Amy Hamilton

Partial Transcript: I'm Amy Hamilton and I operate Appalachian Feed Farm and Nursery. It’s a certified organic farm and nursery. I specialize in heirloom tomatoes. So I grow over 40 varieties every year and save the seeds and sell the seeds and the plants in the following year. I am also a mother, I have a 7 year old son, and have been in this community for 24 years.

Partial Transcript: When I was young one of the first memories I have is playing outside. I would transplant clumps of grass from one area of the yard to the other. So it seems like it’s just something that’s in my blood. I started out working on an organic farm in Florida when I was 20 and learned a lot about farming there, and over the years I have just woven in and out of food, whether it be natural foods- I actually used to work in the kitchen at the Hendersonville Community Co-Op- and a lot of other restaurants and natural food stores in the area. Working with natural medicines, I’ve been an herbalist for most of my adult life. And finally I guess about 14 years ago, became involved with North Carolina State University. They were initiating a project to grow medicinal herbs. Helping tobacco farmers transition from growing tobacco to growing medicinal herbs. So using my knowledge of the natural products industry, I had worked at Gaia Herbs for a while too, got me into this position to be able to work with farmers. And as I worked with farmers I just knew that that was the path for me. So when I gave birth to my son in 2011 I saw it as an opportunity to be able to stay home and work from home and do this thing that I’d always had a passion for.

Partial Transcript: I chose to become certified organic as a way to assure my customers that I do what I say. The market- I primarily sell wholesale, so many of my customers are removed from my face, so I use the label to provide the kind of validation of the integrity that I use in my practices, because I don’t have that face-to-face relationship. I also used to be a medicinal herb grower and it was imperative for me to market my product that I had a certified organic product. And I find that with the nursery there are not that many certified organic plants in our area and it’s something that people really value. So I actually don't find the process cumbersome. I don’t find it overly expensive. There are procedures and programs in place that make it affordable and reasonable. So it’s something that I believe in.

Partial Transcript: People should be concerned or informed about their food sources because- there are a lot of reasons. It is very difficult to make a living as a farmer. Just the way that our economies are structured these days. Small family farms are at a disadvantage economically. It’s important to recognize that when you do support a small family farm you’re supporting an extended community. Not just the community of humans but the ecosystem as well. I live and farm in an area called Sandy Mosh which has historically been an agricultural community for a very, very long time. That’s something that you can tell here when you come out here. The community is healthy. The families, the churches, the community resources, and the land are healthy because of that. We can’t get away with cutting corners and displacing the costs onto the environment in a small community like this like industrial corporations can. We don’t have the lawyers that can protect us from violations and fines. We don’t have the anonymity. We are ensconced in our communities. And we are beholden to our communities. We are beholden to our grandchildren in our communities. And so we are held to a higher standard, and it creates resilience because we are interwoven with the ecosystem and with the generations past and future, and with the current members of our community. So it makes us very resilient and it makes us accountable.

So unfortunately the emphasis to make money at whatever cost is really kind of winning in our economic system right now. Small family farmers are often not able to get away with that even if they would, you know? There are corporate, organic corporations, that are able to produce foods that I think are not really in line with my values as an organic producer. So just because it’s organic doesn’t always mean that it’s something that you would really believe in or want to put your money into or invest in to support. Vote with your dollars, you know? But all of the small family farms that I know around here are people that you would want to invest in.

Partial Transcript: Right. Farming is where environmentalism - the rubber hits the road here. There are decisions that farmers make on a daily basis that affect the ecosystem around them. Affect the soil for many generations afterwards. Our livelihood as farmers comes directly from the relationship with the land, and the seasons and the climate. There is a certain efficiency that nature has, kind of like a law of nature where things are not wasted. When you’re running a small farm and you have very limited resources, time, money for fertilizers, and different things like that, it puts you in a position to be operating in those kinds of natural limits more. To be more wise in your consumption of resources and your expenditure of resources.

You know a small family farm could be just a couple of acres, like mine, 3 to 5 acres to maybe a few hundred acres. Around here we have pretty small family farms. But collectively the way that we manage them is affecting our entire mountain home in western North Carolina. So this is affecting our water quality, this is affecting the soil ecosystem. A lot of what happens in the soil is relationships between funguses and very small insects and earthworms and the roots of plants. It’s a very delicate web and it's all interconnected. Like my field is connected with my forest. There’s a reciprocal relationship going on with that. And my field is connected to my neighbor’s field, connected to my neighbor’s field. So we are really actually literally and physically interconnected with each other. I don’t think that science has yet really proven it, I don’t think the efforts have gone into helping science prove this. But every little piece in the community does matter. And when you have a farm who the farmer is relying on RoundUp Ready soy or corn to feed animals in a confined feeding operation, you may not see the effects of that in the ecosystem right away, but I think that it’s something you’re going to see down the road.
I mean, I certainly feel it. I can talk about the quality of seed, for instance, and the vitality of the soil and the vitality of the food that we consume. I have been growing these seeds since 2011 - and I took over the company from Chip Hope (SP?) who ran it for many years. And these seeds are of this earth, are of this area. And whenever I have a tomato from another seed source, or another farm or something, like if someone gives me something, I can see the difference in the vigor in the plants.

And I’ve seen it year after year and I’ve had my customers tell me this. I can see your plants in my garden. I can tell that they’re your plants and I got them from you because they’re thriving. And that’s something that perhaps we can find a way to quantify that. You know, we can weigh the biomass of the plant and we can, you know, do some kind of chemical analysis and things like that, but there’s this vigor and a vitality that’s a little more nuanced. Just like that terroir that little taste in a wine or something. It’s more subtle, it’s more nuanced, it’s more difficult to measure, but I think it’s integral to our well-being. Because we’re not just living off of vitamins. There’s something else that’s transmitted from the food to our bodies and if it’s not coming out of living soil you’re not going to get it anywhere else. It’s in the living soil.

Partial Transcript: Let’s see. I moved here 24 years ago and I became a member of the French Broad food co-op in Asheville. I was a member there until I moved to Hendersonville and became a member of the coop then, so that was in 1999. Ended up I worked in the kitchen there and then I moved on, got a different job, but continued to be a member. Then when I moved back to Asheville in 2010 I became a member at the French broad again. So I’ve been a member and a shopper and a worker-owner and then in 2011 when I took over the nursery I took over the account there so been providing plants there since 2011. Which is wonderful because I used to be a shopper of the plants there.

Partial Transcript: I believe in co-ops. I believe in the mission. I love the community. I love that we’re accountable to each other. I love that we come together around something that we need every day, which is food, and create community around that in a really big way. As a nursery operator, I love that I’m in everyone’s gardens and helping feed you. When I deliver plants and run into the people who are buying the plants I always have multiple conversations with people and we talk about in the early spring, how good these tomatoes are going to taste, and different recipes, and what might be new this year to try.
So even though I’m the wholesaler I get to interface with the customers and it’s fantastic. Something that I’ve noticed about the Hendersonville co-op, because I’ve worked in natural food stores a lot in different areas, that members at the Hendersonville community co-op eat their vegetables. I used to sell vegetables there and I think that that’s fantastic. It’s not a community that is relying on supplements alone. You’re actually cooking the food and eating the food, enjoying the food and growing the food. And to me that speaks of that vitality, it’s an engagement with each other, it’s an engagement with the environment, it’s an engagement with the seasons. And that’s electrifying and fun.

Partial Transcript: The members of the co-op love to grow plants. There are some really dedicated gardeners there. Not only dedicated but curious and adventurous. I am the same way, it’s like we all like the same kinds of things, we like delicious foods, we like varieties that perform well, but we like unusual varieties that we never heard of before. It’s kind of like we’re all in the same type of family that’s like, let’s try something new this year. I love that kind of customer base. You’re not just looking for, you guys don’t want hybrids, and I don’t grow any hybrids. You’re looking for something that’s heirloom, you’re looking for something that has value of a story, many of the customers are looking for specific things that they have a connection to, through their grandparents and things like that. They’ll give me ideas, they’ll say let’s bring this into the selection. So just that kind of enthusiasm and that dedication year to year it’s just a joy to engage with people like that.

Partial Transcript: I’m certified organic, which you know. What you may not know is that I’ve been growing biodynamically as well. Biodynamic is a system of farming that you can take organic as the kind of baseline and augment it with some other kinds of practices. One of the best ways to encapsulate the idea of biodynamic is to recognize or to say biodynamic recognizes that life on earth is occurring within in the context of a cosmos, an entire cosmos. And that these other heavenly celestial bodies are in a dynamic relationship with the earth and with living beings on the earth. So we recognize that that is true. This is the sun, obviously, but the moon and the outer planets. It’s recognizing that seasonally there are these rhythms and we work within the rhythms. No two days are the same and we know that, and we work with that, we don’t treat all the days as the same.
DW
0:19:12
Do you use the farmer’s almanac at all?
AH
It’s something kind of like that. It’s a very peasant-wisdom-based practice that Rudolph Steiner, who developed the Waldorf system of education, proposed about 100 years ago. There are some preparations, some formulas, that we also use that really are enhancing that relationship among the soil organisms. But also with the cosmic forces as well. But the thing that is most useful to me about biodynamic, in addition to what it means to me personally and spiritually, is it offers me a way to grow heirloom tomatoes in a blight-prone environment, and successfully harvest the seeds. So it’s practical, it works.
0:20:05
Something else the customers may not know is I’m about to graduate with my masters in counseling psychology and my goal is to incorporate therapy with the farm because I see how therapeutic it is for people to be in relationship with nature. It’s like our souls are really hungering for that reconnection. And working with people all these years, I sprout seeds for people, that’s really what I do, because so many people are at a loss, they don’t have the faith in the relationship that the seed will sprout and everything is going to be okay. Some people don’t have time and that’s true, too. But there are some people who really just are at a loss and other people who don’t believe if they plant that plant that it will live. So there’s a restoration of that connection with nature and our own nature that I feel like would be very healing psychically for people as well.
DW
0:21:04
Will it be geared for kids or a specific age group?
AH
I’m not sure of the target population. Right now I’m working with women with eating disorders. I kind of see eating disorders on a spectrum. The diabetes epidemic that we have right now, and the obesity epidemic that we have, even among children, feels to me like disordered eating. It’s really more about disordered nutrition. Disordered lives. People are starving, they’re obese and they're starving with empty food because the soils are dead.

Partial Transcript: It seems like it’s more than a niche. It’s a bigger thing than that. The co-op itself is providing reliable sources of quality foods and medicines. Now you can go in there and you can get a quick meal, a hot meal or something from the grab and go case, and it’s good for you, and it tastes good. There’s a little area where people can sit and meet and talk and just randomly talk to each other. I see a lot of connection happening there.
The co-op has always been a very strong supporter of local producers. That’s very important. Because it’s opening that door to the rest of the customer base that they can be able to now support these small family farms. And it can be hard to do that otherwise. Not everybody can get to the (???) market on Saturday morning. Not every farmer is interested in doing that. So being that wholesale gate for people like myself who want to sell wholesale because it works with our lives but have access to a large audience, it just seems to magnify the impact of that relationship.

Partial Transcript: Watching the co-op grow over the last 10 years. I remember when we were dreaming of what the new space would be like. So to see that new space there, to see everybody thriving in that new space, that is a difficult path to take. Not everybody makes that leap in the expansion successfully. Not everybody carries the heart and soul with them from the little place to the big place. So I really am so proud of the co op for doing that. And it appears that it’s financially successful and has been all these years, and I think that says a lot. When the competition is huge corporations that are much better resourced. But it speaks to the resilience of the community, because it is a community effort.

Partial Transcript: I would say providing a platform for the community to interface. Providing an opportunity for small farmers to have access to more customers.