Free Charlottesville Food by Casey Ireland Page B

Malec of Mas to Millers. Their guidance, experience and general know-how has been an indispensable part of the book-writing process. Greg and Debbie Ireland, Chelsea Ireland and Kevin Haney have given me incredible support—they’ve functioned as sounding boards, proofreaders, marketers and cheerleaders. Kevin’s photography, eye for detail and unwavering dedication have been essential to the completion of this work and my sanity as an author.
    The food community in Charlottesville is a knowledgeable and enthusiastic one. Without the backing of local farmers, retailers, restaurateurs and craftspeople, this text would have no stories to tell. Sincere thanks to Peter Hatch of Monticello for his easy wisdom; his vibrant personal background and incredible knowledge base proved integral to the historical foundations of this book. Every one of the individuals interviewed has been kind, resourceful and eager to help. I am forever grateful for the conversations, farm visits and friendships granted to me by this group of food-minded individuals during the past year.

Introduction
    The local food scene in Charlottesville has taken off by leaps and bounds within the past twenty years. The once-scrubby City Market has morphed into a veritable Mecca of seasonal foodstuffs; the Boar’s Head Inn, one of the only places to offer simple fine dining with regional flavor twenty years ago, is now one of many stellar restaurants putting out quality meals with local ingredients. Gabriele Rausse, local vintner and director of gardens and grounds at Monticello, tells a story of fancy dinners flown in from New York and frozen baguettes from Washington, D.C., purchased at Foods of All Nations.
    Twenty years ago, gourmet retail standbys like Feast! had not yet burst onto the scene; the luxurious handmade lasagna sheets of Mona Lisa Pasta, raspberry jam of Agriberry Farm and delicate and precious quail eggs from Down Branch Farm were nonexistent during this period. While marked by an educated, somewhat cosmopolitan population in the city, Charlottesville possessed a food scene that was a far cry from its current luxuriousness today.
    What happened over twenty years that led to the creation of such a vibrant, accessible and renowned culinary tradition? Trends in agriculture and cooking, often small in scale, alternative movements spearheaded by freethinkers and discontents, have trickled into the mountains and valleys of central Virginia from California, New York and the urban South. The rise of organic agriculture, farm-to-table eating and farmers’ markets have all been absorbed with great success into the existing foodways of the Charlottesville area.
    Wendell Berry, a founder of the organic food movement, proclaimed in 2008, “‘Organic’ has become a label, as it was destined to be.” 1 To Berry, “organic” as a descriptor has become “a completely worthless word now. It has been perverted to suit the needs of industrial agriculture.” 2 In the wake of organic’s demise, a new label has appeared in the texts of Joel Salatin and the farms of the Piedmont: “beyond organic.” USDA-designated conceptions of organic growing, with their focus on fertilizers, feed and chemicals, remain an inadequate way of labeling a product influenced by permaculture, heritage breeds and biomimicry. The holistic, ecologically minded concept of “beyond organic” eating and farming has begun to fill the niches left by the large-scale successes of businesses like Horizon Organics and Earthbound Farms.

    Johnson grass at Timbercreek Organics. Photo by Casey Ireland .
    Organic, as a descriptor and a USDA-approved label, has begun to lose its monopoly over the food markets of health-conscious consumers. The imported California organic tomato, trucked across the country with a price tag to make up for its long transit, has begun to fall out of favor against the lumpy, lobed charm of a backyard plant