Healthy soil and sustainable growing

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Trading city life for an East Texas farm
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/fea/lifetravel/stories/DN-ns_gre

erfarm_0419gd.State.Edition1.24f8b93.html

04:44 PM CDT on Friday, April 17, 2009

By MARIANA GREENE / The Dallas Morning News
magreene@dallasnews.com

DAINGERFIELD, Texas – The process of finding the farm provides clues that
Sid and Eva Greer have retreated from the corporate life, even before you
hear their story. Their midlife change of course is not an uncommon
plotline these days, but far more dream of similar scenarios without
summoning the pluck to make it happen.

The Greers exchanged chauffeured cars, life in exotic locales and audiences
with trade ministers for manual labor sunrise to sundown. Sid runs heirloom
beef cattle and farms pick-your-own fields of fruits, berries and
vegetables. At night, online, he researches sustainable agriculture methods
and puzzles over additional ways to diversify the farm's means of earning
income. Eva tests recipes, plans her schedule of cooking classes, caters
events in nearby towns and readies four bed-and-breakfast cabins for
weekend guests. (Breakfast is often homemade bread and her own fig or
blackberry preserves that you eat in your cabin.)

The couple, now in their fifties, started down this road fully prepared for
hard work, although after 10 years, the operation has yet to turn a profit.

It takes only a few minutes to reach Greer Farm once you turn off the
two-lane highway between Gilmer and Daingerfield, minutes that belie how
remote the farm feels. After twists and turns, the road ever narrowing, you
come upon the historic homestead, a planter's imposing house and handmade
outbuildings built in the 1850s, some restored, some not. Shrieking guineas
announce guests, and in the barnyard baby goats kick up their heels and
chickens scratch for bugs.

As busy as the farm is for its owners, it is a spot of serenity for guests.

"It was killing me," Sid says of his former career with an oil company. He
was gone from his wife and four children 300 nights a year, even though
they lived with him at postings in Madagascar, Tunisia and London.

When his position in London was eliminated, he didn't try to find work in
the same field; he talked his wife and remaining school-age daughter into
making a momentous change in their lives by buying a farm.

"I felt like this would be a lifestyle that would provide a longer,
healthier life than the one I had," Sid says. "I wanted to live off the
land."

Farming is in Sid's family. His father's people were ranchers and farmers
in North Texas, and Sid grew up in East Texas. Eva grew up in what was
British Honduras, now known as Belize. Her German physician father and
aristocratic mother resettled there after World War II, after his years in
a German labor camp and her mother's spent trying to obtain his freedom.

In Belize, Eva says she entertained herself by reading cookbooks. Imagining
the recipes on the table planted a passion for good food made with fresh
ingredients. In Madagascar, she ran a staff house for Amoco employees
"because restaurants were not safe. People came to our house to have a nice
meal."

When her husband expressed his desire to exchange their fast life for a
slow life, Eva, with their children grown, worried what would occupy her
time. Farming was Sid's dream. "I didn't know how I could live here, retire
here, without being bored," she says.

Before the move, therefore, she enrolled in the International Culinary
School at the Art Institute-Houston so she could pursue professionally "my
God-given passion."

Although they bought the farm in 1994, they did not move here until 1999.
Sid taught himself to be a farmer and rancher by "attending lots of
seminars and reading lots of books." He is outspoken politically, and that
fervor extends to the current philosophies of farming. He has tried
strictly organic methods but finds it too expensive to be practical.
Instead, he practices the tenets of sustainable agriculture, employing
methods that provide farm profitability without degrading the natural
resources that support production.

Diversification is important, Sid asserts. He raises grass-fed Maine-Anjou
cattle and sells the beef directly to his customers, chefs and consumers
who participate in the local food movement, who want to know the rancher
raising the beef they consume.

On the farming side, Sid is enlarging berry fields and fruit orchards by
planting trial patches of filberts, olives and raspberries purported to
produce in the Texas climate. He already grows blackberries, blueberries,
figs and plums. Last year's crops, he said, were harvested on a
pick-your-own basis; he had no produce left to take to a farmers market.

The Greers also earn income through agritourism, a practice far more
prevalent in Europe. More and more, the four cabins are rented to
city-dwellers who want to experience life on the farm. Sid doesn't put
folks behind a plow or perch them on a tractor. But he does allow guests to
gather eggs in the henhouse, feed the goats, offer treats to the horses and
pet the baby animals. It's a daily ritual at 4:30 p.m. in the Old Barnyard.
You also may accompany him to the pastures, where the red or brown beef
cattle, a French heirloom breed, come galloping to greet him. Though large,
the animals are gentle, standing quietly until he moves to unload hay. He
calls several by name and pats them like they are big, friendly dogs.

Twice a day, Sid checks the coyote traps set in pastures. The coyotes prey
on calves, sometimes even while the heifer is giving birth. Sometimes he
doesn't get around to it until dark, bucking over bumpy pastures in his
pickup, the truck's headlights making narrow paths in utter darkness. Then
it's back to the farmhouse to sit down to dinner with his wife.

He and Eva build their fences, plow their fields and plant their crops.
They have one small tractor and one part-time helper. Although Sid toils
from before dawn to after dark, he still finds time to post on his blog,
Farmers Don't Blog (www.greerfarm.com/blog). He notes what's happening on
the farm and shares articles, short stories and poems he likes.

"There's something about sitting on the porch in a rocker in the morning
with coffee, or in the evening with tea, and hearing nothing but birds."

To learn about the bed-and- breakfast accommodations, cooking class
schedule or pick-your-own fields, go to www.greerfarm.com.