Participation Type
Roundtable
Session Title
Farming, Foodways, and Regenerative Community Organizing in the North Carolina High Country
Session Abstract or Summary
Roundtable Summary: This roundtable brings into conversation four community members who work in discrete yet intersecting ways to sustainably address farming and foodways in North Carolina’s High Country. Speaker One will give an overview of the history, purpose, impact, and outreach of Blue Ridge Women in Agriculture, a non-profit organization in Boone, NC. Speaker Two will give an overview of the history, purpose, impact, and constraints of the newly-introduced Food Hub in Boone, NC. Speaker Three will give an overview of the history, purpose, impact, and future of the Chef and Winemakers/Producers Summit held annually at Over Yonder in Valle Crucis, NC. Speaker Four will discuss the work of F.A.R.M. Cafe, North Carolina’s first non-profit restaurant and their new food waste recovery program, F.A.R.M. Full Circle. Together, these speakers will create a roundtable discussion that both highlights the needs that led to these community organizations/interventions and brings into dialogue the resulting successes, shortcomings, and lessons learned along the way.
Presentation #1 Title
Blue Ridge Women in Agriculture
Presentation #1 Abstract or Summary
Blue Ridge Women in Agriculture (BRWIA) is a non-profit venture based in Boone, NC, that strengthens the High Country’s local food system by empowering and supporting women and rural families with resources, training, and knowledge sharing about sustainable agriculture. Although BRWIA is run by women and has an origin story of supporting women farmers who historically lacked resources, its programs support the entire food community and target all phases in the food process from production to consumption. This speaker will discuss the rural needs that led to BRWIA’s creation and identify the needs it continues to fill, highlighting successful initiatives that have had significant impact in the counties it serves, including the High Country Farm Tour, the Watauga and Ashe County Seed Libraries, the Lettuce Learn School Garden project, and the Double-Up Food Bucks program.
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #1
Dr. Jessica Martell is Visiting Assistant Professor of English at Appalachian State University and an Executive Board Member of Blue Ridge Women in Agriculture. She is the author of two books on literature and food studies – From Farm to Form: Literary Modernism, Ecology, and the Food Politics of Empire 1890-1930 (forthcoming from the University of Nevada Press in 2020) and the collection Modernism and Food Studies: Politics, Aesthetics, and the Avant-Garde (forthcoming from the University Press of Florida in 2019) – as well as twelve essays in various peer-reviewed academic journals and books. She is a member of the High Country Food Hub Advisory Committee and the Watauga Food Council and is an enthusiastic (if slightly amateurish) homesteader.
Presentation #2 Title
The High Country Food Hub
Presentation #2 Abstract or Summary
This roundtable speaker will discuss the High Country Food Hub, a central storage facility and online farmers’ market for locally-grown food in northwestern North Carolina. The speaker will give an overview of the history, purpose, impact, and constraints of the newly-introduced Food Hub, a program of Blue Ridge Women in Agriculture. The speaker will also discuss spaces for cross-sector collaboration through the project, such as working with local government, cooperative extension services, philanthropy, university partners, local business leaders, regional sustainable agricultural organizations, and farmers to rebuild our region’s local food infrastructure.
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #2
Dave Walker is the Programs Director at Blue Ridge Women in Agriculture, a regional nonprofit focused on strengthening northwestern North Carolina’s local-food system. Dave previously managed and worked with entrepreneurship and placemaking programs in Boone, NC and Chattanooga, TN. He holds a MA in Appalachian Studies and a Graduate Certificate in Geographic Information Sciences from Appalachian State University where his Masters Thesis concerned how first-generation farmers become successful in Blue Ridge Appalachia. Dave counts himself amongst them as he started Daffodil Spring Farm, raising Certified Animal Welfare Approved pastured pigs. His work and research concerns regenerative, just local food systems and economies.
Presentation #3 Title
The Appalachian Chef & Winemaker Summit
Presentation #3 Abstract or Summary
Speaker Three will discuss the region’s wine industry and culinary renaissance, both of which led to the founding 2017 Appalachian Chef & Winemaker Summit and the evolving iterations of the 2018 NC Chef & Craft Beverage Summit and the forthcoming 2019 High Country Chef & Producer Summit. This speaker will discuss the birth of the summit, the community networking involved in the summit, the chef/farmer/producer buy-in required of such a region-wide summit, the impact of the summit, and the evolution of the summit. In so doing, this discussant will explore the constraints, outcomes, and lessons learned along the way when bringing regional chefs and producers to the same table to approach the cultural implications of the farm-to-table and eat/drink local movements and sustainably address concerns of demand, distribution, value, agritourism, and culinary tourism.
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #3
Jessie Blackburn is the assistant chair of the Department of English at Appalachian State University and affiliate faculty in Appalachian Studies. Her forthcoming book, Appalachian Terroir: Stylistic Approaches to New Landscapes, explores the discourse trends in terms of the use, disuse, and refuse of regional rhetorics and cultural aesthetics in the burgeoning wine industry that is shaping today's Appalachian region (under contract with University Press of Kentucky). Her research explores the commodification of the rural, the romanticisation of the bucolic, and the appropriation and simulation of regional rhetorics through provincial aesthetics and semiotic expressions that both essentialize and glorify notions of the 'rural idyll.'
Presentation #4 Title
F.A.R.M. Cafe
Presentation #4 Abstract or Summary
Speaker Four will discuss F.A.R.M. Cafe, a non-profit restaurant in downtown Boone devoted to feeding all regardless of means. Since opening in 2012, this community kitchen has been run almost exclusively by volunteers and utilizes a pay-what-you-can model, meaning that patrons can pay a suggested donation, pay above or below the suggested donation, work in exchange for a meal, or eat for free. The cafe typically serves between 70 and 100 customers a day, with approximately 35% of those not paying for their meals. The F.A.R.M. Full Circle program has also begun retrieving food from grocery stores, mostly fruits and vegetables, that otherwise would be thrown away. That food is then repurposed into fixed meals and distributed to homeless shelters throughout western North Carolina. In addition to striving toward its goal of eliminating hunger in the High Country, F.A.R.M. Cafe also contributes significantly to the culture of Boone in that it brings together diverse groups of people who otherwise may never come into contact with one another. Supporting the cafe then becomes much more than merely fighting food insecurity; eating at the cafe becomes the means to create a more inclusive Appalachian community.
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #4
Zackary Vernon is Assistant Professor of English at Appalachian State University. In both his teaching and writing, he focuses on American literature, film, and environmental studies. Vernon also has an abiding interest in studying the literary, cultural, and material history of Appalachia and the U.S. South. His research has appeared in a range of scholarly books and journals, including Appalachian Journal, Journal of American Studies, Southern Cultures, and ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment. He is the co-editor of Summoning the Dead: Essays on Ron Rash (University of South Carolina Press, 2018) and the editor of Ecocriticism and the Future of Southern Studies (Louisiana State University Press, 2019). Vernon is also currently finishing a manuscript entitled Haunted by Waters: The Hydropolitics of American Literature, 1960-1980, which is under contract with the University of Nevada Press.
Blue Ridge Women in Agriculture
Blue Ridge Women in Agriculture (BRWIA) is a non-profit venture based in Boone, NC, that strengthens the High Country’s local food system by empowering and supporting women and rural families with resources, training, and knowledge sharing about sustainable agriculture. Although BRWIA is run by women and has an origin story of supporting women farmers who historically lacked resources, its programs support the entire food community and target all phases in the food process from production to consumption. This speaker will discuss the rural needs that led to BRWIA’s creation and identify the needs it continues to fill, highlighting successful initiatives that have had significant impact in the counties it serves, including the High Country Farm Tour, the Watauga and Ashe County Seed Libraries, the Lettuce Learn School Garden project, and the Double-Up Food Bucks program.
