If the sky would just open up here, the blazing sun would make it look like the leaves are on fire.. 

But the sky just chuckles and rolls on gray.. gray.. I need to stop thinking about the gray and just integrate it somehow but that’s for one who has more time than I at the moment!

In the meantime down near Chester, SC there is a lot of rural areas with fields changing colors like this one.

Posted via web from IMI Photography

We start the morning at 5:30a. Many farmers we know start even earlier. It can be quite a trial getting up and out the door. Not to mention finding the energy to greet and explain your products to the consumer.

This time of year is a beautiful time though. It can get hot, but there is a good amount of crop diversity of fruits and veggies. It keeps my belly happy!

There are more markets in our region than there have been in a long long time. Part economy, part food security, were just happy to see everyone out. The discussions you can hear out here range from the classic coffeeshop to deep agriculture/agrarian principles. Great way to make new friends.

No matter where you are you can probably find a market. Get out and support them when you can. Every dollar spent is said to be 7 for the local economy. Enjoy the seasonality of your region as it passes too quickly.

From the Tailgate market in Charlotte.

-a

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Now until they trace their paths again Robin and I are a part of Europe. What fun.

“So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish”, penned by Douglas Adams.

For any who know me I’ve been a systems engineer a long time. Being such a creature makes you want to create all your own solutions and keep everything close to home.

I was one who liked to keep his work, his backups, his nexus of it all as close as possible. When you visit me you see a digital heart in my office that contains everything needed to start your own colocation facility. Even though I have an uptime of 300d+ and the cable companies reliability is pretty solid around here there comes a time to find greater reliability and an upgrade path that is a part of a larger networks provision.

After nearly four years running out of my home on some now legacy servers I’ve moved the heart of my home network to a space on our corporate architecture and couldn’t be happier. The site should seem just more poppy due to a better place on the internet backbone.

Now I just need to find some time to redesign. This design has been with us for about two years and it’s time for a change. All designs get dated, or maybe that’s the designer side of me. As new thoughts and permutations of control come out new, higher standards evolve and I’d like to put them in play.

Just not today.

One thing at a time and excising this bit of my life from home was fun enough for now.

The Family that Makes Chocolate Together…

We’ve been told a lot lately that Robin and I (or to Bill & Karen) are very lucky to have family members who can be tapped for work effort. We don’t disagree. While I’d love to hire some of my expert friends in sales the budgets just aren’t a feasible to allow for it in such a bootstrapping fledgling company.

Learning and Overcoming Limits

With the added family and the generally low overhead it comes at an emotion cost and perspectives that are hard to work with.

How do you tell someone who is uncomfortable with a role to just tough it out? How do you put the screws to a father or mother to stop over-thinking and just follow the playbook?

Under the corporate umbrella or even small business you can guess what your manager would have said, or the result that would have occurred if you had stayed on your derisive path. Here though we’re dealing with a lot more intertwined relationships that can’t be met with such a hard stance.

In our cases Robin and I are (relatively) young guns that move fast while carrying extreme loads without much sweat. However, it could be spread more if the same malleability of handling new responsibility was equally met by the greater generations of family. (Like how I kept all that nice? -grin-)

All in all you have to have some amazing communication, understanding, and allow for a natural pace to be set. You aren’t working with the bulls of the street, by taking an more affordable path you must find equilibrium within the relationships.

Working Smarter, Not Harder with Google

Many people do not realize that Google offers a wealth of tools for free. Wiki’s, Lists, Calendars, Documents, etc. As long as you have people on board that can be taught a little bit of digital tech you can reap some fantastic benefits that never before have been so readily available.

Calendaring for All

Once you plug your domain into Google’s architecture you can do domain specific ideas. We share multiple calendars with each other from work schedules, market days, & deliveries. We even started a outside of work schedule to track part time employment between everyone so we can make sure to schedule the work or meetings at everyones free time.

General Wiki

While your parents may not know what a wiki is, they’ll quickly adapt to the knowledge base that you can assemble. With Google’s “Sites” tool you can setup an indepth wiki that can source information deep within.

For example, we have a wiki that has everything from a ToDo list, R&D, equipment lists, discussions, ideas, and more. We created a dashboard within the wiki and bookmarked it on everyones computers that gives them a quick overview of the ToDo list, the shared calendar, and the work orders. Need more detail? Just click through or use the navigation to find greater detail.

Shared Documentation and Spreadsheets

Unless you live under one roof you are all co-locating. Beyond the information repository of a wiki you’ll need a way to work and access documents together or play with spreadsheets. We’ve employed Google’s Document manager to help us keep the work orders and inventory straight. I can easily leverage that data and keep our finances up to date.

Sharing Collateral Materials, DropBox

Another young application on the scene, DropBox. Install it on your computers and then share a folder between people. It helps everyone involved have access to logos, pdfs, print materials, marketing, saved emails, and more. This is one of the most critical tools we use to stop the passing of outdated or incorrect versions of materials that would have been sent via email before.

Dropbox even keeps a change log that allows you to rollback an edit or accidental deletion that might occur. Offsite backups, built-in! They have a 2gb cap which is more than most little startups need. Once we grow, we’ll start paying and everyone wins!

Giving Everyone a Voice, Family Blogging

Lastly and most uniquely you can give all involved a voice through blogging. I solicit at our weekly meetings for new articles to put on our chocolate blog. While I don’t always get material and some material takes a lot longer to “bake” than others, it is a very fun way to get everyone involved and able to participate in the dynamic web. It also gives you fantastic fodder for making your newsletters whether online or off.

Winning Takes Time

Even if you have a fantastic family it’s still going to take a lot of hard work, sweat, and tears to get where you are going. Nothing in life is free, and nothing is as easy at it can be thought to be. With an open communication policy, mediation, and thoughtfulness everyone can find their success. Just stick with it.

Please share your own family stories, where they were right, or where they went wrong. Everyone can learn from these experiences.

I invite you to visit my families rising chocolate shop, The Secret Chocolatier. Where we are trying to bring amazing artisanal delights to the Charlotte region and beyond.

It’s a poor excuse then why I am not writing personally. I get to write pretty close to the surface on our homemade chocolate blog. Combine that with a cyclical heavy twitter usage and I’ve been rather equalized. I’d run some digest feeds here but that feels wrong.

Still all poor excuses I can hear already!

I run on coffee!

I’ve been participating in the green coffee buyers co-op and used the new/old roaster George Holt gave me so much it blew out. With some help from the guys at Hottop I received a new heating element and fuses and I’m back in action. Only problem now is I have a gap in my roaster and beans trickle out.

It’s always something.

I think I need an espresso truffle and a cup of coffee. Huzzah!

Watching the Water

My father taught me to know a good sailor was to look at his his wake. A clean straight wake leaving the boat was a sign of someone who knew the water and the way to navigate it. To see a wake that zagged around was interpreted as floundering, slipping along.

The metaphor may be a bit mixed, it’s washing through a child’s remembrance, but I wish my wake were straighter.

With Kind Thanks

With 2008 closing I must give thanks to those who stayed close. Who were rocks instead of runners. During tough times the way people work to support one another shows colors that are hard to forget.

Alpha and Omega, I cannot thank my wife Robin enough. She is both inspiration, support, the embodiment of patience and shares my burdens with little complaint.

Love is the best adhesive.
— Flight of the Concords

Thanks to my family who took my challenges in stride and gave providence during my struggles. To my in-laws for whom good fortune rains with a sweet chocolate future.

To my friends, who many while down on their own luck only look for the smile of others. Self sacrifice and bleeding hearts I know well.

The farmers and their families, connecting with you regionally has been a deepening and gratifying experience. Knowing your land, your animals, and the micro/macro environment around it all to bring us a harvest plenty (and safe) is no easy task. Thank you for feeding us well.

Social networking kudos too. I’ve expanded my network of people I know locally by an exponent. The reward is compounding. Not only do I know more people in my area, they are as diverse as I am. Skydivers, foodies, marketing, PR, designers, comedians, small businesses and more. To connect everyone on a regular basis is instant community. I hope to continue to meet many more people that can be part of and share the experience that each of us create.

Healthy Growth through Improving

Of many things I saw in 2008 it was our ability to not finish the sentence that took the award for most needed improvement. There are so many who will pick up the mantle of responsibility only to never hit the finish line.

It’s Easy to Start,
It’s Hard to Finish.
—Jason Calacanis

I’ve had the discussion lately that I’m really curious what the statistical ratio is since I find the reliable in very very short supply. With an administration where accountability was unknown I hope the new year brings transparency and a sense of integrity again.

My Participation

• Nuance Labs shifted resources to consulting.
With the depletion of capital we’ve had to put our ideas in stasis and work more mechanically. It’s been fun bringing new small businesses into the net and seeing them plug in.
• IMI Photography strives for a piece of the market.
Photography in the Queen City is pretty hard to come by for those new to the market. We have over 6k photographers and some seriously talented and firmly implanted people. With a hung and dried economy, new resources are highly contended. I love the form and am applying my skills more to Nuance Labs imaging & The Secret Chocolatier projects. I’m still available and seeking new bookings for 09.
• The Secret Chocolatier brings many smiles to the community.
With a family idea and some organic planned thoughts we planted a chocolate garden and fed it with love and care. It has sprouted quite well. As a sapling of a company it’s filled with a lot of excitement and hope for establishing deeper roots in the community in 2009. Homemade chocolate for all!

2009, You are Welcomed

With the trials and tribulations from local and national economies, wars and unrest, new starts and learned from failures, I am ready for 2009. Again I cannot express my unending thanks to those who support myself or those I am connected with enough. May we all find successes in 2009.

-andy

The real question upon return is how to best speak of the event. How to best capture, seal, and use as a foundation for our local conversations and action. I’ve found it difficult. Speaking with many of the delegates there are similarities of not having just one thing but a peppering of tens if not hundreds of little moments that remain indelible.

The Beginning of Terra Madre

We arrived in Torino after a short stay in Lucca by way of an overnighter in Pollenza where we had visited the Slow Food Universita di Scienze Gastronomiche, eaten at Osteria Boccondivino, & Slow Food HQ in Bra. (We know how to move around.)

Picking up our passes and checking in with the US liaisons we were able to meet some of the other US delegation and see a plentiful and diverse group of peoples. The opening ceremonies was long yet brilliant.

Beginning with a procession of Sardinians showing off one of their rituals (impressive, daunting, and powerful) to follow was the marching of the flags. Many countries of the world were represented and as we later found out from Winona laDuke a hope that indegenious cultures will be able to fly their flags next session.

Passionate Speakers, We Listened in Awe

Speakers included those in Slow Food and beyond, Alice Waters introduced a video of Prince Charles, UN Asst. Secretary General Carlos Lopes spoke on behalf of Ban Ki-Moon, Vandana Shiva was passionate and fiery in her remarks, a student Sam Levin blew us away with his youth, determination, vibrance and step-taking, Carlo Petrini brought it all home in the poignant thoughts of our development and rich diversities.

We were awash in the power of the people.

I had chills so many times I thought my brain was going to fry out. I’m not sure everyones world view is ready to accept what is going on. The world is being dominated by those with power and we are constantly seeing large companies leverage that power into poor decisions; squeezing the bottom of the chain, selling consumers marketing and bad health, while replacing nature with man management which is leading us down a very bad road.

United States Delegation, 800+

America will always amaze me. We are a super culture, a mixing pot of everyone. Including the great diversification of the indigenous countries within our country. How often we forget our own brief history.

The meeting of the US delegation was huge and very long. I understand why Slow Food Nation was conceived. We have a lot to talk about. With over 300 million in our borders we have a lot of work to do to corral this great nation.

We heard from many great regional speakers (session notes from Robin):

Josh Viertel, President of SF USA
We cannot take out without putting back in.
Our priorities: #1 The Youth, #2 Social Justice.
We are a movement, not an organization.

Farmer Dominic
We feed the community, and the community feeds us.
The importance of teaching.

Green Mountain College Farm and Food Project
Initiated under three goals: #1 Food, #2 Minds, #3 Ideas
Community supported agriculture (CSA) in the classroom to the kitchen and dining. Common goals with continued partnership and community building.

White Earth Land Recovery Project
Winona laDuke, protecting our sacred wild rices, listening and talking to our relatives (the vegetation), cultural diversity is as important as bio-diversity, remember where we came from and how we got here, honor the history of food, and that we all have the right to own and eat food.

Kellen Vaughn Shelendewa, the crops are your children, learn from your elders, the ancestors are with us and watch us, the earth has been entrusted to us.

Brett Ramie, community inclusion cannot be done without elders, our world cycle is a non-linear progress and we must apply the knowledge of our elders before it is lost to us.

Ian Marvy, creating future eaters and teaching young people to farm.
Peace and refuge exists in the garden.
From seed to sale, helping the youth see potential in alternative markets.
Embrace the joy, understand the anger, and transform one to the other.

Chef Tony Miller, cook to farmer collaboration.
Let the food be the food, the star of the plate. Finish strong, show the youth what we need to continue. Keep the dollar in your yard, source locally whenever possible.

What Novice Farmers Need to Succeed
Access: land, info, market, cultural institutions, encouragement.
Land, liberty, sunshine, stamina.
serveyourcountryfood.net

Inter-generational collaboration in activism
Coalition of Immokalee workers, a 32 pound bucket of tomatoes gets $.45, the same as in 1978. Equating to $8-10,000 a year. 7 cases of slavery in the last decade. They have fought and won cases against large companies to pay more for their produce. Big companies can not keep applying this financial pressure downwards.

Strengthening Food Communities, Will & Erika Allen
Engage and inspire the community. The need to break down the social constructs that are oppressing people. Food justice, generations of justice. Look for the small projects to produce tremendous results, “Below the Grass”. Rich food for all folks.

Overcoming Cultural Divides with Smiles

Robin and I wanted to break through the cultural divides and meet people. We built a photo book, packing it with pictures of who we are and where we are from. Upon meeting someone new usually it involved the act of smiling and gesturing for a photograph.

I would take their picture and then we would approach showing them their picture. This then turned into an often funny trial and error of english, italian, french, hand signs, and laughter.

What really helped was showing our pictures.

Showing our city at night, Robin and her classroom, our farmers and local agriculture, our family.

Through this exchange we would learn who they were, where they were from, what they brought with them, and with many contact information for penning them later. Our parting gift to those we met was a simple photograph of Robin and myself surrounded by some of the pictures they had seen with a set of email and snail mail addresses so that we might keep in touch. We hope they do.

Classes, Lectures, the Public Speaks

There were so many things to learn and not enough time to learn them all. Between Salone de Gusto’s formidable tasting, pairing, and food explorations you had multiple tracks that you could run on in the Terra Madre sector. Climate change, soil protection, fair trade, bee colonies, getting to market, how to market, activist luncheons, youth meetups, and so much more.

We attended many which I’ll go in to in individual postings later, but would have loved to entertain more. Watching and being a participant with all these groups of people, each having a headset and a translator was just brilliant in being able to communicate across the gulf of language.

Do You Value Yourself? Do You Value the World?

In the end we all share this world and many of us are experiencing the same problems. How we face those problems, find solutions that are good, clean, and fair, will be a monumental challenge. If we don’t face it head on though it will get no easier later and if the damage is irreprable, then what.

I’ve said it before, I got into this movement for a hunt for quality. I fell in love with the chain of agriculture and now am in it for my future family. If we can adopt a greater outlook for ourselves and for those in our charge maybe there is hope yet.

Continued Thought, an Evolving Experience

More to come. We thank all of those who helped us achieve our goal and look forward to building further essays and pictorials that give light to what we learned. I end with a musical slideshow that encompasses some of the sights and similar musics heard during our time abroad.

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A rule on foragers. They know the value of a secret and are good to keep their best ones close to their heart (or stomach). I don’t want to give any more than I have to on where we were or Reed’s full name. I respect this self-proclaimed lummox and want to keep the integrity of the wood, per say.

Stay Away from Brown and Whites

We weren’t but a few yards away from civilization when Reed shouted out that we should stay clear of all white and brown mushrooms. Unless of course you know what you are doing. Of course we don’t, and not knowing, this gave us our first framework to work in.

There are plenty of good white and brown mushrooms, there are also plenty that will do you harm from indigestion to liver failure. There have been many families snuffed out by collecting of simple white mushrooms with a death cap mixed in. The difference between a species being identified is of extreme importance.

There were six of us, as we got comfortable with the terrain we learned a little bit more about each other. Educators, chefs, executives, and more. One goal in mind, to learn more about the wild around us and how to better scout for the delectable within. We couldn’t have been paired with a better local guide.

Reed is an impassioned man who loves being outdoors. He is a living tome of knowledge that was first catalyzed as a small child. When asked where he got started thinking about mushrooms he recalled a science fair project and how after that he never stopped looking into the natural world around him.

So Much Knowledge!

I wish my mind could have held it all. He pointed at trees that would have different species at different types of year. Bushes that held edibles, and wild roses that might have the greatest little blooms. Everywhere he turned he could practically tell us something else about the landscape around us. It was impressive and inspiring.

We eventually came to a set of stream-beds. Reed found some small red/orange chanterelle and had us all get a good eyeful. We were then instructed to fan out and look for more based off of a kind of grid search heading north along the stream. Slowly we began to spot little patches here, there, all in a fairly juvenille state, but chanterelle’s none the less.

Over the course of a few hours, a couple of miles, and a few of us getting famous left or right, mud-foot, we learned so much. We found good species and bad, the edible and the repelling. Reed even found a few new that might be good. He would take them home for spore printing and testing. We also stumbled upon an old homesite marked by giant oaks and the remnants of the stone foundation for a wood cabin.

Injury Count, Zero^b^b^b

We came, we saw, we got stung. Oh yea, the only real injury of the trip was when Laura and I, third through a wasp nest finally pissed them off enough to send out a full on assault. We danced violently with spurts of run walking before shedding a portion of clothing and asking the wasps to please go home. While we got the brunt and large amount of stingers I think everyone got stung once. (Which for the record wasp stings take up to 6 days before they fully stop itching.. what a drag!)

While we harvested only a small amount on this trip Reed thought it was a great success. We all now know what to look for on a few edible species. We now know what to not touch from panthers to death caps and a host of bitter bites.

We will try and continue to do this in intervals so that more can become a bit more forage worthy and collectively we can understand more of Charlotte’s natural bioculture.

For more pictures check out my flickr forage gallery. You can also join the Slow Food Charlotte community, find out more about our local agriculture and how you can get involved.