I have become intrigued with cemeteries that are in the middle of cultivated agriculture fields – not at the edge, but in the middle! So many questions …. First, how did the cemetery get there? We know intuitively that the cemetery came first, and then the crops Second, why are these graves not in a church or established family cemetery? The best guess is that the deceased was missing a connection to a church which…
I believe that my wife K.B. has seen every swimming tutorial that YouTube has in their vast library. Her compulsion is no doubt the desire to be the best competitive athlete that she can be as a world-class triathlete. I benefit, too, as her swimming partner and companion when she (we) have gone together to swimming clinics and practices. I am the one who has come out ahead because I get the CliffNotes version the next…
One of the first sections of Interstate Highway to be built in the country was a section of four-lane which bisected downtown Winston-Salem, NC. The project was completed in 1955, Because of Business 40’s age and outdated design standards, as well as increasing traffic volumes and wrecks, N.C. Department of Transportation decided in 2006 to rebuild the section of Business 40 from west of Fourth Street to east of Church Street - a distance of 1.5…
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…
Holly Whitesides and Andy Bryant are ardent practitioners of regenerative agriculture - a farming approach that increases biological activity to produce abundant yields while stewarding the Earth. How come turkeys? Their first thoughts about raising turkeys did not stem from an altruist motive of “wouldn’t it be nice” but a conscious awareness of how turkeys can contribute to the health of the farm. Turkey’s scratch, they poop, they eat grass, they poop more, and anticipate…
The new hand hewn "MicroPRESS - Volume II" of The Organics Farmers: Heart and Hands - Tumbling Shoals Farm has just been published! Printed with letterpress on archival paper, this signed, numbered, and hand crafted limited edition of 50 photo books is now available. The cover has been buried in soil from the farm. As the second book in this series, the purchase price is $75. The Organics Farmers is a long-term project designed to capture…
March for Our Lives, Washington DC, March 24, 2018.
Houck's Gin, Cameron, S.C., dismantled February, 2018 All prima facie evidence of my family’s agriculture history is now gone. My grandfather, Bernard “B.C.” McCollough Houck, was one of eleven children. Born in 1900, he died as a young man at the age of 52. I barely remember him; I called him “Mr. C.”; I would have been two. The impressionable occasion was when he took me to the carnival rides at the Waynesville Township High…
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…
When my mother passed away in 2012, she wanted to be "taken home" and buried in the Houck Family plot of the Mt. Lebanon Cemetery in Cameron, S.C. The cemetery is on the edge of a field, and depending on the year of crop rotation, the field could either be in cotton, peanuts, or soy beans. This year it was cotton. It was also cotton a few years ago when we first began to photograph…
