Meet Thea Maria Carlson, a farmer, organizer, educator and artist with roots in both the San Francisco Bay Area and the Midwest, where she currently lives. She was recently profiled in Farm Together Now, selected by Michael Pollan as his favorite food book of 2010.
Thea Maria Carlson on the farm
Thanks for taking the time to speak with us, Thea. I hope you’re as excited as we are! Let’s start off by talking about what you did today. What’s a day at the farm like?
Every day on the farm is a little different, since I’m working with living things and what I can do is affected by the weather and the seasons. Today I planted some seeds in the greenhouse (broccoli, lettuce, spinach, and Yakina Savoy, an Asian green similar to pac choi), watered the many seedlings that we already had growing, and checked the germination chamber every few hours to see if the tomatoes I planted the other day had sprouted yet. I also worked on our field map, measuring and drawing blocks of beds and planning which crops will get planted where, and when. That planning led me to go through our seed supply to make sure we have enough of all the varieties to last us through the season, and then call the seed company to order more zucchini and pumpkins, which we’ll plant next month.
Some of us here at Foodia daydream about how simple it’d be to just put things in the ground and watch them grow—about how great life on the farm would be. But I know that’s just the romanticized version of farming playing in my head, and farming in real life is hard, challenging work. What’s the most challenging aspect of what you do? What’s the most exciting part?
Because the profit margins are so slim in farming, there is a constant pressure to do everything as efficiently as possible. Most tasks that are fun and easy to do in a home garden – transplanting a few tomatoes or pulling some weeds – are much harder to do on the farm when they are at a production scale. On good days, it’s a fun challenge to try to get optimum speed and accuracy, trying out different positions and working to perfect my skills, but especially when I am first doing a new task, or when I’m tired and sore, I can feel incredibly clumsy and slow.
One of the most exciting parts for me is bringing the vegetables out of the field and getting them to the people that are going to eat them. I love vegetables, both from an aesthetic and a culinary standpoint. When I’ve done my best to grow the most beautiful, delicious and nourishing food I can, I’m proud to share what I’ve grown.
How does farming full-time compare with the other stuff you’ve done—for example, studying at Stanford?
At Stanford I studied Earth Systems, which was great preparation for farming. The classes I took – like Biology, Chemistry, Soil Science, Economics and Ecology – gave me background knowledge that I draw on every day as I make decisions. The Earth Systems program also focused on drawing interdisciplinary connections and developing a solutions-oriented approach, both of which come in handy when trying to build a healthy, self-sustaining farm system. The big difference between my life in college and my life now is that my work is simultaneously physical and intellectual, and I spend more time in the field than looking at books or writing papers. I love that as a farmer I get to be outside and work with plants, spend time working alone and with other people, and experience rural beauty while staying connected to urban areas.
As more folks move to cities or exurbs, it typically means they’re moving further away from the sources of the food they’re eating. What steps can consumers take to know their food? What questions should they ask?
Most cities and suburban areas have an ever-growing array of farmers markets and CSA’s (community-supported agriculture – a system where people make an investment in a local farm early in the year and receive a share of the harvest throughout the season). Both are good options for developing connections with local farms and putting a face on who grows your food. By consistently supporting one or several farms, you’re giving those farms a steady source of income that will help keep them in business. Ask questions about the issues you’re concerned about, whether it’s pesticides or how to cook a certain vegetable, or where the farm is in relation to where you live. But try not to be too set on the answers you’re looking for – really listen to what the farmer says and be open to learning something new. The issues are often more complex than you might think. Many farms have harvest festivals or other seasonal events that are open to the public – it’s a great opportunity to see the farm firsthand, learn exactly how your food is grown, and meet other people who are connected to the farm.
Do you cook?
All the time – I love cooking. I eat simply, but take care to cook things well to bring out their best flavor. And I eat a lot of vegetables – sometimes they’re my whole meal. I mostly learned to cook living in co-ops in college, where I cooked in quantity with lots of different people. Alice Waters’ Art of Simple Food and the Joy of Cooking have also been great reference books for me. I enjoy other food arts as well – culturing yogurt, sauerkraut, and kombucha; canning applesauce and jam; drying fruit, tomatoes and herbs; and perfecting my gluten-free baking skills.
What are some of the changes that need to happen at the public policy level in order to improve our national diet?
The most important – and probably most difficult – policy change would be to eliminate subsidies on big commodity crops (like corn and soybeans). Right now the federal government pays out billions of dollars every year to growers of these commodity crops – see http://farm.ewg.org/. Because they’re based on acreage in production, those subsidies promote large-scale, mechanized monocultures, using genetically modified seed and large amounts of chemical inputs. The payments also lead to a high supply of these crops regardless of market demand, so there is a chronic oversupply of cheap grains that (because of the varieties that are grown), aren’t even edible for humans in their whole state. Instead, they are either fed to animals in confined feeding operations or processed into products like high-fructose corn syrup and soybean oil, which are then turned into the high-calorie, low-nutrient packaged foods that dominate the shelves of both supermarkets and convenience stores. If we stopped paying people to grow those crops – especially if those billions of dollars of subsidies were redirected toward sustainable production of healthy food – there could easily be a great shift in the availability and relative affordability of good food choices nationwide.
Health vs. flavor. Is that a necessary trade off?
No way! Once your taste buds detox from constant sugar, salt and fat overload, healthy really tastes better. The key is starting with great ingredients, cooking them well, and realizing that things like sea salt and high-quality butter are actually good for you and essential to a healthy diet in appropriate amounts. More and more research is showing that foods like fresh-picked organic produce, pastured eggs, and grass-fed meat and dairy have significantly higher levels of the nutrients we need, and those products also taste better to me.
Tastemasters is a weekly series from Foodia.org. Foodia sifts through the clutter to help you find eats that are fresh, healthful, and (most of all) tasty.
