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  • From: "Tameson O'Brien" <tamesonob@metrocast.net>
  • To: "'Healthy soil and sustainable growing'" <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] farmer?
  • Date: Mon, 31 Jan 2011 06:53:23 -0500

Actually, I’m about 2/3 the way through this book and frankly I don’t think he deserves all this bashing from you. If you had read the book you would know that he did in fact quit his day job. He learned everything the hard way just like you and me. And that he’s a real down to earth guy who tells the story without glossing over the rough bits and kept a good attitude about. Why don’t you go read the book Nonna? And then you can make an informed criticism.

 

Tameson

 

From: livingontheland-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org [mailto:livingontheland-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Simply nonna
Sent: Sunday, January 30, 2011 3:15 AM
To: Healthy soil and sustainable growing
Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] farmer?

 

(This is his own bio page)
http://www.kurtwoodfarms.com/kurtwoodfarms/About.html
"Kurt Timmermeister was born in 1962 in the heart of Seattle, no where near farm country.  Anticipating working in foreign service, he graduated from the American College in Paris with a degree in International Affairs.  While in Paris he realized his love of food and restaurants far surpassed his affinity for government work and he returned to Seattle to begin a career in food service."

===========

Let's see-he "bought" 12 acres on an island apparently never having "farmed" before ($$$), and I somehow doubt there are any "farmers" in his family. Yeah,you'll get far in farming with a degree in International Affairs from the American College in Paris. Sounds like his folks had money.He must really be a "foodie" with an underground cheese cave. Another good PR piece for publicity....
I've heard this before ("how hard can growing be-I dun went to college)
First he tried to sell "vegetables" and discovered u actually need to find a "niche" and maybe even actually know your product. What KIND of tomato is this?
Of course,good thing he didn't give up his day job as a "cook "(or dishwasher) and that first foray showed him he needed a "hook" .Doesn't exactly seem like he's another Mario Batalli.(from Seattle too).
"Early tomatoes cost a lot of $$$$ to grow "(well are u growing them 2B early or for taste?) If you don't have a good product (or know how to grow) people will buy once and never come back. The key is in relationships and how you treat people.
Was the land even suitable for growing anything or did it have a nice view?"The farm began as four acres of overgrown blackberry brambles with rusted out cars and cast off junk hidden beneath the canopy of weeds."
Apparently he complains how "chummy" customers want to be??Excuse me, that's called people skills and that negative attitude seems to show his disdain for the customer-what did u expect that people are going to hand over money 2U because you're a nice guy or your daddy is "somebody"?There are those who only seem to respect abuse or grew up that way.
He then quit dairy because of " the attention I gave to both the state and to my customers"'(Notice a pattern here?) Maybe an attitude problem?Sounds like a spoiled rich kid, ya think?
Then he left his city job as a "chef" and started teaching "foodies" yet he has "has little patience for overly precious foodies"Meanwhile he acts like the very foodies he reviles by claiming " The American love of olive oil, he theorizes, boils down to culture envy."? Envy-sounds like he may be a little bitter since he can't grow it and capitalize on the craze. Meanwhile he ignores all the health benefits of olive oil. Or maybe he doesn't know:?Sour grapes...He did live in Paris for many years though.
Serving only "local" is another hook. No man is an island-altho he may live on one. This person seems completely absurd. All down through time (when people had a lot more local availability) they still stocked spices and other items which were necessary, but weren't locally available. Sugar,salt,tea,etc became important trading
commodities. That doesn't mean they did without, and they couldn't go to their local WallyWorld ChinaMart.
I'm sure he's sitting back having a banana and a Starbucks trenta latte ,and abusing those who put up with him,while patting himself on the back for being so "local". Or maybe it was a hatchet job by WSJ? I'd much rather hear him talk about bloat, since he seems to have vast experience in "bloat". Or is it gloat? I get rather tired of these publicity pieces that have an agenda. Kinda like I'm getting tired of all the CSA hype around (since it's sign up time).Follow the money.
Thanks for sharing it Ken. A real eye-opener.

nonna

On Sat, Jan 29, 2011 at 8:21 AM, Ken Hargesheimer <minifarms2@yahoo.com> wrote:

The Dismaying Facts of a Farmer's Market

 

By PIA CATTON

Of all the places where self- congratulatory behavior flourishes, it blooms most vividly in urban farmers markets. Here the smug shopper reigns supreme: a little too friendly at 8 a.m. (the only acceptable arrival time for those who wish to be taken seriously), a little too quick with advice on, say, bitter greens, a little too eager to refer to the farmer by his first name while asking after his partner, children and livestock.

Some city foodies surely dream of the day that they, too, can leave civilization behind and, like their favorite heirloom-tomato supplier or the guy whose ramps you simply must try, live the arcadian life. But if the faces on the other side of the folding table look a little weary, former chef and restaurateur Kurt Timmermeister explains why in his memoir, "Growing a Farmer: How I Learned to Live Off the Land." Farming is just as complicated, market-driven and cruelly disappointing as any office job. With good humor and plain speaking, Mr. Timmermeister introduces readers to the ironies of small-scale farming in modern America.


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Today, Mr. Timmermeister's dairy farm just outside Seattle has 12 Jersey cows, as well as hogs and chickens. But his evolution as a farmer—with many trial-and-error detours along the way—included extended adventures with bees and sheep. In 1990, he bought four acres on Vashon Island and soon after added a neighboring parcel, bringing "Kurtwood Farms" to about 12 acres. While still running a restaurant in the city, he set himself up as a vegetable grower because he had heard it was "a good place to begin—cheap, quick and unregulated by the county, the state or the federal government."

As it turned out, that career only lasted for one season, during which Mr. Timmermeister sold vegetables through two outlets: a farmers market and a Community Supported Agriculture group whose members pre-bought a portion of his harvest. Selling at the market, he soon discovered, "is all about being first." Farmers do what it takes to beat the competition. "If you sell ordinary green beans at the middle of the season when every other farmers market stall is selling green beans, you will make no money," he writes. "If you have beautiful, unusual tomatoes weeks before everyone else, you will clean up." But producing those early tomatoes can require the use of landfill-clogging materials such as plastic sheeting and PVC pipes fashioned into temporary greenhouses.

The author's sales for the first year came to $17,500. The expenses for the farm at that point, he says, were an estimated $20,000. So Mr. Timmermeister shifted his focus to livestock and became a dairy farmer specializing in raw milk: a fashionable, controversial product that goes from cow to glass without pasteurization. While he was able to meet the Seattle area's steady demand, the regulations and fear of liability took their toll.

As he explains in a chapter devoted to raw milk, the government's pasteurization requirements for milk are a classic case of crafting rules to address the lowest common denominator. They are rooted in the 19th century, when dairies moved into urban areas to be near the whiskey factories that sold cheap, left-over grain mash as feed for cows. The poor-quality feed made for poor-quality—and sometimes diseased—milk. Governments looked to Louis Pasteur's method of heating liquid (originally intended for wine) to make milk safe. Meanwhile, dairies outside the cities set their own standards to differentiate themselves from their dodgy urban rivals.


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Despite such standards and self-certification, a belief took hold that all milk should meet a uniform standard. By the 1930s, pasteurization was required for all dairies. "The original supporters of pasteurization had no intention of requiring pasteurization of all the milk," Mr. Timmermeister contends, "only the dangerous, poor-quality milk produced at swill dairies."

Today, raw milk is allowed in 28 states, including Washington. Mr. Timmermeister initially sold it unlawfully, then with proper permission. The state regulators were cooperative, and it took him about six months to be a licensed raw milk producer. After nearly five years, though, he quit. A change in the law, requiring additional testing of his cows, drove him to shout expletives at a state worker, and to wonder if the bureaucrats were conspiring against him.

"It wore me out," he writes. "Not the actual work of milking cows, bottling the milk and selling it, but rather the attention I gave to both the state and to my customers." His raw-milk aficionados, it turns out, place an emotional burden on their suppliers, through their blind belief that the product is a magic cure-all elixir. "When customers informed me that they fed the milk to their weeks-old infants, I would shudder," he writes.

Mr. Timmermeister learned more lessons in farming reality by selling meat and eggs, which were all regulated at the county, state and federal levels. "The result is a little profitability from the selling of these high-ticket but highly regulated products."


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For years, Mr. Timmermeister balanced his city work with his agricultural sideline, but by 2003 he was a full-time farmer. His central product is a Camembert-style cheese, which he sells at nearby stores, from Whole Foods to Thriftway, a local grocery chain. But what keeps the farm afloat is a skill he had developed long before he set up as farmer: cooking. On Sunday evenings paying guests come to his home for dinners made almost exclusively from products grown on the premises. The guests themselves are often the kind of people who make a sport of "locavore" and low-carbon-footprint one-upmanship. Yet Mr. Timmermeister has little patience for overly precious foodies.

At the Sunday dinners, guests are often shocked to learn that Mr. Timmermeister's kitchen has no olive oil. His land can't sustain olive groves, he explains, but does yield other delicious fats: "We have an abundance of beautiful butter from the Jersey cows and excellent, flavorful lard from the pigs." The American love of olive oil, he theorizes, boils down to culture envy. Olive oil fuels the "tyranny of the Mediterranean." In "warmer Italian climates . . . the sun shines often, food is an important part of daily life and life moves at a slower pace."

Growing a Farmer: How I Learned to Live Off the Land

By Kurt Timmermeister 
Norton, 335 pages, $24.95

Likewise, when local-food advocates tried to persuade the author to make his own salt, he "let them know that if they want to row out into the bay and dredge up five-gallon buckets of seawater, bring them back to shore and boil them down to capture a bit of questionable-quality sea salt, that they are most welcome to. I am quite content with my bright red box of kosher salt, thank you."

At times, Mr. Timmermeister can go into too much detail—we may not all need to know how to cure bloat in a cow's digestive tract—but the earnest simplicity of "Growing a Farmer" is charming. Though opinionated, Mr. Timmermeister is not an evangelist. He narrates his personal journey with an open, straightforward spirit and declines to pass judgment on those who can't or won't live as he does.

"I enjoy a life and diet that few can enjoy," he writes. "I don't have a recommendation for a way of growing food that would be accessible to everyone. I can only say that living off the land, and grandly, is possible." Grandly, yes. Profitably? Maybe someday.

—Ms. Catton, a Journal reporter, is the co-author of "Be Thrifty: How to Live Better With Less" (2010).
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703555804576102211222517814.html?KEYWORDS=the+dismaying+facts+of+a+farmer's+market



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