It’s 5 a.m. and we’re miles out in Galveston Bay on a salvaged shrimp boat called Discovery. Daylight lingers below the horizon, yet the air is already warm and humid. We drop anchor and wait patiently in calm water for the sun to rise.
In an hour we will fire up Discovery’s engine to make passes to and fro, bringing in net after net of the bay’s bounty, vigorously sorting shrimp from various by-catch. As we throw eels and thorny catfish over the side, the sun will beat on our backs and sweat will bead on our brows while a supporting cast of sea life—gulls, pelicans, and dolphins—trail excitedly for their morning meal.
But now life and time stand still. Zach Moser—the boat’s captain and an artist whose vocation combines the work of commercial shrimping with participation in the local seafood economy and social activism—leans back in his chair behind the wheel. As he dozes off to sleep, Eric Leshinsky—a fellow artist and the first (and only) mate—lies on the deck with a life jacket beneath his head as the boat gently rocks. The radio chirps with the conversations of other captains; these moments before sunrise while the rest of the world sleeps can be a lively social hour.
Wide awake, I soak up the solitude and savor the moment, the stillness a welcome respite and time to relax, reflect, and be present. My colleague, Chris Maggiolo, and I had traveled 10,000 miles to be here. Departing Boston in late spring we had snaked through young and old America from Charleston to Madison to San Francisco to this place where the Mississippi meets the sea.
The journey began as I was finishing my master’s in gastronomy at Boston University and considering a move to Italy, while Chris was planning to study brewing in France. One day over a couple of beers we were talking about the changing ways Americans are getting their food and decided: Why not hang out in our backyard and tell the story about what good is happening here?
We purchased an old van and gutted it to install a set of makeshift cots. “Old Blue” had carried us across the country as if we were its first explorers, each sight a marvel, each challenge a lesson learned. He would carry us another 5,000 before we made it home.
America is rethinking the way it feeds itself. Sure, fewer than 1 in 100 people are farmers and each day more farmland is converted into cookie-cutter subdivisions. And yes, we still too often purchase food from fast-food windows and eat it in the mad rush to work, or buy it wrapped in cellophane from the grocery store and eat it in front of the television.
But I believe the days in which price, profit, comfort, and convenience are our only guiding lights are gone. Each day new artisans take up their plow and, like Thoreau, begin again by hoeing beans. They believe that what they do matters and that, by mastering some small slice of life, they may make a difference. Like Antaeus of Greek mythology, they draw a vital strength from their connection with the earth.
We worked with nearly 80 artisans throughout America as we followed the food system from beginning to end. We wanted to learn how things were made and who was making them. We wished to tell the stories not of a food system gone awry, but of one in which people were enriching their communities not in the form of hot-aired activism, but in daily acts of living. The hopeful people; those who inspire us to broaden our shoulders and keep our chins up. It is these stories we too seldom hear. Here are a couple of them.
We participated in a pig slaughter in rural Oregon.
On bent knee Brandon Sheard stared down the barrel of his rifle. As the sow fell to the ground, Brandon dropped to his knees to give thanks and pay homage to the animal. He reminded us that taking the life of any living thing is a morally profound proposition, one that we too often overlook or intentionally ignore. We owe it to the animal, Brandon says, to savor each and every bit of it, not just the prestigious muscles but from her head down to her tail. And we owe it to ourselves to appreciate this ancient act.
Hours later, still clothed in blood that was not ours, and after we had skinned, eviscerated, and prepared the pig for the spit, we sat on the porch, slicing off slivers of nearly three-year-old cured prosciutto that Brandon had made. It was the best meat I had ever tasted.
We learned over shared meals and labor Brandon’s route to his present vocation was far from straight. He’d left a PhD program in Renaissance literature because he “wished to produce something of real value.” But he couldn’t help bringing his literary allusions with him.
“Alas, poor Yorick,” he exclaimed with pig head held high, “I knew him.”
And, indeed, he did.
Clear across the country on the North Fork of Long Island, David Page and Barbara Shinn have built their own little world apart in the form of a vineyard. Rows of lush green vines line their bucolic land and wildlife is abundant. Crickets chirp through bird song and chickens make their homes in unused wine barrels. A collie fetches sticks and begs for them to be thrown.
David and Barbara practice biodynamic viticulture; they believe in the synergy of living and growing things. They never spray with “poisons” of any sort, which remains an uncommon practice because it’s uncommonly difficult. It takes faith and intuition.
Barbara, who has her finger on the pulse of the vineyard at all hours of the day, says, “I don’t need science to know it works; I can taste it in our wines.”
And yet science has taken notice—Cornell University has set up a small monitoring station among the vines to figure out exactly what it is that David and Barbara are doing so remarkably well at Shinn Estate Vineyards and Farmhouse.
The vineyard is all the more striking when it’s set in sharp relief from their neighbor, separated by a small fence, where there lies a fallow barren field, tilled for potato planting. Separated by a few yards, they might as well be worlds apart (and as David says, philosophically, still that would be too close). Barbara earned a master’s from the California College of Arts in the 1980s but says she couldn’t wait to get her art off of walls. Keeping the vineyard, she says, “is the most creative thing I’ve ever done.”
These are just a few of the scores of stories we collected during the summer and continue to share on our Web site, Artisan & Apprentice: A Food Anthology. Reading them now I realize that everyone we met was, in his or her own way, both a student of the liberal arts and a liberal artisan, day in and day out, not only making edible objects but crafting a life that they were proud to lead. Integrating muscles and morals and mind, these artisans evoke the heart of liberal learning.
Learning how things are made led me to appreciate these objects anew. Whether it was a bespoke table, a well-crafted knife, or an artisanal piece of cheese, taking part in their genesis enriched my relationship with the material world. I learned to consume a little more consciously, to take the extra moments to be thankful, to slow down in order to savor pleasure and beauty. I learned the importance of gathering around these objects as family, friends, and friends-to-be and sharing space and stories.
And I found—as have most who meet these people or simply visit a farmer’s market to shake the soiled hand of the person who grows their food—that not only is this a way we make meaningful lives and communities together…this is where it all begins.
Read the stories and see videos of nearly 80 food artisans and their work at Jones and Maggiolo’s Web site: www.artisanandapprentice.com