Episode 1.8 Transcript
Dinah: Welcome to Farm to School Northeast, a podcast where we explore the creative ways that food is getting into school cafeterias and how food system education is playing out in classrooms and school gardens across the northeast. Today we have an opportunity to sit down with publisher Philip Lee of Readers to Eaters and author Jacqueline Briggs Martin author of Eva’s Green Garden Life to discuss food and food systems and Farm to School. So welcome, Jacqueline and Philip.
Jacqueline and Philp: Hello. Thank you. Happy to be here.
Dinah: Can you each introduce yourselves and tell us a little bit about the work you do and what inspires you about food and the food system?
Jacqueline: Philip, why don’t you go first.
Philip Lee: Okay. So again, thanks for having me and so I’m Philip Lee. I’m the publisher and co-founder of Readers to Eaters. We are an independent children’s book publisher based in San Francisco, and we started in 2009 specifically with the mission to promote food literacy by telling stories about our diverse food cultures, which basically just means we tell stories about people through food. So we tell stories about people who grow it, cook it, and provide our food and provide insight to our food system. I’ll just start with that and then Jacqueline can introduce herself.
Jacqueline: Well, thank you Dinah for having me. I love talking about books and stories and food. I grew up on a farm in Maine and we never had holidays because we had Holstein cows to milk. Food was our holidays. Strawberry season was a holiday, sweet corn season was a holiday. I no longer live on that farm. I now live in Iowa, but I, in thinking about what I want to write books for children about, I often find myself drawn to stories of farms, stories of food, and those who work with food and care about food.
Dinah: Philip, in your role as a publisher, why do you think it’s so important to publish books that tell stories about people through food, and stories about food and food systems?
Philip: Yeah, I get asked that a lot- funny, because we’re a publisher and people say, why just publish books about food? Because it seems very narrow and specific. But in fact, I would say otherwise because food is the great connector. I mean, we can tell any kind of stories and any kind of subject, especially at the curriculum classroom level through stories about food, and it started with food is something that we all share. We all do it every day, we all experience it every day, and everybody has an opinion about it doesn’t matter if you’re nine years old or you’re 90, that you still have an experience, good or bad about food. And again, food is such a vital, important part of education, and we can talk about things in a very tangible way. It doesn’t matter if it’s science, social studies, language, arts, art, history, nature, environment, even immigration.
We can talk about all these subjects through food. So when I start looking into telling stories about food, we’re always looking at all these new ways to connect subjects as well as people by age groups really. You can tell me, we’re talking about space and we can use food examples to talk about how do we understand space in a new way. Again, we’re talking about immigration and we’re talking about how does immigration changes the way we eat. And so there’s always different and it’s so easy and it’s so delicious to talk about food for people, but it all starts with telling stories about taste and flavor. I’ll give some more examples as we go along, but I’ll just stop at that for now.
Dinah: So Jacqueline, you wrote a book called Farmer Eva’s Green Garden Life that’s published by Readers to Eaters and Farmer Eva is a Massachusetts farmer. Can you tell the listeners a little bit about what inspired you to write this particular story about Farmer Eva?
Jacqueline: Well, stories come from all over. Sometimes they come from a magazine article or an overheard conversation. This story actually came from a friend of mine who is a writer and a neighbor to Eva Sommaripa, and she said to me, you should write about my neighbor Eva Sommaripa. She farms a two acre farm and has supported herself for 40 years on this farm, and I was busy with another project, so I didn’t latch onto that. The next year when I saw my friend, she said, you should write about my neighbor Eva Sommaripa. And I read a book about Eva that had been written by a Boston chef, and I thought, I think I should write about her. So I told my friend that I was interested and she said, come and stay with me and you can visit Eva’s farm. I did that.
And Eva is the kind of person who makes friends quickly. I visited her farm, walked the farm with her, and she would reach down, pluck up a leaf of purple shiso or dandelion and say, try this. We’d walk a little ways further and she would say, try this. She’s so, such a generous and sharing person that you spend an hour with her or two hours and you feel like you’ve known her for a very long time. So the fact that she has supported herself on two acres for 40 years is one thing that makes Eva interesting. She loves poetry. She memorizes poetry, she writes poetry. She mentors young farmers, and she organized a salamander brigade, which is also part of the book. She calls up her neighbors when it looks like a March night when the salamanders will themselves be marching from the forest to the pond to lay their eggs, and she says it’s time. They put on their gear, their garments, and go out and carry salamanders across the road so they won’t get squished by cars. She’s been doing this for more than a decade now, probably two decades, and has saved hundreds of salamanders, and that means thousands of salamanders because they lay a lot of eggs. She’s such an interesting person, so generous of spirit and physically generous with sharing her food that I just wanted people to know about her.
Philip: Can I just jump in real quick because I’m so excited about this hearing Jackie, as we lovingly call Jacqueline, tell this background. But can I tell you from a publisher standpoint, what attracted me to this story? Well, first of all, I’ve worked with Jackie for, this is the fifth book of her food hero series, telling stories about people who grow, cook and provide our foods, but more importantly is growing communities through food. So this is like Jackie came to me with this idea about Eva Sommapripa, and I said, okay, that sounds interesting, but this is, first of all, Jackie is such a wonderful writer. I mean, I’m a publisher, I’m a lover of words, and she opened this manuscript with these words. My friend Eva Sommaripa lives so close to the ocean, she can smell the sea so close to the woods, she can talk to trees.
And it’s so vivid and it’s like I read this and I said, oh my God, who is this person? And there’s a sense of place, there’s a sensory aspect of the smell of the land. And so right away I was drawn to this story and that’s what beautiful writing is. And then as I read on about the story about the Eva, I connected it in two ways. It turns out this is a story about a woman farmer, which I discovered this would be the first book on the subject, women farmers were not recognized by the USDA until 2002. And the other thing that Jackie did in the story is that it connects farming to not just people who grow food but their caretakers of the land, which is connecting farming to ecology and nature, which Jackie just gave that example about here’s even saving the salamanders. They’re not just caring for, they’re caring for the critters underground and all the living things all around the pollinators and the birds about…so this is what I find so refreshing about her take on telling this farming story. So backing up, this is why the publisher was drawn to the story.
Dinah: Jackie, what do you hope that readers of all ages will take away from the story of Farmer Eva?
Jacqueline: Well, first of all, I hope they will feel like she is their friend too. CS Lewis has this wonderful phrase, the furniture of our minds. So I hope that Eva Sommaripa will be part of the furniture of their minds, that they will feel like she’s a neighbor to them because she is a remarkable person. I had to learn about the soil in order to write this book because Eva loves the soil, she just cares for it like a member of her community. And I wanted to include that, and I had to do a lot of reading about the soil and all that’s going on down there and the connections between the plant roots and the soil microbes and how they interact to help each other survive better. I was just excited by learning that because my whole background has been more on a competition basis that plants compete and the strongest survive, and to find out that plants actually cooperate with each other and they all survive better when they do. That was really exciting to me as a model for the way we can all be in the world. So I would hope that I have written the story so that comes through as a good model for knowing about the soil, but also for being in the world.
Dinah: Yeah, that’s an incredible lesson to get out of that. And it sounds like you had to do a lot of research and that you took this learning about soil, but you really connected it to humanity.
Jacqueline: It just kind of connected itself for me, I think. I read a book that is connected with plants and roots called Finding the Mother Tree, and she talks a lot in that book about how tree roots and soil microbes work together to pass messages along to other trees. There’s so much going on underground that I was not aware of. It’s been a real educational journey for me in the past few years to learn about all this underground activity.
Philip: But I also want to just jump in again and give credit to Jackie. And we worked on the development of the story and she did so much research about composting and the land, I mean in the soil and so on, but she turns it into just really fun, playful languages for the young readers. I mean, it’s like calling it the Brown Underground, and it’s all eat around Underground Cafe. And I just think it’s something that, again, as an editor publisher, it’s something that kids would therefore understand. We’ve seen a lot of very sciencey, honestly, a little wonky discussion about composting. But this is fun. And more importantly, it sparks curiosity. It’s like, oh, what is that all about? What’s an eat around Underground Cafe? And those are the kind of language that I am drawn to and I think young readers are also drawn to.
Dinah: So Philip, you said that the USDA didn’t recognize women as farmers until 2002?
Philip: That’s correct.
Dinah: That’s just an outrageous thing to think about.
Philip: It’s almost like the USDA has their own census to count farmers. And until that point, I mean, what happens is that each farm was only allowed. I think the way it works is there’s one farmer per farm, and therefore that one farmer almost always is the man of the farm, and the wife gets counted as the wife of the farmer, and so they’re not counted. And so essentially women farmers run about a third of farms in America. So somewhere like in 2002, they changed the counting system to include multiple family members into one farm, I believe is three or four. And so therefore that’s when women were first counted into the USDA census. And it’s huge– it’s like to be recognized, to be counted. And I also, again, this is through our research working with Jackie on this book, is that it’s not just the fact that farmers are women, but women farmers do farm a little differently. And in fact, Eva very much personifies that because women farmers tend to farm in smaller lots, they tend to farm more organically, and they do tend to take into account nature and environment more so than the bigger or male run farms. And so it’s all these things that Eva happens to be. And so we want to highlight that again, that connection to farming and nature is important.
Dinah: So Philip, with Readers to Eaters, can you speak a little bit to how people can support and amplify the work of women and BIPOC and LGBTQ farmers?
Philip: Well, certainly just reading about these issues, I mean, again, even here we are doing this book on the women farmers, and it turns out to be the first children’s book that recognizes women farmers. And so things we take for granted often are not recognized. And I think for us, by reading about it and by making sure that these people are counted and represented, it’s important. And so and again, here’s Jackie also wrote, the first of our food hero series is called Farmer Will Allen and the Growing Table, it’s about a Black farmer, an urban farmer in Milwaukee. Again, a lot of people think about AG and not really think about urban AG. And again, to Jackie’s credit, she’s the first one to really kind of write about that. And we’re always trying to tell stories about farming in new ways. And even this story in Farmer Eva, not just as a woman farmer, but even recognizing small and medium-sized farmer, which represent much of the Mid-Atlantic states. And it’s something that New England and Mid-Atlantic states is something that we’re trying to highlight, even back to the farming communities because the issues are different. And so Jackie also wrote about Sander Katz, the well-known fermentation expert, and Sander Katz got into fermentation because he had HIV and he moved from New York City into a queer community in rural Tennessee, and that’s where he started doing fermentation. And again, we want to highlight these kind of stories. And so I think for the public, how they can support these folks is very much reading it, reading about it, and supporting the local farmers, ask about, get to understand who their local farmers are and support their work. Jackie, I don’t know if more to add to that.
Jacqueline: Well, I certainly think it’s important work to support women and BIPOC and LGBTQ. I think that what you said, Philip, about readers reading these books, sharing such books with their friends and creating a demand for these books so that writers out there will think, oh yes, I should write about that. Not just me as a writer, but lots of other people, maybe people who never thought about writing a children’s book know someone who has a farm who also has a unique story to tell, and they will tell that story. I think as we all write such stories, we do create a demand for them, and that will mean that there will be more of them. And that is so important in this time that we have lots of stories about lots of kinds of people.
Philip: And again, as a publisher, I just want to jump in and add that during this time when the subject of diversity is often questioned and if not challenged, it’s all more important to know again, we’re just telling stories to reflect people in our community and in our society. We’re not just to know that, again, everybody’s doing different work. I did read into get more information about from the Queer Farmer Network, for example, to understand that, well, queer farmers tend to have a lot of focus on regenerative agriculture. I mean, they are doing, everybody does our share to pay more attention to make an impact in our world and hopefully make it better. And so I think again, by reading about their work, shopping from produce from their work, really adds to supporting the diversity of our food system.
Dinah: Jacqueline, you mentioned a couple of other titles. Will you just tell the listeners maybe the titles of these books that you have written and maybe a little synopsis, just a short one?
Jacqueline: I would love to. As I have been thinking about the Food Hero series, I realized something that I had not thought about when I was writing each individual story. And that is what these five food heroes have in common is they all love food, they all love the flavors of good food, but they also have a goal of creating community through food. Farmer Will Allen found a rundown batch of greenhouses in the city of Milwaukee in a food desert, a place where there was no fresh food for people to purchase. He remodeled those greenhouses, fixed them, and figured out how to make compost for soil, and built an urban farm right in Milwaukee so that those neighbors could have fresh food. Then he went around the country and around the world telling other cities how to do the same thing. I also wrote a book about Alice Waters, Alice Waters, and the Trip to Delicious. Alice Waters only wanted to cook food for her friends, and she found a restaurant where she thought she could do that. She wanted to make delicious food for her friends, and she was all about freshness, getting food at its source and minimal messing around with it, minimal preparation, just finding the best fresh food. But really it was about community. She wanted to do it for her friends. She became famous, of course, with Che Panis restaurant, and then she decided to do the same for kids and she started schoolyard gardens. Other people do schoolyard gardens, too. She’s not the only one who does them, but she did start a schoolyard garden program that is now also all over the country and around the world. Then there was Roy Choi who lives in Los Angeles, and when he lost his job as a chef in 2008, did not know what he was going to do until he decided to put Korean barbecue inside a corn tortilla and sell it out of a food truck. It was a huge success. People stood in line and he said communities were created as people stood in line for his tacos. We also, June and I, June Jo Lee and I wrote Chef Roy Choi together, and we wrote a story about Sandor Katz the fermenter together. All of the people that I have written about, not only love fresh food, love to build communities through food, but they want to share what they know they have all in one way or another, taken their knowledge out to other communities. Sandor Katz goes around the country and around the world leading fermentation workshops. And Eva doesn’t go around the country and the world, but her influence has spread because she has mentored young farmers who have come to her farm and worked with her and she has taught them, and then they have gone off to start their own farms in other places. And so her influence is much broader than where her farm is in southeastern Massachusetts. So that’s a little bit about each of my books. I hope it’s not too long.
Dinah: No, I love it. And I’m very excited for book number six, and I hope there’s a number six in your mind.
Jacqueline:I hope so, too.
Dinah: I don’t want you to reveal it, but I’m hoping you’re thinking about it. So Jacqueline, how you’re obviously an incredibly skilled storyteller with a passion for food and food systems. How can young readers tell stories of their own about food systems? Where would you suggest they begin?
Jacqueline: Well, when I am talking to young readers, to students, I think food is a wonderful place to start because most families have something that is, they’re like family food that grandma made it and she learned it from her grandma, and they always have it on birthdays or they always have it on holidays or they have it on picnics, and it doesn’t have to be a fancy food. A food that we used to have in my family on the farm was in the summertime, crackers and milk and sardines. We had those cows, we had all that milk, and it would be a warm summer night and we would have cold milk and crackers with possibly sardines, possibly cheese, but my siblings and I now remember that fondly, those cracker and milk suppers. So I think for kids to talk about a food from their childhood, or they are children, but a food that is important to them, maybe it’s a peanut butter sandwich, maybe it’s the ramen that they make after school. But if it is a ramen, that would be wonderful because it’s such a comfort food. There’s always something that people really love that’s a treat for them. And to write about that, where it came from, how they make it, there’s so many ways they can do that, that it’s a great place to start writing and start being more aware of the aspects of our daily meals.
Philip: Also jump in very quickly on this, again, from a publisher standpoint, what I would certainly encourage young readers who also become young writers and tell their stories, and I think when it comes to storytelling, a great way to start telling stories about other people is to start by understanding yourself. And with food, it’s a very, again, very immediate association of understanding what you like and not like, and therefore you are. And a lot of our stories, we try to get kids not think in terms of yuck and yum, but flavors and texture. And if you understand why you like a food, how do you make it more tasty? It starts with having language of understanding, flavor and texture. Do you like it more sweet? Do you like it more sour, more bitter?
And then a lot of times we add a cultural level understanding to these kinds of vocabulary. It’s like just when we think sweet is sweet and sour and sour is the basic flat line what these things are. Well, I’m Chinese and I grew up eating a lot of bitter fruit and vegetables. Actually, I just said some bok choy last night for vegetables and bok choy can be a little bit bitter and so is broccoli and so is certainly bitter melons, but it’s tasty to me. I mean, bitter is not not tasty, but it’s just a flavor. And we talked to friends who are from the Middle East and they said sour is the flavor of home. And so it’s a way of understanding different culture. And we work a lot with new immigrants coming to America and they say, what’s the flavor of America? It’s sweet because we tend to make everything pretty sweet.
And so it’s a great way to understand ourselves, our community and culture. And therefore how do we tell stories? I mean, again, here we’re talking to farm to school, and so much of that’s encouraging kids to understand how food grows and eating different kinds of greens. But I find it’d be really fun for kids to understand flavor again from what’s coming out of the garden. And how do you even make it tasty? I mean, I think it’s okay to talk about eating a salad with a salad dressing, yet we don’t address that very much. And the dressing can be tasty in so many, it can be more acidic, it can be more sour, and it could be more sweet again. So those are really great ways to start understanding ourselves and start telling stories about what we like and not like as a foundational conversation.
Dinah: I love all of that advice for young storytellers. Thank you. So is there anything that I haven’t asked you both you would want to share?
Jacqueline: I would want to encourage listeners to plant some seeds. And Eva, one of her main crops was pea shoots, which are just pea seeds that she harvested when they were four or five inches tall. Pea shoots grow in two weeks. You can have a crop in two weeks. So it’s a great thing for classrooms to do. It’s a great thing to do in your kitchen because they’re really good on sandwiches and they’re good on salads and pea seeds are not hard to find. And there is something, well, I call it magical about watching a seed sprout. It’s just amazing. You have this little dried up thing and you put it in soil and a week later there’s a sprout and there’s green leaves. So, I guess that would be my one thing that we hadn’t covered yet is– plant some seeds.
Philip: And I just add to this, Jackie’s last comment here, seeing something grow is so nourishing. I was just reading about Nelson Mandela when he was in prison he actually started a garden at the prison. And he said, obviously it was too small to grow it as food, but just by growing food, by growing something, it gives him the sense of place, gives him the sense of making a difference, and ultimately he said he learned about leadership because you are nourishing a plant like you are nourishing people, and it’s just, I think gardening is really inspiring and so these stories are wonderful to share.
Dinah: Jackie, I have some seeds on the windowsill now, and you reminded me that whenever I put them in, you’re right, they are so small, and you just have to have faith and you have to have hope that this is going to sprout. And it’s always a reminder for me to believe in the seed, and so it is really exciting.
Jacqueline: It is. It is. And I think that something you both said reminds me that when we grow seeds we join a huge community of people all over the world, the three of us grow seeds, and all around the world people put seeds in the ground or seeds in pots, and we are part of that. It connects up.
Dinah: I am sensing that next book coming out, Jackie. Thank you so much to both of you for coming to talk about books, and food systems and food and Farmer Eva’s Green Garden Life and all of the great titles at Readers to Eaters and the five food hero books that you have written, Jackie, are all so exciting. So thank you for sharing that and I am hoping that classrooms hear this and get these book titles for their students, and also that and that students are excited to tell their own stories.
Jacqueline and Philip; Thank you. I hope so, too. Thank you for having us, Dinah.
Dinah: This podcast is a production of the Northeast Farm to School Collaborative. For more information about this podcast or farm to school in the northeast, go to northeastfarmtoschool.org
Phone: (413) 253-3844
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