filled with the Shitake ‘dowel spawn’ or ‘mycelium,’ as it is properly called, we added bit of warm wax to seal it in place.

And now we wait. “Put these logs in a place shaded place where you will see them everyday,” Lyle instructed as we carried them to the trunk of my Volkswagon Jetta, (which is fueled with biodiesel from Piedmont Biofuels where Lyle is CEO and V. P. of Stuff.)

“Otherwise you might not know when they start coming out. And keep them moist. I plan to throw a bucket of water on mine every so often.” His stack of alternating logs looked like a miniature log house, and was right outside his front door.

One organism. That means whoever sees some growth first can call the other and alert them to go check their logs. What a concept.

I spent an hour late that night on Google, trying to confirm his one organism concept. I read about “one huge fungus growing underground in Oregon that reputedly covers 2200 acres, and is thought to be the largest known single living organism in the world.”  And then, “It is part of the accepted common folklore that the largest living thing in the world is a fungus that occupies some forty acres in Michigan.”

And I did find a website that said, “Mycelium is a network of interconnected cells that form a single organism.” But I wanted more.

Which led me to numerous claims about the health benefits of shitakes and the historic and spiritual significance of mushrooms.  All compelling, and I am now even more excited for my logs to start to fruit.

I like to think we all connected, and the one organism theory is enchanting – so I’ve decided that it’s true.

This was not Lyle’s first try at growing mushrooms, but his fourth. Three times he got mushrooms, and once it was a bust.

I also choose to believe we got it right this time, and our mushroom harvest, thanks to the good people at Mother Earth News and their generous gift of shitake dowel spawns, is going to be a huge, health-giving, interconnected success.

Melted blue candle wax covering the spawns

My own little shitake log house

Leaving Pisa

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June 18, 2013
To truly understand a place – you must fly over it. You must grasp its geography from the long view of the sky.

Flying out of the Pisa airport in Italy this evening, looking down on the red rooftops, and then the perfect rectangles of farmland – some are green on this late June day, and some are brown.

And then a patch of forest, that seems to go right down to the ocean, but for a small group of buildings at the end of a road, the one that must take you from Pisa to the ocean, should you want to go there.

And all that is fitted into a tiny airplane window.

Tonight there is also a huge moon and, given how close we are to the very longest day of the year, even at 8:30pm we are still taking off in broad daylight.

As we fly the sky turns to pink, and then to purple.

To truly understand a place – you must love it deeply, and then have to leave it.

The stewardess hands me a cardboard package, meant to be my supper.

On the front it says Urban Eat. And under that it says BLT Wrap. On the side it promises Real Food, Hand Crafted and offers a website… www.urbaneat.co,uk.

All this in full techno branding in a clever rustic beige.

The bacon is a rather bland pink lunchmeat and the lettuce and tomato are equally non-descript.

What did I expect of British Airways?

Prosciutto, provolone and sun-roasted tomatoes?

To understand a place –  you must eat it’s food until you are addicted, and until their faux food makes you miss the place all the more.

We are flying home.

It will be hours, and maybe when I arrive sometime tomorrow I will be ready to be a US-er again.

But for now I slip my stash of Parmesan cheese out of my backpack, take a bite and pretend that I will be in Italy forever. If only red wine was allowed in a carry-on.

When you truly understand and love a place  – there are times, to survive, you may need to pretend it is your home.

 

Our place in North Carolina, our home in NC – from the sky.

 

Day of Fire

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Building temperature by side stoking

Today we finished the 86th firing of our original wood kiln. Thankfully it went very well.

After about four days, that amounts to six cords of wood, a crew of about ten wood-fire diehards (it took six to finish it off today) and 1500+ pieces of pottery – fired to over 2400 degrees F.

Firing the cob oven

 

Next door, just a quick walk back down the dirt lane to our ‘other house,’ Danny and his friend Josh, were firing the cob bread oven.

A small stack of wood, two guys, about twenty loaves bread, and some matzo crackers.  It smelled delicious.

Creating an over door

They had spent the morning creating a door for the  oven and it worked perfectly.

The oven got hot, stayed hot, and their half whole wheat, sour-dough bread came out with a dark, mahogany colored crust, but a soft and spongy perfect inside.

And it was delicious!

The Hewitt Pottery motley firing crew

About 3pm the pottery firing crew had finally reached top temperature as well, and stopped for a beer and a bit of a rest, before closing up the kiln.

Those 1500+ pots will now stay in the kiln, cooling down, ever so gradually, for about a week before we can open the kiln and see the results.

It is a long week, but everyone is ready for a bit of a rest before the unpacking and the made dash to get ready for the Kiln Opening Sale on April 13th and 14th.

About the same time as the pottery firing was winding down in the late afternoon, the bakers were pulling loaves out of their bread oven as well.

Even better than it looks!

So I walked down to check on their progress and was able to return with fresh-baked, warm sourdough bread.

The reaction was all good all around. A fresh loaf of bread quickly disappeared.

Which is to say politely – they scoffed it down.

As the sun began to set Danny and Jake closed up shop at the bread oven, and stopped by with a couple more loaves.

two tired, but happy, firing crews break bread together

The firing crews swapped firing stories, and happily ate more freshly-baked bread.

What means the most to Mark, in reaching for excellence in making his pots, are the materials – locally sourced clay bodies – and then of course the craft, the highest standard possible that each crafts person can reach for.

Baker meet potter

What means the most to Danny the baker in creating great bread, are the very same criteria.

Great locally sourced flour, hundreds of hours of practice, and a fanatical discipline/commitment to making the best-ever artisan breads.

It is a neighborhood match made in heaven.

Danny and I schemed about a pop-up restaurant serving wood-fired bread [and more] served on wood-fired pots, and we even found a Sunday evening in May to try that out.

There might be pizza in the mix, or forccachia – but for today it was just pure joy to be firing these two fabulous wood ovens within a few hundred yards

of one another. One full of fabulous baked goods edible on the spot, and the other with some great plates, bowls, pitchers, jars, and more – some to eat off of and some to enjoy as an inspiring art object.

A final dangerous climb to put on the chimney cover…

But it’s unavoidable.

We sent a fair bit of carbon into the atmosphere today, down here at the end of the Johnny Burke Road.

On this stunning spring day, at one of the prettiest places on earth, at least we can say we burned a renewable fuel. Soon our customers will take home hundreds of lovely, useful pots, and even sooner, many full stomachs will enjoy fabulous bread – and, for what it’s worth – we will have that to show for our carbon burning extravagance.

We have fired this pottery kiln 86 times in the last 30 years.

Tonight I can see also see the promise of dozens of lively locally made breads/pizzas/foccachias/English muffins/crackers – the list is endless, coming forth from that cob oven.

Rosemary butter – experimenting for the pop-up restaurant!

Which could mean that Danny can make bread and make a living, and we can build an even tighter, stronger local food community.

As the oven cools down I am envisioning the next firing  –  and conversing, laughing, cooking, eating – while making the best of the last few hours of a lovely, warm and inviting cob oven.

Veterans’ Day 2012

carolpeppehewitt

To a friend who lost his father – a decorated Veteran, just a few months ago:

Dear Randy,

My Dad had health problems that kept him home from WW II. Instead he became a different kind of Vet. He was our small town’s Veterinarian, ministering to cows, horses, pigs, skunks, and also to a myriad of cats and dogs – to everybody in town’s favorite pet. When he died in December 1997 of pancreatic cancer, having closed his practice of 53 years only a month earlier in November of that year, there were far too many folks at the funeral for the church to hold.

You may like people, but you love your pet. And that sweet guy who kept your beloved pet going (and in many cases was also the one you trusted to put your pet to sleep) was someone you counted on. His death was such a loss in that small town. He even had clients who had been with him all 53 years and their grief seemed about as deep as our family’s.

Now it is our turn. We are the ones who make up the precious fabric of this – our small town.  You minister to their real estate and political needs.

We offer them great pottery, and I try to help shape their social and environmental consciousness while they think they are just having fun.

Lesley, thank God, badgers them with news of the amazing arts community we live in, and it works.

Tomorrow I will remember your Dad, and Mark’s uncle who died in WW II, and my uncles who served as well.

And we will keep on building our community. Because all good starts right here and trickles out. And because it is the richest and most rewarding way to live.

(How did trickle-down miss that simple truth?)

Lovely to see you both tonight. I am looking forward to a belated birthday dinner here in January.

All good,
Carol