The Farmer

“You have chosen to get involved in one of the most difficult projects in American Agriculture.”

This was the first line of an email I received from a well-respected miller in Kansas to whom I’d reached out, hoping for a bit of guidance. The rest of the email delineated the various pre- and postharvest challenges we would need to overcome, from seed availability to grain quality, storage, cleaning, and packaging. It was early on in the concept stage of what would become Carolina Ground, and in my initial email, I had mentioned the possibility of collective ownership by the bakers and/or farmers; to this, his response was that farmers are an independent lot. Fair warning. I was initially intimidated by this “independent lot.” The chasm that existed between baker and farmer was not just our lost connection to the agrarian roots of our trade. There were cultural differences as well. It had been more than a hundred years since the community mill had bridged this gap. And there was justifiable mistrust from these growers. They had been burned in the past, many times, by markets over which they had no control.

I attended field days put on by the Cooperative Extension Service, hoping to learn about the production challenges these growers face. Understanding their farming culture as a whole would prove just as important as our single crop, since grain fits into a rotation. These large-scale organic Southern growers rotate wheat crops with tobacco or sweet potatoes, corn, or, more recently, hemp. The timing of harvest and planting as well as potential benefit or disease from the previous crop in the rotation can add to or detract from the quality of our grain. I wanted to know about all of this. And I also wanted to know more in the hopes of forming long-lasting relationships.

Carter Farms, Eagle Springs, North Carolina.

Soft wheat harvest at Barham Family Farm, Wake Forest, North Carolina.