Meadows: From Livestock Feed to Landscape Design Popculture

Gene and Ben in a hay field, Perrys Mills, NY

 Before the meadow experts draw their metaphorical knives, let me first say that I recognize that there are different types of meadows and that I am not an expert in any of them.  I know that there are perpetual meadows from alpine to coastal and everything in between that stand to discredit the title of this blog.  But it seems as though every presentation, every rendering, and every landscape design is clearly discussing what was heretofore known as a hay field.  Clients, unless it is truly a project where a perpetual meadow naturally occurs, or a research facility, or a hardcore Eco-wealthy tycoon, are not going to introduce the types of conditions required to maintain those meadows.  Thankfully it is quite rare that someone would set fire to a field of tall grasses.

Agricultural meadows are not rare on farms in upstate New York where I grew up. There, we just called it "hay" (although the family farm is itself truly becoming a thing of rarity).  If you were lucky and had the right field you got a second or third cut and you didn't leave it in the field to dry for "good winter color".  And, if it was long enough to cut, you cut it for feed.  The winter color near my house was severely stunted by a 6" haircut that was soon covered with snow that was then soon covered with a layer of dried or liquified manure.  The effects of this practice are hotly debated particularly this year in the Champlain Valley where the blue-green algae blooms threaten the life within Lake Champlain, not to mention the tourist and recreation associated with summer fun.

Those hay fields were not described in glowing language meant to sell a design concept.  It was a fact of life and a toilsome one at that.  I was too small to really be involved in the process and did what I could apart from not getting stepped on.  It was a lot of long hours cutting and bailing, loading and unloading, stacking and unstacking and finally feeding and cleaning manure. When it was time to "do hay" my father would climb from what we called the hay mow, an elevated barn attic where bailed hay is stored for the winter, looking as if he had been caught in a heavy rain.  A literal heavy rain, the man was exhausted.

I've described a simple process made romantic in my telling and somehow cheapened by master degree holding esthetes: a club in which I clearly hold a card.  I say that perhaps to assuage the dread that I may be morphing into a griping middle-aged man lost in the noble past.  Maybe I am.  Or maybe I can't help but acknowledge not only the hypocrisy inherent in the sale of a "meadow" as a design element, but that I am, even in my criticism, inherently and inextricably connected to that hypocrisy.  The day I, like so many others of my generation, left the rural homestead to pursue higher education I both forfeited my right to defend the farm life and the right judge others who, like me, are so entirely over educated that they need to rediscover that noble past.

So now we have urban chickens, urban farms, urban bees and urban meadows.  All of which I took for granted and all of which I now see in an entirely different way.  And somehow it irks me that my urban and suburban born friends are becoming enlightened to this fact.  Maybe its because what I wanted most was to have all the things they did growing up.  That I grew up in a way that was different and difficult and somehow that chip is slowly being tipped from my shoulder.

And I feel like I carry another secret: it's that is there is a reason why my generation left those farms.  It's hard.  Beekeeping is hard.  Doing hay is hard.  Putting up fence is hard. Catching cows when they get out is hard.  Keeping chickens alive is hard. The "evil" of  large scale industrial farming is not abstract and the people affected directly by it are real.  Like warriors or athletes it's a lifestyle that makes men and women strong in their youth and wears on them in old age.  Not everyone is cut out for that life and when I hear about concepts deployed by newly minted experts as a weekend warrior activity or a design aesthetic I am somehow on some level oddly offended.

So the dilemma I face isn't the acceptance of agricultural processes as pop-culture (something that has been done more or less since the advent of agriculture), it's that I haven't been able to let that chip fall.

Highland Brewery: Low Impact Beer

In 1994 the Highland Brewery began brewing beer in downtown Asheville, North Carolina with some refurbished dairy equipment.  I was lucky enough to take a "tour" back in 2001 which consisted mainly of standing in place and drinking.  My pint was joyfully snatched from my hand and refilled every time it was 1/4 of the way below the rim: the proverbial never emptying glass.  Needless to say the rest of the workday was shot, but the beer was well worth it.


Fast forward 11 years and I find myself living in Philadelphia, inspired by the writings of Paul Hawken, and Amory Lovins (among many, many others) looking for companies, leaders, and designers that are trying to move towards a capitalism that is more complete.  I was additionally inspired by a John Todd who lectured at the Academy of Science and spoke about how, during his tenure with UVM, he worked with the Magic Hat brewery in Burlington, VT to develop a closed loop brewing process.


This was of particular interest to me for two reasons:  UVM and Magic Hat were just across the lake when I was growing up, and...I love beer!  So I decided to look close to Philadelphia and wrote a little something about Dogfish Head Brewery. 


I then set upon a mission to track down all my favorite beers and see if and how they fit in to my other interest of what Hawken calls, Natural Capitalism.  The first on the list is Highland Brewery, a favorite beer brewer of mine and one of the biggest things I miss about living in North Carolina, and Asheville in particular.  All of their beers are amazing and full bodied...the Kashmir IPA and the Oatmeal Porter are my personal favorites.  Highland's claim to fame is their malty yet well bodied Gaelic Ale.  It's a crowd pleasing beer


With regards to a green initiative they hit the trifecta of building reuse, sustainable manufacturing, and community stewardship.  You can click HERE for the particulars, but these guys try and do it all.

In terms of community outreach, Highland has partnered with the Southern Appalachian Highlands Conservancy, Adopt-a-Stream, and Manna Food Bank, and offer support to other organizations in their tasting room.  And that room is amazing see below:

Tasting Room!

I toured again last May with a raucous group, had a blast, and could not recommend the facility more.  Part of that tour lead us to the French Broad River Brewery, but that is a blog for another day.... Cheers!

 

Micro Intervention: See Potential

Photo courtesy of Emily Schiffer

Similar to our last blog post on La Place du Geant  we would like to share this interesting spin on community based design visualization. Photographer Emily Schiffer has developed an idea that hopes to better serve communities suffering from poverty, blight, and underused infrastructure in the South Side of Chicago.  In partnership with Orrin Williams, the founder and director of the Center for Urban Transformation (CUT) [http://www.cutchicago.org/], she would like to engage the community with and public art with the goal of transforming urban blight into community potential.


With a focus on urban agriculture Schiffer would like to work with artists, photographers, and community leaders to use large-scale photographic installations and urban redevelopment as strategies for pre-visualizing a transformed landscape. Her hope is that this community cooperative approach will help to redirect attention towards solutions based in reality and "reframe individuals' relationships with food and foster new forms of healthy living."


The viability of urban agriculture in the United States is yet to be determined given the dominance of industrial farming operations. Family farms in rural areas all over the country are continuing to fail at an alarming rate.  If it can be accomplished in an manner that is economically and socially sustainable, perhaps part of the answer lies with urban agriculture.  The fact that it is unproven does not preclude attempts to create urban farms.  Organic farming at one time was considered a niche business, but it profitably continues now on a variety of scales.  Maybe the same can happen for urban agriculture.


We applaud Schiffer's project and value the creativity, courage, and vision it takes to make something like this happen.


To find out more about Schiffer's project, watch the video below or visit Kickstarter.



Photo and text courtesy of Kickstarter and Emily Schiffer.