Ingredients

In just one month, we’ll be in Boston to team up with our good friends at Farm Aid for a screening of the film. This is fairly momentous for us, as New England is such a hotbed of activity for local food and family farms, yet our presence there is far lesser than that of other regions in the country. This means we’ll get to reach an entirely new audience that has never seen the film before, and with the film’s release on iTunes and soon Netflix (add us to your queue!), hopefully they’ll be telling their friends who will then tell their friends. One can dream, huh?

But this Farm Aid screening will really be something else. Farm Aid has secured the Brattle Theatre for the night—an institution for Harvard students and Cambridge loyalists—it’s smack dab in the center of Cambridge’s historic Harvard Square. And as has become customary for screenings, a panel and discussion will follow the film. We love this, as the panels carry the theme and points of the film, which are specific to New York, Ohio, and Oregon, but interjects them into the local discussion of food systems specific to that region.

The panel for the evening:

Carolyn Mugar, Executive Director of Farm Aid
Peter Davis, Chef of Henrietta’s Table
Ellery Kimball, Blue Heron Organic Farm
Tim Griffin, The Friedman’s School Agriculture, Food, and Environment program at Tufts University

If you’ve read Ben Hewitt’s The Town That Food Saved, you’re aware of just how active the local food scene is in New England, so such a great event in Boston really has us excited.

(Photo credit, from top to bottom: Brattle Hall via wallyg; Henrietta’s Table via Charles Hotel)

It’s easy to feel a sense of hope and enthusiasm about our film and the food movement when I hear reports of sold out screening after sold out screening in various parts of the country, but when I come across a story like the one I just learned about Crow’s Nest Farm in Blackburg, Virginia, it’s even easier to realize there’s still a lot of work to be done. Crow’s Nest is a pick-your-own berry farm outside of the same town that Virginia Tech calls home, and the town has seen an increase in development on rural land—which coincides with the sale of Crow’s Nest by its owner, Charlie O’Dell. Charlie explored his options, understood that the value of his land for development was high, but decided to sell to the farm to a young family man named Bill Sembello. This was last July.

The events that have transpired since highlight the very flaws in the governance of our food systems that make it so incredibly difficult for small family farms to succeed. He approached the USDA seeking financial assistance, only to discover that after initially giving him expectations that they’d assist in the purchase of the farm from Charlie, the USDA valued the farm and its equipment at almost half the sum Bill needed to raise to complete the sale—stating that the land’s value to the community as a berry farm and had no bearing on the land’s value to the community as land to be developed for domestic growth. Bill was mislead, the process was poorly managed by the USDA, and the farm now hangs in limbo and is dangerously close to falling into the hands of developers.

But Bill wasn’t quite ready to give up. In an open letter to Mark Bittman, Bill asks for help. He asks for a voice, an advocate, because simply enough? What’s happening with Bill and his family defies logic. At a time when the government has voiced its suport for small family farms, it’s recommending that this farm close—and not because there’s no farmer willing to take over the land. In response to Bill’s letter, the Blackburg community has rallied behind his cause and is coming together to right this ship. It’s an incredible story of communal support that I hope you’ll find nothing short of inspiring.

And you can throw your support to Bill’s cause, as well. Request to join their Facebook group Friends of the Berry Farm by following this link here.

(Photo credit goes to Flickr user jmcc2009)