The Difference of a Day...The Farm Army Day 2

We like to think that we get a lot done on a daily basis, but in the last 24 hours, we are particularly proud of ourselves.  We found a lot of people who were interested in what we are doing and working with us to increase the number of heritage breeds in the world.  The Farm Army post from yesterday and the 100Heritage program is gaining momentum.

We talked.  We met people in small towns who told us their stories.  They told us this was their first year or that they had just bought land and had no clue what they were doing aside from the basics.  They told us a number of stories.  They told us that their father or grandfather was a farmer or a rancher and they decided not to go into it, but still felt the call.

We talked.  We talked to people who were interested in what we are doing because they run farms of their own and want to help.

We talked.  We talked to people who thanked us for doing this because they were tired of Monsanto and other corporate farms taking over.  They were tired of reading about misuse, mismanagement, and mistreatment of animals and were delighted that groups were stepping up.

We talked.  We got sponsors and people who want to make t-shirts, and logos and more.

We talked.  We heard from vegans and vegetarians who thought that we should not be promoting the death of animals.

We talked.  We listened.
This morning, there were a number of messages in the inbox.  There were many requests for hosting opportunities and people wondering even more what we were all about.

I liked the fact that it was mainly supportive.  I liked that people were looking at who we are and wanting to join in.

The idea that large numbers of people are coming on board with this is fantastic.  More so the fact that this large group was born from a small group gives us more hope.

Right now, we are able to do a lot for our members.  We are able to provide things like short term micro loans for people to get started, get gas, or even just get groceries until payday.

Soon, we will be able to provide other things like portable pension and medical plans that can go people from job to job as they learn.

We will have tuition reimbursement for people who are continuing their education.

The easier we can make it to be a farmer, the more farmers there will be.  The more farmers producing better food the more good food we can get to people.

We are proud to say that we are helping more people.  The Hive Host program that came before this
sponsors bee hives and now there are 40 more beekeepers in the world.  As of this writing, we have placed two sets of heritage breed pigs and nearly 20.  In that same amount of time, we have "sold" them already.

We are in motion.  Join us and help us get better food in the world.

Wanna join?  Contact us:
epochpeople@gmail.com

The Farm Army

We need more bacon.
Seriously, there is a pig shortage and that is causing a rise in bacon prices.  Meanwhile, bacon is going into everything...even ice cream.

I am looking back on my high school economics and realizing that there are a lot of barriers to entry when we look at the pig biz.  First, you need space.  Yes, you can lock a pig up in a 10 ft. by 10 ft. pen and just let them be.  This is not a nice deal for the pig, but in several months you will have some bacon.  I would recommend about a quarter of an acre, at the least and let the little dudes (more than one is best) roam.  This will save you money because they will root for some of their food and it is just better for them to have a better temperament.

Buying pigs is an investment.  Owning pigs is an investment.  For that matter, everything that goes with owning any animal is an investment.  Because farming in general is an investment people have to know that there is a pay off at the end.  Whether it is the taste of bacon or the cash that they can get from sales, there has to be a return on that investment.  This goes for anything at all.

What do we want?  We want to see better food in the world.   We are not the biggest fans of Monsanto.  We are not the biggest fans of McDonald's.  We are a group of chefs and as such, the return on our investment is the creation of the best food for the most people.  So, we invest in farmers and watch them grow.  Because we need to see a return on our investment, we create ways to make those investments pay off and it is in our interest to make sure that the people we invest in are well taken care of.

What is stopping you?  Seriously.  We want to know what is keeping you from following your dream.  We can help.  Our goal is to see more good food in the world and the desire is to create viable and realistic systems to bring some good food to the table.

Look at the Hive Host Program.  We build bee hives, place them with people who want to help bees and learn about beekeeping, and then create an amicable split of the honey and other products.   Compost SC works with worm composters to sell their products all over the southeast and they are able to share in the profits of the work their worms do.  Now we are ready to step it up a notch and think about other things.  What would it take to get started? What does it take to make your desires a reality?

We are looking to make small scale investments in people.  We are looking to help and create.
We are ready to invest in you, are you ready to invest in you?

We are starting the 100 Heritage Initiative.
Simply put, we are looking for people with land to help raise heritage breed animals.  Members of our organization will be our partners in raising various heritage breeds of animals on their property and creating a profit for the farmer and a responsibly raised product for our buyers.
This is a chance for hands on education, get support and assistance as well supporting heritage breed animals in the world.

We are looking to place 100 heritage breed animals with growers interested in bringing them to market in 2015 with a plan to do much much more in the following year.

If you would like to join 99knives and be a part of this and many other amazing projects.  Contact us at epochpeople@gmail.com

Food and Farm Nerdism...

Someone told me yesterday that I was one hard working mom.  That thought was very strange to me because I literally have only left the house once in the last two days.  My husband is 90 miles away most days working on the farm that we are moving to and I am sitting here staring at multiple screens.  What is the nature of farm work in the modern world?

This year is going to be an exploration of this.  I get a great deal done from the comfort of my bed, now, in the winter, with a beautiful little girl on my hip.  I am ordering seeds, I am organizing events from thousands of miles away.  We are coordinating large scale compost collection from our laptops and cell phones.  It is amazing what you can do and from where.  You can make local changes from thousands of miles away.

new farm worker?

I am going to go ahead and say it.  We are the most advanced that we have ever been and I could, theoretically, be on the moon and do the same things.  My husband is 90 miles away and our interactions are instantaneous.  We became fascinated with this and things like this when we saw the people at Kijani Grows.  This organization is devising ways to essentially run a farm from their cell phones.

Then there are people like the guys at Farmbot.  Farmbot which works with CNC Farming.  What is going to happen is that some places are going to be able to run an entire farm with robots.  They will be able to harvest, inspect crops, tend to livestock and more with greater ease.  On the horizon is the debate about whether or not that is a good thing.  Whether it will be great that we have a lot more free time on our hands or whether the idea that we remove a lot of the humanity from farming.

The folks at Open Source Ecology are building homes and tractors and more and making the information available to all.  How do we get at that information?  How do we get it out?

The fundamental ideal is that we have to unite the two fronts.  We need to take into account that people want and need a personal connection to their food, yet also acknowledge that we live in a modern world.

Taking the place of the hoe and rake?

Farm Hack and other organizations are finding that niche and it is interesting to watch.  Why is Monsanto successful?  Why are other companies able to bring food from a third of the way around the world?  Tech is the key.  With global ties they are able to find a number of sellers and buyers as well as seek the highest prices and increase the margin of profit.  They are also going to have the most money to invest in these technologies and their implementation.

One of the main things facing the American farmer and small farmers all over the world is how to get to their product to their customers.  Knowing their customers is a very big deal.  So not only are the things that make their farm work integral, so too is the social media and reaching out. There will need to be a lot of face to face, e-mail, and more.  Web sites, Facebook pages and "branding" are genuine concerns where we will be able to "farm out" our needs to places a half a world away if we want...if we want.

Farming is entering and catching up to a new era.  Farming is a discipline that has its roots in the past and always will.  The challenge is how to feed an ever growing population and (in keeping with the goal of 99Knives) get the best food to the most people.  That is going to mean stepping up and stepping out of the comfort zones of the discipline of farming and preparing food.  We are going to have to know as much about social media and tech as we know about our soil.  It means that we are going to be looking at a lot more screens as much as we are looking what the chickens are doing.  We are the new #farmnerds as attuned to whirring gears and hashtags as we are in the nitrogen content in our soil.

My opinion?  I think that it is a good thing.  We are going to be able to do a lot more and I am going to be able to spend a lot more time with my child and husband.  There may be something with whirring gears by my side and taking care of the small stuff, but there will also be a comfort to knowing that I can fly across the country and see my mother and know that the pigs are being fed via camera and drone.  Farming can never lose the human touch, but it becomes really interesting in watching how it evolves.  My daughter, will be able to feed chickens with the touch of a button.

Contact
Carol Jordan-Mckern
9of9productions@gmail.com
tweets at @9t9knives

How it all comes together...

What the hell are you doing?

Who the hell are you?

We get asked a lot what one thing that we has to do with the other things that we do and how do we do it all over the place.  These are the days when it all comes together so we thought we would to explain what bees have to do with worms and artists and food and more.

99Knives is about getting better food to more people.  That is our goal.

Compost SC collects compostable materials from restaurants and households all across South Carolina. We turn it into compost for community gardens and as of this moment, we are up to 15 tons all across SC and expanding into NC and GA; growing better food for more people.

Worm WorX uses earthworms to dispose of more the waste that we get from those places.  We also partner with other growers to create a network that sells their castings.  Are you a vermicompost  worm farmer who would like to be a part of Compost SC?  Then shoot us an email at epochpeople@gmail.com  and we will tell you how to join and sell your castings, make some money and make a difference.

Bee Kind, Bee Cause works with local people who want to own bees to educate them on the art and science of keeping bees.  99Knives is funding the placement of bee hives in Asheville, NC, Charleston, Greenville, and Columbia, SC, Santa Rosa, CA, and Atlanta, GA.  If you have ever thought about owning a top bar hive, order one from us here! We are supporting more bees in the world and creating stronger food systems.  We fund this by building and selling hives, and selling honey and wax, but in the end more people get better food.



99Knives is hosting a concert at the Corner Stone Farm.  We are also hosting talks about green initiatives.  We are selling coffee and partnering with those producers to gather their spent grounds and coffee chaff to put into our compost piles, our mushroom kits, etc.  and in the end more people get better food.

People are going to buy honey and people are going to start gardens.  Coffee is the most popular beverage on the planet.  We are rolling out a product line and using the produce from those products to make the world a better place.  These are things that people are going to buy anyway.  We do it cheaper, better, and the proceeds go to something positive.  We support your friends and neighbors, small crafters and small farms.  So, the next time you think about something you need or want think about how we can do these things better AND help the world.

These are just the things that we have going on now and we have new projects coming out every day.  2015 is going to be an amazing year, and this is how it all comes together.

A Community Through Food by Concerned Citizen

A year ago I woke up and went to work.  My walk took me past a garden in a "bad" neighborhood.  In fact, the Woodside neighborhood of Greenville, SC was rated the 8th most dangerous neighborhood in the country.  Every day when I would walk past there, I would see a garden.  Rather, I would see what was left of a garden.  It had overgrown quite a bit and the more resilient plants were continuing to grow.  Okra, tomatoes, and cucumbers were climbing and rising through the weeds and reaching towards the sun.  There were a few strawberries that clung to life as well, but nothing really of note.

This garden, it turns out, was meant to support a learning plan for kids in the neighborhood as well as provide some vegetables for the senior citizens home across the street.  There was the remnant of a sign that touted the companies who had donated money to see it come to life, but it was now leaning against a wall, its posts tangled with weeds.  The raised beds that they had fronted the money for were rotting and straining to contain the weed infested beds.  I knelt down and dug my hands in.  I could feel the earth give easily and could tell that this garden was not far from having been maintained.  It had merely gotten out of control and only recently.

I began to leave work an hour earlier.  When I left the house, I would grab my gloves and on my way to work, I would stop and pull some weeds.  I would clear some of the brush.  I would water things.  This was the south and it was the summer and once, while bent over pulling weeds, I saw a shadow moving slowly out of the corner of my eye.  Even though it was early in the morning and the sun was just coming up, it was hot and I was already sweating.

The shadow came to me slowly and I saw that it was a woman from the home across the street. She asked what I was doing and I told her that I was just pulling weeds.  She was pushing a walker, the kind with wheels and a basket on the front.  She asked if I was going to pick anything that was growing there. I had never planned on it so I told her to help herself and even offered to help her pick some of the Roma tomatoes that were stretching across the lawn.

She began to tell me about the garden, about how she could see it out of the window of her room in the home across the street.  Then she told me that she didn't have the energy to come out the way she used to but there was a guy who would come and pick the vegetables and then he would walk across the street and sell them to people in the home.  He would sell them the vegetables that were supposed to be free to them.

From that day on, I began to look more closely at the neighborhood.  I am the type of person who notices more the surroundings rather than the people in an area, so it was really no wonder that I noticed the weeds that were growing before I looked around and saw all of the other things.  I saw that there were beer and liquor cans all around.  This was the summer and when I took the earbuds out of my ears I could hear the bouncing of a basketball...at six in the morning.  It was often kids coming or going from the row houses one block over.  Where were they going that early?  Where were they coming from that early?

I began to look at some of the houses in the area.  There were some for sale and I was in the market for a cheap house.   I felt I could handle living in a "bad" neighborhood.  I began to look at auction houses.  These were houses that had been repossessed and the previous owners had been booted out; victims of the housing crash.  There were bullet holes in the windows of some of the homes, but they would likely be bought by a developer all in one go and then leveled.  They would be turned into homes that the people who had previously lived there could not afford to live in.

The woman would come back every so often and chat with me while I worked.  I liked the company.  Soon, she was joined by others; men and women who had been born and raised in the area and who told me stories about what had once been where.  Schools they had gone to when they were 8 and the significance of things that were in the area; what had once sat on a particular foundation that was now leveled and gone.

One of the next things that I had noticed what was not there.  There were no more cans.  I could see out of the corner of my eye while I was working people who would look and keep walking. I suspected these were the people who had once taken tomatoes to sell to the seniors across the street and now, that they saw it was being maintained, thought better and went elsewhere.

I am a big proponent of the "broken windows theory".  This is simply the idea that people do not respect something that they come across that is already a mess.  If a building already has broken windows vandalism increases and other crimes follow. Unkempt areas cause a downward spiral. Can we admit that there may be an overgrown gardens corollary?

The recent divides in this country over what is going on is based a great deal on location, location, location. Liberal, conservative, Democrat or Republican, Black or White, a lot of what we are encountering is who is where and when.  That was an interesting summer because I talked to old and young.  Old people who told me that they used to be able to play late into the evening in this neighborhood when they were kids.   I talked to young people who said that they were afraid to walk in  any neighborhood because of what had happened to Trayvon Martin.  We had these discussions though, while gathered around a garden.  At the core of these discussions was "ownership" and how many of the old people felt that the neighborhoods had gotten away from them and how many of the young people felt that it was hard to feel a part of any neighborhood where you are made to feel that you do not belong or where you are always about to move. Those who were in the middle?  The people my age?  They were at work because that is where they had to be.

Someone on some Facebook thread called me silly for wanting to create gardens.  They say, not to my face, mind you, but behind the comfort of a keyboard, that gardens don't do anything.  I tend to laugh at them.  This year we are going to start a lot more gardens and we are going to maintain them.  We are goingn fact, the Woodside neighborhood of Greenville, SC was rated the 8th most dangerous neighborhood in the country.

No matter what position you take about what is going on in Ferguson, what happened in NY, or Cleveland or any of the other cases that have been all over the news, whether you believe that it is race or whatever else, I have my theories and I stick by them, there is an ideal place for healing and for change.  That place is in the garden.

The interesting thing is that gardens that 99knives supports, produce exactly what everyone wants; better looking neighborhoods, food, occupation for idle hands.

There are ways to help. Donate so that we can buy seeds and more.

If you would like to help us, Join a CSA in your area.
in South Carolina Greenville, Columbia, Charleston...
in Atlanta
contact us at epochpeople@gmail.com

Help us keep the gardens from overgrowing.

The Hive Host Program and how to support a CSA in your area

The Hive Host Program...works to help solve a very basic problem, there are not enough bees.  This program is not going to solve the entire problem all at once, but it is start.  Bees are an integral part of our food system and need to be supported.

How do we do it?
Colony collapse disorder is a serious problem.  There are mild disputes as to what is causing bees to die by the thousands but the primary thought is that pesticides have a lot to do with it. Bee keeping is an ancient art and skill and many people have wanted to do it.  There are problems, though.  For some it is too expensive.  For some it is too time consuming.  Some lack the knowledge.  Still, many yearn to keep bees and many of our bee friends need our help.

We set out to solve some of these problems.  Taking a page from the bees book, we have formed partnerships to solve a problem and much the same way they adapt to nature, we work in our own "environment" to make a difference.

99Knives decided to invest and we could not have  made a better decision.  The plan is simple.  We pay for people to host hives on their property.  The bees do what bees do, and the rewards abound.  When we put a hive on someone's property, we help them learn to work with bees.  The bees pollinate the flowers.  The bees make honey.  The bees make wax.  The bees do what bees do, and the rewards abound.

There are ideas that merely the tending of bees is calming.  It is relaxing as a hobby.  There are those who like the soft buzz of our little friends as they hover around the garden and they seem to be unaware of our existence.  We know that they are there and it is becoming increasingly apparent that we will miss them when they are gone.

Just like the bees we plan ahead.  These initiatives and many more are funded through our CSAs.   These are community supported agriculture projects in several cities in several states.  We do this to support small farmers and initiatives in the cities where food deserts are prevalent.  We provide seeds, and all of the other things that people who are working hard to make changes in the food system.

Is there a CSA in your area?  Are there people in your area making a difference...who want to?  CSA's and the networks they build provide a great service.  The allow growers to plan for what they are going to grow, they know they have customers and can plan accordingly.  The easier the better and the more people are able to get involved.

Get local produce, support the bees, help the world.  It is likely that we have a CSA near you and if we don't now, we likely will soon.

Wanna learn about what we do?

Wanna know what we do?

We need your help...Contact us at epochpeople@gmail.com

Beekeeping as a Chef

I used to walk or stumble out of whatever restaurant I was working in after a very late night and wonder if there was anyone who worked near as hard as I had that evening.  It is very easy to think that we, at the top of the food chain, are the hardest working things on the planet to bring that food to the table.  I am seeing the new angles now that we are going to be raising food.  It had always been in the back of my mind as I had learned in grade school who did what in the animal kingdom.  Now, seeing it, I have a better appreciation for the amount of work that went into the apple that ate a few moments ago.

The bee populations across the country are in decline.  They are even worse in here in California because of drought conditions.  In my Facebook feed, I am seeing random posts about the things that are going to get more scarce or even disappear because of droughts like almonds and avocados.  Now that it is real life, right in front of me in the form of a buzzing little bug that flies about four miles away from its home, numerous times, on a daily basis, I am getting a little better perspective.

I became a chef to feed people and our goal is to help that along a little.  We had people take a little
time out of their day to contact people who were interested in bee keeping.  What we found was that there were a lot of people out there who were very interested in the art and skill of beekeeping but either did not have the time or did not have the money.  As a hobby, it can be both time consuming and expensive.  Still, our little friends in the hive need some help so we thought about how we can help that.

Colony Collapse Disorder is a condition that is killing off millions of bees each year and wiser minds than mine argue about the cause, nonetheless it is still occurring.
We at 99Knives thought that we could do something to help that.  We reached out to people, namely land owners, and asked them if they would be willing to host a hive.  Mainly we would foot the bill for the hives and gear and ask them to put hives on their property.  We are setting out to create a human hive of our own.  These are made up of people who want to learn and those who have the resources.

A quick search has shown us similar projects going on all over the country with this.  We are based in California and South Carolina, but there are groups forming all over the country that are working on a number of projects.  The struggle to bring bees back has begun.

I put honey in my tea sometimes and that's about it.  Looking around, though, there are so many other things that these little guys do.  Just about every fruit that we eat is here because of them.  The beeswax that is in the lip balm that I use is there because of them.

Our goal in 2015 is to educate and we are starting with the "foundational" aspects of our food system; the things that create the things that grow our food.  I am not going to lie, these little buggers used to scare the hell out of me and I must admit that my first instinct is to crush them or run.  I have a new perspective as a chef and soon being a beekeeper.  They do not just make honey, they do a lot more hard work.

Wanna help?  You can help fund the purchase of a hosted hive by donating here.

Wanna see what is going on?
Carol Jordan tweets at @9t9knives
find us on Facebook
contact us at epochpeople@gmail.com

Worm WorX Worms and Products...

Someone once said that on his farm, the worms are the hardest working livestock that he has.  The spend the majority of their day chomping through waste and doing what they do best; turning it into fertilizer.  The castings they produce make stronger plants that are more resistant to disease and need less chemical interaction. That is just if you have them in a bin.  If you have them in the dirt surrounding you, they are more than likely digging and aerating your soil and making it easier for the roots of your plants to dig in.

We need to see more worms in the world doing what worms do to produce better plants and create better farms.  2015 has been dubbed the year of soils and our worm friends need our help.  In the new year, we are going to be working as hard as we can to get more and better soil quality but we also need more people doing more with worms.

We are encouraging that!

 One pound of live worms. $15.00 (+$2.95 shipping and handling)
We have pounds and pounds of red wigglers ready to go to a new home in the new year.  The red wiggler is one of the champs of the compost world because it eats so much and is very active.  Purchase a pound of these worms and we will send you all the information that you need to get started.
1 lb worms and 1 small bag coffee chaff and spent grounds

Custom made vermicompost bin...$50 (+$6.95 shipping and handling)
Our custom made compost bin (18"w x 18"l x 36" h) is made from white pine and burlap.  We use these because they easily
accommodate any moisture that comes with the bin and the burlap interior bag "breathes" very well to allow good air flow.  It is durable enough to last without the use of plastics and should last a long time. It breathes and it breaks down. Your set comes with the bin and a half pound of worms to get started with. as well as a bag of coffee chaff bedding courtesy of one of our many coffee roaster sponsors.

Coffee chaff bedding (large with burlap bag) $15.00 (+$2.95 shipping and handling)
Do you love the smell of coffee?  Coffee chaff is extremely lightweight and makes an incredible bedding for the worms similar to sawdust and paper but bonus, it smells like coffee! Get a large bag and even use the burlap sack for whatever you may need in the garden or around the house!

For every $100 dollars that we raise, we are able to donate a pound of worms to worthy causes and organizations that keep worms.  We support groups that educate on the virtues of good soils and good plants and produce.

So help us get started in the new year!
Got questions?  Contact us at Epochpeople@gmail.com

Try a top bar hive and help a(nother) good cause...

Thanks to your help, we are able to donate hives like this one to several locations all over the country in 2015.

Bee-Kind Bee-Cause  along with 99Knives are out to save some bees.  To do that, we are thinking like a bee.  It takes many bees doing many different jobs to create a successful hive and many many successful hives to have a successful eco-system.  The more bees the better.

To promote bees and bee-keeping, we are doing our best to make it affordable to get people involved in the bee movement including...

Top Bar Hives
 $50.00 (plus 6.95 shipping and handling)

Affordable, well made, Kenyan Top Bar Hive made of pine with levels and wing-nut adjustable legs to create the perfect environment for your buzzing buddies.
The Top Bar Hive design is great for the beginning bee keeper
You get a top bar hive, a unique hive tool, and even a pack of flowers and herbs to spread around and help our friends the bees in the spring.
If you are not satisfied with your purchase, we offer a full money back guarantee.  This is a great way to help a good cause and get ready for a wonderful year!

Flowers and herb pack $5.00

This pack of herbs and flowers can be spread around your yard or anywhere you like as long as it is warm in your area.  Even if you are not keeping bees yourself, you can help the bee population by providing something for them to collect from!

Casting mix- Go wild with a mix of herbs, annuals, and perennials and toss them around any open space near you and the bees will find them.

Herb mix-  A mix of fragrant herbs that the bees just love and they are great for you too.

Just Flowers- get a mix of annuals and perennials that you can be as detailed or as wild as you like!

Flowers, Herbs, Both!

Just Flowers Just Herbs Bee Mix

This is just the beginning.  We are sponsoring the placement of hives all across the U.S this year and your purchase can help us place more hives and do more with the Bee Kind van that will be traveling from state to state.  For every 4 top bar hives that are bought, we donate one to an organization that wants one, promotes good stewardship of the land, and seeks to educate people about bees.

We are off to a very good start!

The Ingredients to Change the World...Start with a cup of coffee

We are starting with a cup of coffee.  Caffeine is a must.  We are joined by 100 million other people in the U.S. over the age of 18 who drink coffee each day.  That is a lot of coffee.  That is also a lot of coffee grounds and a lot of chaff that comes from roasting that much coffee.  These are the ingredients for change though.

Thanks to Leopard Forest Coffee, Charleston Coffee Roasters and a few more, we are going to be taking all of that spent coffee and and the chaff that comes from the roasting process and using it (after partaking of a few cups of coffee ourselves, of course.)

Coffee grounds and chaff is the perfect substrate (growing material) for growing mushrooms and we are going to grow A LOT of mushrooms.  We wanted to do something different.  So, we are also going to be selling mushroom kits so that people can grow their own at home.  Half the proceeds from the sales of these kits is going to go to local schools.  We are also going to donate the kits themselves so that kids can learn in classrooms how these mushrooms grow.  

The rest of the spent grounds and chaff is going to go to Compost SC.  It will be added to worm beds to make compost and fertilizer.

Highland Mist...This blend is known for its dynamic flavor.  They call it their chocolate covered cherry flavor. $13 per pound (whole bean)

The Farmhouse blend is a medium blend for those who love coffee, with no extremes. $13 per pound (whole bean)

The Total Eclipse is true to its name...Dark and Bold!
$14 per pound (whole bean)

The Decaf is all the great flavor without the caffeine.
$13 per pound (whole bean)

For every pound of coffee sold, one dollar goes to support gardening in schools!

These are the ingredients to change the world.  It all starts with a little coffee.

A Hard Day For a Vegetarian, by Theresa McDaniel

Freedom From Want- Norman Rockwell

Some days I want bacon.  This time of year is the hardest. My mom makes the best turkey at
Thanksgiving and vegan substitutes have never quite fit the bill.  This Thanksgiving I had hummus and a huge salad.  My mom assured me that the apple pie was vegetarian.  Thursday was not the hard day, though.  Friday was.

I work for Compost SC.  It is an organization that I started and we gather food scraps and compostable matter so that we can compost them and then use them for soil amendment, all so that we can grow more food.  We call it closing the food loop.

The problem is that, much like a leaky boat, there are a number of other little holes that we do not see in the food loop.

to be clear, not me or my friend.
I didn't want to embarrass him or the business

Friday morning, my parents and I went to get coffee.  I ordered a bagel and my usual quad-soy-raspberry-no whip- mocha. Even though it is November, it was still warm enough to sit outside and there before going out to look at the world and watch people spend wads of money on Black Friday,  was a man drinking coffee.  He looked as though he had seen better days.  He looked to be holding on to his black coffee to warm his hands as much as his insides as he sipped.

My dad warned me to put the butter on my bagel before it got too cool to melt the butter.  I told him that I don't eat butter.  I told him that I was working on becoming full vegan.  My dad smirked.  It was the same smirk that I had seen when I told him that I wanted to play the violin when I was 12.  That same violin that sits on the wall of my bedroom and that I rarely pick up and for which I had only recently learned to read music.  It was not a smirk that said he thought I was not going to do it.  It was that smirk that said, "I know that you are going to do it.  It will just take a while."

I was going to do it.  It was going to take a while.  I became a vegetarian when I was 16.  Within a week I felt lighter and better.  We were living in San Diego at the time and the options were plentiful.  I could find vegetarian options all over the place and my mother was more than willing to cut back on the protein.  I was always able to cook for myself and so when it came to making things just for me, it was pretty easy.

I started with just giving up meat, then eggs.  Slowly it led to almost all animal products.  Every day, it gets easier and easier.  Some days, I crave bacon and it is difficult to find things that compare to what momma makes.  I miss her mac and cheese and I miss the piles of bacon and sausage.  Now, I have been a vegetarian a full third of my life and someday, I will be at a point will I have not eaten meat more than I have eaten meat or animal products.  I feel pretty good.

The pats of butter sat on the plate and they did not melt.  Every so often, the man who had seen better days would glance at the plate.  I could tell that he was interested in the butter, but there was no real context to offer it to him and he seemed like he did not want to ask.  If I had offered him a bagel along with it, that would have made sense.  Just the butter though, was weird.  With a look, I just pointed to it and he nodded.  I handed it to him.  My dad glanced back and we both watched the man place the wrapped pats of butter in a plastic bag and put them in his pocket.

He continued to look at me in an curious way.  It was as though he was looking for a break in the conversation to say something to me.  Even when my dad would pause, he didn't say anything; just looked at me.  Finally, I returned his gaze and raised my eyebrows.

"You're that girl."

"I am a girl...I don't know if I am THAT girl."

My father, surprised that I was talking to the man behind his back, turned and asked in an imposing baritone, "What girl?"

Miles away from home, literally across the country from my home, I was behaving myself.  I am sure my dad was waiting for stories of me passed out, drunk, on the floor of some bar.  I was nearly sure there were no stories like that out here about me and I felt safe.

The man went on to say that he sees me all the time by the dumpsters.  Rubber boots, sweat pants and hoodie at 3 or 4 in the morning.  I am never hiding.  I will often just stop, pick up our bucket of compost, throw it in my car and be on my way.  The thing that I have always known about where every I am is that someone is always watching.

My dad gave me a look that asked if I still had my pistol and in an unspoken shorthand that we had developed from knowing me all my life, I nodded yes. I told the man yes aloud and felt a mild flash of red to my face as if he was about to ask me for my autograph.  How would I sign it?  Theresa the garbage girl?

I told him what I do and he asked me if I ever looked in the dumpster.  I had to confess that unless I had a really compelling reason to look, I would not.  It was never worth the queasy feeling that I would get to look.  Every so often, I would see a bucket that was tossed in there.  We always needed buckets.  I never really looked in or dove.

I told him that I would sometime and he said "Tonight...Tonight is a good night."  It was almost conspiratorial, as though he wanted me in a on a heist or something.  I looked at my father and he looked at me, neither of us saying a word.  I had the same look I imagine I had when I asked about going on my first date only this time it was a homeless man who looked to be in his 50's.

My dad looked at me as if to say, "Go ahead."  I told him that I normally go out at 4 and that he and mom would be asleep at the hotel anyway.  He gave me his exasperated wave that indicated that he knew that I had already decided.

I was trying to take some time off because my parents were in town.  It was my first Thanksgiving not in California and if I could not be home then I thought I was grown up enough to invite my parents out here to South Carolina.  To watch my mother putter about in a kitchen that was far too small and my dad constantly updating scores on his laptop from games in sports I had no idea about was a bit strange but we, for the first time, shared some bottles of wine and ate, mostly standing up.

Next year, it will be at my brother's house, with his new wife and their new child in Oregon, but this one was all mine and apparently, I had accepted a date from a homeless man and was going to spend a portion of it with him, dumpster diving.

Most of the time when I go out on these missions it is relatively solitary.  Some days I will have help from other volunteers who are in the area.  Just for some company as I go from place to place like a bee picking up pollen and nectar only this case, it is garbage.

It was freezing.  Literally.  The temperature was about 25 degrees and it felt like I could feel my breath freezing every time I inhaled and it made me cough a little.  We met at a local supermarket and he directed me to park at the side, out of sight. I brought him a coffee just in case and I sipped tea. The temptation to pour it on me just to heat up was almost unbearable.

He looked around crouched behind a bush and through to the corral that held the dumpster.  It was piled high with trash and nearly overflowing.  In the corral were waxed boxes that once held produce.  In the corner was a turkey.  It was a whole wrapped turkey and perhaps something happened to it, but regardless there it was, wasted.

He blew into his hands and rubbed them together.  Then he pulled the door open.  Inside were boxes and in those boxes were lots and lots of food.  There were cakes and cupcakes, brownies and sweets of all kinds.

The dumpster was filled with boxes and boxes of food.  He said it was like this every holiday and that on regular days it was still pretty full.  There were expiration stickers on each item that indicated the date.   For most, they expired that day and not even really expired, but were just not sold. He took a bite of one many sandwiches and had a look on his face like he had not eaten in days.  I asked him what kind it was and he said it didn't matter.  He had not been starving he had just gotten past the point where he cared or was concerned about the taste of thing.  His life had become about sustenance.  The particular store we were outside of (I will not mention the name) was kind of a specialty place.  They do not donate their compostables to us so I was not familiar with the outside.  I went inside it nearly once a week or so for random things.

We ducked every time there was a passing car thinking that it might be the police.  I began to wonder what that would look like.  I wondered what my parents would say if they had to bail me out in the morning.  Whether my father, a decorated military lawyer, would make a big deal about his little girl getting arrested for going through a dumpster full of wasted food.  He would have a fit but somewhere in the back of his mind he would have loved it. Not only were they throwing it out, but they were going after people who were going to get it?  I can understand the more conservative narratives.  There are laws.  People could get sick from eating something that was tainted.  Or, something could happen to them while they were diving.  Or, and this is pure devil's advocate here, they could see it simply as people would just wait to go through the dumpster at night rather than shop in the store.  That is a far reach.

This was one of the leaks in the boat of the food loop.  Not only was food being wasted, but animals had given their lives and died so that sandwiches and wraps could be made and disposed of when the concoctions we had made with their flesh was no longer appetizing through the unrecyclable plastics they were wrapped in.  A whole turkey lay rotting in the corner, bound for the landfill.

My new friend loaded a duffle bag full of food.  I asked him about the turkey and he said that there may or may not have been a reason it was tossed and it was too dangerous to take.  Cooking it would have been a hassle in his living conditions anyway so he left it.  We left the box full of beef and of course the box full of sushi and fish that had just hours earlier graced the shelves inside.  The boxes and wraps of some of the things that he had taken simply said "Best By 11/28" as if as soon as the front door of the store was locked and the last customer was gone, the food went bad.

I began to wonder if I had any right not to eat anything with so much going to waste.  Did I have the right to be picky when others are starving?  It was their food and their right to do with it what they wished.  I had always had a problem working in food service.  I could not rectify people throwing out food that was good and that others would never get a chance to taste.  High end, quality, artisanal were not a lot of words used in shelters I imagine.  I could not bring myself to do it.  At the end of the night just toss all that food.

There were boxes full of eggs and empty bottles of milk that had likely been poured down the drain.  My friend found the remnant cans of a six pack of great beer.  It seems that two of the cans had been crushed and opened so they threw the rest out.

There are a lot of layers to this whole thing but the overall thing that stuck with me is the notion that there are people starving, food being wasted, and those like myself who do not think that an animal should have to die to feed anyone.  Mores or taste, it is all still there.  Why didn't they take it to a shelter?  Why didn't they at least compost the veggies?

I met with my parents a few hours later and I told them what I had seen.  We took a drive around the city and we drank coffee and watched the sun rise together.  They were renting a car and driving to Atlanta for the day to fly back to California.  Before they left, I looked at my father and asked him what I should do.  I wondered, what did all mean.  

"That is hard to say, but you will figure it out."

"Will I?"

He looked at me and he smirked.  That smirk that said, "I know that you are going to do it, it will just take a while."

It was a hard day for me as a vegetarian.  I wondered if my vegetarianism is a luxury and though it is something that I consider, it is not the primary reason for me writing this.  If I were homeless and hungry would still be a vegetarian?  There were piles of food in there, but nothing with any protein.  Some of the wraps had hummus in them and were stamped proudly as "vegan", and yes, I took a bite from one and added the remnants to the compost bin, but if I were on the street, the chances of coming across something like were few and far between.

I write this primarily because I have always been one of those people who wonders how others live and now that I have that peek I wonder more.  I wanted to eat a sandwich with him out of solidarity.  I wanted to find the animal that had given its life for that food and tell him or her that they did not die in vain and that if nothing else, some random girl somewhere took a bite out of respect (?) just to keep you from going into a landfill somewhere.   I lost my appetite not because there was flesh, but more because it was going to waste.  I lost my appetite because I was not hungry enough. This is something that it is going to take me a little while to wrap my head around.

Earth and Pollen

For the next couple of months, at 99Knives our primary focus is going to be on the things that we can do over the winter, the crops that we can grow and harvest, and the ways that we can prepare for the coming spring.  Yes, we will be singing Christmas carols and offering all kinds of holiday cheer, but rest assured that we are going to be thinking about the things that brought us here and how we arrive at these moments, surrounded by friends and family, and eating things that were lovingly brought to us and prepared by skilled hands.

While we eat turkey and pumpkin pie somewhere in the back of our minds is how we are going to
recreate this scene next year and, being human, how we are going to make it better.

We have said it before and we will say it again, the work does not end in winter and in fact we are joining nature in the amazing loop that will bring us back to where we are now.

Investments in our future...
To date, we have designated approximately $120,000 to be put into our various projects over the year in a rather diverse engagement in several projects, each that engages with many people, and each that builds on our core ideology...the best food for the most people.

Compost SC
...was started as a method for reclaiming waste from restaurants and coffee shops.  We invested in this program to create a way for us to get low cost soil amendment for crops in the coming year.  We realized that we would soon have too much to utilize and have devised ways to donate it or sell it off.  What started off with a desire to help the planet, to the tune of 100 tons saved from landfill, turned into a profit center.

Worm Works... 
...was devised as a way to take this a step further.  We were able to create a network of worm farmers who were willing to sell their worm based fertilizer at a profit for them and a means of further closing this loop.  Better soil, better plants, better food.


Bee-kind...
...is working with honey producers as well.  Bees are a keystone to our environmental well being.  There are many producers out there and we feel that as chefs, we should encourage people to make
more and to develop many more ways to help bees thrive.  More bees, more plants, more food.

Bee-kind is working to promote these ideas and develop networks for growers so that they can sell their products locally at a nominal profit.  We need more bees in the world.

All of this means better and more crops for us in the spring.  It means more people to buy from and more people to sell to.  It means stronger networks, stronger people, a stronger economy, and a stronger planet.

These are all ideas worth looking at and investing in.  We have a vested interest in creating sustainable, afforable/profitable food systems.  These are things that everyone can agree on and watch as we grow together.  We can put a little more money in our pockets.  We can grow a few more plants.  We can get to know our growers.  In the coming weeks and months we are going to be working along every link in the chain and making a huge impact on the world we live in.  All we need to do is start where nature starts...with earth and pollen.

I Am Somebody and So Are You

This is industry related, I swear...

I have wild hair and I have a piercing in my belly button but I like to think that the similarities between me and the trolls of myth end there.  Yesterday I said some things about some things and it irritated quite a few people.  To them I say good!  I am a living breathing human being and I have a voice.  So do you.  Use it.

A troll in the internet sense just says things to get a rise out of someone.  Trust me, I read the comments sections of a lot of articles.  That is not at all what I was doing here.   I had some thoughts, I voiced them.  I will have many more and no, I will not shut up.  Nor should you if you believe in something.

I fear I may have gotten on this person's bad side when I referred to his event as "hipster bullshit".  He ended up doing the equivalent of stomping like a child from a room and leaving the conversation when I called him on it.  Not before doing the very cowardly thing of lobbing what he thought was an insult.  He called me...brace yourselves..."irrelevant". I think his hope was to make me feel small and insignificant.  It didn't work.

He said that other people were saying the same thing about me in private messages to him and were basically saying "Who is she?"  I am a living, breathing, human woman with an opinion, that's who I am.  Why were these conversations going on in the backrooms and corridors of Facebook?  Everyone is someone.  Everyone has a valid opinion.  Moreover the moment I start couching my self worth in what some other person on the internet said about me, is the day...well, I don't know because it is never going to happen.

When I called his event elitist, he denied it.  When I said that neither it nor he came anywhere near what he claims he was trying to do, he scoffed.  If nothing else his final comments were very telling about who he is and what this event was about.

Everyone has a voice.  Everyone has something to say and someone who is trying to educate someone else should be the first to recognize that there is no one who is irrelevant.  This is especially true when we are talking about food.  Everybody's gotta eat and everyone who ingests food has a vote.

Pam Warhurst of Incredible Edible has a wonderful ideology...



The best thing about Incredible Edible it is that it is inclusive.  No one is irrelevant and no one should be out of the loop.

Am I a nobody?  No, I am a wife and mother and business owner.  I am a daughter, a farmer, and a darn good chef and my opinion matters.   So I was really very happy when he said that I was irrelevant.  It sealed my faith in myself and proved my point.  It was a bunch of hipster bullshit put on by a pretentious douche who puts himself out there as the new every man while simultaneously calling anyone who disagrees with him ignorant and irrelevant.

My husband is a comic nerd who always laughs at this scene from the Avengers.  The one where Loki attempts to put his foot down and assert how lowly we all are in his presence...

I get it now.

The Ones Who Walk Away From Suzie's Farm

For the past couple of months I have been getting notices for an event in my Facebook feed and I found it quite interesting.  Not that it was anything that I would ever go to, but because of all the event proposed to be and all of the other people who were interested.  If you are in the know and were one of the 1200 or so people who got an invite to this oh so exclusive event, then you got an invite to it then I hate to break it to you, but the event has been cancelled...kinda.  It does not matter really anyway because of lot of the spectacle was in the events leading up to it.

Let me say a few things right off the bat in the interest of editorial honesty.  Let that be the first thing; that this is an editorial and that I am writing this to offer my opinion on things that happened and I fully accept criticism and contrasting viewpoints.  The second thing that I would like to make abundantly clear is that I am not a vegetarian.  I gladly eat meat but more on that in a few moments.  Finally, let me state that I do not personally know anyone in this debate.  That is to say that I have not met any of these people face to face and that is a large part of why I am going to say what I am going to say about this particular happening.

The event was Death For Food At Suzie's Farm and I am sure that you could see from the title alone, it got a lot of objections.  A lot of people were going to get together and serve a gourmet meal of turkeys and lamb and more.  Chefs from all over San Diego were going to lend their talents to this event and the organizers were going to talk about humane killing of animals.  In the interest of editorial honesty I am not going to write in grandiose terms about killing and murder of animals.  We can see that what most telling about this event is not what is said so much as what is not said and how it is not said.  Bear with me.

We have been down this road so many times and this was simply the last straw for me.  This is the culinary industry's collective "jumping of the shark" moment.  The event is ostensibly cancelled and our  feathered friends may get some reprieve but who knows.  Attendees were ready and willing to shell out $150.00 per person to $300.00 per person should you like to participate in the "harvest" of a biodynamically raised turkey to take home.

The initially $150.00 is for a delightful, I am sure, dinner but my frustration and annoyance comes from the additional $150.00 people were willing to pay for the honor of watching their bird slaughtered in front of them supposedly in the interest of education on the origin of your meal.  This is where we get into terminology.  "Slaughter" is the correct term.  This term is conspicuously absent when we are talking about this event.  The organizer uses words like "harvest" so that people feel better about what they are doing all the while couching the event in the idea that people must confront their idea of what it means to kill what you eat.  If it is slaughter, call it slaughter and reclaim the word.

The event is promoted as an educational event, which, in my opinion, is designed to make it more palatable to the attendees. I would have felt more comfortable with it as an event if they had merely said that it was just a dinner and if one so chose, they could slaughter their own and take it with them for Thanksgiving.  Instead, they chose to say that the point was to make sure that people knew where their food was coming from and what went into its arrival at the table.  Here is where I have to take a swing at a few myths.

Myth #1  People don't know where their food comes from...
People know exactly where their food comes from.  The matters that are at issue now is how much they care or can afford to care.  Aside from once hearing that someone thought that mayonnaise came from plants (and I think/hope that was a joke) no one over the age of ten or so does not know where their food comes from.  The question is and should be how to get people to care and put them in a position where they can make the choice to care.  Ironically, that involves making it more affordable.  When the goal is to get your family fed on a holiday and have that big brown bird with the crispy skin on the table few can afford to keep in the forefront of their minds how it got there, whether it had a big field to roam around in or whether it met a peaceful end.  They have mouths to feed and if anything needs to be removed from the table, it is the notion that this was about educating Americans.

Myth #2  That this was not about the money...
I am a capitalist.  I do not believe that people should do things for free and I never will.  I do believe that charity is charity and capitalism is capitalism and the moment that profit exceeds loss  is when that threshold is crossed. Myth #1 is hard to extricate from this also.  Whether or not the organizers were out to get rich, I do not know enough to say.  I do however know that people were coming out ahead and that everyone involved was going to get more out of it than they were putting in.  Again, I have to say that this is not a bad thing but combined with Myth #1 it is problematic.

Myth #3  This is about reverence for the animals...
NO!  Short and simply put, the moment this becomes about people paying to watch what they eat get killed it crosses the line from reverence to spectacle and there are two sub-myths that accompany that.  The fact that there are 700 million people in the U.S. alone and nearly 8 billion world wide.  I am all for baby steps in positive directions but we have to confront an end game here.  Can we honestly say that these events are helping the cause? I have to say no.  I have to say emphatically no.  That leads me to...

Myth #4  This is about awareness...
One of the main reasons I chose to write this is to open the dialogue.  Organizers of this event said that this was one of the main things that they wanted to get from it.  They wanted people to speak about it and talk about where their food was coming from.  At last look 1500 people were invited.  About 100 responded.  52 said they were coming.  I am not sure how many tickets were sold or who was slated to show, but let's assume that Facebook is in this case reliable.  52 people were going to learn about this event.  52 people were going to show up and participate.  Let's look at the demo of that 52 people.  These were 52 people who were in the food industry.  These were 52 people who could afford to pay that kind of money.  These were 52 people who were able to plan that far ahead and were willing commit to this.
Of course, this is just Facebook and I never saw how many tickets were sold.  Even it were half that are we willing to say that this was an educational event.  I have to admit that I used the word "elitist" in a forum about the event and people said that it was not.  I still cling to the notion that this is the epitome of elitist and the irony is that people were not seeing that.
There was a notion that this was a wide ranging event and that there were huge numbers being reached and lives changed etc. etc.  Maybe not that much but let's call this what it is, a bunch of people who could afford two sitting around drinking craft beer and cocktails ruminating on how wonderful this whole thing is and they are for supporting it.

What smacks the event in the face is that when it poked its head up, people were outraged.  There were people who were outraged on a number of levels.  I was in the camp of people who are meat eaters but saw this as nothing but animals dying for what I called "elitist hipster bullshit" in the guise of social commentary and education.  The average person can't afford this nor would they if they could.  There is no educational value; no positive agenda being advanced.  Without any of that, then it really just killing animals for show. You could save a few hundred dollars yet spend more than you would for a Butterball and have a humanely raised bird at home with your family that you know was raised comfortably and killed quickly.

Then there were the vegetarians, vegans, animal rights people, etc. camp.  Again, in the interest of full disclosure, part of me took glee when they got involved because it proved just about everything that I said above.  This event was going great guns when it was a bunch of people speaking amongst themselves.  That is the nature of elitism.  If you surround yourself with people who tell you exactly what you want to hear, you end up thinking that you are a pretty great person and that everything you think is right because well everyone within earshot thinks the same thing.
I took glee because I was one of the few voices on the Facebook pages saying that it was wrong.  I was shouted down by people saying that no it was great and that people everywhere are going to love this and us for what we are doing.  Wrong.
In case you have not noticed, I have been speaking in pretty generic terms mainly because I don't want to advertise for either side.  No links, no invitations for debate, etc. If you want to find it, it can be pretty easily Googled, just look up Death For Food.

That being said, the other faction showed up pretty quickly and in force.  The only kind of force this group musters on a regular basis and that is petition and protests.  The interesting thing is that these petitions, I found, have no force of law.  So, they were not doing anything but making many people aware that many people did not like this.  Overnight, 2000 signatures.  Those are pretty stark numbers when you could only get 52 people RSVP on Facebook.  Overnight, 2000 plus people were disgusted, threatened to boycott Suzie's Farm, and picket the event.  Overnight, the event fell apart.

The legs fell out from under the thing and we are forced to look at the resulting issues.  Again, keep in mind that the petition does not have the rule of law so there would not be police out there stopping them from doing this event.  Essentially, they caved from public pressure.  Suzie's Farm backed out and without a venue, there was nothing to be done.  Go back to what I said earlier, if the the thing itself were so meaningful, shouldn't the event have gone forward?  Is this not the opportunity to take on a fight that "everyone" thinks should happen?

At this point, prepare to enter the spin zone.  What is the outcome of this story?  I doubt even any of the chefs involved will offer their restaurant for the event because even if it is a full house that will be what they are known for.

Some are considering having the event in private but that leads to how do you get people to attend, shell out the money and again it flies in the face of everything that the event purports to be about; education and reverence for the origins of our food.  "Secret rich people animal killings" does not sound like a promising spin.

The man who organized the protest, is he satisfied?  I don't think so.  Some have labeled him an opportunistic food terrorist.  When all is said and done all is not said and done.

I wrote this because it brought to mind one of my favorite stories.  It is a short story called "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas" by Ursula LeGuin (here it is in full.  It is a good and short read) and it poses a very deep ethical question, one that I think is expanded upon here in real life.  Could you live in a town that is absolutely perfect and peaceful aside from one child, sitting alone, starving, crying, and wallowing in its own shit?  In the story, some just walk away from Omelas.

Here, are we ok knowing that every time we eat a chicken nugget, it came from one or several chickens squished together and deep fried not knowing how it/they were treated or do we bring this front and center and charge $300 to see it? Here, some people don't acknowledge it.  Some people walk away.

For more on this CLick!