Sweating the Small Stuff – It Makes a Difference

I have been going to Plum Granny Farm since 2014. I have observed the husband and wife team of Cheryl Ferguson and Ray Tuegel reinvent themselves (they once had professional jobs) and Cheryl's inherited family farm which once grew only tobacco. I have the unique perspective of seeing this farm as a snapshot each time I visit, which might be twice a growing season. What I don't see first hand I absorb in their weekly…

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The Organics: Heart and Hands Tumbling Shoals Farm Family
Tumbling Shoals Farm Family - composited image

The Organics: Heart and Hands Tumbling Shoals Farm Family

Jason Roehrig and Shiloh Avery, both veterans of the Peace Corps, created Tumbling Shoals Farm (2007) in Wilkes County (North Carolina).  A family farming experience was common to both as a children.  A detailed business plan which was three years in the making gave them the courage to know they were ready to farm.  They farm with integrity because of a high sense  of responsibility to their customers and their families - only the best…

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“And over there” … Successful Farmers are Entrepreneurs
Cheryl Ferguson Plum Granny Farm

“And over there” … Successful Farmers are Entrepreneurs

Since I have been documenting organic farmers and farming, I have been searching for and cataloguing common denominators that characterize this special breed of growers. I had the opportunity this week to visit with Cheryl Ferguson and Ray Tuegel, owners of Plum Granny Farm. In only a moment of a conversation, Cheryl exclaimed “And over there…” Who but an entrepreneur would be excited about “over there” and how it would fulfill a vision for what…

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The Organics: Heart and Hands – “MicroPRESS – Volume I”

The new hand sewn  "MicroPRESS - Volume I" of The Organics: Heart and Hands has just been published! Printed with archival inks on archival paper, this signed, and numbered, limited edition of 50  photo books is now available. The Organics is a long-term project designed to capture the living spirit of sustainable agriculture growers' hearts and of their connected hands which serve as instruments of cultivation and harvest. "MicroPRESS Volume I" is a smaller representation of…

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The Organics: Heart and Hands Cheryl and Ray

This profile is a seminal component of a major work portfolio head lighting organic farmers whose hands are as expressive as their faces, and whose hearts have lead them to a proactive life of caring for the earth and others. "Growing up on the farm, I really never saw myself coming back and making a life here – I needed to get away and create my own story,” Cheryl Ferguson of Plum Granny Farm in Piedmont North…

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The Organics: Heart and Hands Isaac Oliver

  We had a family garden when I was growing up in Alabama, and my dad gave me the responsibility of taking care of the beans. I really enjoyed that experience - a real sense of pride that has stayed with me. What impacted me the most was one day when I was working construction (on the west coast) and I looked into the field next to our building project, and the field crew were…

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The Organics: Heart and Hands Jennifer Mantler

  Jennifer Mantler lives what this photo essay  project is all about ... Jennifer, like so many other college students that we have encountered, had periods of disillusionment during the college years of her life.  Unfulfilled expectations and conflicting messages generated by a choice of  study majors, in Jennifer's case - environmental science and political science - left Jennifer feeling that there had to be something more. Another common theme we have encountered as an ingredient for…

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The Troybilt made me do it …

Cynthia Glasscoe enjoys telling the story of her dad's Troybilt tiller which changed her life. "It has been in my barn forever as a a gentle reminder of when he was alive and instilled in me his passion for gardening and farming." This image is the newest addition to the Organics: Heart and Hands series.

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The Organics: Heart and Hands Bob Alsup

This profile is a seminal component of a major work portfolio head lighting organic farmers whose hands are as expressive as their faces, and whose hearts have lead them to a proactive life of caring for the earth and others. From surgeon to farmer ... Since coming back to Winston-Salem to begin practice in 1979, Bob Alsup always had a garden. Even as a kid, he had a strawberry patch or vegetable plot.  On his very first day in…

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The Organics: Heart and Hands Kate Schumacher

  Kate Schumacher has lived her whole life in the South, and as she tells it, "rural spaces have been a part of my entire existence."  A college education and a few months into graduate school put her into a panic when she finally figured out that  she wasn't living a meaningful existence.   Career testings consistently pointed her to fields of study that had the word "agriculture" in them and on a whim and at…

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