Some bragging about Helen and Nicolas

Last night, at the GA organics conference, the annual Land Stewardship Award was presented to my mother in law, Helen, and to Nicolas, for their many years of tireless work for organics in Georgia. Nicolas and I had known that Helen was getting the award but didn't know about Nicolas! I got that news once we got there, yesterday morning. I'm glad that the kids and I took off and spent the day in Chattanooga, TN with Mindy and her kids (which was so wonderful) or Nicolas would have read the news on our faces. The kids and I were so excited.

Michael Tuohy, a very successful Atlanta chef who is very committed to local organics gave a wonderful introduction about Nicolas and his mom before presenting them with the award. I can not remember any of it. I was too busy watching them in order to witness that amazing moment when they would recognize that Michael was talking about them.

The GA organics conference has gotten huge! There were 650 people signed up for this one and it was sold out; people were turned away. Organics in GA has come a long way. I believe the credit is partly due to the amazing writing of people like Michael Pollan, who wrote Omnivore's Dilemma and Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Mineral. Good writing about the environment, when it isn't preachy, is powerful. There is a writer who changed forever the way I think about the ecology of the South. Her name is Janisse Ray and she was the keynote speaker at the GO conference two years ago. Last night, since she was starting the night's proceedings off by reading one of her poems, she was seated at the front table, as were we...! My excitement over talking to Janisse Ray was almost as huge as that I was feeling over Nicolas and Helen winning an award. It was quite a night. I'll have to write about Janisse in another post.

The key note speaker was the CEO (he calls himself CEIO) of the co-op that produces Organic Valley products. He was about the most down to earth and genuine CEO that I have ever heard speak. Sure, I would like to keep everything local and definitely not import from the other side of the world. He does all he can to promote local but sees that we aren't there yet and he brought up some good points about helping the cultures of those producing organic for us in China or South America. This guy's co-op is the real deal, especially as compared to that other big dairy business - Horizon.

Here is a page from GA Organics web site that has a great 5 minute video about organics (you can hear Nicolas, and see our farmers' market and farm in a few shots).

Barbara Kingsolver; the rock star of my book world

Yes, Barbara Kingsolver, one of my top five authors of all time is coming to speak tomorrow night at Emory University. And I get to go! My love of her began with the book The Bean Trees, which I read about twelve or so years ago. It has been my favorite book to give to women, over the past decade. She wrote it as a result of having insomnia while she was pregnant. Rue Kream, who wrote a wonderful unschooling book, Parenting a Free Child, also wrote with the help of insomnia. This should inspire me to move to the computer in the middle of my insomniac nights, but it hasn't, yet...

I love all of Barbara Kingsolver's books. When I took that book quiz a few months ago I was defined as being her novel, The Poisonwood Bible, which made me so happy.

And now she is coming here, to Emory, to speak to the importance of eating locally produced, organic food. I only started reading Animal, Vegetable, Mineral (the book that has provoked this book tour) this week. I am loving it. She speaks to the dying art of valuing your family and your country through the culture of food; of how important a meal, lovingly made (and even grown) together as a family, no matter how busy we are, can be. The book has me ordering cheese making materials to make my own cheese using our local organic dairy guy's raw milk, for which I will make the hour long drive every two weeks to get the milk.

Barbara Kingsolver's talk is kicking off a week, in Atlanta, of celebrating eating locally produced food. Nicolas, his mother and Gillen's pictures will be displayed at Georgia Organics headquarters, for some celebration, along with the portraits of lots of other farmers, on Monday. We will have a booth at a farmers market to be set up at Emory this Friday. I so hope that Barbara Kingsolver gets the urge to come buy a local tomato or a pepper so I can gaze upon her reverentially, maybe even get my voice to make a few intelligible sounds in her direction.

Later: I found out that Ms. Kingsolver is being fed our farm food tonight for dinner, before her talk. Our arugula, eggs, beans, tomatoes, and some others that I can't remember. SO cool.