A MOUNTAIN BOOK REVIEW
Good Grazing
Reviewed by Harriet O’Rear
If the author of the cookbook Good Grazing had a resume, it would look like this (and no one would believe it):
Name: Letty Smith
Address: Circle S Ranch, Lookout Mountain, New Salem, Georgia
Marital Status: married, Curtis Husband’s occupation: log home builder, cattle man.
Education: Religion major, Davidson College, North Carolina
Previous experience: Driving hay baling equipment, front end loaders, horse trailers, bush hogs – since old enough to reach clutch
Farrier- certified horse shoer - five years
Outfitter, leader of pack trips into Wind River Canyon, Wyoming - ten years Manager of equestrian center – one year
Hobbies: Quilting, making goat cheese from Gertrude the milk goat; making butter from Shadow the milk cow, playing piano Present occupations: Performer of county music: “Letty and Georgia” duet, playing weddings, reunions, dances all over the southeast
Owner, operator, planter, weeder, grower, deliverer for Circle S Community Farm, a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) participant. Sells subscriptions for Circle S vegetables, herbs, eggs, beef and flowers to about forty Lookout Mountain families who receive baskets of chemical-free goods on a weekly basis for four six week periods, lasting from April to November.
Sitting in a lawn chair overlooking fields of horses, cows, chickens, and goats, Letty gave the following details of her work in sustainable agriculture.
“If every US citizen ate just one meal a week, composed of locally and organically raised meats and produce, we would reduce our country’s oil consumption by over 1.1 million barrels of oil every week. That’s not gallons, but barrels. Small changes in buying habits can make big differences. Becoming a less energy-dependent nation may just need to start with a good breakfast.” -Animal, Vegetable, Miracle
And Letty supplies a lot of breakfast food. In one season, she grows, packs and delivers material for about 4200 individual meals during season. Mustard, collards, kale, spinach, kohlrabi, beets and lettuce, strawberries and peas in the spring; corn, okra, tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, peppers, kohlrabi, fennel, leeks, onions, potatoes, melons in the summer; brussel sprouts, sweet potato, cabbage, hard squash in the fall. Then there are the herbs: basil, rosemary, cilantro, dill, garlic, plus papalo, parsley, summer savory and thyme.
All of the above are grown from seeds or sets by Letty. She tills the land, makes the rows, plants the crop, mostly on her hands and knees up and down the rows. She fertilizes with her own compost which is derived from the clippings and leftovers in the garden, plus manure from the critters on the farm. When asked how she turned the compost pile, she answered, “with a shovel”.
Once the produce is ready to harvest, Letty packs baskets of these delicacies, and then stuffs sunflowers, zinnias, and cultivated wildflowers into the cracks. The result is a breathtaking array of colors, fragrances, and tastes.
Additional options for customers include brown, green and white eggs donated by the 70 hens that scratch around her front and side yards, or a quarter or half a beef from the Circle S steers, many of them belted galloways, the Oreo cattle.
When asked about delivery, she responded that it is more sustainable for one person to make delivery once a week than for forty cars to run up and down the road to pick up goods. The driver is, of course, Letty. And, the direct contact of the farmer to the consumer is a major factor in CSA.
Letty said that after delivery she would get numerous phone calls, customers with questions such as, “How do you cook collards?, What is kohlrabi? What can I make from swiss chard?” The ones who knew about turnip greens had not tried Chinese cabbage, and the ones who liked brussel sprouts had never cooked with cilantro.
She decided to do a cookbook to explain what a customer could do with what she got in the weekly basket. Lettie had to start the project after the frost got the zinnias and before the onions needed seeding in the spring.
By serendipity, Letty rode horses in her off time (must have been 3 am to 4 am) across the road with Tosh Hopkins, a neighbor who is a professional artist specializing in graphite and charcoal drawings. Tosh left her landscapes and animal portraits to produce spectacular pointilism drawings of cabbage and mustard greens, acorn squash and arugula, over 200 vegetable portraits illustrating the goods in the baskets. They are breath-taking renditions, suitable for wall or coffee table, or a museum.
With a beautiful hand, she also hand-wrote the recipes, several for each vegetable, fruit, and herb. While some are from Letty’s kitchen, others were contributed from Circle S shareholders and friends –Gazpacho and Apple Crisp recipes donated by (of all people) Letty’s Mom.
Letty and Curtis published the 200 page book themselves, finishing as the spinach started to peep up in the row. And Good Grazing is not just an amateurish small edition, but a large and classy volume that is as much at home on the coffee table as on the counter. Letty says that the beauty of publishing in small quantity is that she can correct or add to with each publication. She welcomes recipes from customers.
If you want a piece of the Circle S vegetable pie, either in a subscription for produce, or for a copy of Good Grazing, contact Letty at: wwwcirclesfarm.net. The book is $20.00, but free to subscribers of her CSA program.LV
