FOODCHAIN
TOP OF THE
Foodies
in other
places might
just cook
and eat.
In and
around
Chapel Hill,
they want
to know
the how,
the why
and the
where from.
he time: A sunny Sunday afternoon in
mid-June, just as spring’s final strawber-
ries give way to the first tomatoes of
summer.
The place: The W.C. Breeze farm
north of Hillsborough.
The scene: Canopied booths surround
an open field filling quickly with lawn
chairs, hay bales and picnic blankets. At
each booth, a chef and a farmer dish up a
delicacy they’ve created from the cornucopia that is the North Carolina Piedmont.
At one stall, bison burgers on focaccia. At
another, wood-smoked Yukon Gold potato
salad with pickled fennel, cipollini onions
T
by Kathleen Kearns
honey-marshmallow sno-balls made with
ice shaved by hand on the spot. One
mouthful is more orgasmic than the last.
Four or five hundred people are holding
small white plates and smiling.
The happy eaters at the 2009 Farm to
Fork picnic include a cross section of the
players in the burgeoning local food movement — longtime farmers and those who
have just planted their first backyard vegetable beds, chefs and home cooks for
whom fresh ingredients are essential raw
material, nutritionists, land-use planners
concerned with shrinking agricultural space,
environmentalists preoccupied with global
warming, economic development folks and,
The 2009 Farm to
Fork picnic in northern Orange County
included the big players — the eaters and
the eaten — in the
local food movement. On top row are
Professor Alice
Ammerman ’ 82 and
Bill Dow, a physician-turned-farmer. On
bottom row, Noah
Ranells, farmer and
Orange County agricultural economic
development coordinator.
