Love for Food and Earth-friendly Solutions Leads to Farming

Thanks to Kirsten Lechner of A Simple Focus for this story and photo.

“I love food, which is definitely one of the reasons I farm,” says Kathleen Smith of Farm Front Gardens, who originally majored in Spanish and Literature at Chapel Hill. During college, Kathleen spent six months traveling in Peru and Columbia – a transformative adventure that led her into sustainable farming. While traveling, she saw first-hand how American consumption uses up natural resources abroad and leaves poverty in its wake. And, she recalls, "it seemed crazy that I wasn't able to accomplish the basic tasks of existence such as growing my own food."

So, she left UNC to work at a sustainable farm in Florida. Kathleen was hooked. She transferred to Appalachian State University's sustainable development program, where she met Ben Berry, a life-long gardener with an interest in finding bottom-up, local solutions to life’s food and energy questions.

Now Ben and Kathleen farm on land they rent in a hidden corner of Wake County that has been designated as part of a land conservancy. They keep chickens for eggs, and when we arrived they had just received a shipment of fuzzy baby chicks in a variety of colors. Their diversity will produce the artful eggs that range from browns to greens and make cooking less of a chore and more of a therapy.

The tour took us to their greenhouse, where their worms are happily making compost, and it ended in the field where they are tirelessly tilling row after row with pitchforks rather than tractors. They’re making fertile soil from Carolina clay. I can’t wait to taste the fruits of their labor!