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Young managers get to work at Peacehaven Farm

It's stirring to watch North Carolina agriculture transform and evolve in real time, from multiple ground zeroes in Guilford and surrounding counties. Today I visited Peacehaven Farm in Whitsett to follow up with the creators of a new farm residential program for people with disabilities. There I talked with Buck Cochran, Chas Edens and Ben Wright who, like other people I've interviewed over the past year, see agriculture as more about building and restoring person-to-person relationships than starting a money-making enterprise.

Peacehaven Farm is located on 89 acres, its entrance announced by a small white sign and old steel-walled barn on N.C. Hwy 61. Edens and Wright, farm managers who graduated from N.C. State in May, started in late July the physical work of prepping the farm, obtaining sheep and chickens, and repairing the sole building on the place. They studied landscape horticulture (with a permaculture emphasis) in college and cultivated a passion for addressing food and hunger issues by volunteering with Anathoth Community Garden in Cedar Grove and the Piedmont Interfaith Network of Gardens (PING). They met Cochran, Peacehaven's executive director, at an Anathoth workshop and Cochran later hired them to work on the farm. 

Peacehaven aims to ultimately house 30 to 35 residents who will raise and sell meat, fiber and produce, and live in homes powered with renewable energy. A master plan features a greenhouse, perennial fruit shrubs, hog shelter and biodiesel tank. But the men are taking a relaxed, go-with-the-flow approach to accomplishing each task. The non-profit will lease the property for 40 years at virtually no expense.

"One thing I think is a hallmark of what we're doing is learning as we do it and moving at a pace where we're not getting ahead of ourselves and not making huge mistakes in terms of how we use the land," Cochran said.

Cochran, a former associate pastor with Westminster Presbyterian Church in Greensboro, noted that the project's lack of strategic planning is different from what he is used to. They don't yet know what cover crops they will plant in the fall nor exactly when the first residential house will go up.

"I was fearful of it at first because it's not how I was used to operating," he said. "But I've found it kind of freeing and I think it's a faithful way to approach a project."

High on the farm managers' priority list are holding regular potlucks with whoever will attend and letting volunteers and interns experiment with creative ideas. In August, they held an ice cream social for the neighbors. A group of volunteers will come out on Sunday to build vegetable beds and Wright and Edens plan to construct yurts to live in until more permanent housing is built.

"I'm not interested in selling a cucumber for x amount of dollars," Edens said. "Personally I think we need to get away from thinking of food as a commodity. I get excited about thinking of food, good food, as a vital part of life."

Accompanying Photos

Morgan Josey Glover (News & Record)

Photo Caption: Ben Wright was hired as one of two farm managers hired in 2009 to work at Peacehaven Farm in Whitsett.

Additional Photos