by Hart Fowler | Apr 1, 2019 | April 2019, Stuff
On her family’s land in Clayton, Beth Browne is supporting independent farmers.
Beth Browne is not a farmer in the traditional sense.
The self-described “city girl from New York” was living on a sailboat in San Diego in 1995 when, eager to start a family, she decided to return home to farm 348 acres of land her family owned in Clayton.
Things did not go well.
“I tried to do it myself,” says Browne, a writer, traveler and mother of two from the deck of her sailboat, just-docked in The Bahamas, “and couldn’t even grow one tomato.”
But Browne had a vision.
Over two decades ago, before the flourishing farm-to-table movement took off in North Carolina and elsewhere, Browne dreamed of facilitating an all-organic, chemical-free operation that would be run by independent farmers who’d lease the land from her to grow their own crops. It was a radical idea in the large-scale, industrialized farming community that exists in Johnston County, and it took Browne 20 years to realize her vision.
Today, Browne leases acreage to three farmers—one up-and-comer, one commodity-driven and looking towards raising organic beef, and to Jenn Sanford-Johnson, the owner of Chickadee Farms—who use sustainable, organic methods to grow fresh, pesticide-free crops.
“Being a good caretaker to me means sustainable organic production,” Browne says. “It has definitely been a long time coming and we’re not there yet. But I plan to continue to be a steward to the land and preserve it as best I can for future generations.”
A Family Legacy
In 1865, Browne’s great-grandfather, Edward Robert Johnson, was shot in the head in the Battle of Petersburg in Virginia. He was left for dead by his Confederate comrades, captured by Yankee soldiers and kept at the Point Lookout prison camp in Maryland until the war’s end, when he walked back home to Johnston County. Johnson married Elizabeth Harrison, a woman 20 years his junior, and the couple had six children. After a cyclone destroyed the Johnsons’ first farmhouse, located where the Cleveland School in Clayton now stands, the family acquired 388 acres and Johnson built a four-room farmhouse, in 1886.
Fast-forward more than a century and Browne and her boyfriend at the time, Darrel Tracy, left their boat in San Diego and made a long journey of their own, returning to the farmland that Browne’s father, George McLemore
Jr., had bought from his brothers. The four-room farmhouse had been vacant for some time and was in need of repair; the detached kitchen had fallen down entirely, and the bathroom was unusable.
Browne and Tracy, a landscape architect and a forester who, Beth says, was “much of the inspiration for the management of the farm,” made a makeshift apartment of 20-feet by 10-feet in the barn while they renovated the house.
“It was a place to use after the sailboat,” Browne says. “I survived Hurricane Fran in that apartment.”
McLemore, who was ailing when Browne returned to North Carolina, had been leasing the farmland to a local farmer for decades. Though Browne says she is “forever grateful” to the farmer for working the land in her absence, she says she “could just see that it wasn’t working.”
“I knew my great-grandfather was looking down in disapproval,” Browne says, after she had finished renovating the farmhouse and turned her attention to the farmland. “I could see first-hand what conventional farming was doing to the land.”
Now with two young children, the breaking point for Browne came when she realized that chemicals the farmer was spraying on his crops were drifting towards her house.
“I don’t want my children breathing that,” Browne thought. “It had to stop.”
A Dream Realized
Browne knew she had her work cut out for her. There were issues with the land that demanded serious remediation and expertise.
“For one thing, the soil erosion was horrible,” she says. “A soil conservationist came to look and he said it was the worst soil he had ever seen. There were ruts that were waist deep and you could pick up the soil and it was like beach sand. There was no organic material in it at all.”
It was slow-going at first for Browne in her search for like-minded farmers with an interest and long-term plans in an area known for its large factory farms. Browne hired a soil and water conservation specialist who advised taking two of the larger backfields out of production by planting grass. Then, two and a half years ago, Browne met Sanford-Johnson, the woman who would shape her dream of owning a farm that was chemical-free and all-organic into a reality.
Sanford-Johnson, who grew up outside of Garner, just down the road from Browne’s farmland, fell in love with farming after earning an associate’s degree in sustainable agriculture. Following a stint with the Interfaith Food Shuttle Teaching Farm in Raleigh, she helped start the Well Fed Community Garden, a community-focused urban farm that grows fresh produce for Raleigh’s Irregardless Cafe. After meeting Browne at the Raleigh Farmers Market and learning through friends that some of her land was coming up available to lease, Sanford-Johnson decided the time was right to start her own farm out in the country.
She met with Browne on her land and the two women hit off; it wasn’t long before Sanford-Johnson’s Chickadee Farms was born.
“Jenn is like an angel from heaven and has the curly hair to prove it,” says Browne of her friend and farming partner. Since starting Chickadee Farms, Sanford-Johnson has grown it from one acre to six in just under three years. She grows vegetables and herbs there, and is also experimenting with cut flowers. She also keeps a trailer with 30 hens; Sanford-Johnson harvests the chickens’ eggs and allows them to roam the land, scavenging for insects and turning the soil, a far cry from the chemical fertilizers that farmers once used there.
Sanford-Johnson has three avenues for selling the produce she grows. Through a system known as Community Supported Agriculture, members can sign up for weekly deliveries from Chickadee Farms on 12 and 24-week plans. Sanford-Johnson is also a mainstay at two local farmers markets and she sells directly to restaurants, including Raleigh favorite Crawford and Son.
“I’m starting to build a customer base in this area that doesn’t have many options for organically grown food,” Sanford-Johnson says. “It’s been going great and it has been hard to keep up with demand.”
In addition to Sanford-Johnson, Browne leases acreage to Danny Chastain, who started the Honest Dirt Family Farm last spring with a half acre, growing mixed produce that he sells at the Fuquay-Varina Farmers Market.
“I about broke even, I’m just getting my feet wet,” Chastain says.
This year, Chastain is farming a full acre, expanding sales to the Clayton Farmers Market and adding baby greens to sell to restaurants. Next year, he plans to expand to two acres and add a high tunnel greenhouse.
James “Hunter” Langden also leases land from Browne, about 60 acres on which he grows wheat, following a less successful attempt at growing organic tobacco. He and Browne are discussing potentially raising cows for organic, sustainable beef, a venture Langden thinks will be more profitable than row crops.
Looking Forward
Last October, Browne offered Sanford-Johnson and her daughter, Jude, the opportunity to move into the main farmhouse that her great-grandfather built so she can live where she works. Sanford-Johnson says she is appreciative of Browne’s hands-off approach.
“You hear stories about other people leasing land where they micromanage or are really demanding about what your farm does,” she says. “[Browne] owns a couple of pieces of equipment we use, and a high tunnel greenhouse which I use. If I ever need anything, or if there are any repairs that need to be done on the farm, she’s always been like ‘yeah, of course.’ She’s supportive in that way.”
Browne is so hands-off, in fact, that in early March, days before a late-winter snow fell in Johnston County, she set sail for the Bahamas, leaving all of the farm’s operations in Sanford-Johnson’s capable hands.
“I’m looking to stay as long as I can,” Sanford-Johnson says.
“I hope the farm can remain a farm,” says Browne of her land. “That was something my father expressed a desire for before he died. There is a long tradition of farming in Johnston County going back to the earliest white settlements. But with Raleigh sprawling out our way, farms are fast being lost, replaced by housing. It’s critical for Johnston County to retain some of its land for green, open space and wildlife habitats. I hope my farm can be part of that going forward.”
by Hart Fowler | Feb 27, 2019 | Buzz, February 2019
You’ve likely heard them on the air before: Radio veterans and Durham residents Phoebe Judge and Lauren Spohrer are host and executive producer of “Criminal,” one of the most popular and critically acclaimed podcasts since the medium made its debut on iTunes in 2005. Now, Judge and Spohrer have taken their storytelling in a different direction, branching outside of the true crime genre with the launch of “This Is Love” last year.
“This Is Love,” currently in its second season, tells real-life love stories of the romantic, familial and platonic variety. Like “Criminal,” the podcast often features locals, as in Episode 4, “Eight Thousand Miles,” which tells the story of Bida Manda and Brewery Bhavana owner Vansana Nolintha and his younger sister, Vanvisa, and their path to the United States from their home country of Laos. Or Episode 1, “The Run,” which explores podcast illustrator Julienne Alexander’s parents’ love story following a chance meeting in Central Park.
We spoke with Judge about starting a podcast, storytelling and life on the road. Read an additional interview with Spohrer at raleighmag.com.
I read you began recording “Criminal” in a closet. Is that true?
When we started the show, we were working with [sound producer] Eric Mennel and all three of us had full-time jobs. I was on the air every day at WUNC, as well as Eric, and Lauren was an adjunct professor at Duke, and so we would have to record “Criminal” at night. We didn’t have a studio, so after work, we would go and record in Lauren’s closet, and we would use yoga mats to soundproof. We didn’t make any money on “Criminal” for a long time. We just did it because we believed in the show, and we really wanted to make this show, and we were happy to be able to do it, money or not.
How was the transition from radio to podcasting?
Lauren and I decided we wanted to make a show that we could completely control, that I could host, that she could executive produce, and we could control the content, the format, and have nobody telling us what we should do. So, there was great freedom when thinking about podcasting. We were going to take it seriously, as we always have, and hold it to the highest journalistic standards as we always did on public radio. But now, no one could tell us what we should be reporting on, and we could design something completely new.
How do you find stories for “Criminal”?
In the same way we found stories when we worked for public radio. There’s always going to be a first-person perspective and there’s always going to be something somewhat crime-related. If you listen to “Criminal,” you know that link is somewhat tenuous at times. We shy away from violent stories, and it is going to be something that surprises. We’re constantly reading old newspapers, reading magazines and doing internet searches. We’re taking ideas from listeners. We’re reading old books. We’ll often say, we’ll start in one place looking for an idea and two hours later, we’re going in a wholly different direction, and we don’t know how we’ve gotten there, but we’ve landed on the perfect story.
Your first episode of “Criminal,” “The Owl,” involved the death of Kathleen Peterson, who was married to the famous novelist Michael Peterson. The story was also the subject of the Netflix documentary “The Staircase.”
I still have never seen “The Staircase.” Why we wanted to do that episode is because I’m so interested in the lawyer, Larry Pollard, who has a theory about the owl [causing the fall that may have killed Kathleen Peterson]. I have always been interested in owl and animal attacks. Someone told me that people running in Raleigh and Chapel Hill in the winter, on trails, would feel this bump on their head, and it would be an owl!
Of the more than 106 episodes of “Criminal” that you’ve done, do any resonate more in your mind than others?
I’ve always loved Episode 23, “Triassic Park,” about petrified wood theft. I love the episode we did called “Palace of Justice,” which speaks to the last surviving Nuremburg prosecutor. I love Episode 3, “Call Your Mom,” about a mother-daughter coroner team in Wyoming. [Also], “No Place Like Home,” about a leper colony in Carville, Louisiana.
How has the success of “Criminal” affected your lifestyle? You travel quite a bit now doing live performances.
We’re traveling all the time, and I feel very lucky about that, and [now] we [have the freedom] to travel to do a story, if it is better for us to be in-person and do field reports. We also do live shows. I think that has really benefited the show, to meet the people who listen to the show. But in terms of everything else, we’re on the road so much it is always so nice to come home. At the end of the day, we still record the podcast at the studio at WUNC in Chapel Hill, just like we’ve done for years. It’s the same drive on 15-501 back home to Durham, just like it was when I was working as a producer for “The Story.”
Why start another podcast, “This Is Love”?
When Lauren and I had the idea for “Criminal,” we were interested in crime, but we’re also interested in a million other subjects as well. After four years, we were ready to spread our wings and try something new, and see if we could put this aesthetic and tone we had created with “Criminal” towards another subject, and “love” seemed like something that was going to provide us with such rich material. Just as we had explored the boundaries of that word “crime,” we’d be able to do the same with the word “love.” It was going to be a bunch more work, but we were happy to take on the challenge to make another show that people would listen to, and that people would get something from.
Durham, Darkness and Love: A Q&A with podcaster Lauren
Spohrer
Lauren Spohrer is the producer and co-founder of the podcasts
Criminal and This is Love.
How did you first meet [podcast host] Phoebe Judge?
I was working on “The
Story” with Dick Gordon [for WUNC] and had just moved to North Carolina. She
came in to an an editorial meeting. I remember she was wearing, like, a jean
jacket and the sleeves were worn out and frayed, and she had these bracelets
on, she had really long hair, and and she was pitching stories that were so
good. I remember stopping and thinking, “who is this, what is she wearing, where did she come from?” We didn’t
immediately become friends. Phoebe’s really quite shy and neither of us are
into chit-chat. They moved us into the same cubicle for a while, and we became
good friends. She would guest host on the show and I would produce. We both
realized we both had good ideas and were hard workers and got along really
well. When you meet someone who has the same work ethic as you, you start
thinking of the possibilities.
What does your role as a producer entail?
You look for stories and cull through stories to make sure you
find the right one. You make sure the host has everything they need during
interviews. A producer is like a shadow host.
While the host is concentrating on the conversation, the producer is
listening very carefully, and if someone answers [a question that could lead to
something more], you [tell the host] to try it again, to get a more complete
answer. The producer also will write the story, and then work with the host to
make sure everyone likes it and it feels natural, that it feels compelling.
Producers handle cutting and mixing the audio, and creating the thing that will
be uploaded to the world. It’s comparable to the showrunner in television, when
someone has the vision and then has to do all the legwork to make it happen.
You have a master’s degree in fiction writing and have taught
fiction. How does that inform the storytelling aspects in your podcast?
Obviously, the stories for the podcast are true stories which are
rigorously fact checked. When you go to graduate school for creative writing,
your whole life is just reading, and trying to write it, and you think really
intensively about beginning, middle and end. You study very closely how authors
keep you turning the page. What sort of questions do I have when reading a
novel? What am I most excited about? What do I lean forward to learn more
about?
How did you and Judge choose the subject of love when you
branched out for your second podcast?
A lot of the Criminal stories are quite sweet, and have a lot of
joy and humor, but Criminal stories can be dark, and that is not all we’re
interested in. We started to have little
inklings that we wanted to tell stories that were explicitly warm. We
started wondering, what if we started a little side project that told really
loving stories which show how people can be quite wonderful to each other
sometimes?
Can you talk about some of the local stories you’ve featured
on This Is Love?
The first episode “The
Run” is about a family [based in Durham], about Julienne Alexander, who makes
all of our illustrations and our logos. We’ve know her for a long time and her
family is interesting in that her mother passed away when she was very young.
Her father [David] is this really charming, really fun, one-of-a-kind guy. He
raised Julie and her sister, Jody, by himself. And they had a life that was
full of adventure and every time I would hear little snippets of Jody’s and
Julie’s upbringing, I wanted to know more. I also find it very intriguing that
his wife had passed away when the girls were so young, and he has never fallen
in love again. To me, it is moving and fascinating to think that he poured
himself into raising these girls, both of which are these fantastically
interesting, idiosyncratic people, and then he also felt like he had found his
one true love, and she passed away, and his life is complete without someone in
that same way.
We also talked to [brother and sister] Vansana and Vanvisa
Nolintha, who own a pretty big-deal restaurant here in Raleigh called Bida
Manda, and he had this interesting story of one of those immigrant kids who
comes to the U.S. when they’re young. He felt very alienated in Greensboro, and
then his younger sister came, and we were intrigued by the way she had to
navigate [being in a new country]. The fascinating part was that they horribly
missed their parents, and their parents horribly missed them, but everyone put
on a good face because no one wanted anyone else to worry. We found that really
relatable to think about how we all sometimes hide from our friends when we
think they’re not doing well because we don’t want to burden them. Those
invisible, emotional sacrifices we make in an effort to protect the people that
we love.
What can we look forward to in 2019 from Criminal and This is
Love?
We’re planning
more love stories. We’re also looking to tell longer stories, where we tell one
story over the course of a few episodes. We’re noticing how few crime podcasts
do international stories, so we’re looking into ways to do a few international
stories for Criminal. We’re also a
planning a big tour of live shows, which we’ve been doing for a few years. We’re
going to try to up our game to create a live night of storytelling.
How long have you lived in Durham and what do you like about
Durham most?
I’ve been here for six years. I love all the museums, all of the
old buildings, the Durham Bulls, walking in the woods in the evening, the
quarry, all the swimming holes. I like the culture. I’ve lived in New York, and
moving back, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Durham has great food, fun bars, it’s
a creative place full of people doing interesting things and people who are
taking all kinds of risks creatively, thinking of projects and going for
it.
by Hart Fowler | Dec 17, 2018 | Buzz, December 2018 / January 2019
With slumping sales over the past decade due to baby boomers turning to easier-to-manage plastic Christmas trees now that the kids are (hopefully) out of the house, there was a big question looming on the minds of tree farmers: would millennials pick up on the tradition of buying a real Christmas tree?
The answer is a resounding yes.
With a 17 percent price surge in live trees over the past two years, which is expected to continue through this holiday season due to increased demand, millennials are putting the “royal” back into Tannenbaums like the iconic film of their generation, and their predilections for environmental consciousness and supporting all things local has led to a resurgence in the tradition of tree buying.
“This is the first time in more than a decade that many local tree farmers are profitable,” says Tim O’Connor, the executive director of the National Christmas Tree Association (NCTA).
Byron May and his wife, Diana, have owned Jordan Lake Christmas Tree Farm since 1994. “We have seen an increase in demand for real trees over the past few years, coming off a period of time where there was a surplus of trees,” says May.
According to the NCTA, the reason millennials have continued the tradition of choosing live trees over artificial ones is that they’re hip to the environmentally friendly practices, and locally grown offerings, of tree farms. Each acre of trees on a farm produces enough oxygen to support the annual daily needs of 18 people. Farmers use sustainable farming techniques, and with each tree harvested, three seedlings are planted to replace them the following spring. 93 percent of trees are recycled in the U.S., ground into mulch and repurposed for other landscaping uses.
As for buying local, the Christmas tree industry employs roughly 100,000 Americans, whereas 85 percent of artificial trees are imported from China.
With millennials carrying on the real Christmas tree tradition, farmers are tapping in to their own new traditions, helping to coordinate opportune social media moments when young buyers are selecting or cutting down their trees, and having hashtags and geotags at the ready.
At least for now, having a real Christmas tree for the holidays is not going to be a lost tradition, gone the way of letter writing or phone calls, and it won’t be relegated to an existence only in the nostalgic songs of days past, when we roasted chestnuts over an open fire and knew what a partridge in a pear tree was.
So, when it comes time to get your tree this year, go local—go spruce, fir or pine—over plastic.
