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Transcript of Change Comes to Dinner; How Vertical Farmers, Urban Growers, and Other Innovators Are...
822019 Change Comes to Dinner How Vertical Farmers Urban Growers and Other Innovators Are Revolutionizing How Amhellip
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullchange-comes-to-dinner-how-vertical-farmers-urban-growers-and-other-innovators 112
822019 Change Comes to Dinner How Vertical Farmers Urban Growers and Other Innovators Are Revolutionizing How Amhellip
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullchange-comes-to-dinner-how-vertical-farmers-urban-growers-and-other-innovators 212
983139983144983137983150983143983141 983139983151983149983141983155 983156983151 983140983145983150983150983141983154 Copyright copy 2012 by Katherine Gustafson Allrights reserved Printed in the United States of America For information addressSt Martinrsquos Press 175 Fifth Avenue New York NY 10010
wwwstmartinscom
Design by Steven Seighman
ISBN 978-0-312-57737-7 (trade paperback)ISBN 978-1-4668-0241-4 (e-book)
First Edition May 2012
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
822019 Change Comes to Dinner How Vertical Farmers Urban Growers and Other Innovators Are Revolutionizing How Amhellip
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullchange-comes-to-dinner-how-vertical-farmers-urban-growers-and-other-innovators 312
MY HOPERAKING JOURNEY BEGAN like so many voyages of discov-
ery do on an old yellow school bus This bus was not full of chil-
dren though but foodmdashtomatoes potatoes lettuce apple cider
milk ribs chicken barbeque saucemdashall of it from farms within 150
miles of the Richmond street corner where I filled up my shopping
basket in this unlikely vehicle
Up by the steering wheel Mark Lilly presided over the bus with
a proprietary air greeting people as they came aboard to browse in
the apple barrels wooden shelves and freezers he had installed
showing kids the baby chicks he was keeping in a cage out on the
sidewalk The products I picked out to purchasemdasha tub of frozen
pit-cooked barbeque made by a Mennonite family a whole chicken
from the famous Polyface Farm a glass bottle of yogurt topped
with blackberry jammdashwere things that I had spent ten hours driv-
ing all over the Virginia countryside with Mark to pick up a few
days before I couldnrsquot wait to see how they tastedA visit with a local-food entrepreneur like Mark was I felt the
logical place to start my journey the commitment to eating locally
is the sacred cow of the sustainable food movement There seems
CHAPTER 1
School Bus Farm Market
An unusual small business brings farm- fresh to the city
822019 Change Comes to Dinner How Vertical Farmers Urban Growers and Other Innovators Are Revolutionizing How Amhellip
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullchange-comes-to-dinner-how-vertical-farmers-urban-growers-and-other-innovators 412
18 Change Comes to Dinner
to be a generalmdashthough sometimes only vaguely justifiedmdash
consensus that sourcing as much of our food as possible from within
a short driving distance of our houses is one of the most important
things we can do to right the sinking ship of the US food system
I wondered if this was true Is relocalizing our food economy
the answer to our woes It seemed improbable to me that small
farmers selling at urban marketsmdashthe image almost universally as-
sociated with the idea of ldquoeating localrdquomdashcould be the much sought-
after solution to all the complicated problems of our industrially
dominated food system Arenrsquot these local farms just too small and
too few and too apt to be growing things like garlic scapes and
ramps whichmdashletrsquos be honestmdashsound more like pieces of equip-
ment found in a skateboard park than food
The most familiar argument for locavorism arises from an ob-
jection to the massive distances that the vast majority of food
eaten in the United States travels before it reaches dinner plates
The figure fifteen hundred miles is thrown around a lot and while
that numbermdashcalculated by the Leopold Center for Sustainable
Agriculturemdashis only kind of true and then only if you live in Chi-
cago the exact number doesnrsquot really matter the sticking point is
that we eat many things that have flown on airplanes from other
hemispheres or been trucked across continents (or back and forth
between states in a pointless bureaucratic shuf fle) to get to us
The ghastly carbon footprint of all that global food shipping is
the more commonly reiterated reason to eat more locally The envi-
ronmental impact of getting an apple from five miles away the
logic goes must surely be less than that of shipping your fruit in
from New Zealand Unfortunately for the locavores the ecologicalargument for eating locally doesnrsquot always stand up well to scru-
tiny An apple in a load of millions shipped cross-country in an ef-
822019 Change Comes to Dinner How Vertical Farmers Urban Growers and Other Innovators Are Revolutionizing How Amhellip
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullchange-comes-to-dinner-how-vertical-farmers-urban-growers-and-other-innovators 512
School Bus Farm Market 19
ficient eighteen-wheeler might well account for fewer carbon
emissions than an apple in a single bushel driven thirty miles to a
farmersrsquo market in an old diesel farm truck And that comparison
doesnrsquot account for the carbon dioxide expended by the shoppers
getting to and from the place of purchasemdasha figure that might
be lower for those who shop at grocery stores where only one
trip is necessary than for those who take separate trips to farm-
ersrsquo markets specialty shops and other stores to put the weekrsquos
menu together
Making local and regional food distribution systems more ro-
bust and ef ficient would change the environmental calculus consid-
erably But as things stand now other reasons for eating locally
turn out to be far more compelling What people want by and large
it seems to me is to live in communities that are thriving where
they can find the means to be happy and healthy What better
way to make sure our communities thrive than by locating a chunk
of the most important businesses of our livesmdashthe work of feeding
ourselvesmdashclose to our cities and in our own neighborhoods Bol-
stering local food economies means creating and keeping local
jobs maintaining food producersrsquo interest in and responsiveness to
the needs and wants of the community (including the need for safe
and healthy food) ensuring greater freshness and providing local
consumers with more instead of fewer options regarding where
when and how to buy their food
I still had my doubts about whether all those little guys farming
their hearts out on their one- five- and twenty-acre parcels and
dragging their wares to the farmersrsquo market every week could feed
our country effectively but logic had it that they were doing vitalwork to keep our country from inexorably being taken over part
and parcel by corporate food concerns Local-food entrepreneurs
822019 Change Comes to Dinner How Vertical Farmers Urban Growers and Other Innovators Are Revolutionizing How Amhellip
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullchange-comes-to-dinner-how-vertical-farmers-urban-growers-and-other-innovators 612
20 Change Comes to Dinner
were on the front lines bringing us all hope And hope is what I was
after In trying to find some small answer to the question ldquoWhat
would a better food system look likerdquo I clearly needed to see ldquolocal
foodrdquo in action If what I found didnrsquot appear to be the final glorious
solution to our food dilemmas perhaps I could gain some hints about
what such a solution might be
So one April evening I headed south from my home in Wash-
ington DC to Richmond the capital of Virginia where Mark is
making a go of it with his school bus-cum-roving farmersrsquo market
an unusual business venture he calls Farm to Family His bus route
follows a schedule but he uses his BlackBerry to remind his thou-
sands of Facebook and Twitter fans of his location and to update
them about any change of plans which happen occasionally due to
parking problems absence of shoppers or previously unscheduled
visits
When I inquired whether I might see his operation Mark had
kindly invited me to stay at his house for the night so I could come
on his purchasing rounds at local farms early the following day
Thatrsquos how I found myself sitting at a dining room table in a cozy
house somewhere in Richmond eating a bowl of yogurt criss-
crossed with a drizzle of maple syrup products Mark buys from
local farmers and sells on his bus
ldquoThis is the best stuff yoursquove ever tastedrdquo Mark said pointing at
my bowl Something about his friendly low-key demeanor shaved
head and sun-reddened cheeks reminded me obscurely of a fire-
fighter His wife Suzi a warm woman in a teal ldquoeat localrdquo T-shirt and
reddish hair twisted up in a clip chatted with me about her job in the
alternative healing and body care section of Ellwood Thompsonrsquos aunique Richmond grocery store focused on local food Not long after
my visit she would begin working full-time with mark on Farm to
Family
822019 Change Comes to Dinner How Vertical Farmers Urban Growers and Other Innovators Are Revolutionizing How Amhellip
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School Bus Farm Market 21
ldquoThe Fs should be green darker green Donrsquot you thinkrdquo
Mark interrupted leaning over and showing Suzi a picture on his
BlackBerrymdashthe drafts of a Farm to Family logo sent by his de-
signer
ldquoItrsquos a little busyrdquo she said ldquoYou have to picture it on everythingrdquo
He brooded on this for a few moments then stalked away from
the table leaving Suzi to install me in a sweet-smelling crimson
guest room with an antique bedstead a shelf of Buddhist relics and
a tinkling wind chime made of slices of pink stone
The next morning as we sped down the highway toward the
Shenandoah Valley in his truck dragging a trailer equipped with
six giant plastic coolers Mark told me how he got the idea for the
bus venture after experiencing a political awakening about issues
of industrial food during a masterrsquos program in disaster science and
emergency management A research project about Californiarsquos San
Joaquin Valley for a class called Hazards and Threats to the Future
led him into a sobering investigation of soil salination monocul-
tures water shortages labor issues and petroleumrsquos role in an area
that grows almost 13 percent of the countryrsquos produce
ldquoIt is really bad what is going on out thererdquo he said propping
his arm on the steering wheel ldquoIf that system fails thatrsquos going to
have a major major impact on the countryrdquo The idea for the bus
venture started simmering in the back of his mind but he would
never have gone ahead if he hadnrsquot lost his job working in food ser-
vice at a university By then he had already bought the old bus from
Craigslist on a hunch
All around us spring had burst upon the countryside the pink
cotton candy fluff of redbud trees lacing the edges of the roadwayIt was an unusually hot day for April the temperature reading in
the corner of the rearview mirror was climbing past eighty The
truckrsquos AC was on the fritz
822019 Change Comes to Dinner How Vertical Farmers Urban Growers and Other Innovators Are Revolutionizing How Amhellip
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22 Change Comes to Dinner
ldquoIt all boils down to moneyrdquo he went on ldquoWhat corporations
do is they want to make as much money as they can and exploit
anything in their path to get that done These lobbyists and players
in Washingtonmdashthe government makes laws to benefit them not to
benefit the peoplerdquo For a guy engaged in such a creative and opti-
mistic business endeavor he exuded a surprisingly intense sense of
outrage
We trundled off the highway onto a country road slicing through
green hills and pulled into the parking lot of a McDonaldrsquos of all
places where a white- bearded Mennonite farmer in a straw hat and
his blue-skirted wife in a pale kerchief were waiting incongruously
for us next to their truck and trailer
This was Mike and Diana Puffenbarger a thirty-years-married
couple who run a farm a barbeque business and a hunting and
fishing guide service Mikersquos family has been producing maple
syrup for five generations and he himself has been at it for at least
three decades Their 4 times 4 sported a window sticker saying ldquoTRUTH
WILL SET YOU FREE JOHN 832rdquo alongside another emblazoned with
a picture of a howling coyote in crosshairs surrounded by the motto
ldquoHUNT HARD SHOOT STRAIGHT KILL CLEAN APOLOGIZE TO NO ONErdquo
As they helped load tubs of their pit-cooked barbeque and
bottles of their syrup into Markrsquos truck I asked Mike about their
biggest challenge as small farmers
ldquoThe governmentrdquo he responded without a pause ldquoTheyrsquore let-
ting in all this junk from China But we try to do something they
hammer us Wersquove been butchering meat for years from our farm and
wersquove never had a recall Whatrsquos that tell yourdquo The Puffenbargers
take their animals destined for sale as meat to a slaughterhouse asrequired by the USDA the closest one being in Harrisonburg eighty
miles from their farm in Bolar Virginia They prefer to butcher at
home the meat they eat themselves
822019 Change Comes to Dinner How Vertical Farmers Urban Growers and Other Innovators Are Revolutionizing How Amhellip
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School Bus Farm Market 23
Mikersquos comment highlighted one of the many reasons local-
food advocates cite for buying closer to home The countryrsquos indus-
trial food chain has been busy building itself an abysmal record on
food safety The USDA website posts hundreds of recalls of food
products every year the majority of them for posing a ldquopossible
health riskrdquo The word salmonella makes a distressingly regular ap-
pearance on this list as do E coli and Listeria a dangerous bacte-
rium One compelling reason to buy your foodmdashespecially your
meatmdashfrom smaller-scale farmers who are involved in your com-
munity instead of from corporations whose operations are opaque
remote and likely too massive to be handled safely is that smaller
closer-to-home producers are more likely to have both the ability and
the motivation to make sure their products arenrsquot tainted
Back on the road the pungent odor of manure wafting in the
window and the temperature in the truck climbing toward incendi-
ary Mark told me he had been totally unprepared for what he was
getting into when he started the bus business His original idea was
to go into food desertsmdashurban areas where residents donrsquot have ac-
cess to stores that carry fresh foodmdashand sell his local meat and
produce to these underserved communities He got registered to
accept food stamps and parked in poor neighborhoods waiting for
the rush of customers But the people there looked at him like he
was crazy and continued to spend their money in the corner store
where fresh vegetables are usually absent in favor of fried chicken
chips and soda
ldquoI got blindsided I was really naiumlverdquo he said ldquoA for- profit
business has no incentive to go into a food desert and set up shop
If yoursquore a for- profit business and yoursquore bringing in high-qualitystuff it costs I would be out of business if I were to just go into
low-income areasrdquo Mark was referencing one of the most promi-
nent critiques of the locavore ethos the cost of food from nearby
822019 Change Comes to Dinner How Vertical Farmers Urban Growers and Other Innovators Are Revolutionizing How Amhellip
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullchange-comes-to-dinner-how-vertical-farmers-urban-growers-and-other-innovators 1012
24 Change Comes to Dinner
small farms is almost always substantially higher than the products
of industrial production you can buy in the average supermarket or
at the corner store Critics accuse the eat-local movement of pro-
moting two separate food systems one thatrsquos supplied with healthy
ldquohappyrdquo food for all the people who can afford it and another stocked
with ecologically damaging pesticide laden processed junk for
everyone else
But when yoursquore trying to start a business like Mark Lilly you
donrsquot have the time or money to fix the worldrsquos problems You find
the customers who can help you succeed So while still doing some
work in low-income communities including occasionally giving
away free food (efforts for which he has received high- profile pub-
licity including a three- page spread in People magazine) he has
focused mostly on parts of town where people have a little extra
money to spend and are attuned to the politics of local food He runs
his own version of a community-supported agriculture (CSA) pro-
gram which he calls a USA for ldquourban-supported agriculturerdquo that
has people pay ahead of time for a seasonrsquos worth of biweekly boxes
of fresh food He also delivers milk to peoplersquos doors early in the
morning just like guys used to do back in my grandmotherrsquos time
ldquoIrsquom giving people a way to opt out of the current systemrdquo he
proudly told me as we rattled up a long dirt drive into the cluttered
parking area of Mountain View Dairy Farm Proprietor Christie
Huger dressed for the heat in a white T-shirt athletic shorts and
sandals greeted us as Mark backed the truck up to the loading area
by a dilapidated trailer of fice They consulted for a few moments
by a set of glass-fronted refrigerators before starting to load jars
of blackberry yogurt and glass bottles of milk into the coolers inMarkrsquos trailer
Christiersquos tousled hair and tired smile suggested that it had al-
ready been a long day despite it not yet being noon She used to
822019 Change Comes to Dinner How Vertical Farmers Urban Growers and Other Innovators Are Revolutionizing How Amhellip
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School Bus Farm Market 25
be an art teacher she told me but she quit teaching two years ago
to attend full-time to the farm I asked her if itrsquos been a hard transi-
tion and she answered unhesitatingly ldquoIf I went back to teaching
itrsquod be easier When you get up at four-thirty and then force your-
self to come inside at eight at night to feed your kids dinner itrsquos
hardrdquo I wondered aloud if she planned to go back to teaching and
her answer was again immediate no way
I followed Christiersquos daughter Isabelle an energetic girl in a
peach tank top and a bowl haircut toward a pen by the house where
a tiny lamb was bleating manically She grabbed a baby bottle full
of water and kneeled down beside the animal
ldquoDo you want to be a farmer when you grow uprdquo I asked
thinking about that statistic I had recently come across the average
age of farmers in the United States is fifty-five and rising We badly
need kids to take an interest in this kind of life
ldquoI already amrdquo she said matter-of-factly squinting up at me in
the sunshine ldquoIrsquom a sheep farmer Because we have this little baby
sheeprdquo
My heart melted and I realized that this moment as much as the
fresh delicious milk itself was what the consumers on Markrsquos bus
are buying From Mennonite farmers to milk in glass bottles to the
old yellow school bus Markrsquos business plays on city dwellersrsquo sense
of nostalgia for what they see as a safe picturesque and pastoral
yesteryear A common theme in the movement to reinvigorate local
food systems is the idea of a David-and-Goliath battle between cor-
porate overlords and the small family farmer with the corporation
representing the evils of mechanized overcrowded stifling isolating
modern life and the little guy laying claim to a virtuous existence ofnature space freedom and community Not to mention little baby
sheep
I mentioned this observation to Mark as we got back on the road
822019 Change Comes to Dinner How Vertical Farmers Urban Growers and Other Innovators Are Revolutionizing How Amhellip
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullchange-comes-to-dinner-how-vertical-farmers-urban-growers-and-other-innovators 1212
26 Change Comes to Dinner
heading to our next stop On the bus he told me visitors often revel
in memories of other types of roving food vendors that populated
their long-ago childhoods Customers reminisce about the guys
who used to come by their urban neighborhoods in trucks or with
handcarts yelling ldquoFresh fishrdquo or ldquoWatermelonrdquo
ldquoBack in the day there was the milkman and the meat delivery
guyrdquo Mark said ldquoYou knew them They came to your house It was
interactive You chatted with them Thatrsquos what I try to do Irsquom in-
teractive I chat with peoplerdquo
Mark tries in short to give his customers ldquoan experiencerdquo He
brings baby animals for children to hold He talks to customers about
what they can do with what he sellsmdashhow to cook a spaghetti squash
for instance or which kind of barbeque sauce will go best on pulled
pork At the time of our journey his bus was plastered with hand-
lettered signs proclaiming a variety of riling slogans such as ldquoEAT
AT HOME COOK HAVE FUNrdquo and ldquoDONrsquoT RELY ON A FAILING HIGHLY
PROCESSED UNSUSTAINABLE TOXIC FOOD SYSTEM GROW AND PRESERVE
YOUR OWN FOOD NOWrdquo
When he invites customers onto his bus hersquos asking them not
only to step inside the vehicle but also to move into another way of
looking at our world of food The way he thinks of it coming onto
his bus is the next best thing to experiencing the bracing goodness
of the farm itself ldquoIrsquom packaging a farm onto a school busrdquo he
said ldquoand bringing it to themrdquo
822019 Change Comes to Dinner How Vertical Farmers Urban Growers and Other Innovators Are Revolutionizing How Amhellip
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullchange-comes-to-dinner-how-vertical-farmers-urban-growers-and-other-innovators 212
983139983144983137983150983143983141 983139983151983149983141983155 983156983151 983140983145983150983150983141983154 Copyright copy 2012 by Katherine Gustafson Allrights reserved Printed in the United States of America For information addressSt Martinrsquos Press 175 Fifth Avenue New York NY 10010
wwwstmartinscom
Design by Steven Seighman
ISBN 978-0-312-57737-7 (trade paperback)ISBN 978-1-4668-0241-4 (e-book)
First Edition May 2012
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
822019 Change Comes to Dinner How Vertical Farmers Urban Growers and Other Innovators Are Revolutionizing How Amhellip
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullchange-comes-to-dinner-how-vertical-farmers-urban-growers-and-other-innovators 312
MY HOPERAKING JOURNEY BEGAN like so many voyages of discov-
ery do on an old yellow school bus This bus was not full of chil-
dren though but foodmdashtomatoes potatoes lettuce apple cider
milk ribs chicken barbeque saucemdashall of it from farms within 150
miles of the Richmond street corner where I filled up my shopping
basket in this unlikely vehicle
Up by the steering wheel Mark Lilly presided over the bus with
a proprietary air greeting people as they came aboard to browse in
the apple barrels wooden shelves and freezers he had installed
showing kids the baby chicks he was keeping in a cage out on the
sidewalk The products I picked out to purchasemdasha tub of frozen
pit-cooked barbeque made by a Mennonite family a whole chicken
from the famous Polyface Farm a glass bottle of yogurt topped
with blackberry jammdashwere things that I had spent ten hours driv-
ing all over the Virginia countryside with Mark to pick up a few
days before I couldnrsquot wait to see how they tastedA visit with a local-food entrepreneur like Mark was I felt the
logical place to start my journey the commitment to eating locally
is the sacred cow of the sustainable food movement There seems
CHAPTER 1
School Bus Farm Market
An unusual small business brings farm- fresh to the city
822019 Change Comes to Dinner How Vertical Farmers Urban Growers and Other Innovators Are Revolutionizing How Amhellip
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullchange-comes-to-dinner-how-vertical-farmers-urban-growers-and-other-innovators 412
18 Change Comes to Dinner
to be a generalmdashthough sometimes only vaguely justifiedmdash
consensus that sourcing as much of our food as possible from within
a short driving distance of our houses is one of the most important
things we can do to right the sinking ship of the US food system
I wondered if this was true Is relocalizing our food economy
the answer to our woes It seemed improbable to me that small
farmers selling at urban marketsmdashthe image almost universally as-
sociated with the idea of ldquoeating localrdquomdashcould be the much sought-
after solution to all the complicated problems of our industrially
dominated food system Arenrsquot these local farms just too small and
too few and too apt to be growing things like garlic scapes and
ramps whichmdashletrsquos be honestmdashsound more like pieces of equip-
ment found in a skateboard park than food
The most familiar argument for locavorism arises from an ob-
jection to the massive distances that the vast majority of food
eaten in the United States travels before it reaches dinner plates
The figure fifteen hundred miles is thrown around a lot and while
that numbermdashcalculated by the Leopold Center for Sustainable
Agriculturemdashis only kind of true and then only if you live in Chi-
cago the exact number doesnrsquot really matter the sticking point is
that we eat many things that have flown on airplanes from other
hemispheres or been trucked across continents (or back and forth
between states in a pointless bureaucratic shuf fle) to get to us
The ghastly carbon footprint of all that global food shipping is
the more commonly reiterated reason to eat more locally The envi-
ronmental impact of getting an apple from five miles away the
logic goes must surely be less than that of shipping your fruit in
from New Zealand Unfortunately for the locavores the ecologicalargument for eating locally doesnrsquot always stand up well to scru-
tiny An apple in a load of millions shipped cross-country in an ef-
822019 Change Comes to Dinner How Vertical Farmers Urban Growers and Other Innovators Are Revolutionizing How Amhellip
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullchange-comes-to-dinner-how-vertical-farmers-urban-growers-and-other-innovators 512
School Bus Farm Market 19
ficient eighteen-wheeler might well account for fewer carbon
emissions than an apple in a single bushel driven thirty miles to a
farmersrsquo market in an old diesel farm truck And that comparison
doesnrsquot account for the carbon dioxide expended by the shoppers
getting to and from the place of purchasemdasha figure that might
be lower for those who shop at grocery stores where only one
trip is necessary than for those who take separate trips to farm-
ersrsquo markets specialty shops and other stores to put the weekrsquos
menu together
Making local and regional food distribution systems more ro-
bust and ef ficient would change the environmental calculus consid-
erably But as things stand now other reasons for eating locally
turn out to be far more compelling What people want by and large
it seems to me is to live in communities that are thriving where
they can find the means to be happy and healthy What better
way to make sure our communities thrive than by locating a chunk
of the most important businesses of our livesmdashthe work of feeding
ourselvesmdashclose to our cities and in our own neighborhoods Bol-
stering local food economies means creating and keeping local
jobs maintaining food producersrsquo interest in and responsiveness to
the needs and wants of the community (including the need for safe
and healthy food) ensuring greater freshness and providing local
consumers with more instead of fewer options regarding where
when and how to buy their food
I still had my doubts about whether all those little guys farming
their hearts out on their one- five- and twenty-acre parcels and
dragging their wares to the farmersrsquo market every week could feed
our country effectively but logic had it that they were doing vitalwork to keep our country from inexorably being taken over part
and parcel by corporate food concerns Local-food entrepreneurs
822019 Change Comes to Dinner How Vertical Farmers Urban Growers and Other Innovators Are Revolutionizing How Amhellip
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullchange-comes-to-dinner-how-vertical-farmers-urban-growers-and-other-innovators 612
20 Change Comes to Dinner
were on the front lines bringing us all hope And hope is what I was
after In trying to find some small answer to the question ldquoWhat
would a better food system look likerdquo I clearly needed to see ldquolocal
foodrdquo in action If what I found didnrsquot appear to be the final glorious
solution to our food dilemmas perhaps I could gain some hints about
what such a solution might be
So one April evening I headed south from my home in Wash-
ington DC to Richmond the capital of Virginia where Mark is
making a go of it with his school bus-cum-roving farmersrsquo market
an unusual business venture he calls Farm to Family His bus route
follows a schedule but he uses his BlackBerry to remind his thou-
sands of Facebook and Twitter fans of his location and to update
them about any change of plans which happen occasionally due to
parking problems absence of shoppers or previously unscheduled
visits
When I inquired whether I might see his operation Mark had
kindly invited me to stay at his house for the night so I could come
on his purchasing rounds at local farms early the following day
Thatrsquos how I found myself sitting at a dining room table in a cozy
house somewhere in Richmond eating a bowl of yogurt criss-
crossed with a drizzle of maple syrup products Mark buys from
local farmers and sells on his bus
ldquoThis is the best stuff yoursquove ever tastedrdquo Mark said pointing at
my bowl Something about his friendly low-key demeanor shaved
head and sun-reddened cheeks reminded me obscurely of a fire-
fighter His wife Suzi a warm woman in a teal ldquoeat localrdquo T-shirt and
reddish hair twisted up in a clip chatted with me about her job in the
alternative healing and body care section of Ellwood Thompsonrsquos aunique Richmond grocery store focused on local food Not long after
my visit she would begin working full-time with mark on Farm to
Family
822019 Change Comes to Dinner How Vertical Farmers Urban Growers and Other Innovators Are Revolutionizing How Amhellip
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullchange-comes-to-dinner-how-vertical-farmers-urban-growers-and-other-innovators 712
School Bus Farm Market 21
ldquoThe Fs should be green darker green Donrsquot you thinkrdquo
Mark interrupted leaning over and showing Suzi a picture on his
BlackBerrymdashthe drafts of a Farm to Family logo sent by his de-
signer
ldquoItrsquos a little busyrdquo she said ldquoYou have to picture it on everythingrdquo
He brooded on this for a few moments then stalked away from
the table leaving Suzi to install me in a sweet-smelling crimson
guest room with an antique bedstead a shelf of Buddhist relics and
a tinkling wind chime made of slices of pink stone
The next morning as we sped down the highway toward the
Shenandoah Valley in his truck dragging a trailer equipped with
six giant plastic coolers Mark told me how he got the idea for the
bus venture after experiencing a political awakening about issues
of industrial food during a masterrsquos program in disaster science and
emergency management A research project about Californiarsquos San
Joaquin Valley for a class called Hazards and Threats to the Future
led him into a sobering investigation of soil salination monocul-
tures water shortages labor issues and petroleumrsquos role in an area
that grows almost 13 percent of the countryrsquos produce
ldquoIt is really bad what is going on out thererdquo he said propping
his arm on the steering wheel ldquoIf that system fails thatrsquos going to
have a major major impact on the countryrdquo The idea for the bus
venture started simmering in the back of his mind but he would
never have gone ahead if he hadnrsquot lost his job working in food ser-
vice at a university By then he had already bought the old bus from
Craigslist on a hunch
All around us spring had burst upon the countryside the pink
cotton candy fluff of redbud trees lacing the edges of the roadwayIt was an unusually hot day for April the temperature reading in
the corner of the rearview mirror was climbing past eighty The
truckrsquos AC was on the fritz
822019 Change Comes to Dinner How Vertical Farmers Urban Growers and Other Innovators Are Revolutionizing How Amhellip
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22 Change Comes to Dinner
ldquoIt all boils down to moneyrdquo he went on ldquoWhat corporations
do is they want to make as much money as they can and exploit
anything in their path to get that done These lobbyists and players
in Washingtonmdashthe government makes laws to benefit them not to
benefit the peoplerdquo For a guy engaged in such a creative and opti-
mistic business endeavor he exuded a surprisingly intense sense of
outrage
We trundled off the highway onto a country road slicing through
green hills and pulled into the parking lot of a McDonaldrsquos of all
places where a white- bearded Mennonite farmer in a straw hat and
his blue-skirted wife in a pale kerchief were waiting incongruously
for us next to their truck and trailer
This was Mike and Diana Puffenbarger a thirty-years-married
couple who run a farm a barbeque business and a hunting and
fishing guide service Mikersquos family has been producing maple
syrup for five generations and he himself has been at it for at least
three decades Their 4 times 4 sported a window sticker saying ldquoTRUTH
WILL SET YOU FREE JOHN 832rdquo alongside another emblazoned with
a picture of a howling coyote in crosshairs surrounded by the motto
ldquoHUNT HARD SHOOT STRAIGHT KILL CLEAN APOLOGIZE TO NO ONErdquo
As they helped load tubs of their pit-cooked barbeque and
bottles of their syrup into Markrsquos truck I asked Mike about their
biggest challenge as small farmers
ldquoThe governmentrdquo he responded without a pause ldquoTheyrsquore let-
ting in all this junk from China But we try to do something they
hammer us Wersquove been butchering meat for years from our farm and
wersquove never had a recall Whatrsquos that tell yourdquo The Puffenbargers
take their animals destined for sale as meat to a slaughterhouse asrequired by the USDA the closest one being in Harrisonburg eighty
miles from their farm in Bolar Virginia They prefer to butcher at
home the meat they eat themselves
822019 Change Comes to Dinner How Vertical Farmers Urban Growers and Other Innovators Are Revolutionizing How Amhellip
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School Bus Farm Market 23
Mikersquos comment highlighted one of the many reasons local-
food advocates cite for buying closer to home The countryrsquos indus-
trial food chain has been busy building itself an abysmal record on
food safety The USDA website posts hundreds of recalls of food
products every year the majority of them for posing a ldquopossible
health riskrdquo The word salmonella makes a distressingly regular ap-
pearance on this list as do E coli and Listeria a dangerous bacte-
rium One compelling reason to buy your foodmdashespecially your
meatmdashfrom smaller-scale farmers who are involved in your com-
munity instead of from corporations whose operations are opaque
remote and likely too massive to be handled safely is that smaller
closer-to-home producers are more likely to have both the ability and
the motivation to make sure their products arenrsquot tainted
Back on the road the pungent odor of manure wafting in the
window and the temperature in the truck climbing toward incendi-
ary Mark told me he had been totally unprepared for what he was
getting into when he started the bus business His original idea was
to go into food desertsmdashurban areas where residents donrsquot have ac-
cess to stores that carry fresh foodmdashand sell his local meat and
produce to these underserved communities He got registered to
accept food stamps and parked in poor neighborhoods waiting for
the rush of customers But the people there looked at him like he
was crazy and continued to spend their money in the corner store
where fresh vegetables are usually absent in favor of fried chicken
chips and soda
ldquoI got blindsided I was really naiumlverdquo he said ldquoA for- profit
business has no incentive to go into a food desert and set up shop
If yoursquore a for- profit business and yoursquore bringing in high-qualitystuff it costs I would be out of business if I were to just go into
low-income areasrdquo Mark was referencing one of the most promi-
nent critiques of the locavore ethos the cost of food from nearby
822019 Change Comes to Dinner How Vertical Farmers Urban Growers and Other Innovators Are Revolutionizing How Amhellip
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullchange-comes-to-dinner-how-vertical-farmers-urban-growers-and-other-innovators 1012
24 Change Comes to Dinner
small farms is almost always substantially higher than the products
of industrial production you can buy in the average supermarket or
at the corner store Critics accuse the eat-local movement of pro-
moting two separate food systems one thatrsquos supplied with healthy
ldquohappyrdquo food for all the people who can afford it and another stocked
with ecologically damaging pesticide laden processed junk for
everyone else
But when yoursquore trying to start a business like Mark Lilly you
donrsquot have the time or money to fix the worldrsquos problems You find
the customers who can help you succeed So while still doing some
work in low-income communities including occasionally giving
away free food (efforts for which he has received high- profile pub-
licity including a three- page spread in People magazine) he has
focused mostly on parts of town where people have a little extra
money to spend and are attuned to the politics of local food He runs
his own version of a community-supported agriculture (CSA) pro-
gram which he calls a USA for ldquourban-supported agriculturerdquo that
has people pay ahead of time for a seasonrsquos worth of biweekly boxes
of fresh food He also delivers milk to peoplersquos doors early in the
morning just like guys used to do back in my grandmotherrsquos time
ldquoIrsquom giving people a way to opt out of the current systemrdquo he
proudly told me as we rattled up a long dirt drive into the cluttered
parking area of Mountain View Dairy Farm Proprietor Christie
Huger dressed for the heat in a white T-shirt athletic shorts and
sandals greeted us as Mark backed the truck up to the loading area
by a dilapidated trailer of fice They consulted for a few moments
by a set of glass-fronted refrigerators before starting to load jars
of blackberry yogurt and glass bottles of milk into the coolers inMarkrsquos trailer
Christiersquos tousled hair and tired smile suggested that it had al-
ready been a long day despite it not yet being noon She used to
822019 Change Comes to Dinner How Vertical Farmers Urban Growers and Other Innovators Are Revolutionizing How Amhellip
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullchange-comes-to-dinner-how-vertical-farmers-urban-growers-and-other-innovators 1112
School Bus Farm Market 25
be an art teacher she told me but she quit teaching two years ago
to attend full-time to the farm I asked her if itrsquos been a hard transi-
tion and she answered unhesitatingly ldquoIf I went back to teaching
itrsquod be easier When you get up at four-thirty and then force your-
self to come inside at eight at night to feed your kids dinner itrsquos
hardrdquo I wondered aloud if she planned to go back to teaching and
her answer was again immediate no way
I followed Christiersquos daughter Isabelle an energetic girl in a
peach tank top and a bowl haircut toward a pen by the house where
a tiny lamb was bleating manically She grabbed a baby bottle full
of water and kneeled down beside the animal
ldquoDo you want to be a farmer when you grow uprdquo I asked
thinking about that statistic I had recently come across the average
age of farmers in the United States is fifty-five and rising We badly
need kids to take an interest in this kind of life
ldquoI already amrdquo she said matter-of-factly squinting up at me in
the sunshine ldquoIrsquom a sheep farmer Because we have this little baby
sheeprdquo
My heart melted and I realized that this moment as much as the
fresh delicious milk itself was what the consumers on Markrsquos bus
are buying From Mennonite farmers to milk in glass bottles to the
old yellow school bus Markrsquos business plays on city dwellersrsquo sense
of nostalgia for what they see as a safe picturesque and pastoral
yesteryear A common theme in the movement to reinvigorate local
food systems is the idea of a David-and-Goliath battle between cor-
porate overlords and the small family farmer with the corporation
representing the evils of mechanized overcrowded stifling isolating
modern life and the little guy laying claim to a virtuous existence ofnature space freedom and community Not to mention little baby
sheep
I mentioned this observation to Mark as we got back on the road
822019 Change Comes to Dinner How Vertical Farmers Urban Growers and Other Innovators Are Revolutionizing How Amhellip
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullchange-comes-to-dinner-how-vertical-farmers-urban-growers-and-other-innovators 1212
26 Change Comes to Dinner
heading to our next stop On the bus he told me visitors often revel
in memories of other types of roving food vendors that populated
their long-ago childhoods Customers reminisce about the guys
who used to come by their urban neighborhoods in trucks or with
handcarts yelling ldquoFresh fishrdquo or ldquoWatermelonrdquo
ldquoBack in the day there was the milkman and the meat delivery
guyrdquo Mark said ldquoYou knew them They came to your house It was
interactive You chatted with them Thatrsquos what I try to do Irsquom in-
teractive I chat with peoplerdquo
Mark tries in short to give his customers ldquoan experiencerdquo He
brings baby animals for children to hold He talks to customers about
what they can do with what he sellsmdashhow to cook a spaghetti squash
for instance or which kind of barbeque sauce will go best on pulled
pork At the time of our journey his bus was plastered with hand-
lettered signs proclaiming a variety of riling slogans such as ldquoEAT
AT HOME COOK HAVE FUNrdquo and ldquoDONrsquoT RELY ON A FAILING HIGHLY
PROCESSED UNSUSTAINABLE TOXIC FOOD SYSTEM GROW AND PRESERVE
YOUR OWN FOOD NOWrdquo
When he invites customers onto his bus hersquos asking them not
only to step inside the vehicle but also to move into another way of
looking at our world of food The way he thinks of it coming onto
his bus is the next best thing to experiencing the bracing goodness
of the farm itself ldquoIrsquom packaging a farm onto a school busrdquo he
said ldquoand bringing it to themrdquo
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MY HOPERAKING JOURNEY BEGAN like so many voyages of discov-
ery do on an old yellow school bus This bus was not full of chil-
dren though but foodmdashtomatoes potatoes lettuce apple cider
milk ribs chicken barbeque saucemdashall of it from farms within 150
miles of the Richmond street corner where I filled up my shopping
basket in this unlikely vehicle
Up by the steering wheel Mark Lilly presided over the bus with
a proprietary air greeting people as they came aboard to browse in
the apple barrels wooden shelves and freezers he had installed
showing kids the baby chicks he was keeping in a cage out on the
sidewalk The products I picked out to purchasemdasha tub of frozen
pit-cooked barbeque made by a Mennonite family a whole chicken
from the famous Polyface Farm a glass bottle of yogurt topped
with blackberry jammdashwere things that I had spent ten hours driv-
ing all over the Virginia countryside with Mark to pick up a few
days before I couldnrsquot wait to see how they tastedA visit with a local-food entrepreneur like Mark was I felt the
logical place to start my journey the commitment to eating locally
is the sacred cow of the sustainable food movement There seems
CHAPTER 1
School Bus Farm Market
An unusual small business brings farm- fresh to the city
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18 Change Comes to Dinner
to be a generalmdashthough sometimes only vaguely justifiedmdash
consensus that sourcing as much of our food as possible from within
a short driving distance of our houses is one of the most important
things we can do to right the sinking ship of the US food system
I wondered if this was true Is relocalizing our food economy
the answer to our woes It seemed improbable to me that small
farmers selling at urban marketsmdashthe image almost universally as-
sociated with the idea of ldquoeating localrdquomdashcould be the much sought-
after solution to all the complicated problems of our industrially
dominated food system Arenrsquot these local farms just too small and
too few and too apt to be growing things like garlic scapes and
ramps whichmdashletrsquos be honestmdashsound more like pieces of equip-
ment found in a skateboard park than food
The most familiar argument for locavorism arises from an ob-
jection to the massive distances that the vast majority of food
eaten in the United States travels before it reaches dinner plates
The figure fifteen hundred miles is thrown around a lot and while
that numbermdashcalculated by the Leopold Center for Sustainable
Agriculturemdashis only kind of true and then only if you live in Chi-
cago the exact number doesnrsquot really matter the sticking point is
that we eat many things that have flown on airplanes from other
hemispheres or been trucked across continents (or back and forth
between states in a pointless bureaucratic shuf fle) to get to us
The ghastly carbon footprint of all that global food shipping is
the more commonly reiterated reason to eat more locally The envi-
ronmental impact of getting an apple from five miles away the
logic goes must surely be less than that of shipping your fruit in
from New Zealand Unfortunately for the locavores the ecologicalargument for eating locally doesnrsquot always stand up well to scru-
tiny An apple in a load of millions shipped cross-country in an ef-
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School Bus Farm Market 19
ficient eighteen-wheeler might well account for fewer carbon
emissions than an apple in a single bushel driven thirty miles to a
farmersrsquo market in an old diesel farm truck And that comparison
doesnrsquot account for the carbon dioxide expended by the shoppers
getting to and from the place of purchasemdasha figure that might
be lower for those who shop at grocery stores where only one
trip is necessary than for those who take separate trips to farm-
ersrsquo markets specialty shops and other stores to put the weekrsquos
menu together
Making local and regional food distribution systems more ro-
bust and ef ficient would change the environmental calculus consid-
erably But as things stand now other reasons for eating locally
turn out to be far more compelling What people want by and large
it seems to me is to live in communities that are thriving where
they can find the means to be happy and healthy What better
way to make sure our communities thrive than by locating a chunk
of the most important businesses of our livesmdashthe work of feeding
ourselvesmdashclose to our cities and in our own neighborhoods Bol-
stering local food economies means creating and keeping local
jobs maintaining food producersrsquo interest in and responsiveness to
the needs and wants of the community (including the need for safe
and healthy food) ensuring greater freshness and providing local
consumers with more instead of fewer options regarding where
when and how to buy their food
I still had my doubts about whether all those little guys farming
their hearts out on their one- five- and twenty-acre parcels and
dragging their wares to the farmersrsquo market every week could feed
our country effectively but logic had it that they were doing vitalwork to keep our country from inexorably being taken over part
and parcel by corporate food concerns Local-food entrepreneurs
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20 Change Comes to Dinner
were on the front lines bringing us all hope And hope is what I was
after In trying to find some small answer to the question ldquoWhat
would a better food system look likerdquo I clearly needed to see ldquolocal
foodrdquo in action If what I found didnrsquot appear to be the final glorious
solution to our food dilemmas perhaps I could gain some hints about
what such a solution might be
So one April evening I headed south from my home in Wash-
ington DC to Richmond the capital of Virginia where Mark is
making a go of it with his school bus-cum-roving farmersrsquo market
an unusual business venture he calls Farm to Family His bus route
follows a schedule but he uses his BlackBerry to remind his thou-
sands of Facebook and Twitter fans of his location and to update
them about any change of plans which happen occasionally due to
parking problems absence of shoppers or previously unscheduled
visits
When I inquired whether I might see his operation Mark had
kindly invited me to stay at his house for the night so I could come
on his purchasing rounds at local farms early the following day
Thatrsquos how I found myself sitting at a dining room table in a cozy
house somewhere in Richmond eating a bowl of yogurt criss-
crossed with a drizzle of maple syrup products Mark buys from
local farmers and sells on his bus
ldquoThis is the best stuff yoursquove ever tastedrdquo Mark said pointing at
my bowl Something about his friendly low-key demeanor shaved
head and sun-reddened cheeks reminded me obscurely of a fire-
fighter His wife Suzi a warm woman in a teal ldquoeat localrdquo T-shirt and
reddish hair twisted up in a clip chatted with me about her job in the
alternative healing and body care section of Ellwood Thompsonrsquos aunique Richmond grocery store focused on local food Not long after
my visit she would begin working full-time with mark on Farm to
Family
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School Bus Farm Market 21
ldquoThe Fs should be green darker green Donrsquot you thinkrdquo
Mark interrupted leaning over and showing Suzi a picture on his
BlackBerrymdashthe drafts of a Farm to Family logo sent by his de-
signer
ldquoItrsquos a little busyrdquo she said ldquoYou have to picture it on everythingrdquo
He brooded on this for a few moments then stalked away from
the table leaving Suzi to install me in a sweet-smelling crimson
guest room with an antique bedstead a shelf of Buddhist relics and
a tinkling wind chime made of slices of pink stone
The next morning as we sped down the highway toward the
Shenandoah Valley in his truck dragging a trailer equipped with
six giant plastic coolers Mark told me how he got the idea for the
bus venture after experiencing a political awakening about issues
of industrial food during a masterrsquos program in disaster science and
emergency management A research project about Californiarsquos San
Joaquin Valley for a class called Hazards and Threats to the Future
led him into a sobering investigation of soil salination monocul-
tures water shortages labor issues and petroleumrsquos role in an area
that grows almost 13 percent of the countryrsquos produce
ldquoIt is really bad what is going on out thererdquo he said propping
his arm on the steering wheel ldquoIf that system fails thatrsquos going to
have a major major impact on the countryrdquo The idea for the bus
venture started simmering in the back of his mind but he would
never have gone ahead if he hadnrsquot lost his job working in food ser-
vice at a university By then he had already bought the old bus from
Craigslist on a hunch
All around us spring had burst upon the countryside the pink
cotton candy fluff of redbud trees lacing the edges of the roadwayIt was an unusually hot day for April the temperature reading in
the corner of the rearview mirror was climbing past eighty The
truckrsquos AC was on the fritz
822019 Change Comes to Dinner How Vertical Farmers Urban Growers and Other Innovators Are Revolutionizing How Amhellip
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22 Change Comes to Dinner
ldquoIt all boils down to moneyrdquo he went on ldquoWhat corporations
do is they want to make as much money as they can and exploit
anything in their path to get that done These lobbyists and players
in Washingtonmdashthe government makes laws to benefit them not to
benefit the peoplerdquo For a guy engaged in such a creative and opti-
mistic business endeavor he exuded a surprisingly intense sense of
outrage
We trundled off the highway onto a country road slicing through
green hills and pulled into the parking lot of a McDonaldrsquos of all
places where a white- bearded Mennonite farmer in a straw hat and
his blue-skirted wife in a pale kerchief were waiting incongruously
for us next to their truck and trailer
This was Mike and Diana Puffenbarger a thirty-years-married
couple who run a farm a barbeque business and a hunting and
fishing guide service Mikersquos family has been producing maple
syrup for five generations and he himself has been at it for at least
three decades Their 4 times 4 sported a window sticker saying ldquoTRUTH
WILL SET YOU FREE JOHN 832rdquo alongside another emblazoned with
a picture of a howling coyote in crosshairs surrounded by the motto
ldquoHUNT HARD SHOOT STRAIGHT KILL CLEAN APOLOGIZE TO NO ONErdquo
As they helped load tubs of their pit-cooked barbeque and
bottles of their syrup into Markrsquos truck I asked Mike about their
biggest challenge as small farmers
ldquoThe governmentrdquo he responded without a pause ldquoTheyrsquore let-
ting in all this junk from China But we try to do something they
hammer us Wersquove been butchering meat for years from our farm and
wersquove never had a recall Whatrsquos that tell yourdquo The Puffenbargers
take their animals destined for sale as meat to a slaughterhouse asrequired by the USDA the closest one being in Harrisonburg eighty
miles from their farm in Bolar Virginia They prefer to butcher at
home the meat they eat themselves
822019 Change Comes to Dinner How Vertical Farmers Urban Growers and Other Innovators Are Revolutionizing How Amhellip
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School Bus Farm Market 23
Mikersquos comment highlighted one of the many reasons local-
food advocates cite for buying closer to home The countryrsquos indus-
trial food chain has been busy building itself an abysmal record on
food safety The USDA website posts hundreds of recalls of food
products every year the majority of them for posing a ldquopossible
health riskrdquo The word salmonella makes a distressingly regular ap-
pearance on this list as do E coli and Listeria a dangerous bacte-
rium One compelling reason to buy your foodmdashespecially your
meatmdashfrom smaller-scale farmers who are involved in your com-
munity instead of from corporations whose operations are opaque
remote and likely too massive to be handled safely is that smaller
closer-to-home producers are more likely to have both the ability and
the motivation to make sure their products arenrsquot tainted
Back on the road the pungent odor of manure wafting in the
window and the temperature in the truck climbing toward incendi-
ary Mark told me he had been totally unprepared for what he was
getting into when he started the bus business His original idea was
to go into food desertsmdashurban areas where residents donrsquot have ac-
cess to stores that carry fresh foodmdashand sell his local meat and
produce to these underserved communities He got registered to
accept food stamps and parked in poor neighborhoods waiting for
the rush of customers But the people there looked at him like he
was crazy and continued to spend their money in the corner store
where fresh vegetables are usually absent in favor of fried chicken
chips and soda
ldquoI got blindsided I was really naiumlverdquo he said ldquoA for- profit
business has no incentive to go into a food desert and set up shop
If yoursquore a for- profit business and yoursquore bringing in high-qualitystuff it costs I would be out of business if I were to just go into
low-income areasrdquo Mark was referencing one of the most promi-
nent critiques of the locavore ethos the cost of food from nearby
822019 Change Comes to Dinner How Vertical Farmers Urban Growers and Other Innovators Are Revolutionizing How Amhellip
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullchange-comes-to-dinner-how-vertical-farmers-urban-growers-and-other-innovators 1012
24 Change Comes to Dinner
small farms is almost always substantially higher than the products
of industrial production you can buy in the average supermarket or
at the corner store Critics accuse the eat-local movement of pro-
moting two separate food systems one thatrsquos supplied with healthy
ldquohappyrdquo food for all the people who can afford it and another stocked
with ecologically damaging pesticide laden processed junk for
everyone else
But when yoursquore trying to start a business like Mark Lilly you
donrsquot have the time or money to fix the worldrsquos problems You find
the customers who can help you succeed So while still doing some
work in low-income communities including occasionally giving
away free food (efforts for which he has received high- profile pub-
licity including a three- page spread in People magazine) he has
focused mostly on parts of town where people have a little extra
money to spend and are attuned to the politics of local food He runs
his own version of a community-supported agriculture (CSA) pro-
gram which he calls a USA for ldquourban-supported agriculturerdquo that
has people pay ahead of time for a seasonrsquos worth of biweekly boxes
of fresh food He also delivers milk to peoplersquos doors early in the
morning just like guys used to do back in my grandmotherrsquos time
ldquoIrsquom giving people a way to opt out of the current systemrdquo he
proudly told me as we rattled up a long dirt drive into the cluttered
parking area of Mountain View Dairy Farm Proprietor Christie
Huger dressed for the heat in a white T-shirt athletic shorts and
sandals greeted us as Mark backed the truck up to the loading area
by a dilapidated trailer of fice They consulted for a few moments
by a set of glass-fronted refrigerators before starting to load jars
of blackberry yogurt and glass bottles of milk into the coolers inMarkrsquos trailer
Christiersquos tousled hair and tired smile suggested that it had al-
ready been a long day despite it not yet being noon She used to
822019 Change Comes to Dinner How Vertical Farmers Urban Growers and Other Innovators Are Revolutionizing How Amhellip
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullchange-comes-to-dinner-how-vertical-farmers-urban-growers-and-other-innovators 1112
School Bus Farm Market 25
be an art teacher she told me but she quit teaching two years ago
to attend full-time to the farm I asked her if itrsquos been a hard transi-
tion and she answered unhesitatingly ldquoIf I went back to teaching
itrsquod be easier When you get up at four-thirty and then force your-
self to come inside at eight at night to feed your kids dinner itrsquos
hardrdquo I wondered aloud if she planned to go back to teaching and
her answer was again immediate no way
I followed Christiersquos daughter Isabelle an energetic girl in a
peach tank top and a bowl haircut toward a pen by the house where
a tiny lamb was bleating manically She grabbed a baby bottle full
of water and kneeled down beside the animal
ldquoDo you want to be a farmer when you grow uprdquo I asked
thinking about that statistic I had recently come across the average
age of farmers in the United States is fifty-five and rising We badly
need kids to take an interest in this kind of life
ldquoI already amrdquo she said matter-of-factly squinting up at me in
the sunshine ldquoIrsquom a sheep farmer Because we have this little baby
sheeprdquo
My heart melted and I realized that this moment as much as the
fresh delicious milk itself was what the consumers on Markrsquos bus
are buying From Mennonite farmers to milk in glass bottles to the
old yellow school bus Markrsquos business plays on city dwellersrsquo sense
of nostalgia for what they see as a safe picturesque and pastoral
yesteryear A common theme in the movement to reinvigorate local
food systems is the idea of a David-and-Goliath battle between cor-
porate overlords and the small family farmer with the corporation
representing the evils of mechanized overcrowded stifling isolating
modern life and the little guy laying claim to a virtuous existence ofnature space freedom and community Not to mention little baby
sheep
I mentioned this observation to Mark as we got back on the road
822019 Change Comes to Dinner How Vertical Farmers Urban Growers and Other Innovators Are Revolutionizing How Amhellip
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullchange-comes-to-dinner-how-vertical-farmers-urban-growers-and-other-innovators 1212
26 Change Comes to Dinner
heading to our next stop On the bus he told me visitors often revel
in memories of other types of roving food vendors that populated
their long-ago childhoods Customers reminisce about the guys
who used to come by their urban neighborhoods in trucks or with
handcarts yelling ldquoFresh fishrdquo or ldquoWatermelonrdquo
ldquoBack in the day there was the milkman and the meat delivery
guyrdquo Mark said ldquoYou knew them They came to your house It was
interactive You chatted with them Thatrsquos what I try to do Irsquom in-
teractive I chat with peoplerdquo
Mark tries in short to give his customers ldquoan experiencerdquo He
brings baby animals for children to hold He talks to customers about
what they can do with what he sellsmdashhow to cook a spaghetti squash
for instance or which kind of barbeque sauce will go best on pulled
pork At the time of our journey his bus was plastered with hand-
lettered signs proclaiming a variety of riling slogans such as ldquoEAT
AT HOME COOK HAVE FUNrdquo and ldquoDONrsquoT RELY ON A FAILING HIGHLY
PROCESSED UNSUSTAINABLE TOXIC FOOD SYSTEM GROW AND PRESERVE
YOUR OWN FOOD NOWrdquo
When he invites customers onto his bus hersquos asking them not
only to step inside the vehicle but also to move into another way of
looking at our world of food The way he thinks of it coming onto
his bus is the next best thing to experiencing the bracing goodness
of the farm itself ldquoIrsquom packaging a farm onto a school busrdquo he
said ldquoand bringing it to themrdquo
822019 Change Comes to Dinner How Vertical Farmers Urban Growers and Other Innovators Are Revolutionizing How Amhellip
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullchange-comes-to-dinner-how-vertical-farmers-urban-growers-and-other-innovators 412
18 Change Comes to Dinner
to be a generalmdashthough sometimes only vaguely justifiedmdash
consensus that sourcing as much of our food as possible from within
a short driving distance of our houses is one of the most important
things we can do to right the sinking ship of the US food system
I wondered if this was true Is relocalizing our food economy
the answer to our woes It seemed improbable to me that small
farmers selling at urban marketsmdashthe image almost universally as-
sociated with the idea of ldquoeating localrdquomdashcould be the much sought-
after solution to all the complicated problems of our industrially
dominated food system Arenrsquot these local farms just too small and
too few and too apt to be growing things like garlic scapes and
ramps whichmdashletrsquos be honestmdashsound more like pieces of equip-
ment found in a skateboard park than food
The most familiar argument for locavorism arises from an ob-
jection to the massive distances that the vast majority of food
eaten in the United States travels before it reaches dinner plates
The figure fifteen hundred miles is thrown around a lot and while
that numbermdashcalculated by the Leopold Center for Sustainable
Agriculturemdashis only kind of true and then only if you live in Chi-
cago the exact number doesnrsquot really matter the sticking point is
that we eat many things that have flown on airplanes from other
hemispheres or been trucked across continents (or back and forth
between states in a pointless bureaucratic shuf fle) to get to us
The ghastly carbon footprint of all that global food shipping is
the more commonly reiterated reason to eat more locally The envi-
ronmental impact of getting an apple from five miles away the
logic goes must surely be less than that of shipping your fruit in
from New Zealand Unfortunately for the locavores the ecologicalargument for eating locally doesnrsquot always stand up well to scru-
tiny An apple in a load of millions shipped cross-country in an ef-
822019 Change Comes to Dinner How Vertical Farmers Urban Growers and Other Innovators Are Revolutionizing How Amhellip
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullchange-comes-to-dinner-how-vertical-farmers-urban-growers-and-other-innovators 512
School Bus Farm Market 19
ficient eighteen-wheeler might well account for fewer carbon
emissions than an apple in a single bushel driven thirty miles to a
farmersrsquo market in an old diesel farm truck And that comparison
doesnrsquot account for the carbon dioxide expended by the shoppers
getting to and from the place of purchasemdasha figure that might
be lower for those who shop at grocery stores where only one
trip is necessary than for those who take separate trips to farm-
ersrsquo markets specialty shops and other stores to put the weekrsquos
menu together
Making local and regional food distribution systems more ro-
bust and ef ficient would change the environmental calculus consid-
erably But as things stand now other reasons for eating locally
turn out to be far more compelling What people want by and large
it seems to me is to live in communities that are thriving where
they can find the means to be happy and healthy What better
way to make sure our communities thrive than by locating a chunk
of the most important businesses of our livesmdashthe work of feeding
ourselvesmdashclose to our cities and in our own neighborhoods Bol-
stering local food economies means creating and keeping local
jobs maintaining food producersrsquo interest in and responsiveness to
the needs and wants of the community (including the need for safe
and healthy food) ensuring greater freshness and providing local
consumers with more instead of fewer options regarding where
when and how to buy their food
I still had my doubts about whether all those little guys farming
their hearts out on their one- five- and twenty-acre parcels and
dragging their wares to the farmersrsquo market every week could feed
our country effectively but logic had it that they were doing vitalwork to keep our country from inexorably being taken over part
and parcel by corporate food concerns Local-food entrepreneurs
822019 Change Comes to Dinner How Vertical Farmers Urban Growers and Other Innovators Are Revolutionizing How Amhellip
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullchange-comes-to-dinner-how-vertical-farmers-urban-growers-and-other-innovators 612
20 Change Comes to Dinner
were on the front lines bringing us all hope And hope is what I was
after In trying to find some small answer to the question ldquoWhat
would a better food system look likerdquo I clearly needed to see ldquolocal
foodrdquo in action If what I found didnrsquot appear to be the final glorious
solution to our food dilemmas perhaps I could gain some hints about
what such a solution might be
So one April evening I headed south from my home in Wash-
ington DC to Richmond the capital of Virginia where Mark is
making a go of it with his school bus-cum-roving farmersrsquo market
an unusual business venture he calls Farm to Family His bus route
follows a schedule but he uses his BlackBerry to remind his thou-
sands of Facebook and Twitter fans of his location and to update
them about any change of plans which happen occasionally due to
parking problems absence of shoppers or previously unscheduled
visits
When I inquired whether I might see his operation Mark had
kindly invited me to stay at his house for the night so I could come
on his purchasing rounds at local farms early the following day
Thatrsquos how I found myself sitting at a dining room table in a cozy
house somewhere in Richmond eating a bowl of yogurt criss-
crossed with a drizzle of maple syrup products Mark buys from
local farmers and sells on his bus
ldquoThis is the best stuff yoursquove ever tastedrdquo Mark said pointing at
my bowl Something about his friendly low-key demeanor shaved
head and sun-reddened cheeks reminded me obscurely of a fire-
fighter His wife Suzi a warm woman in a teal ldquoeat localrdquo T-shirt and
reddish hair twisted up in a clip chatted with me about her job in the
alternative healing and body care section of Ellwood Thompsonrsquos aunique Richmond grocery store focused on local food Not long after
my visit she would begin working full-time with mark on Farm to
Family
822019 Change Comes to Dinner How Vertical Farmers Urban Growers and Other Innovators Are Revolutionizing How Amhellip
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullchange-comes-to-dinner-how-vertical-farmers-urban-growers-and-other-innovators 712
School Bus Farm Market 21
ldquoThe Fs should be green darker green Donrsquot you thinkrdquo
Mark interrupted leaning over and showing Suzi a picture on his
BlackBerrymdashthe drafts of a Farm to Family logo sent by his de-
signer
ldquoItrsquos a little busyrdquo she said ldquoYou have to picture it on everythingrdquo
He brooded on this for a few moments then stalked away from
the table leaving Suzi to install me in a sweet-smelling crimson
guest room with an antique bedstead a shelf of Buddhist relics and
a tinkling wind chime made of slices of pink stone
The next morning as we sped down the highway toward the
Shenandoah Valley in his truck dragging a trailer equipped with
six giant plastic coolers Mark told me how he got the idea for the
bus venture after experiencing a political awakening about issues
of industrial food during a masterrsquos program in disaster science and
emergency management A research project about Californiarsquos San
Joaquin Valley for a class called Hazards and Threats to the Future
led him into a sobering investigation of soil salination monocul-
tures water shortages labor issues and petroleumrsquos role in an area
that grows almost 13 percent of the countryrsquos produce
ldquoIt is really bad what is going on out thererdquo he said propping
his arm on the steering wheel ldquoIf that system fails thatrsquos going to
have a major major impact on the countryrdquo The idea for the bus
venture started simmering in the back of his mind but he would
never have gone ahead if he hadnrsquot lost his job working in food ser-
vice at a university By then he had already bought the old bus from
Craigslist on a hunch
All around us spring had burst upon the countryside the pink
cotton candy fluff of redbud trees lacing the edges of the roadwayIt was an unusually hot day for April the temperature reading in
the corner of the rearview mirror was climbing past eighty The
truckrsquos AC was on the fritz
822019 Change Comes to Dinner How Vertical Farmers Urban Growers and Other Innovators Are Revolutionizing How Amhellip
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullchange-comes-to-dinner-how-vertical-farmers-urban-growers-and-other-innovators 812
22 Change Comes to Dinner
ldquoIt all boils down to moneyrdquo he went on ldquoWhat corporations
do is they want to make as much money as they can and exploit
anything in their path to get that done These lobbyists and players
in Washingtonmdashthe government makes laws to benefit them not to
benefit the peoplerdquo For a guy engaged in such a creative and opti-
mistic business endeavor he exuded a surprisingly intense sense of
outrage
We trundled off the highway onto a country road slicing through
green hills and pulled into the parking lot of a McDonaldrsquos of all
places where a white- bearded Mennonite farmer in a straw hat and
his blue-skirted wife in a pale kerchief were waiting incongruously
for us next to their truck and trailer
This was Mike and Diana Puffenbarger a thirty-years-married
couple who run a farm a barbeque business and a hunting and
fishing guide service Mikersquos family has been producing maple
syrup for five generations and he himself has been at it for at least
three decades Their 4 times 4 sported a window sticker saying ldquoTRUTH
WILL SET YOU FREE JOHN 832rdquo alongside another emblazoned with
a picture of a howling coyote in crosshairs surrounded by the motto
ldquoHUNT HARD SHOOT STRAIGHT KILL CLEAN APOLOGIZE TO NO ONErdquo
As they helped load tubs of their pit-cooked barbeque and
bottles of their syrup into Markrsquos truck I asked Mike about their
biggest challenge as small farmers
ldquoThe governmentrdquo he responded without a pause ldquoTheyrsquore let-
ting in all this junk from China But we try to do something they
hammer us Wersquove been butchering meat for years from our farm and
wersquove never had a recall Whatrsquos that tell yourdquo The Puffenbargers
take their animals destined for sale as meat to a slaughterhouse asrequired by the USDA the closest one being in Harrisonburg eighty
miles from their farm in Bolar Virginia They prefer to butcher at
home the meat they eat themselves
822019 Change Comes to Dinner How Vertical Farmers Urban Growers and Other Innovators Are Revolutionizing How Amhellip
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullchange-comes-to-dinner-how-vertical-farmers-urban-growers-and-other-innovators 912
School Bus Farm Market 23
Mikersquos comment highlighted one of the many reasons local-
food advocates cite for buying closer to home The countryrsquos indus-
trial food chain has been busy building itself an abysmal record on
food safety The USDA website posts hundreds of recalls of food
products every year the majority of them for posing a ldquopossible
health riskrdquo The word salmonella makes a distressingly regular ap-
pearance on this list as do E coli and Listeria a dangerous bacte-
rium One compelling reason to buy your foodmdashespecially your
meatmdashfrom smaller-scale farmers who are involved in your com-
munity instead of from corporations whose operations are opaque
remote and likely too massive to be handled safely is that smaller
closer-to-home producers are more likely to have both the ability and
the motivation to make sure their products arenrsquot tainted
Back on the road the pungent odor of manure wafting in the
window and the temperature in the truck climbing toward incendi-
ary Mark told me he had been totally unprepared for what he was
getting into when he started the bus business His original idea was
to go into food desertsmdashurban areas where residents donrsquot have ac-
cess to stores that carry fresh foodmdashand sell his local meat and
produce to these underserved communities He got registered to
accept food stamps and parked in poor neighborhoods waiting for
the rush of customers But the people there looked at him like he
was crazy and continued to spend their money in the corner store
where fresh vegetables are usually absent in favor of fried chicken
chips and soda
ldquoI got blindsided I was really naiumlverdquo he said ldquoA for- profit
business has no incentive to go into a food desert and set up shop
If yoursquore a for- profit business and yoursquore bringing in high-qualitystuff it costs I would be out of business if I were to just go into
low-income areasrdquo Mark was referencing one of the most promi-
nent critiques of the locavore ethos the cost of food from nearby
822019 Change Comes to Dinner How Vertical Farmers Urban Growers and Other Innovators Are Revolutionizing How Amhellip
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullchange-comes-to-dinner-how-vertical-farmers-urban-growers-and-other-innovators 1012
24 Change Comes to Dinner
small farms is almost always substantially higher than the products
of industrial production you can buy in the average supermarket or
at the corner store Critics accuse the eat-local movement of pro-
moting two separate food systems one thatrsquos supplied with healthy
ldquohappyrdquo food for all the people who can afford it and another stocked
with ecologically damaging pesticide laden processed junk for
everyone else
But when yoursquore trying to start a business like Mark Lilly you
donrsquot have the time or money to fix the worldrsquos problems You find
the customers who can help you succeed So while still doing some
work in low-income communities including occasionally giving
away free food (efforts for which he has received high- profile pub-
licity including a three- page spread in People magazine) he has
focused mostly on parts of town where people have a little extra
money to spend and are attuned to the politics of local food He runs
his own version of a community-supported agriculture (CSA) pro-
gram which he calls a USA for ldquourban-supported agriculturerdquo that
has people pay ahead of time for a seasonrsquos worth of biweekly boxes
of fresh food He also delivers milk to peoplersquos doors early in the
morning just like guys used to do back in my grandmotherrsquos time
ldquoIrsquom giving people a way to opt out of the current systemrdquo he
proudly told me as we rattled up a long dirt drive into the cluttered
parking area of Mountain View Dairy Farm Proprietor Christie
Huger dressed for the heat in a white T-shirt athletic shorts and
sandals greeted us as Mark backed the truck up to the loading area
by a dilapidated trailer of fice They consulted for a few moments
by a set of glass-fronted refrigerators before starting to load jars
of blackberry yogurt and glass bottles of milk into the coolers inMarkrsquos trailer
Christiersquos tousled hair and tired smile suggested that it had al-
ready been a long day despite it not yet being noon She used to
822019 Change Comes to Dinner How Vertical Farmers Urban Growers and Other Innovators Are Revolutionizing How Amhellip
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullchange-comes-to-dinner-how-vertical-farmers-urban-growers-and-other-innovators 1112
School Bus Farm Market 25
be an art teacher she told me but she quit teaching two years ago
to attend full-time to the farm I asked her if itrsquos been a hard transi-
tion and she answered unhesitatingly ldquoIf I went back to teaching
itrsquod be easier When you get up at four-thirty and then force your-
self to come inside at eight at night to feed your kids dinner itrsquos
hardrdquo I wondered aloud if she planned to go back to teaching and
her answer was again immediate no way
I followed Christiersquos daughter Isabelle an energetic girl in a
peach tank top and a bowl haircut toward a pen by the house where
a tiny lamb was bleating manically She grabbed a baby bottle full
of water and kneeled down beside the animal
ldquoDo you want to be a farmer when you grow uprdquo I asked
thinking about that statistic I had recently come across the average
age of farmers in the United States is fifty-five and rising We badly
need kids to take an interest in this kind of life
ldquoI already amrdquo she said matter-of-factly squinting up at me in
the sunshine ldquoIrsquom a sheep farmer Because we have this little baby
sheeprdquo
My heart melted and I realized that this moment as much as the
fresh delicious milk itself was what the consumers on Markrsquos bus
are buying From Mennonite farmers to milk in glass bottles to the
old yellow school bus Markrsquos business plays on city dwellersrsquo sense
of nostalgia for what they see as a safe picturesque and pastoral
yesteryear A common theme in the movement to reinvigorate local
food systems is the idea of a David-and-Goliath battle between cor-
porate overlords and the small family farmer with the corporation
representing the evils of mechanized overcrowded stifling isolating
modern life and the little guy laying claim to a virtuous existence ofnature space freedom and community Not to mention little baby
sheep
I mentioned this observation to Mark as we got back on the road
822019 Change Comes to Dinner How Vertical Farmers Urban Growers and Other Innovators Are Revolutionizing How Amhellip
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullchange-comes-to-dinner-how-vertical-farmers-urban-growers-and-other-innovators 1212
26 Change Comes to Dinner
heading to our next stop On the bus he told me visitors often revel
in memories of other types of roving food vendors that populated
their long-ago childhoods Customers reminisce about the guys
who used to come by their urban neighborhoods in trucks or with
handcarts yelling ldquoFresh fishrdquo or ldquoWatermelonrdquo
ldquoBack in the day there was the milkman and the meat delivery
guyrdquo Mark said ldquoYou knew them They came to your house It was
interactive You chatted with them Thatrsquos what I try to do Irsquom in-
teractive I chat with peoplerdquo
Mark tries in short to give his customers ldquoan experiencerdquo He
brings baby animals for children to hold He talks to customers about
what they can do with what he sellsmdashhow to cook a spaghetti squash
for instance or which kind of barbeque sauce will go best on pulled
pork At the time of our journey his bus was plastered with hand-
lettered signs proclaiming a variety of riling slogans such as ldquoEAT
AT HOME COOK HAVE FUNrdquo and ldquoDONrsquoT RELY ON A FAILING HIGHLY
PROCESSED UNSUSTAINABLE TOXIC FOOD SYSTEM GROW AND PRESERVE
YOUR OWN FOOD NOWrdquo
When he invites customers onto his bus hersquos asking them not
only to step inside the vehicle but also to move into another way of
looking at our world of food The way he thinks of it coming onto
his bus is the next best thing to experiencing the bracing goodness
of the farm itself ldquoIrsquom packaging a farm onto a school busrdquo he
said ldquoand bringing it to themrdquo
822019 Change Comes to Dinner How Vertical Farmers Urban Growers and Other Innovators Are Revolutionizing How Amhellip
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullchange-comes-to-dinner-how-vertical-farmers-urban-growers-and-other-innovators 512
School Bus Farm Market 19
ficient eighteen-wheeler might well account for fewer carbon
emissions than an apple in a single bushel driven thirty miles to a
farmersrsquo market in an old diesel farm truck And that comparison
doesnrsquot account for the carbon dioxide expended by the shoppers
getting to and from the place of purchasemdasha figure that might
be lower for those who shop at grocery stores where only one
trip is necessary than for those who take separate trips to farm-
ersrsquo markets specialty shops and other stores to put the weekrsquos
menu together
Making local and regional food distribution systems more ro-
bust and ef ficient would change the environmental calculus consid-
erably But as things stand now other reasons for eating locally
turn out to be far more compelling What people want by and large
it seems to me is to live in communities that are thriving where
they can find the means to be happy and healthy What better
way to make sure our communities thrive than by locating a chunk
of the most important businesses of our livesmdashthe work of feeding
ourselvesmdashclose to our cities and in our own neighborhoods Bol-
stering local food economies means creating and keeping local
jobs maintaining food producersrsquo interest in and responsiveness to
the needs and wants of the community (including the need for safe
and healthy food) ensuring greater freshness and providing local
consumers with more instead of fewer options regarding where
when and how to buy their food
I still had my doubts about whether all those little guys farming
their hearts out on their one- five- and twenty-acre parcels and
dragging their wares to the farmersrsquo market every week could feed
our country effectively but logic had it that they were doing vitalwork to keep our country from inexorably being taken over part
and parcel by corporate food concerns Local-food entrepreneurs
822019 Change Comes to Dinner How Vertical Farmers Urban Growers and Other Innovators Are Revolutionizing How Amhellip
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullchange-comes-to-dinner-how-vertical-farmers-urban-growers-and-other-innovators 612
20 Change Comes to Dinner
were on the front lines bringing us all hope And hope is what I was
after In trying to find some small answer to the question ldquoWhat
would a better food system look likerdquo I clearly needed to see ldquolocal
foodrdquo in action If what I found didnrsquot appear to be the final glorious
solution to our food dilemmas perhaps I could gain some hints about
what such a solution might be
So one April evening I headed south from my home in Wash-
ington DC to Richmond the capital of Virginia where Mark is
making a go of it with his school bus-cum-roving farmersrsquo market
an unusual business venture he calls Farm to Family His bus route
follows a schedule but he uses his BlackBerry to remind his thou-
sands of Facebook and Twitter fans of his location and to update
them about any change of plans which happen occasionally due to
parking problems absence of shoppers or previously unscheduled
visits
When I inquired whether I might see his operation Mark had
kindly invited me to stay at his house for the night so I could come
on his purchasing rounds at local farms early the following day
Thatrsquos how I found myself sitting at a dining room table in a cozy
house somewhere in Richmond eating a bowl of yogurt criss-
crossed with a drizzle of maple syrup products Mark buys from
local farmers and sells on his bus
ldquoThis is the best stuff yoursquove ever tastedrdquo Mark said pointing at
my bowl Something about his friendly low-key demeanor shaved
head and sun-reddened cheeks reminded me obscurely of a fire-
fighter His wife Suzi a warm woman in a teal ldquoeat localrdquo T-shirt and
reddish hair twisted up in a clip chatted with me about her job in the
alternative healing and body care section of Ellwood Thompsonrsquos aunique Richmond grocery store focused on local food Not long after
my visit she would begin working full-time with mark on Farm to
Family
822019 Change Comes to Dinner How Vertical Farmers Urban Growers and Other Innovators Are Revolutionizing How Amhellip
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullchange-comes-to-dinner-how-vertical-farmers-urban-growers-and-other-innovators 712
School Bus Farm Market 21
ldquoThe Fs should be green darker green Donrsquot you thinkrdquo
Mark interrupted leaning over and showing Suzi a picture on his
BlackBerrymdashthe drafts of a Farm to Family logo sent by his de-
signer
ldquoItrsquos a little busyrdquo she said ldquoYou have to picture it on everythingrdquo
He brooded on this for a few moments then stalked away from
the table leaving Suzi to install me in a sweet-smelling crimson
guest room with an antique bedstead a shelf of Buddhist relics and
a tinkling wind chime made of slices of pink stone
The next morning as we sped down the highway toward the
Shenandoah Valley in his truck dragging a trailer equipped with
six giant plastic coolers Mark told me how he got the idea for the
bus venture after experiencing a political awakening about issues
of industrial food during a masterrsquos program in disaster science and
emergency management A research project about Californiarsquos San
Joaquin Valley for a class called Hazards and Threats to the Future
led him into a sobering investigation of soil salination monocul-
tures water shortages labor issues and petroleumrsquos role in an area
that grows almost 13 percent of the countryrsquos produce
ldquoIt is really bad what is going on out thererdquo he said propping
his arm on the steering wheel ldquoIf that system fails thatrsquos going to
have a major major impact on the countryrdquo The idea for the bus
venture started simmering in the back of his mind but he would
never have gone ahead if he hadnrsquot lost his job working in food ser-
vice at a university By then he had already bought the old bus from
Craigslist on a hunch
All around us spring had burst upon the countryside the pink
cotton candy fluff of redbud trees lacing the edges of the roadwayIt was an unusually hot day for April the temperature reading in
the corner of the rearview mirror was climbing past eighty The
truckrsquos AC was on the fritz
822019 Change Comes to Dinner How Vertical Farmers Urban Growers and Other Innovators Are Revolutionizing How Amhellip
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullchange-comes-to-dinner-how-vertical-farmers-urban-growers-and-other-innovators 812
22 Change Comes to Dinner
ldquoIt all boils down to moneyrdquo he went on ldquoWhat corporations
do is they want to make as much money as they can and exploit
anything in their path to get that done These lobbyists and players
in Washingtonmdashthe government makes laws to benefit them not to
benefit the peoplerdquo For a guy engaged in such a creative and opti-
mistic business endeavor he exuded a surprisingly intense sense of
outrage
We trundled off the highway onto a country road slicing through
green hills and pulled into the parking lot of a McDonaldrsquos of all
places where a white- bearded Mennonite farmer in a straw hat and
his blue-skirted wife in a pale kerchief were waiting incongruously
for us next to their truck and trailer
This was Mike and Diana Puffenbarger a thirty-years-married
couple who run a farm a barbeque business and a hunting and
fishing guide service Mikersquos family has been producing maple
syrup for five generations and he himself has been at it for at least
three decades Their 4 times 4 sported a window sticker saying ldquoTRUTH
WILL SET YOU FREE JOHN 832rdquo alongside another emblazoned with
a picture of a howling coyote in crosshairs surrounded by the motto
ldquoHUNT HARD SHOOT STRAIGHT KILL CLEAN APOLOGIZE TO NO ONErdquo
As they helped load tubs of their pit-cooked barbeque and
bottles of their syrup into Markrsquos truck I asked Mike about their
biggest challenge as small farmers
ldquoThe governmentrdquo he responded without a pause ldquoTheyrsquore let-
ting in all this junk from China But we try to do something they
hammer us Wersquove been butchering meat for years from our farm and
wersquove never had a recall Whatrsquos that tell yourdquo The Puffenbargers
take their animals destined for sale as meat to a slaughterhouse asrequired by the USDA the closest one being in Harrisonburg eighty
miles from their farm in Bolar Virginia They prefer to butcher at
home the meat they eat themselves
822019 Change Comes to Dinner How Vertical Farmers Urban Growers and Other Innovators Are Revolutionizing How Amhellip
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullchange-comes-to-dinner-how-vertical-farmers-urban-growers-and-other-innovators 912
School Bus Farm Market 23
Mikersquos comment highlighted one of the many reasons local-
food advocates cite for buying closer to home The countryrsquos indus-
trial food chain has been busy building itself an abysmal record on
food safety The USDA website posts hundreds of recalls of food
products every year the majority of them for posing a ldquopossible
health riskrdquo The word salmonella makes a distressingly regular ap-
pearance on this list as do E coli and Listeria a dangerous bacte-
rium One compelling reason to buy your foodmdashespecially your
meatmdashfrom smaller-scale farmers who are involved in your com-
munity instead of from corporations whose operations are opaque
remote and likely too massive to be handled safely is that smaller
closer-to-home producers are more likely to have both the ability and
the motivation to make sure their products arenrsquot tainted
Back on the road the pungent odor of manure wafting in the
window and the temperature in the truck climbing toward incendi-
ary Mark told me he had been totally unprepared for what he was
getting into when he started the bus business His original idea was
to go into food desertsmdashurban areas where residents donrsquot have ac-
cess to stores that carry fresh foodmdashand sell his local meat and
produce to these underserved communities He got registered to
accept food stamps and parked in poor neighborhoods waiting for
the rush of customers But the people there looked at him like he
was crazy and continued to spend their money in the corner store
where fresh vegetables are usually absent in favor of fried chicken
chips and soda
ldquoI got blindsided I was really naiumlverdquo he said ldquoA for- profit
business has no incentive to go into a food desert and set up shop
If yoursquore a for- profit business and yoursquore bringing in high-qualitystuff it costs I would be out of business if I were to just go into
low-income areasrdquo Mark was referencing one of the most promi-
nent critiques of the locavore ethos the cost of food from nearby
822019 Change Comes to Dinner How Vertical Farmers Urban Growers and Other Innovators Are Revolutionizing How Amhellip
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullchange-comes-to-dinner-how-vertical-farmers-urban-growers-and-other-innovators 1012
24 Change Comes to Dinner
small farms is almost always substantially higher than the products
of industrial production you can buy in the average supermarket or
at the corner store Critics accuse the eat-local movement of pro-
moting two separate food systems one thatrsquos supplied with healthy
ldquohappyrdquo food for all the people who can afford it and another stocked
with ecologically damaging pesticide laden processed junk for
everyone else
But when yoursquore trying to start a business like Mark Lilly you
donrsquot have the time or money to fix the worldrsquos problems You find
the customers who can help you succeed So while still doing some
work in low-income communities including occasionally giving
away free food (efforts for which he has received high- profile pub-
licity including a three- page spread in People magazine) he has
focused mostly on parts of town where people have a little extra
money to spend and are attuned to the politics of local food He runs
his own version of a community-supported agriculture (CSA) pro-
gram which he calls a USA for ldquourban-supported agriculturerdquo that
has people pay ahead of time for a seasonrsquos worth of biweekly boxes
of fresh food He also delivers milk to peoplersquos doors early in the
morning just like guys used to do back in my grandmotherrsquos time
ldquoIrsquom giving people a way to opt out of the current systemrdquo he
proudly told me as we rattled up a long dirt drive into the cluttered
parking area of Mountain View Dairy Farm Proprietor Christie
Huger dressed for the heat in a white T-shirt athletic shorts and
sandals greeted us as Mark backed the truck up to the loading area
by a dilapidated trailer of fice They consulted for a few moments
by a set of glass-fronted refrigerators before starting to load jars
of blackberry yogurt and glass bottles of milk into the coolers inMarkrsquos trailer
Christiersquos tousled hair and tired smile suggested that it had al-
ready been a long day despite it not yet being noon She used to
822019 Change Comes to Dinner How Vertical Farmers Urban Growers and Other Innovators Are Revolutionizing How Amhellip
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullchange-comes-to-dinner-how-vertical-farmers-urban-growers-and-other-innovators 1112
School Bus Farm Market 25
be an art teacher she told me but she quit teaching two years ago
to attend full-time to the farm I asked her if itrsquos been a hard transi-
tion and she answered unhesitatingly ldquoIf I went back to teaching
itrsquod be easier When you get up at four-thirty and then force your-
self to come inside at eight at night to feed your kids dinner itrsquos
hardrdquo I wondered aloud if she planned to go back to teaching and
her answer was again immediate no way
I followed Christiersquos daughter Isabelle an energetic girl in a
peach tank top and a bowl haircut toward a pen by the house where
a tiny lamb was bleating manically She grabbed a baby bottle full
of water and kneeled down beside the animal
ldquoDo you want to be a farmer when you grow uprdquo I asked
thinking about that statistic I had recently come across the average
age of farmers in the United States is fifty-five and rising We badly
need kids to take an interest in this kind of life
ldquoI already amrdquo she said matter-of-factly squinting up at me in
the sunshine ldquoIrsquom a sheep farmer Because we have this little baby
sheeprdquo
My heart melted and I realized that this moment as much as the
fresh delicious milk itself was what the consumers on Markrsquos bus
are buying From Mennonite farmers to milk in glass bottles to the
old yellow school bus Markrsquos business plays on city dwellersrsquo sense
of nostalgia for what they see as a safe picturesque and pastoral
yesteryear A common theme in the movement to reinvigorate local
food systems is the idea of a David-and-Goliath battle between cor-
porate overlords and the small family farmer with the corporation
representing the evils of mechanized overcrowded stifling isolating
modern life and the little guy laying claim to a virtuous existence ofnature space freedom and community Not to mention little baby
sheep
I mentioned this observation to Mark as we got back on the road
822019 Change Comes to Dinner How Vertical Farmers Urban Growers and Other Innovators Are Revolutionizing How Amhellip
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullchange-comes-to-dinner-how-vertical-farmers-urban-growers-and-other-innovators 1212
26 Change Comes to Dinner
heading to our next stop On the bus he told me visitors often revel
in memories of other types of roving food vendors that populated
their long-ago childhoods Customers reminisce about the guys
who used to come by their urban neighborhoods in trucks or with
handcarts yelling ldquoFresh fishrdquo or ldquoWatermelonrdquo
ldquoBack in the day there was the milkman and the meat delivery
guyrdquo Mark said ldquoYou knew them They came to your house It was
interactive You chatted with them Thatrsquos what I try to do Irsquom in-
teractive I chat with peoplerdquo
Mark tries in short to give his customers ldquoan experiencerdquo He
brings baby animals for children to hold He talks to customers about
what they can do with what he sellsmdashhow to cook a spaghetti squash
for instance or which kind of barbeque sauce will go best on pulled
pork At the time of our journey his bus was plastered with hand-
lettered signs proclaiming a variety of riling slogans such as ldquoEAT
AT HOME COOK HAVE FUNrdquo and ldquoDONrsquoT RELY ON A FAILING HIGHLY
PROCESSED UNSUSTAINABLE TOXIC FOOD SYSTEM GROW AND PRESERVE
YOUR OWN FOOD NOWrdquo
When he invites customers onto his bus hersquos asking them not
only to step inside the vehicle but also to move into another way of
looking at our world of food The way he thinks of it coming onto
his bus is the next best thing to experiencing the bracing goodness
of the farm itself ldquoIrsquom packaging a farm onto a school busrdquo he
said ldquoand bringing it to themrdquo
822019 Change Comes to Dinner How Vertical Farmers Urban Growers and Other Innovators Are Revolutionizing How Amhellip
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullchange-comes-to-dinner-how-vertical-farmers-urban-growers-and-other-innovators 612
20 Change Comes to Dinner
were on the front lines bringing us all hope And hope is what I was
after In trying to find some small answer to the question ldquoWhat
would a better food system look likerdquo I clearly needed to see ldquolocal
foodrdquo in action If what I found didnrsquot appear to be the final glorious
solution to our food dilemmas perhaps I could gain some hints about
what such a solution might be
So one April evening I headed south from my home in Wash-
ington DC to Richmond the capital of Virginia where Mark is
making a go of it with his school bus-cum-roving farmersrsquo market
an unusual business venture he calls Farm to Family His bus route
follows a schedule but he uses his BlackBerry to remind his thou-
sands of Facebook and Twitter fans of his location and to update
them about any change of plans which happen occasionally due to
parking problems absence of shoppers or previously unscheduled
visits
When I inquired whether I might see his operation Mark had
kindly invited me to stay at his house for the night so I could come
on his purchasing rounds at local farms early the following day
Thatrsquos how I found myself sitting at a dining room table in a cozy
house somewhere in Richmond eating a bowl of yogurt criss-
crossed with a drizzle of maple syrup products Mark buys from
local farmers and sells on his bus
ldquoThis is the best stuff yoursquove ever tastedrdquo Mark said pointing at
my bowl Something about his friendly low-key demeanor shaved
head and sun-reddened cheeks reminded me obscurely of a fire-
fighter His wife Suzi a warm woman in a teal ldquoeat localrdquo T-shirt and
reddish hair twisted up in a clip chatted with me about her job in the
alternative healing and body care section of Ellwood Thompsonrsquos aunique Richmond grocery store focused on local food Not long after
my visit she would begin working full-time with mark on Farm to
Family
822019 Change Comes to Dinner How Vertical Farmers Urban Growers and Other Innovators Are Revolutionizing How Amhellip
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullchange-comes-to-dinner-how-vertical-farmers-urban-growers-and-other-innovators 712
School Bus Farm Market 21
ldquoThe Fs should be green darker green Donrsquot you thinkrdquo
Mark interrupted leaning over and showing Suzi a picture on his
BlackBerrymdashthe drafts of a Farm to Family logo sent by his de-
signer
ldquoItrsquos a little busyrdquo she said ldquoYou have to picture it on everythingrdquo
He brooded on this for a few moments then stalked away from
the table leaving Suzi to install me in a sweet-smelling crimson
guest room with an antique bedstead a shelf of Buddhist relics and
a tinkling wind chime made of slices of pink stone
The next morning as we sped down the highway toward the
Shenandoah Valley in his truck dragging a trailer equipped with
six giant plastic coolers Mark told me how he got the idea for the
bus venture after experiencing a political awakening about issues
of industrial food during a masterrsquos program in disaster science and
emergency management A research project about Californiarsquos San
Joaquin Valley for a class called Hazards and Threats to the Future
led him into a sobering investigation of soil salination monocul-
tures water shortages labor issues and petroleumrsquos role in an area
that grows almost 13 percent of the countryrsquos produce
ldquoIt is really bad what is going on out thererdquo he said propping
his arm on the steering wheel ldquoIf that system fails thatrsquos going to
have a major major impact on the countryrdquo The idea for the bus
venture started simmering in the back of his mind but he would
never have gone ahead if he hadnrsquot lost his job working in food ser-
vice at a university By then he had already bought the old bus from
Craigslist on a hunch
All around us spring had burst upon the countryside the pink
cotton candy fluff of redbud trees lacing the edges of the roadwayIt was an unusually hot day for April the temperature reading in
the corner of the rearview mirror was climbing past eighty The
truckrsquos AC was on the fritz
822019 Change Comes to Dinner How Vertical Farmers Urban Growers and Other Innovators Are Revolutionizing How Amhellip
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullchange-comes-to-dinner-how-vertical-farmers-urban-growers-and-other-innovators 812
22 Change Comes to Dinner
ldquoIt all boils down to moneyrdquo he went on ldquoWhat corporations
do is they want to make as much money as they can and exploit
anything in their path to get that done These lobbyists and players
in Washingtonmdashthe government makes laws to benefit them not to
benefit the peoplerdquo For a guy engaged in such a creative and opti-
mistic business endeavor he exuded a surprisingly intense sense of
outrage
We trundled off the highway onto a country road slicing through
green hills and pulled into the parking lot of a McDonaldrsquos of all
places where a white- bearded Mennonite farmer in a straw hat and
his blue-skirted wife in a pale kerchief were waiting incongruously
for us next to their truck and trailer
This was Mike and Diana Puffenbarger a thirty-years-married
couple who run a farm a barbeque business and a hunting and
fishing guide service Mikersquos family has been producing maple
syrup for five generations and he himself has been at it for at least
three decades Their 4 times 4 sported a window sticker saying ldquoTRUTH
WILL SET YOU FREE JOHN 832rdquo alongside another emblazoned with
a picture of a howling coyote in crosshairs surrounded by the motto
ldquoHUNT HARD SHOOT STRAIGHT KILL CLEAN APOLOGIZE TO NO ONErdquo
As they helped load tubs of their pit-cooked barbeque and
bottles of their syrup into Markrsquos truck I asked Mike about their
biggest challenge as small farmers
ldquoThe governmentrdquo he responded without a pause ldquoTheyrsquore let-
ting in all this junk from China But we try to do something they
hammer us Wersquove been butchering meat for years from our farm and
wersquove never had a recall Whatrsquos that tell yourdquo The Puffenbargers
take their animals destined for sale as meat to a slaughterhouse asrequired by the USDA the closest one being in Harrisonburg eighty
miles from their farm in Bolar Virginia They prefer to butcher at
home the meat they eat themselves
822019 Change Comes to Dinner How Vertical Farmers Urban Growers and Other Innovators Are Revolutionizing How Amhellip
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullchange-comes-to-dinner-how-vertical-farmers-urban-growers-and-other-innovators 912
School Bus Farm Market 23
Mikersquos comment highlighted one of the many reasons local-
food advocates cite for buying closer to home The countryrsquos indus-
trial food chain has been busy building itself an abysmal record on
food safety The USDA website posts hundreds of recalls of food
products every year the majority of them for posing a ldquopossible
health riskrdquo The word salmonella makes a distressingly regular ap-
pearance on this list as do E coli and Listeria a dangerous bacte-
rium One compelling reason to buy your foodmdashespecially your
meatmdashfrom smaller-scale farmers who are involved in your com-
munity instead of from corporations whose operations are opaque
remote and likely too massive to be handled safely is that smaller
closer-to-home producers are more likely to have both the ability and
the motivation to make sure their products arenrsquot tainted
Back on the road the pungent odor of manure wafting in the
window and the temperature in the truck climbing toward incendi-
ary Mark told me he had been totally unprepared for what he was
getting into when he started the bus business His original idea was
to go into food desertsmdashurban areas where residents donrsquot have ac-
cess to stores that carry fresh foodmdashand sell his local meat and
produce to these underserved communities He got registered to
accept food stamps and parked in poor neighborhoods waiting for
the rush of customers But the people there looked at him like he
was crazy and continued to spend their money in the corner store
where fresh vegetables are usually absent in favor of fried chicken
chips and soda
ldquoI got blindsided I was really naiumlverdquo he said ldquoA for- profit
business has no incentive to go into a food desert and set up shop
If yoursquore a for- profit business and yoursquore bringing in high-qualitystuff it costs I would be out of business if I were to just go into
low-income areasrdquo Mark was referencing one of the most promi-
nent critiques of the locavore ethos the cost of food from nearby
822019 Change Comes to Dinner How Vertical Farmers Urban Growers and Other Innovators Are Revolutionizing How Amhellip
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullchange-comes-to-dinner-how-vertical-farmers-urban-growers-and-other-innovators 1012
24 Change Comes to Dinner
small farms is almost always substantially higher than the products
of industrial production you can buy in the average supermarket or
at the corner store Critics accuse the eat-local movement of pro-
moting two separate food systems one thatrsquos supplied with healthy
ldquohappyrdquo food for all the people who can afford it and another stocked
with ecologically damaging pesticide laden processed junk for
everyone else
But when yoursquore trying to start a business like Mark Lilly you
donrsquot have the time or money to fix the worldrsquos problems You find
the customers who can help you succeed So while still doing some
work in low-income communities including occasionally giving
away free food (efforts for which he has received high- profile pub-
licity including a three- page spread in People magazine) he has
focused mostly on parts of town where people have a little extra
money to spend and are attuned to the politics of local food He runs
his own version of a community-supported agriculture (CSA) pro-
gram which he calls a USA for ldquourban-supported agriculturerdquo that
has people pay ahead of time for a seasonrsquos worth of biweekly boxes
of fresh food He also delivers milk to peoplersquos doors early in the
morning just like guys used to do back in my grandmotherrsquos time
ldquoIrsquom giving people a way to opt out of the current systemrdquo he
proudly told me as we rattled up a long dirt drive into the cluttered
parking area of Mountain View Dairy Farm Proprietor Christie
Huger dressed for the heat in a white T-shirt athletic shorts and
sandals greeted us as Mark backed the truck up to the loading area
by a dilapidated trailer of fice They consulted for a few moments
by a set of glass-fronted refrigerators before starting to load jars
of blackberry yogurt and glass bottles of milk into the coolers inMarkrsquos trailer
Christiersquos tousled hair and tired smile suggested that it had al-
ready been a long day despite it not yet being noon She used to
822019 Change Comes to Dinner How Vertical Farmers Urban Growers and Other Innovators Are Revolutionizing How Amhellip
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullchange-comes-to-dinner-how-vertical-farmers-urban-growers-and-other-innovators 1112
School Bus Farm Market 25
be an art teacher she told me but she quit teaching two years ago
to attend full-time to the farm I asked her if itrsquos been a hard transi-
tion and she answered unhesitatingly ldquoIf I went back to teaching
itrsquod be easier When you get up at four-thirty and then force your-
self to come inside at eight at night to feed your kids dinner itrsquos
hardrdquo I wondered aloud if she planned to go back to teaching and
her answer was again immediate no way
I followed Christiersquos daughter Isabelle an energetic girl in a
peach tank top and a bowl haircut toward a pen by the house where
a tiny lamb was bleating manically She grabbed a baby bottle full
of water and kneeled down beside the animal
ldquoDo you want to be a farmer when you grow uprdquo I asked
thinking about that statistic I had recently come across the average
age of farmers in the United States is fifty-five and rising We badly
need kids to take an interest in this kind of life
ldquoI already amrdquo she said matter-of-factly squinting up at me in
the sunshine ldquoIrsquom a sheep farmer Because we have this little baby
sheeprdquo
My heart melted and I realized that this moment as much as the
fresh delicious milk itself was what the consumers on Markrsquos bus
are buying From Mennonite farmers to milk in glass bottles to the
old yellow school bus Markrsquos business plays on city dwellersrsquo sense
of nostalgia for what they see as a safe picturesque and pastoral
yesteryear A common theme in the movement to reinvigorate local
food systems is the idea of a David-and-Goliath battle between cor-
porate overlords and the small family farmer with the corporation
representing the evils of mechanized overcrowded stifling isolating
modern life and the little guy laying claim to a virtuous existence ofnature space freedom and community Not to mention little baby
sheep
I mentioned this observation to Mark as we got back on the road
822019 Change Comes to Dinner How Vertical Farmers Urban Growers and Other Innovators Are Revolutionizing How Amhellip
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullchange-comes-to-dinner-how-vertical-farmers-urban-growers-and-other-innovators 1212
26 Change Comes to Dinner
heading to our next stop On the bus he told me visitors often revel
in memories of other types of roving food vendors that populated
their long-ago childhoods Customers reminisce about the guys
who used to come by their urban neighborhoods in trucks or with
handcarts yelling ldquoFresh fishrdquo or ldquoWatermelonrdquo
ldquoBack in the day there was the milkman and the meat delivery
guyrdquo Mark said ldquoYou knew them They came to your house It was
interactive You chatted with them Thatrsquos what I try to do Irsquom in-
teractive I chat with peoplerdquo
Mark tries in short to give his customers ldquoan experiencerdquo He
brings baby animals for children to hold He talks to customers about
what they can do with what he sellsmdashhow to cook a spaghetti squash
for instance or which kind of barbeque sauce will go best on pulled
pork At the time of our journey his bus was plastered with hand-
lettered signs proclaiming a variety of riling slogans such as ldquoEAT
AT HOME COOK HAVE FUNrdquo and ldquoDONrsquoT RELY ON A FAILING HIGHLY
PROCESSED UNSUSTAINABLE TOXIC FOOD SYSTEM GROW AND PRESERVE
YOUR OWN FOOD NOWrdquo
When he invites customers onto his bus hersquos asking them not
only to step inside the vehicle but also to move into another way of
looking at our world of food The way he thinks of it coming onto
his bus is the next best thing to experiencing the bracing goodness
of the farm itself ldquoIrsquom packaging a farm onto a school busrdquo he
said ldquoand bringing it to themrdquo
822019 Change Comes to Dinner How Vertical Farmers Urban Growers and Other Innovators Are Revolutionizing How Amhellip
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullchange-comes-to-dinner-how-vertical-farmers-urban-growers-and-other-innovators 712
School Bus Farm Market 21
ldquoThe Fs should be green darker green Donrsquot you thinkrdquo
Mark interrupted leaning over and showing Suzi a picture on his
BlackBerrymdashthe drafts of a Farm to Family logo sent by his de-
signer
ldquoItrsquos a little busyrdquo she said ldquoYou have to picture it on everythingrdquo
He brooded on this for a few moments then stalked away from
the table leaving Suzi to install me in a sweet-smelling crimson
guest room with an antique bedstead a shelf of Buddhist relics and
a tinkling wind chime made of slices of pink stone
The next morning as we sped down the highway toward the
Shenandoah Valley in his truck dragging a trailer equipped with
six giant plastic coolers Mark told me how he got the idea for the
bus venture after experiencing a political awakening about issues
of industrial food during a masterrsquos program in disaster science and
emergency management A research project about Californiarsquos San
Joaquin Valley for a class called Hazards and Threats to the Future
led him into a sobering investigation of soil salination monocul-
tures water shortages labor issues and petroleumrsquos role in an area
that grows almost 13 percent of the countryrsquos produce
ldquoIt is really bad what is going on out thererdquo he said propping
his arm on the steering wheel ldquoIf that system fails thatrsquos going to
have a major major impact on the countryrdquo The idea for the bus
venture started simmering in the back of his mind but he would
never have gone ahead if he hadnrsquot lost his job working in food ser-
vice at a university By then he had already bought the old bus from
Craigslist on a hunch
All around us spring had burst upon the countryside the pink
cotton candy fluff of redbud trees lacing the edges of the roadwayIt was an unusually hot day for April the temperature reading in
the corner of the rearview mirror was climbing past eighty The
truckrsquos AC was on the fritz
822019 Change Comes to Dinner How Vertical Farmers Urban Growers and Other Innovators Are Revolutionizing How Amhellip
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullchange-comes-to-dinner-how-vertical-farmers-urban-growers-and-other-innovators 812
22 Change Comes to Dinner
ldquoIt all boils down to moneyrdquo he went on ldquoWhat corporations
do is they want to make as much money as they can and exploit
anything in their path to get that done These lobbyists and players
in Washingtonmdashthe government makes laws to benefit them not to
benefit the peoplerdquo For a guy engaged in such a creative and opti-
mistic business endeavor he exuded a surprisingly intense sense of
outrage
We trundled off the highway onto a country road slicing through
green hills and pulled into the parking lot of a McDonaldrsquos of all
places where a white- bearded Mennonite farmer in a straw hat and
his blue-skirted wife in a pale kerchief were waiting incongruously
for us next to their truck and trailer
This was Mike and Diana Puffenbarger a thirty-years-married
couple who run a farm a barbeque business and a hunting and
fishing guide service Mikersquos family has been producing maple
syrup for five generations and he himself has been at it for at least
three decades Their 4 times 4 sported a window sticker saying ldquoTRUTH
WILL SET YOU FREE JOHN 832rdquo alongside another emblazoned with
a picture of a howling coyote in crosshairs surrounded by the motto
ldquoHUNT HARD SHOOT STRAIGHT KILL CLEAN APOLOGIZE TO NO ONErdquo
As they helped load tubs of their pit-cooked barbeque and
bottles of their syrup into Markrsquos truck I asked Mike about their
biggest challenge as small farmers
ldquoThe governmentrdquo he responded without a pause ldquoTheyrsquore let-
ting in all this junk from China But we try to do something they
hammer us Wersquove been butchering meat for years from our farm and
wersquove never had a recall Whatrsquos that tell yourdquo The Puffenbargers
take their animals destined for sale as meat to a slaughterhouse asrequired by the USDA the closest one being in Harrisonburg eighty
miles from their farm in Bolar Virginia They prefer to butcher at
home the meat they eat themselves
822019 Change Comes to Dinner How Vertical Farmers Urban Growers and Other Innovators Are Revolutionizing How Amhellip
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullchange-comes-to-dinner-how-vertical-farmers-urban-growers-and-other-innovators 912
School Bus Farm Market 23
Mikersquos comment highlighted one of the many reasons local-
food advocates cite for buying closer to home The countryrsquos indus-
trial food chain has been busy building itself an abysmal record on
food safety The USDA website posts hundreds of recalls of food
products every year the majority of them for posing a ldquopossible
health riskrdquo The word salmonella makes a distressingly regular ap-
pearance on this list as do E coli and Listeria a dangerous bacte-
rium One compelling reason to buy your foodmdashespecially your
meatmdashfrom smaller-scale farmers who are involved in your com-
munity instead of from corporations whose operations are opaque
remote and likely too massive to be handled safely is that smaller
closer-to-home producers are more likely to have both the ability and
the motivation to make sure their products arenrsquot tainted
Back on the road the pungent odor of manure wafting in the
window and the temperature in the truck climbing toward incendi-
ary Mark told me he had been totally unprepared for what he was
getting into when he started the bus business His original idea was
to go into food desertsmdashurban areas where residents donrsquot have ac-
cess to stores that carry fresh foodmdashand sell his local meat and
produce to these underserved communities He got registered to
accept food stamps and parked in poor neighborhoods waiting for
the rush of customers But the people there looked at him like he
was crazy and continued to spend their money in the corner store
where fresh vegetables are usually absent in favor of fried chicken
chips and soda
ldquoI got blindsided I was really naiumlverdquo he said ldquoA for- profit
business has no incentive to go into a food desert and set up shop
If yoursquore a for- profit business and yoursquore bringing in high-qualitystuff it costs I would be out of business if I were to just go into
low-income areasrdquo Mark was referencing one of the most promi-
nent critiques of the locavore ethos the cost of food from nearby
822019 Change Comes to Dinner How Vertical Farmers Urban Growers and Other Innovators Are Revolutionizing How Amhellip
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullchange-comes-to-dinner-how-vertical-farmers-urban-growers-and-other-innovators 1012
24 Change Comes to Dinner
small farms is almost always substantially higher than the products
of industrial production you can buy in the average supermarket or
at the corner store Critics accuse the eat-local movement of pro-
moting two separate food systems one thatrsquos supplied with healthy
ldquohappyrdquo food for all the people who can afford it and another stocked
with ecologically damaging pesticide laden processed junk for
everyone else
But when yoursquore trying to start a business like Mark Lilly you
donrsquot have the time or money to fix the worldrsquos problems You find
the customers who can help you succeed So while still doing some
work in low-income communities including occasionally giving
away free food (efforts for which he has received high- profile pub-
licity including a three- page spread in People magazine) he has
focused mostly on parts of town where people have a little extra
money to spend and are attuned to the politics of local food He runs
his own version of a community-supported agriculture (CSA) pro-
gram which he calls a USA for ldquourban-supported agriculturerdquo that
has people pay ahead of time for a seasonrsquos worth of biweekly boxes
of fresh food He also delivers milk to peoplersquos doors early in the
morning just like guys used to do back in my grandmotherrsquos time
ldquoIrsquom giving people a way to opt out of the current systemrdquo he
proudly told me as we rattled up a long dirt drive into the cluttered
parking area of Mountain View Dairy Farm Proprietor Christie
Huger dressed for the heat in a white T-shirt athletic shorts and
sandals greeted us as Mark backed the truck up to the loading area
by a dilapidated trailer of fice They consulted for a few moments
by a set of glass-fronted refrigerators before starting to load jars
of blackberry yogurt and glass bottles of milk into the coolers inMarkrsquos trailer
Christiersquos tousled hair and tired smile suggested that it had al-
ready been a long day despite it not yet being noon She used to
822019 Change Comes to Dinner How Vertical Farmers Urban Growers and Other Innovators Are Revolutionizing How Amhellip
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullchange-comes-to-dinner-how-vertical-farmers-urban-growers-and-other-innovators 1112
School Bus Farm Market 25
be an art teacher she told me but she quit teaching two years ago
to attend full-time to the farm I asked her if itrsquos been a hard transi-
tion and she answered unhesitatingly ldquoIf I went back to teaching
itrsquod be easier When you get up at four-thirty and then force your-
self to come inside at eight at night to feed your kids dinner itrsquos
hardrdquo I wondered aloud if she planned to go back to teaching and
her answer was again immediate no way
I followed Christiersquos daughter Isabelle an energetic girl in a
peach tank top and a bowl haircut toward a pen by the house where
a tiny lamb was bleating manically She grabbed a baby bottle full
of water and kneeled down beside the animal
ldquoDo you want to be a farmer when you grow uprdquo I asked
thinking about that statistic I had recently come across the average
age of farmers in the United States is fifty-five and rising We badly
need kids to take an interest in this kind of life
ldquoI already amrdquo she said matter-of-factly squinting up at me in
the sunshine ldquoIrsquom a sheep farmer Because we have this little baby
sheeprdquo
My heart melted and I realized that this moment as much as the
fresh delicious milk itself was what the consumers on Markrsquos bus
are buying From Mennonite farmers to milk in glass bottles to the
old yellow school bus Markrsquos business plays on city dwellersrsquo sense
of nostalgia for what they see as a safe picturesque and pastoral
yesteryear A common theme in the movement to reinvigorate local
food systems is the idea of a David-and-Goliath battle between cor-
porate overlords and the small family farmer with the corporation
representing the evils of mechanized overcrowded stifling isolating
modern life and the little guy laying claim to a virtuous existence ofnature space freedom and community Not to mention little baby
sheep
I mentioned this observation to Mark as we got back on the road
822019 Change Comes to Dinner How Vertical Farmers Urban Growers and Other Innovators Are Revolutionizing How Amhellip
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullchange-comes-to-dinner-how-vertical-farmers-urban-growers-and-other-innovators 1212
26 Change Comes to Dinner
heading to our next stop On the bus he told me visitors often revel
in memories of other types of roving food vendors that populated
their long-ago childhoods Customers reminisce about the guys
who used to come by their urban neighborhoods in trucks or with
handcarts yelling ldquoFresh fishrdquo or ldquoWatermelonrdquo
ldquoBack in the day there was the milkman and the meat delivery
guyrdquo Mark said ldquoYou knew them They came to your house It was
interactive You chatted with them Thatrsquos what I try to do Irsquom in-
teractive I chat with peoplerdquo
Mark tries in short to give his customers ldquoan experiencerdquo He
brings baby animals for children to hold He talks to customers about
what they can do with what he sellsmdashhow to cook a spaghetti squash
for instance or which kind of barbeque sauce will go best on pulled
pork At the time of our journey his bus was plastered with hand-
lettered signs proclaiming a variety of riling slogans such as ldquoEAT
AT HOME COOK HAVE FUNrdquo and ldquoDONrsquoT RELY ON A FAILING HIGHLY
PROCESSED UNSUSTAINABLE TOXIC FOOD SYSTEM GROW AND PRESERVE
YOUR OWN FOOD NOWrdquo
When he invites customers onto his bus hersquos asking them not
only to step inside the vehicle but also to move into another way of
looking at our world of food The way he thinks of it coming onto
his bus is the next best thing to experiencing the bracing goodness
of the farm itself ldquoIrsquom packaging a farm onto a school busrdquo he
said ldquoand bringing it to themrdquo
822019 Change Comes to Dinner How Vertical Farmers Urban Growers and Other Innovators Are Revolutionizing How Amhellip
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullchange-comes-to-dinner-how-vertical-farmers-urban-growers-and-other-innovators 812
22 Change Comes to Dinner
ldquoIt all boils down to moneyrdquo he went on ldquoWhat corporations
do is they want to make as much money as they can and exploit
anything in their path to get that done These lobbyists and players
in Washingtonmdashthe government makes laws to benefit them not to
benefit the peoplerdquo For a guy engaged in such a creative and opti-
mistic business endeavor he exuded a surprisingly intense sense of
outrage
We trundled off the highway onto a country road slicing through
green hills and pulled into the parking lot of a McDonaldrsquos of all
places where a white- bearded Mennonite farmer in a straw hat and
his blue-skirted wife in a pale kerchief were waiting incongruously
for us next to their truck and trailer
This was Mike and Diana Puffenbarger a thirty-years-married
couple who run a farm a barbeque business and a hunting and
fishing guide service Mikersquos family has been producing maple
syrup for five generations and he himself has been at it for at least
three decades Their 4 times 4 sported a window sticker saying ldquoTRUTH
WILL SET YOU FREE JOHN 832rdquo alongside another emblazoned with
a picture of a howling coyote in crosshairs surrounded by the motto
ldquoHUNT HARD SHOOT STRAIGHT KILL CLEAN APOLOGIZE TO NO ONErdquo
As they helped load tubs of their pit-cooked barbeque and
bottles of their syrup into Markrsquos truck I asked Mike about their
biggest challenge as small farmers
ldquoThe governmentrdquo he responded without a pause ldquoTheyrsquore let-
ting in all this junk from China But we try to do something they
hammer us Wersquove been butchering meat for years from our farm and
wersquove never had a recall Whatrsquos that tell yourdquo The Puffenbargers
take their animals destined for sale as meat to a slaughterhouse asrequired by the USDA the closest one being in Harrisonburg eighty
miles from their farm in Bolar Virginia They prefer to butcher at
home the meat they eat themselves
822019 Change Comes to Dinner How Vertical Farmers Urban Growers and Other Innovators Are Revolutionizing How Amhellip
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullchange-comes-to-dinner-how-vertical-farmers-urban-growers-and-other-innovators 912
School Bus Farm Market 23
Mikersquos comment highlighted one of the many reasons local-
food advocates cite for buying closer to home The countryrsquos indus-
trial food chain has been busy building itself an abysmal record on
food safety The USDA website posts hundreds of recalls of food
products every year the majority of them for posing a ldquopossible
health riskrdquo The word salmonella makes a distressingly regular ap-
pearance on this list as do E coli and Listeria a dangerous bacte-
rium One compelling reason to buy your foodmdashespecially your
meatmdashfrom smaller-scale farmers who are involved in your com-
munity instead of from corporations whose operations are opaque
remote and likely too massive to be handled safely is that smaller
closer-to-home producers are more likely to have both the ability and
the motivation to make sure their products arenrsquot tainted
Back on the road the pungent odor of manure wafting in the
window and the temperature in the truck climbing toward incendi-
ary Mark told me he had been totally unprepared for what he was
getting into when he started the bus business His original idea was
to go into food desertsmdashurban areas where residents donrsquot have ac-
cess to stores that carry fresh foodmdashand sell his local meat and
produce to these underserved communities He got registered to
accept food stamps and parked in poor neighborhoods waiting for
the rush of customers But the people there looked at him like he
was crazy and continued to spend their money in the corner store
where fresh vegetables are usually absent in favor of fried chicken
chips and soda
ldquoI got blindsided I was really naiumlverdquo he said ldquoA for- profit
business has no incentive to go into a food desert and set up shop
If yoursquore a for- profit business and yoursquore bringing in high-qualitystuff it costs I would be out of business if I were to just go into
low-income areasrdquo Mark was referencing one of the most promi-
nent critiques of the locavore ethos the cost of food from nearby
822019 Change Comes to Dinner How Vertical Farmers Urban Growers and Other Innovators Are Revolutionizing How Amhellip
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullchange-comes-to-dinner-how-vertical-farmers-urban-growers-and-other-innovators 1012
24 Change Comes to Dinner
small farms is almost always substantially higher than the products
of industrial production you can buy in the average supermarket or
at the corner store Critics accuse the eat-local movement of pro-
moting two separate food systems one thatrsquos supplied with healthy
ldquohappyrdquo food for all the people who can afford it and another stocked
with ecologically damaging pesticide laden processed junk for
everyone else
But when yoursquore trying to start a business like Mark Lilly you
donrsquot have the time or money to fix the worldrsquos problems You find
the customers who can help you succeed So while still doing some
work in low-income communities including occasionally giving
away free food (efforts for which he has received high- profile pub-
licity including a three- page spread in People magazine) he has
focused mostly on parts of town where people have a little extra
money to spend and are attuned to the politics of local food He runs
his own version of a community-supported agriculture (CSA) pro-
gram which he calls a USA for ldquourban-supported agriculturerdquo that
has people pay ahead of time for a seasonrsquos worth of biweekly boxes
of fresh food He also delivers milk to peoplersquos doors early in the
morning just like guys used to do back in my grandmotherrsquos time
ldquoIrsquom giving people a way to opt out of the current systemrdquo he
proudly told me as we rattled up a long dirt drive into the cluttered
parking area of Mountain View Dairy Farm Proprietor Christie
Huger dressed for the heat in a white T-shirt athletic shorts and
sandals greeted us as Mark backed the truck up to the loading area
by a dilapidated trailer of fice They consulted for a few moments
by a set of glass-fronted refrigerators before starting to load jars
of blackberry yogurt and glass bottles of milk into the coolers inMarkrsquos trailer
Christiersquos tousled hair and tired smile suggested that it had al-
ready been a long day despite it not yet being noon She used to
822019 Change Comes to Dinner How Vertical Farmers Urban Growers and Other Innovators Are Revolutionizing How Amhellip
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullchange-comes-to-dinner-how-vertical-farmers-urban-growers-and-other-innovators 1112
School Bus Farm Market 25
be an art teacher she told me but she quit teaching two years ago
to attend full-time to the farm I asked her if itrsquos been a hard transi-
tion and she answered unhesitatingly ldquoIf I went back to teaching
itrsquod be easier When you get up at four-thirty and then force your-
self to come inside at eight at night to feed your kids dinner itrsquos
hardrdquo I wondered aloud if she planned to go back to teaching and
her answer was again immediate no way
I followed Christiersquos daughter Isabelle an energetic girl in a
peach tank top and a bowl haircut toward a pen by the house where
a tiny lamb was bleating manically She grabbed a baby bottle full
of water and kneeled down beside the animal
ldquoDo you want to be a farmer when you grow uprdquo I asked
thinking about that statistic I had recently come across the average
age of farmers in the United States is fifty-five and rising We badly
need kids to take an interest in this kind of life
ldquoI already amrdquo she said matter-of-factly squinting up at me in
the sunshine ldquoIrsquom a sheep farmer Because we have this little baby
sheeprdquo
My heart melted and I realized that this moment as much as the
fresh delicious milk itself was what the consumers on Markrsquos bus
are buying From Mennonite farmers to milk in glass bottles to the
old yellow school bus Markrsquos business plays on city dwellersrsquo sense
of nostalgia for what they see as a safe picturesque and pastoral
yesteryear A common theme in the movement to reinvigorate local
food systems is the idea of a David-and-Goliath battle between cor-
porate overlords and the small family farmer with the corporation
representing the evils of mechanized overcrowded stifling isolating
modern life and the little guy laying claim to a virtuous existence ofnature space freedom and community Not to mention little baby
sheep
I mentioned this observation to Mark as we got back on the road
822019 Change Comes to Dinner How Vertical Farmers Urban Growers and Other Innovators Are Revolutionizing How Amhellip
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullchange-comes-to-dinner-how-vertical-farmers-urban-growers-and-other-innovators 1212
26 Change Comes to Dinner
heading to our next stop On the bus he told me visitors often revel
in memories of other types of roving food vendors that populated
their long-ago childhoods Customers reminisce about the guys
who used to come by their urban neighborhoods in trucks or with
handcarts yelling ldquoFresh fishrdquo or ldquoWatermelonrdquo
ldquoBack in the day there was the milkman and the meat delivery
guyrdquo Mark said ldquoYou knew them They came to your house It was
interactive You chatted with them Thatrsquos what I try to do Irsquom in-
teractive I chat with peoplerdquo
Mark tries in short to give his customers ldquoan experiencerdquo He
brings baby animals for children to hold He talks to customers about
what they can do with what he sellsmdashhow to cook a spaghetti squash
for instance or which kind of barbeque sauce will go best on pulled
pork At the time of our journey his bus was plastered with hand-
lettered signs proclaiming a variety of riling slogans such as ldquoEAT
AT HOME COOK HAVE FUNrdquo and ldquoDONrsquoT RELY ON A FAILING HIGHLY
PROCESSED UNSUSTAINABLE TOXIC FOOD SYSTEM GROW AND PRESERVE
YOUR OWN FOOD NOWrdquo
When he invites customers onto his bus hersquos asking them not
only to step inside the vehicle but also to move into another way of
looking at our world of food The way he thinks of it coming onto
his bus is the next best thing to experiencing the bracing goodness
of the farm itself ldquoIrsquom packaging a farm onto a school busrdquo he
said ldquoand bringing it to themrdquo
822019 Change Comes to Dinner How Vertical Farmers Urban Growers and Other Innovators Are Revolutionizing How Amhellip
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullchange-comes-to-dinner-how-vertical-farmers-urban-growers-and-other-innovators 912
School Bus Farm Market 23
Mikersquos comment highlighted one of the many reasons local-
food advocates cite for buying closer to home The countryrsquos indus-
trial food chain has been busy building itself an abysmal record on
food safety The USDA website posts hundreds of recalls of food
products every year the majority of them for posing a ldquopossible
health riskrdquo The word salmonella makes a distressingly regular ap-
pearance on this list as do E coli and Listeria a dangerous bacte-
rium One compelling reason to buy your foodmdashespecially your
meatmdashfrom smaller-scale farmers who are involved in your com-
munity instead of from corporations whose operations are opaque
remote and likely too massive to be handled safely is that smaller
closer-to-home producers are more likely to have both the ability and
the motivation to make sure their products arenrsquot tainted
Back on the road the pungent odor of manure wafting in the
window and the temperature in the truck climbing toward incendi-
ary Mark told me he had been totally unprepared for what he was
getting into when he started the bus business His original idea was
to go into food desertsmdashurban areas where residents donrsquot have ac-
cess to stores that carry fresh foodmdashand sell his local meat and
produce to these underserved communities He got registered to
accept food stamps and parked in poor neighborhoods waiting for
the rush of customers But the people there looked at him like he
was crazy and continued to spend their money in the corner store
where fresh vegetables are usually absent in favor of fried chicken
chips and soda
ldquoI got blindsided I was really naiumlverdquo he said ldquoA for- profit
business has no incentive to go into a food desert and set up shop
If yoursquore a for- profit business and yoursquore bringing in high-qualitystuff it costs I would be out of business if I were to just go into
low-income areasrdquo Mark was referencing one of the most promi-
nent critiques of the locavore ethos the cost of food from nearby
822019 Change Comes to Dinner How Vertical Farmers Urban Growers and Other Innovators Are Revolutionizing How Amhellip
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullchange-comes-to-dinner-how-vertical-farmers-urban-growers-and-other-innovators 1012
24 Change Comes to Dinner
small farms is almost always substantially higher than the products
of industrial production you can buy in the average supermarket or
at the corner store Critics accuse the eat-local movement of pro-
moting two separate food systems one thatrsquos supplied with healthy
ldquohappyrdquo food for all the people who can afford it and another stocked
with ecologically damaging pesticide laden processed junk for
everyone else
But when yoursquore trying to start a business like Mark Lilly you
donrsquot have the time or money to fix the worldrsquos problems You find
the customers who can help you succeed So while still doing some
work in low-income communities including occasionally giving
away free food (efforts for which he has received high- profile pub-
licity including a three- page spread in People magazine) he has
focused mostly on parts of town where people have a little extra
money to spend and are attuned to the politics of local food He runs
his own version of a community-supported agriculture (CSA) pro-
gram which he calls a USA for ldquourban-supported agriculturerdquo that
has people pay ahead of time for a seasonrsquos worth of biweekly boxes
of fresh food He also delivers milk to peoplersquos doors early in the
morning just like guys used to do back in my grandmotherrsquos time
ldquoIrsquom giving people a way to opt out of the current systemrdquo he
proudly told me as we rattled up a long dirt drive into the cluttered
parking area of Mountain View Dairy Farm Proprietor Christie
Huger dressed for the heat in a white T-shirt athletic shorts and
sandals greeted us as Mark backed the truck up to the loading area
by a dilapidated trailer of fice They consulted for a few moments
by a set of glass-fronted refrigerators before starting to load jars
of blackberry yogurt and glass bottles of milk into the coolers inMarkrsquos trailer
Christiersquos tousled hair and tired smile suggested that it had al-
ready been a long day despite it not yet being noon She used to
822019 Change Comes to Dinner How Vertical Farmers Urban Growers and Other Innovators Are Revolutionizing How Amhellip
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullchange-comes-to-dinner-how-vertical-farmers-urban-growers-and-other-innovators 1112
School Bus Farm Market 25
be an art teacher she told me but she quit teaching two years ago
to attend full-time to the farm I asked her if itrsquos been a hard transi-
tion and she answered unhesitatingly ldquoIf I went back to teaching
itrsquod be easier When you get up at four-thirty and then force your-
self to come inside at eight at night to feed your kids dinner itrsquos
hardrdquo I wondered aloud if she planned to go back to teaching and
her answer was again immediate no way
I followed Christiersquos daughter Isabelle an energetic girl in a
peach tank top and a bowl haircut toward a pen by the house where
a tiny lamb was bleating manically She grabbed a baby bottle full
of water and kneeled down beside the animal
ldquoDo you want to be a farmer when you grow uprdquo I asked
thinking about that statistic I had recently come across the average
age of farmers in the United States is fifty-five and rising We badly
need kids to take an interest in this kind of life
ldquoI already amrdquo she said matter-of-factly squinting up at me in
the sunshine ldquoIrsquom a sheep farmer Because we have this little baby
sheeprdquo
My heart melted and I realized that this moment as much as the
fresh delicious milk itself was what the consumers on Markrsquos bus
are buying From Mennonite farmers to milk in glass bottles to the
old yellow school bus Markrsquos business plays on city dwellersrsquo sense
of nostalgia for what they see as a safe picturesque and pastoral
yesteryear A common theme in the movement to reinvigorate local
food systems is the idea of a David-and-Goliath battle between cor-
porate overlords and the small family farmer with the corporation
representing the evils of mechanized overcrowded stifling isolating
modern life and the little guy laying claim to a virtuous existence ofnature space freedom and community Not to mention little baby
sheep
I mentioned this observation to Mark as we got back on the road
822019 Change Comes to Dinner How Vertical Farmers Urban Growers and Other Innovators Are Revolutionizing How Amhellip
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullchange-comes-to-dinner-how-vertical-farmers-urban-growers-and-other-innovators 1212
26 Change Comes to Dinner
heading to our next stop On the bus he told me visitors often revel
in memories of other types of roving food vendors that populated
their long-ago childhoods Customers reminisce about the guys
who used to come by their urban neighborhoods in trucks or with
handcarts yelling ldquoFresh fishrdquo or ldquoWatermelonrdquo
ldquoBack in the day there was the milkman and the meat delivery
guyrdquo Mark said ldquoYou knew them They came to your house It was
interactive You chatted with them Thatrsquos what I try to do Irsquom in-
teractive I chat with peoplerdquo
Mark tries in short to give his customers ldquoan experiencerdquo He
brings baby animals for children to hold He talks to customers about
what they can do with what he sellsmdashhow to cook a spaghetti squash
for instance or which kind of barbeque sauce will go best on pulled
pork At the time of our journey his bus was plastered with hand-
lettered signs proclaiming a variety of riling slogans such as ldquoEAT
AT HOME COOK HAVE FUNrdquo and ldquoDONrsquoT RELY ON A FAILING HIGHLY
PROCESSED UNSUSTAINABLE TOXIC FOOD SYSTEM GROW AND PRESERVE
YOUR OWN FOOD NOWrdquo
When he invites customers onto his bus hersquos asking them not
only to step inside the vehicle but also to move into another way of
looking at our world of food The way he thinks of it coming onto
his bus is the next best thing to experiencing the bracing goodness
of the farm itself ldquoIrsquom packaging a farm onto a school busrdquo he
said ldquoand bringing it to themrdquo
822019 Change Comes to Dinner How Vertical Farmers Urban Growers and Other Innovators Are Revolutionizing How Amhellip
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullchange-comes-to-dinner-how-vertical-farmers-urban-growers-and-other-innovators 1012
24 Change Comes to Dinner
small farms is almost always substantially higher than the products
of industrial production you can buy in the average supermarket or
at the corner store Critics accuse the eat-local movement of pro-
moting two separate food systems one thatrsquos supplied with healthy
ldquohappyrdquo food for all the people who can afford it and another stocked
with ecologically damaging pesticide laden processed junk for
everyone else
But when yoursquore trying to start a business like Mark Lilly you
donrsquot have the time or money to fix the worldrsquos problems You find
the customers who can help you succeed So while still doing some
work in low-income communities including occasionally giving
away free food (efforts for which he has received high- profile pub-
licity including a three- page spread in People magazine) he has
focused mostly on parts of town where people have a little extra
money to spend and are attuned to the politics of local food He runs
his own version of a community-supported agriculture (CSA) pro-
gram which he calls a USA for ldquourban-supported agriculturerdquo that
has people pay ahead of time for a seasonrsquos worth of biweekly boxes
of fresh food He also delivers milk to peoplersquos doors early in the
morning just like guys used to do back in my grandmotherrsquos time
ldquoIrsquom giving people a way to opt out of the current systemrdquo he
proudly told me as we rattled up a long dirt drive into the cluttered
parking area of Mountain View Dairy Farm Proprietor Christie
Huger dressed for the heat in a white T-shirt athletic shorts and
sandals greeted us as Mark backed the truck up to the loading area
by a dilapidated trailer of fice They consulted for a few moments
by a set of glass-fronted refrigerators before starting to load jars
of blackberry yogurt and glass bottles of milk into the coolers inMarkrsquos trailer
Christiersquos tousled hair and tired smile suggested that it had al-
ready been a long day despite it not yet being noon She used to
822019 Change Comes to Dinner How Vertical Farmers Urban Growers and Other Innovators Are Revolutionizing How Amhellip
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullchange-comes-to-dinner-how-vertical-farmers-urban-growers-and-other-innovators 1112
School Bus Farm Market 25
be an art teacher she told me but she quit teaching two years ago
to attend full-time to the farm I asked her if itrsquos been a hard transi-
tion and she answered unhesitatingly ldquoIf I went back to teaching
itrsquod be easier When you get up at four-thirty and then force your-
self to come inside at eight at night to feed your kids dinner itrsquos
hardrdquo I wondered aloud if she planned to go back to teaching and
her answer was again immediate no way
I followed Christiersquos daughter Isabelle an energetic girl in a
peach tank top and a bowl haircut toward a pen by the house where
a tiny lamb was bleating manically She grabbed a baby bottle full
of water and kneeled down beside the animal
ldquoDo you want to be a farmer when you grow uprdquo I asked
thinking about that statistic I had recently come across the average
age of farmers in the United States is fifty-five and rising We badly
need kids to take an interest in this kind of life
ldquoI already amrdquo she said matter-of-factly squinting up at me in
the sunshine ldquoIrsquom a sheep farmer Because we have this little baby
sheeprdquo
My heart melted and I realized that this moment as much as the
fresh delicious milk itself was what the consumers on Markrsquos bus
are buying From Mennonite farmers to milk in glass bottles to the
old yellow school bus Markrsquos business plays on city dwellersrsquo sense
of nostalgia for what they see as a safe picturesque and pastoral
yesteryear A common theme in the movement to reinvigorate local
food systems is the idea of a David-and-Goliath battle between cor-
porate overlords and the small family farmer with the corporation
representing the evils of mechanized overcrowded stifling isolating
modern life and the little guy laying claim to a virtuous existence ofnature space freedom and community Not to mention little baby
sheep
I mentioned this observation to Mark as we got back on the road
822019 Change Comes to Dinner How Vertical Farmers Urban Growers and Other Innovators Are Revolutionizing How Amhellip
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullchange-comes-to-dinner-how-vertical-farmers-urban-growers-and-other-innovators 1212
26 Change Comes to Dinner
heading to our next stop On the bus he told me visitors often revel
in memories of other types of roving food vendors that populated
their long-ago childhoods Customers reminisce about the guys
who used to come by their urban neighborhoods in trucks or with
handcarts yelling ldquoFresh fishrdquo or ldquoWatermelonrdquo
ldquoBack in the day there was the milkman and the meat delivery
guyrdquo Mark said ldquoYou knew them They came to your house It was
interactive You chatted with them Thatrsquos what I try to do Irsquom in-
teractive I chat with peoplerdquo
Mark tries in short to give his customers ldquoan experiencerdquo He
brings baby animals for children to hold He talks to customers about
what they can do with what he sellsmdashhow to cook a spaghetti squash
for instance or which kind of barbeque sauce will go best on pulled
pork At the time of our journey his bus was plastered with hand-
lettered signs proclaiming a variety of riling slogans such as ldquoEAT
AT HOME COOK HAVE FUNrdquo and ldquoDONrsquoT RELY ON A FAILING HIGHLY
PROCESSED UNSUSTAINABLE TOXIC FOOD SYSTEM GROW AND PRESERVE
YOUR OWN FOOD NOWrdquo
When he invites customers onto his bus hersquos asking them not
only to step inside the vehicle but also to move into another way of
looking at our world of food The way he thinks of it coming onto
his bus is the next best thing to experiencing the bracing goodness
of the farm itself ldquoIrsquom packaging a farm onto a school busrdquo he
said ldquoand bringing it to themrdquo
822019 Change Comes to Dinner How Vertical Farmers Urban Growers and Other Innovators Are Revolutionizing How Amhellip
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullchange-comes-to-dinner-how-vertical-farmers-urban-growers-and-other-innovators 1112
School Bus Farm Market 25
be an art teacher she told me but she quit teaching two years ago
to attend full-time to the farm I asked her if itrsquos been a hard transi-
tion and she answered unhesitatingly ldquoIf I went back to teaching
itrsquod be easier When you get up at four-thirty and then force your-
self to come inside at eight at night to feed your kids dinner itrsquos
hardrdquo I wondered aloud if she planned to go back to teaching and
her answer was again immediate no way
I followed Christiersquos daughter Isabelle an energetic girl in a
peach tank top and a bowl haircut toward a pen by the house where
a tiny lamb was bleating manically She grabbed a baby bottle full
of water and kneeled down beside the animal
ldquoDo you want to be a farmer when you grow uprdquo I asked
thinking about that statistic I had recently come across the average
age of farmers in the United States is fifty-five and rising We badly
need kids to take an interest in this kind of life
ldquoI already amrdquo she said matter-of-factly squinting up at me in
the sunshine ldquoIrsquom a sheep farmer Because we have this little baby
sheeprdquo
My heart melted and I realized that this moment as much as the
fresh delicious milk itself was what the consumers on Markrsquos bus
are buying From Mennonite farmers to milk in glass bottles to the
old yellow school bus Markrsquos business plays on city dwellersrsquo sense
of nostalgia for what they see as a safe picturesque and pastoral
yesteryear A common theme in the movement to reinvigorate local
food systems is the idea of a David-and-Goliath battle between cor-
porate overlords and the small family farmer with the corporation
representing the evils of mechanized overcrowded stifling isolating
modern life and the little guy laying claim to a virtuous existence ofnature space freedom and community Not to mention little baby
sheep
I mentioned this observation to Mark as we got back on the road
822019 Change Comes to Dinner How Vertical Farmers Urban Growers and Other Innovators Are Revolutionizing How Amhellip
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullchange-comes-to-dinner-how-vertical-farmers-urban-growers-and-other-innovators 1212
26 Change Comes to Dinner
heading to our next stop On the bus he told me visitors often revel
in memories of other types of roving food vendors that populated
their long-ago childhoods Customers reminisce about the guys
who used to come by their urban neighborhoods in trucks or with
handcarts yelling ldquoFresh fishrdquo or ldquoWatermelonrdquo
ldquoBack in the day there was the milkman and the meat delivery
guyrdquo Mark said ldquoYou knew them They came to your house It was
interactive You chatted with them Thatrsquos what I try to do Irsquom in-
teractive I chat with peoplerdquo
Mark tries in short to give his customers ldquoan experiencerdquo He
brings baby animals for children to hold He talks to customers about
what they can do with what he sellsmdashhow to cook a spaghetti squash
for instance or which kind of barbeque sauce will go best on pulled
pork At the time of our journey his bus was plastered with hand-
lettered signs proclaiming a variety of riling slogans such as ldquoEAT
AT HOME COOK HAVE FUNrdquo and ldquoDONrsquoT RELY ON A FAILING HIGHLY
PROCESSED UNSUSTAINABLE TOXIC FOOD SYSTEM GROW AND PRESERVE
YOUR OWN FOOD NOWrdquo
When he invites customers onto his bus hersquos asking them not
only to step inside the vehicle but also to move into another way of
looking at our world of food The way he thinks of it coming onto
his bus is the next best thing to experiencing the bracing goodness
of the farm itself ldquoIrsquom packaging a farm onto a school busrdquo he
said ldquoand bringing it to themrdquo
822019 Change Comes to Dinner How Vertical Farmers Urban Growers and Other Innovators Are Revolutionizing How Amhellip
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullchange-comes-to-dinner-how-vertical-farmers-urban-growers-and-other-innovators 1212
26 Change Comes to Dinner
heading to our next stop On the bus he told me visitors often revel
in memories of other types of roving food vendors that populated
their long-ago childhoods Customers reminisce about the guys
who used to come by their urban neighborhoods in trucks or with
handcarts yelling ldquoFresh fishrdquo or ldquoWatermelonrdquo
ldquoBack in the day there was the milkman and the meat delivery
guyrdquo Mark said ldquoYou knew them They came to your house It was
interactive You chatted with them Thatrsquos what I try to do Irsquom in-
teractive I chat with peoplerdquo
Mark tries in short to give his customers ldquoan experiencerdquo He
brings baby animals for children to hold He talks to customers about
what they can do with what he sellsmdashhow to cook a spaghetti squash
for instance or which kind of barbeque sauce will go best on pulled
pork At the time of our journey his bus was plastered with hand-
lettered signs proclaiming a variety of riling slogans such as ldquoEAT
AT HOME COOK HAVE FUNrdquo and ldquoDONrsquoT RELY ON A FAILING HIGHLY
PROCESSED UNSUSTAINABLE TOXIC FOOD SYSTEM GROW AND PRESERVE
YOUR OWN FOOD NOWrdquo
When he invites customers onto his bus hersquos asking them not
only to step inside the vehicle but also to move into another way of
looking at our world of food The way he thinks of it coming onto
his bus is the next best thing to experiencing the bracing goodness
of the farm itself ldquoIrsquom packaging a farm onto a school busrdquo he
said ldquoand bringing it to themrdquo