Glover Family Farm Photos

Monday photos this week have to start with those from Skip and Cookie Glover's farm, where we attended a Slow Food event yesterday. Skip's family has been farming on this land for generations. It is a beautiful piece of land that has a deep-country feel yet is only minutes away from lots of organic-loving suburban customers. If you can finagle that set-up, it is a good way to get customers to come to you so that you can stay on the farm and out of the delivery van. Skip only started farming full time in his fifties and has accomplished so much since then - especially in terms of helping immigrants and in education. This really inspiring article talks about how he and Cookie once helped Aboriginals while living in Australia, that Skip was once the head of Georgia Organics, and it details their more recent work with Heiffer International, and with local Asian communities. Despite seeing them at the Morningside Market every week in those initial years (they ended up choosing not to stay certified organic, even though they have always and will always farm organically) and meeting up with them at conferences, we had never been to their farm.

Here's Joe - One of our farm's best employees of all time. Joe is also the most patient, good-natured, mellow guy you'll ever meet (could it be true what they say about meat? He doesn't eat it...... nah, he was born that way). Anyway, Joe is now taking over as the primary farmer for the trying-to-retire Glovers. We arrived yesterday in the middle of his farm tour.

Here is Skip at the raffle. He decided to come up to the mike to reassure whomever won his very old and valuable bottle of scotch that despite the possible signs of a mouse having eaten part of the box, it was still untouched. He was only giving it up because it was given to him by his son's ex-wife. Gotta love Skip.

He has twenty bee hives (he has cut down from fifty) and reassured me that he has never used antibiotics against mites, nor anything else for that matter. Hmmm. I may be emboldened to find a screen bottom but not do any natural mite prevention.

Once the food was on our non-disposable (pretty impressive at an outdoor event with 200 people) plates, every single one of the many Latin-spiced dishes was soooo good that I would have paid more. I talked too much and didn't even get to the beer before it ran out, and this with a decision having been made that I would have a rare chance not to be the designated driver that night ... yes the food was so good that I didn't even steal Nicolas' beer (or overly shame him for not filling one for me).

The kids savored it as well. Though not slowly, they ate every bit of food on their overloaded plates. They were eager to return to the baddest, longest zip-line they had ever seen.I love the cowboy on the right. I really do. And he is loving himself in that hat that Gillen bought for his own self at the festival on Saturday.

Regular ol' Monday farm photos still to come (after a brief pause to eat very local food and to give up the computer to some local authors and Zoo Tycoons).