Winston-Salem Journal, N.C., Michael Hastings column

Source: Winston-Salem Journal, N.self storageC.Oct. 02--Old Salem Museums & Gardens held its 19th conference on Restoring Southern Gardens and Landscapes last Thursday through Saturday, attracting about 120 people from across the South.The gardening conference is held every other year. The focus this year was food, and the title was "Feeding the American South: Heritage Gardening & Farming."The conference typically draws a mix of gardeners, museum workers and historical researchers, said Sally Gant, one of the organizers and the director of education and special programs at the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts in Old Salem."But with the food theme, we've attracted a lot of new, different people," Gant said.To put on the conference, Old Salem worked with the Livestock Conservancy, an organization in Pittsboro that advocates for heritage breeds."We do seed saving, fruits and vegetables, and they do heritage breeds of animals, so that was a logical partnership," said Martha Hartley, a researcher and planner in the restoration division at Old Salem.The conference offered a feast of educational programs -- as well as a couple of feasts.On Thursday evening, participants got a tour of Reynolda Village that focused on the farm operations of the Reynolds family in the early 20th century.After that came a dinner in Reynolda House Museum of American Art catered by Spring House Restaurant, Kitchen & Bar and inspired by a 1916 "barbecue with all accessories."The menu included pulled pork shoulder, chicken and roast pork loin. My favorite part was a selection of homemade pickles, including beets, hot peppers and root vegetables.After dinner, Barbara Millhouse, a granddaughter of Katharine and R.J. Reynolds and the founding president of the Reynolda House Museum of American Art, spoke to the crowd about how her grandmother developed plans for a dairy and farm that could be a model for progressive farmers across the country."This was about the time when many people were giving up the family cow," Millhouse said, and starting to buy commercial milk.Unfortunately, early commercial milk was often dangerous, giving people deadly dysentery, tuberculosis and other diseases. In the dairy's peak years from 1916 to 1924, Katharine Reynolds worked hard to improve conditions through sanitation, immunization and other efforts.Friday morning's schedule included talks on Thomas Jefferson's fruit orchard and kitchen garden. It was followed by lunch at the Tavern in Old Salem.Area livestock farmers brought several heritage breeds to the tavern barn for the day. Cynthia Bledsoe, of Billy Place Farm in East Bend, had a couple of varieties of chickens and St. Croix sheep. She sells their meat at Cobblestone Farmers Market and other places."I've just always had that pull toward old-timey ways and old breeds," she said. "And they just have such a good taste."I particularly enjoyed Michael W. Twitty's Friday afternoon workshop in the Single Brothers House kitchen. Twitty, of Rockville, Md., is a culinary historian who specializes in African and African-American foodways. He has spoken on the subject at such places as the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian Institution, Colonial Williamsburg and Monticello.Twitty said that slave迷利倉cooking in the late 18th- or early 19th-century era was regional. "There wasn't any one-size fits all," he said.Exactly what people ate depended on who they were, where they were and when they were eating.He talked about how many slaves might have made okra soup with hot peppers, tomatoes and cymling (pattypan) squash. "But sometimes it might have had seafood in it, or bits of pork or other meat," he said.Twitty also mentioned sweet potato leaves, which he said are very nutritious. "These are better than any organic spinach you can buy at Whole Foods," he said.Twitty said many people think that Africans were confronted with a lot of new and unfamiliar food when they first arrived in North America, but that isn't quite so."Africa was in the middle of all these trade routes," he said.African and Indian trade goes back thousands of years. As a result, the culinary repertoire of African tended to be large. What Africans arriving in North America cooked depended partly on what they found on these shores and partly on what they brought with them, including sorghum, okra and field peas.Twitty cited the writings of a slave trader who worked in Ghana who said that Africans there used bits of pork or other meat in pots of greens -- just like Southerners today. "And he said it was 'violent with heat,'" Twitty said, meaning that cooks in Ghana added hot peppers just as Southerners often do today.Twitty said that ultimately Southern food became a combination of contributions by American Indians, Africans and Europeans -- whether they contributed the pot (or cooking method), the cook and his or her sensibility, or the ingredients."I can talk about the African cook cooking the native American food in the European pot. I can talk about the native American cooking the European food in the African pot. And I can just keep going on like that all day," he said.On Friday evening, local farmers, chefs and others collaborated on a dinner, coordinated by Beta Verde and inspired by Slow Food's Ark of Taste, a catalog of heritage foods in danger of extinction. This catalog lists hundreds of specific animal breeds and plant varieties.The dinner included American Chinchilla rabbit in a terrine, Cherokee Trail of Tears beans in a casserole with Carolina Gold rice, and Jimmy Nardello peppers with sorghum-flavored roasted winter squash. Dessert was American Persimmon pudding with bourbon whipped cream.Ingredients came from such area farms as Plum Granny, Yellow Wolf and Sugar Creek, and from Old Salem's own gardens.The conference wound up Saturday with talks on Southern gardens and livestock traditions, lunch and an optional visit to Stauber Farm in Bethania, where Charles and Lamar Taft are, like Cynthia Bledsoe, raising St. Croix sheep."This has been a totally different approach for us, but it's been fun," Gant said of the conference. "And we are seeing how a lot of these programs tie in to what we are doing with agricultural and horticultural programs throughout the year, and showing people how we move from seed to soil to supper."Copyright: ___ (c)2013 Winston-Salem Journal (Winston Salem, N.C.) Visit Winston-Salem Journal (Winston Salem, N.C.) at 2.journalnow.com Distributed by MCT Information Services自存倉