The City of Nice People

Charlottesville to Richmond

People in Charlottesville are SO NICE!  And so helpful, too!  Here are five examples of the people I met while in town:

Last night we stayed with one Austin’s high school friends’ roommates.  Friends of the friend of a friend again, I like those.  They go to UVA and have a nice porch swing, which we sat on in the evening.  Today, keeping with the history theme, visited Monticello, home of Thomas Jefferson.  

UVA—also designed by Thomas Jefferson.

Monticello

After our tour, Dave and Austin took off for Richmond, and I headed to Barnes & Noble to get a new book.  I ended up with three.  At the checkout counter, I asked if the store had a student discount.  The woman at the register told me no, but that they had an educator discount.  I told her I would be teaching science to elementary school kids as part of an after school program in the fall, and she gave me 20% off.

Then, I went to Lindt to get a bar of chocolate and chatted with the cash register attendant there for 20 minutes about college, Japan, and the Alps.  He gave me lots of samples and was wonderful to talk to.

After that, I went to Walgreens for contact solution.  I needed to use the restroom, so I asked an employee at the pharmacy where it was.  She left the pharmacy, walked across the entire store, and unlocked the door to the employee lounge for me.

After that, I went to Whole Foods.  I asked the employee sweeping the sidewalk in front of the store what they did with their compost.  When I told her, named Dawn, about my project, she practically dropped her broom and dragged me to the break room.  There, we, and several other employees, talked about the company that picks up the compost, Timber Creek Organics, for quite awhile.  Timbercreek farm began growing organic foods relatively recently, and was inspired to do so by none other than Joel Salatin and Polyface Farms!  Quelle coincidence!

Timbercreek began composting a few years ago so they could produce healthier grasses for their herbivorous animals.  They contacted local businesses and asked them to collect their compostable waste, which Timbercreek picks up several times a week.  Currently, they collect almost 5 tons of compostable material a week.  That’s insane!  What a successful program!  Timbercreek sells the excess compost product back to community residents.  One of the Whole Foods employees, Melissa, had purchased some of their compost for her garden and said it was incredible and she had never grown such healthy produce.  Timbercreek, continue spreading the gospel of compost. 

People of Charlottesville, continue spreading the gospel of kindness.

Thanks, google image search!

The Farm of Many Faces

Lexington to Charlottesville: Part Two

Today I visited Polyface Farms.  The sustainable farm was used as a case study in Michael Pollan's The Omnivore’s Dilemma, and, more recently, featured in the movie Food, Inc.  When I discovered how close we were traveling to the farm, I decided that I needed to pay it a visit, and have been quite excited ever since.  I was not disappointed.  

Located in the middle of rural southwestern Virginia, it was a bit of a trek to get out to the farm.  I felt like I had been driving one lane country farm roads for ages before I finally arrived.  As I pulled into the gravel parking lot, I spotted a woman watering her flowers on the porch of one of the two houses.  She turned out to be Lucille Salatin, mother of Joel Salatin, who was featured in Food, Inc.  Joel runs the farm, but Lucille owns it, and so she was able to tell me quite a bit about the farm’s philosophy, which is centered around the health of the grasses:

The cows feed on grass, and move to a new field every day to ensure that the grass isn't overgrazed.

The broilers, or chickens raised for meat, follow the cows feeding on shorter blades of grass and grains.

The "egg-mobile" follows the broilers, and the chickens feed on cow manure while laying eggs.

Inside the egg-mobile.

The broilers are slaughtered right on the farm.

And sold from the farm, too.

There you have it: the (overly simplified) philosophy behind one of the more ecologically healthy farms in the country.

I was also interested in how sustainable food growers dealt with food waste.  Lucille told me that they feed the chickens their leftover food scraps.  I was pleased to hear that, but what about compost?  Don’t they have a pile?

More like a mountain.

Food scraps don’t end up here in the compost pile, but after the Salatins slaughter chickens, they compost the guts, bones, feathers, and other unusable parts.  They don’t want any cannibalistic chickens running around, apparently.  Also in the compost is the farm’s yard clippings.  The chicken parts combined with the brush make a very nutrient-rich compost product, Lucille told me.  With the stench of the piles and the hordes of flies milling around, that's easy to believe.

So many flies.

History and Cookies

Lexington to Charlottesville: Part One

Here in the Commonwealth of Virginia, we are living among history.  Lexington in particular is a Civil War historical hotspot; it was home to Confederate Generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson.  This morning, we paid a visit to the Washington and Lee University campus, which is named after George Washington and Robert E. Lee.  Fun fact: Lee’s wife was Martha Washington’s great-granddaughter. 

Washington and Lee is right next to the Virginia Military Institute.

The Middle of the Washington and Lee campus.

General Lee's horse's grave. Traveller was quite the beloved animal.

Stonewall Jackson's house and garden...

...which utilizes compost!  I told you it was a big deal.

After leaving Lexington, I went to Polyface Farms.  You'll be able to read alllll about that visit in the next post.

After leaving Polyface, I met up with Dave and Austin in Afton, home of June Curry, the cookie lady.  A legend among trans-american cyclists, Curry has been providing weary riders with cookies, water, and a place to stay since the bike-centennial in 1976.  A woman who started helping riders simply by putting a hose out on the street has transformed the hilly area into a favorite cycling destination.  Over the years, Curry has accumulated a museum full of pictures, jerseys, and other memorabilia left by the thousands of cyclists who have passed through.  She was a delight to talk to, and we spent several hours with her on her porch.

Austin hanging his torn (from his fall) jersey on the wall of the bike museum.

The cookie lady feeds food scraps to her rooster!

Wytheville

Radford to Lexington

Yesterday before we got to Radford, I stopped in Wytheville, where I spoke with a woman named Donna, who is the Deputy Clerk for the Building, Engineering, and Public Works Department.  When I introduced myself and told her about my project, she stared at me in disbelief.  “A college student did you say you were?”  She asked.  “You don’t look a day out of high school.”  I’m 21 and going to be a senior in college in a little over a month.  I’ll take that comment to mean I’m going to age well.

Wytheville city hall.

Despite Donna’s initial comment, she was actually very helpful.  Wytheville doesn’t provide recycling collection to its residents, but they have a drop off point near city hall.  They also have yard waste pickup once a month, and the waste management team brings the brush to a burn site.  The town doesn’t have a formal compost program, but they strongly encourage their residents to compost.  The Virginia Tech Cooperative Extension Office in town educates residents on how to compost.  While Donna herself doesn’t participate in the practice of compost, she deals with her food waste in a different way: by feeding it to her chickens or dogs.

The Best Local Food Ever.

Damascus to Radford

Damascus is 2 miles from the Tennessee state border!  New state! 

for 2 minutes... 

The western Appalachians are known for coal mining, while the people of the eastern range are more likely to subsist on agriculture.  The book I’ve been reading for the past week, Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, describes describes Kingsolver’s goal of eating local for a year, and how the climate of the eastern appalachians made it possible for her to live off the lands.  The book takes place in southwestern Virginia, which Kingsolver seems to emphasize quite a bit.  Since we’re in southwestern Virginia, naturally, I was curious as to where Kingsolver lives.  

Ten miles from Damascus, in a small town called Meadowview.  

I was so excited to learn this, and even more excited when I found out she had a restaurant!  Specializing in local foods, the Harvest Table has been open since September 2007.  I went there for lunch, hoping to get a chance to talk to Kingsolver herself about her thoughts on food waste and compost, but, unfortunately, I was unable to track her down.  Nobody at the restaurant would give me her phone number or address (something about journalism makes me feel like a bit of a stalker), which was just so bizarre.  Anyway.  

The Harvest Table (blue) is next to the Farmer's Guild (red), a general store.

This sign posted outside the Harvest Table requests local produce from farmers.

While I was unable to get a direct quote from Kingsolver, this passage in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle speaks for her thoughts on the subjects:

I have not learned to throw perfectly good food in the garbage.  Not even into the compost, unless it has truly gone bad.  To me it feels like throwing away a Rolex watch or something.  (I’m just guessing on that.)  Food was grown by the sweat of someone’s brow.  It started life as a seed or newborn and beat all the odds.  It’s intrinsically the most precious product in our lives, from an animal point of view, (188).

Barbara Kingsolver and I would get along splendidly, I’m sure.  

After lunch, I discussed the restaurant’s food waste and compost programs with Jared, one of the cooks.  He showed me the buckets outside of the restaurant where they collect all of the vegetable peels and other kitchen waste.  While they don’t compost directly at the restaurant, Kingsolver or her husband, Steven Hopp, collect the buckets regularly and take them to their own compost pile.  I was surprised to learn that the uneaten food scraps from customers’ plates go into the trash, rather than compost buckets; however, according to Jared, “most of the plates come back fairly clean.”

Compost buckets outside in the restaurant's garden.

I don’t understand how they wouldn’t come back clean.  The goat cheese and lettuce-topped pizza, coffee, and blackberry poundcake composed the best meal I’ve had on this trip.  And that’s a bold statement, considering all of the amazing almond butter and rice cakes I’ve consumed!

So.

Delicious.

Coal

Pikeville to Damascus, VA

New state: Virginia!

Before leaving Virginia, I stopped in Elkhorn City.  Perhaps I spoke too soon when I described Kentucky as sustainable; Elkhorn City is anything but.  Not only do they not have any sort of recycling program, but they burn their yard clippings, brush, and other organic waste.  The closest recycling program is in Pikeville, over 20 miles away.  

Perhaps part of the unsustainable nature of Elkhorn City is that it’s in the heart of coal mining country.  Along state route 80, I was one of few drivers not carrying a truck load of coal.  Google satellite, too, depicts the mountain top removal mining that’s so prevalent in these parts.

The scariest part of these trucks is their speeds: they go 65 mph on narrow, winding roads on which I don't feel comfortable breaking 50 mph.
These stickers were all over the place in Kentucky.  Who knew that Appalachia residents were in favor of mountain top removal mining and landscape destruction?

Breaks Interstate Park, the "Grand Canyon of the South." No sign of coal mining here.

The end of the day, however, brought us to Damascus, Virginia, a small town on the Appalachian Trail.  We're staying at a hostel supported by the Methodist Church in town.  Since we're so close to the trail, several northbound (or NoBo, in Appalachian Trail lingo) hikers are staying here as well.  Our trips are remarkably similar: over two months spent biking across or hiking up the country.  I was glad our paths intersected.

The hostel

Appalachia

Booneville to Pikeville

Eastern Kentucky is full of dogs.  I could say the same about many parts of the US, but the dogs in Kentucky are different.  These dogs roam around freely, able to growl and bark and chase down any unsuspecting jogger (or cyclist) who happens to set foot (or wheel) on the street in front of their house.  Not that that happened to me (or Austin), of course...

Anyway, we got to Booneville around 6 last night, and if the name Booneville evokes images of a tiny town in the middle of the wilderness, your image is very accurate.  Although there was quite a nice shelter for traveling cyclists behind the Methodist church in town, which included a patio, bathrooms, and even a shower!  We pitched our tent on the field there, between corn fields and the forest, and went to bed just as a slow drizzle was beginning.  Two hours later, the drizzle had turned into a violent lightning storm, and our tent was soaking wet.  Thunder boomed and lightning flashed every five seconds.  I was terrified, but, luckily we had the Sprinter for shelter.

Pitching the tent pre-downpour.

Sunrise over the corn, grass, and trees.

In the morning, it was still raining, so I stayed behind in town while Dave and Austin got biking.  I went to the only restaurant in town, the Hometown Cafe, and was reading, eating oatmeal, and drinking coffee when I got a call from Dave saying that the rain was too heavy to ride in and they were taking a quick break.  I paid my bill, and chatted with Trish (one of two employees in the restaurant at 6 AM.  The other was the chef), before I left.

Hometown Cafe’s food waste stream is rather interesting: they have almost none.  The owners of the restaurant feed the leftovers, and food scraps from customers’ plates, to their dogs: a jack russell terrier and a golden retriever.  Even the potato peels and apple cores get used; they feed those to their chickens!

After leaving Booneville, I met up with Dave and Austin 20 miles down the road, where they were having coffee and seeking refuge from the storm.  When the rain let up a bit, they continued on, but it was pouring again soon.  As I was driving, I felt that the sheets of rain, branches in the road, and steep, winding Appalachian roads were hazardous to drive in, not to mention bike.  As if they were reading my mind, Dave and Austin flagged me down as I was turning the next corner.  We decided that taking the risk of biking wasn’t worth it, so we drove the rest of the route to Pikeville, where we stayed in a lovely hotel (with a pool! and a spa!) courtesy of the parents.  

For lunch, we went to KFC to see if Kentucky Fried Chicken is better in Kentucky.  The verdict?  It’s not.

Sustainable Kentucky:

:not an oxymoron.

Harrodsburg to Booneville

We spent the night in Nicholasville, Ky, a little bit northeast of Harrodsburg and off the route.  The reason?  Cody, our couch surfing host!  I’ve written before about how much we enjoy staying with locals, and Cody was no exception.  He cooked us dinner, taught me how to make rice his special way, taught me how to make tomatilla salsa (DELICIOUS, btw), and made us avocado smoothies for dessert.  They sound bizarre, but sweet and avocado flavors do indeed go nicely together.  

Perhaps more exciting than his cooking (to me, at least) was the fact that he collected all of the tomatilla skins, pepper seeds, and lime skins in a basket by the sink.  After dinner (and after I told him about my project), we went out to his backyard add the food scraps to his compost pile!  And what a nice compost pile it is, enclosed by a retaining wall that Cody himself built after he bought the house.  In addition to the compost pile, he has a garden, and several fruit trees.  A further measure he’s taken to conserve resources was to install a rainwater collection barrel on the side of his house.  When he needs to water his garden, rather than turn on the hose, he goes to his barrel and takes water from there.  What a simple way to conserve!

Compost!

Collecting rainwater

I had gone on a run around Cody’s neighborhood before dinner, and since it was trash pickup day, had noticed all of the discarded items on the street.  I had also noticed red recycling bins, but not in front of every house.  Cody explained to me that the single stream recycling program cost residents an additional $1.10 a month on top of standard trash pickup, and that some people refused to pay.  I was shocked, and tried to imagine the ostracism that would occur in my California neighborhood if someone refused to pay $13 a year to recycle.  

This morning, we stopped in Berea en route to Booneville.  Berea was a nice little college town, and was in the midst of a local foods celebration!  I stopped in Berea Coffee & Tea, where I was given my iced coffee in a compostable cup.  I asked the owner if they had a compost bin in the restaurant, but he told me that customers had to take their cups home if they wanted to compost them.  He also told me that the cups require higher heat to breakdown than most backyard piles allow for.  If so few cups are actually being composted, what’s the point?  Why don’t they provide recyclable cups?  A recycle bin is much more accessible than an industrial compost pile.

Despite this small flaw in logic, Berea Coffee & Tea is actually quite environmentally friendly, and was the first Kentucky coffee shop to be distinguished as a “Green Restaurant.”  This website outlines some of the great initiatives they’ve undertaken (and has a great photo..I forgot to take one).

Main Street Berea—the large building is Boone Tavern, named for Daniel Boone, who passed through here in 1775.

The local foods celebration is an excellent idea, and I wish I could’ve participated in it a bit more.  You can read more about the celebration here, including the philosophy behind the celebration, and the “100-mile potluck” featuring local foods grown within, you guessed it, 100 miles.  Tomorrow, the community is hosting an auction where residents can bid for food and sustainability-related prizes.  A sausage making workshop, a canning demonstration, a pizza-tossing class, and, my personal favorite, a composting workshop, are among the prizes being auctioned.

Kentucky, the Other Land of Lincoln

Sonora to Harrodsburg

Illinois is known as "the land of Lincoln," but our 16th president was actually born in Kentucky; about 10 miles northeast of Sonora!  So Dave, Austin, and I visited Abraham Lincoln's birthplace on the way out of town.  

"Memorializing a President;" the copper circles are pennies

In front of the memorial building

Log cabin representative of the Lincolns'

On the way to Harrodsburg, I stopped in Bardstown for lunch at Corner Cafe and Bakery, mostly because it serves all organic foods and the bluegrass band playing in the dining room was full of Kentucky charm.  After my delicious blue cheese-mango-walnut-microgreen salad, I spoke with Debbie, the owner.  She opened the restaurant in October, 2008, and has been doing great business ever since.  Since they’re eco-conscious and advertise their organic ingredients, I thought they might compost their food scraps.  I thought wrong.  “I hadn’t thought of composting, but I suppose we could do that since we have a farm,” Debbie told me.  

Spreading the compost message, one restaurant at a time.  

Salvaging Food

Owensboro to Sonora

On the way to Sonora, I stopped in McDaniels at the Knotty Pine Family Restaurant for some lunch.  My grilled chicken sandwich (on Texas toast, a first for me) was $3.00, aka HALF the price of a Quizno’s sandwich.  It feels weird to tip 67%, but Edna, the waitress, brought me so much water that I deemed it necessary.  She was also very helpful and discussed the fate of Knotty Pine’s excess food for quite awhile.  The owner has five dogs, to whom he brings leftovers and food scraps daily.  Edna also brings leftovers to her dog, but she supplements his diet with dog food.

The Knotty Pine

Once we arrived in Sonora, I noticed a store called “Family Salvage Grocery.”  Images of my dumpster diving, bread salvage mission came to mind, and I stopped there to chat with Donna, the owner of the store.  She’s lived in Sonora her entire life, and, until several years ago, had a factory job.  However, when she got laid off, she was forced to find a new profession.  Rather than start at a different factory and have to work her way back up to her former status, she had the idea of opening a salvage grocery store.  

She orders damaged, recently expired, and other undesirable foods from large chains like Walmart and Kroger.  The stores ship her the salvaged foods in boxes.  Each shipment is freighted to her, and she has no idea what will be in the boxes until she opens them.  Dented cans of beans, expired rice cakes, and crushed cereal boxes were among the foods that arrived this week, and the store’s aisles were lined with Sonora residents taking advantage of the deals.

I knew the expiration date on rice cakes was merely a suggestion!

“I love how cheap this store is!” I overheard a shopper exclaim as I was browsing the aisles.  

I love how the store diverts food from the landfill.

Unbridled Spirit

Cave in Rock to Owensboro

New State: Kentucky!

Our campfire and vegetable soup dreams were drowned by a significant downpour last night, so we were resigned to PB&J’s (AB&J) for dinner.  This morning was also pretty misty, and we stopped at GeeJays Cafe for breakfast.  I had an egg sandwich and coffee for $2.50.  I keep forgetting how cheap the cost of living is in this part of the country, and am amazed every time I see food prices. 

GeeJays Cafe

After breakfast, we drove onto the (free) car ferry and were transported across the Ohio River into Kentucky.  I felt SO much unbridled spirit when we crossed the border it was ridiculous.

On the ferry

Welcome to Kentucky!

We’re staying in Owensboro tonight, which is 20 miles north of Livermore, the name of my hometown!  I knew there was a Livermore in Maine, since I traveled through it five summers ago, but a Livermore, Kentucky was a VERY pleasant surprise.

For dinner, we asked the women at the hotel front desk for a restaurant recommendation.  She suggested Moonlite Bar-B-Q Inn, which was, SURPRISE, a buffet!  A very good buffet, though, specializing in barbeque, something they take very seriously.  To get an idea of just how seriously, please watch this video.  It made my day. 

The mutton was indeed delicious, and I sampled so many different barbeque meats it was a taste bud overload.  Not food overload, however, as Moonlite’s plate sizes are relatively small.  The small plate sizes help to reduce food waste, as they attempt to minimize the amount of food wasted as much as possible.  When they can, the leftover buffet food is reused or added into something else.  When food goes bad, they throw it away.  

Not all of the food waste is thrown away, however.  Moonlite sells the inedible food waste, such as cooking grease and animal bones.  The bones are ground up to make dog food and fertilizer.  Yum.