204 animal, vegetable, miraclemitment to new methods will be salvation or disaster. The term “high-
value crop” is relative to a dirt- cheap commodity grain like corn; in season,
even high quality organic tomatoes will bring the farmer only about 50 to
75 cents per pound. (The lower end, for conventional, is 18 cents.) But
that can translate into a cautious living. Participants find the project com-
pelling for many reasons. After learning to grow vegetables organically,
many families have been motivated to make their entire farms organic,
including hay fi elds.
The Appalachian Harvest collective pays a full- time marketer named
Robin who spends much of her life on the phone, in her vehicle, or pound-
ing the grocery- store pavements, arranging every sale with the supermar-
kets, one vegetable and one week at a time. As a farmer herself, she knows
the stakes. Also on the payroll here are the manager and summer workers
who transform truckloads of fi eld- picked vegetables into the clam- shelled
or cellophane- wrapped items that ultimately reach the supermarket after
produce has been washed and sorted for size and ripeness.
On a midsummer day in the packing house, vegetables roll through
the processing line in a quantity that makes the work in my own kitchen
look small indeed. Tomatoes bounce down a sorting conveyor, several
bushels per minute, dropping through different- sized holes in a vibrating
belt. Workers on both sides of the line collect them, check for fl aws and
ripeness, and package the tomatoes as quickly as their hands can move,
finally pressing on the “certified organic” sticker. Watching the operation,
I kept thinking of people I know who can hardly even stand to hear that
word, because of how organic is personified for them. “I’m always afraid
I’m going to get the Mr. Natural lecture,” one friend confessed to me.
“You know, from the slow- moving person with ugly hair, doing back- and-
leg stretches while they talk to you.. .” I laughed because, earnest though
I am about food, I know this guy too: dreadlocked, Birkenstocked, stand-
ing at the checkout with his bottle of Intestinal- Joy Brand wheatgrass
juice, edging closer to peer in my cart, reeking faintly of garlic and a keen-
ness to save me from some food- karma error.
For the record, this is what Appalachian Harvest organics look like at
the source: Red Wing work boots, barbershop haircuts, Levi’s with a little
mud on the cuffs, men and women who probably go to church on Sunday