The Letter We Get Every Year or A Year From Now, You'll Wish You Had Started Today

Given the work we are doing this winter, this seems particularly poignant to post.  It is a blog post written by Melissa Arteste and it speaks a good deal to the frustration that a good many of us are feeling today.  Read, enjoy, think...--Carol Jordan-McKern

We have gotten the same or a similar letter for the past five years.  It will start around April or May and
then they come in rapidly right after all the way until about the end of August.  The first time I got the letter, I sprang into action.  The second time, I was a little frustrated.  The third time, more so, and the fourth and fifth and sixth, etc. I was just downright annoyed.

They tend to start innocently and even honorably enough and go something like this:
   "Hi, We are trying to raise money to build a garden/ community garden/ school garden etc. and we need your help to buy x y and/or z"

Mainly they are looking for money for lumber to build raised beds...understandable.

Or they are looking for money for tools... There are other solutions there, but ok.

Or, (and this is the one that really annoys me) they are looking for money to buy compost or fertilizer.

The reason this annoys me the most is because the time to start thinking about this is right now.  Not the first warm days after a long winter, but right now as the leaves are setting up to fall and there is very little else that can be planted.

A good time to get into these things is right now.  The BEST time to get into these things is right now.  We need to get away from the idea that gardening and growing start when the sun is warm and getting high in the sky and when the world is   We need to realize that a lot of preparation needs to and can go into the creation of a great garden and especially if it is in a school.  The lesson of a garden is in what it means over the long term.  The lesson is in what it means when it is not so pretty outside.

The lesson is to go and find a shady place and gather as much and as many leaves as possible.  Combine that with as many food scraps as you can find and get to work.  Engage in finding other sources of compostable materials.  The idea is to get ready for the spring...right now.  Get ready and stay ready.

A year from now, you'll wish you had started today.

Where are we going with this?

I miss my chef coat some days.  I really do.  There was always that moment when I would walk into the kitchen, especially on a hot summer day and throw on my coat over my tank top, a single roll of the cuff of my sleeves and a quick tap on my left arm to know that my thermometer, my pen, and no less than two Sharpies were there.  Clean, white, pristine. The first hour of my day is sitting at my desk, reviewing sales and then ordering for the next three days.  I make a few phone calls then stuff shows up.

One of my favorite executive chefs told me once that what made him the exec wasn't the fact that he could do his job but that he could do my job and he then pointed to everyone on the line and said that he can do their job too.  I like that and want to take it to the next step.

But it's not magic.  Not a day goes by when someone doesn't ask me what we are up to with all of these "little" projects.  All of this talk about compost and worms.  I thought this was supposed to be about food?  The unstated promise of blogs like this is that this will be all about recipes and problems with guests in our restaurants.  How do we get stars and when is the next farm to table event?

We're different.  We are going back to the beginning.  We are going to where it all starts.  So what does that mean?  That means when the prep cook on the line hacks off the butt of a nice head of romaine lettuce, where does it go?  Landfill?  Buried forever and lost from the cycle for years.

We are going back to beginning of the cycle.  We are talking about getting back to how the food that
winds up on the plate got there and how to make sure it tastes good and there is more of it.  That starts with, I hate to say it, garbage.  It starts with poop.  It starts with worms.  It starts with those things that we do not want to talk about and since we do not want to talk about them we do not pay attention to them.  Since we do not pay attention to them, the things that go into our soil and then into our plants and from those plants then into our animals and ourselves; it could be anything.

When we say that we want to start from the beginning this is what we mean and that means getting our hands dirty.  Where are the seeds coming from?  What are the seeds going into?  A year from now, we will be talking about what to do with all of the things that we grew.  We will talk about various methods of roasting, pureeing, drying, canning, whatever.  Until then, we are talking about what gets it out of the ground.

We wanna believe that great chefs know their growers, the best chefs know how to grow food themselves.

Carol Jordan-McKern
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Keeping an eye out...

This morning, we started at about four a.m. gathering buckets of compostable materials.  We are developing quite  a routine and more than a few followers.  It takes about 3 hours to hit all of our hot spots and as the sun rose and we could only barely see our breath.  We stopped for a moment to have some coffee and think about our next move.

We are holding steady across all of our piles at an estimated 8 tons.  That is nearly 16,000 pounds of stuff that could have gone into a landfill.  We are not fooling ourselves and though we are a pretty competitive bunch, we do not dare dream that our small band of is going to get it all.  We are out to get a fair chunk.  The curse of this job and this competitiveness is that our eyes are always open.

As the sun rose, and people began to stir, as the city began to come to life we saw a man with a pond skimmer.  My partner and I looked at each other and thought the same thing at the same time.  A few simple questions to the young man and we found out that the park cleans the pond every Friday and that when he is done he dumps it in the dumpster about 50 ft away.

We tipped the garbage can back and felt that it was about 100 pounds.  There are fish in the pond and they do not use chemicals to maintain it.  Just aeration and circulation.  The circulation pump rises out of the water at one corner and throws the water in the air about a foot and shoots it causing a mild whirlpool.  The algae that grows during the week, because of the current, collects in one corner where it is very easy to skim off the top.  About a 100 pounds a week.

So this is what comes from keeping our eyes open.  100 pounds a week of nitrogen rich mass that would have gone into a landfill is now going into the compost pile and will soon be going to gardens all across SC.  We keep our eyes open.

Sadly, there was not a lot that we could do about the pumpkins from Halloween.  You win some, you lose some!

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The Numbers Coming In...Our first week with CompostSC

This morning, we made our first rounds of compost pickup for CompostSC and we gathered a nifty thousand pounds now that all the numbers are coming in.

In Clemson, 5 different households were able to fill four gallon buckets with compostable material in the course of 5 days.  In Greenville, it was 9 households and Columbia and Charleston each had 10.  The others were considerably less per household.  Some people just forgot they were there.  Some people continually dumped their compostables in the regular trash out of habit.

This was the first week, though and the thing is that people are activating on this and the numbers are promising.  We can see that people are thinking about this and getting more interested in what this means.

It means lowering their carbon footprint.
It means revitalizing the soil for farms and gardens across the state.
It means food being grown for food banks and our CSA, all across the state.
It means a group of people learning.
It means we are forming a network.

Compost pile at about 130 degrees!

It also means that we have a lot farther to go.

Joining means a lot.  Here's how it works.  Sign up and we give you a sealable 4 gallon container.  We pick it up once a week and give you a clean one.  We also give you points towards our CSA, weekly gifts, and you also become a member of our book and tool library.  As a member, you are eligible for discounts on the events like Epoch Fest SC 2015.  This is going to be a strong year for growth in all areas. Contact us at Epochpeople@gmail.com if you would like to join!

Not all about the compost, throwing some education in there, too!

So we have started routes of gathering compost in Columbia, Greenville, Moncks Corner and Charleston with Summerville, Clemson and Forest Acres in another week.  We have collected over 6 tons and now have 106 members and the community is growing steadily.

We did not want to form groups of people who do not know one another. Someone started thinking about how to make it easier to form a community.  Should we put together a bunch of events that people will never come to?  No.  Should we spend endless hours talking on the phone, emailing, skyping, instagramming, etc. etc.?  I do not think it is possible.  We have pretty much concluded that we needed to do something new and different and still manage to link people to what we are doing.


We are building a library.  99Knives cookbook is going on the list of course, but we are also starting off with The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan and Animal Vegetable or Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver.  With 106 subscribers, they are going to take some time to make the rounds, but people are encouraged to add their own books to the list and lend them or give them to the cause.

It may be a single book that you could not bring yourself to take to the library, or one that is dog eared, written in or whatever.  We are happy to take it along with us, add it to our catalogue and pass it to the next person who requests it when it is available (We are heading that way anyway!)

It is nice to learn something and share some of what you know along the way!

This spring, we will be launching our tool garden as well.  The books, tools, and appliances will be available to every member.  So join up!  Send us an e-mail if you would like to join us! The more the merrier with 94 tons to go!

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Theresa McDaniel, New Farm Girl a Long Way From Long Beach!

I grew up on the beaches of California enjoying hot summers and winters that would find me hanging Christmas lights in shorts and having to drive hundreds of miles north to see snow in the winter.  When I was asked to come out here to South Carolina to do some work on my masters, I thought that it would be a parallel experience just trading one coast for another.

This past week has found me doing a lot of talking (I am ok with that, many people say that I never shut up!), digging through garbage (I am less ok with this, but I like to think of myself as being open to new things and down to accomplish missions!) and handling worms (this one stretched my mind a bit...)

I never thought I would be doing anything like this.  Nor did I ever think that I would ever like something like this.  Yes, I said like.  It is more the competitor in me than the latent "farm girl".  I like to see things accumulate.  I like to see things build up and form.

The average earthworm

can eat its own weight in food every day and, like a 2nd grader, I like to watch them work.  I like to see things that were once there, gone and changed into more useful stuff.

I read somewhere that worms can be the hardest workers on the farm.  It is somewhat true.  Keep them warm and moist and well fed and they will do amazing things for you.

In about two weeks, we are going to do our first "harvest" of their castings.  They are going to be bagged and sold and we will go on from there.  Much the same way I feel about Tetris, where I like to see the blocks stack up, I will watch the bags stack up and then go out the door.

That is what the farm and work overall are all about, I guess, watching the things you put your time and work into pay off.





We have nearly 50 pounds of worms just working away at Corner Stone Farms and as long as we can keep them happy, we will have twice that amount very soon and then twice again soon after that.  We are off to a good start, but we are a long way from home and so am I!

Life Goes on Without Me...The core of a movement

Yesterday morning I welcomed a beautiful little girl into the world.  I am tired but I know that things will go forward with 99knives because that is the way that it was designed.  To have one person at the center, holding things together in the face of something that we think is so vital.  I can take off knowing that things are moving along and that I can take some time with my new soul in my arms, my new husband, our new farm and know that things are going to go on.
I am musing on this and writing about this as think about so many things that wait for exceptional people to espouse common sense.  Did we really need Betty Friedan to tell us that women are equal to men?  Did we really need Martin Luther King to tell us that blacks are equal to whites?  Looking at the world as it is I think there is too much to be done to wait for an individual to step up.  We have work to do.  We have to stop waiting for someone to arrive to tell us to do it.