Food + Community, Growing Together

by Christine Muhlke

The New York Times Magazine, published online October 8, 2010

When I began writing about American farmers and food artisans for this magazine’s Field Report column two years ago, I set out to learn the story behind the people whose ingredients were driving chefs to create great dishes. Little did I know it would become a column about communities — of producers, of customers, of eaters and enthusiasts

 After transcribing the first five or so interviews, I adopted the shorthand “comm”: “I don’t think that I would exist w/o the comm of ppl that are my customers and my suppliers,” I typed for Jeff Ford, a baker in Madison, Wis. “We’re showing how to build a local comm, we’re not showing em how to farm,” I scribbled for Tim Young, a Georgia marketing-service entrepreneur turned farmer. “Another piece for me about urban homesteading is rebuilding comm — it’s such a cliché — but rebuilding comm around food,” said Anya Fernald, a consultant for food businesses in Oakland, Calif. In a recent interview with Evan Dayringer, a farm apprentice, there are 26 comms in the course of three hours. At this point, my computer just fills in the word after the second M.

What are they talking about when they talk about community? In their case, it’s the network of people that they gradually knit around themselves based on a shared interest in food, from the grain supplier to the bakery apprentice to the farmers’ marketers and restaurateurs who order the loaves. It’s the schoolteacher who buys bread every week who eventually asks the baker if he’ll teach her students how to make pizza dough. It’s the cheese maker who trades for baguettes. It’s the sous-chef who receives the daily delivery and becomes a drinking buddy. Read the full article.