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GREENSBORO -- Before every Boston Tea Party, every spontaneous uprising, there is always a Stamp Act — one last straw, one final outrage that's too much to swallow.

At J&S Farm Stand, John Marshal can no longer count the last straws on both hands. Mad cow. Bird flu. The spinach scare. Green onions. The peanut butter recall. Genetically modified hog feed that happened to get into corn chips.

And each day brings a fresh scandal about Chinese exports, in which contaminated pet food was the tip of the iceberg.

"People don't trust corporate America anymore, but they trust mom and pop," says Marshal, whose stand at Piedmont Triad Farmers Market stocks organics from about 50 local producers — eggs, milk, flour, chicken, lamb, even dog food.

"They want fruit that was ripened on the vine and picked last night down the road. Not harvested green or pink, shipped 1,000 miles and then 'ripened' in a CO2 chamber."

A gradual trend toward natural, local food has long been dubbed "slow food." Up close, it seems a slight misnomer.

That's because one glimpse inside the Piedmont's widening network of farmers who pick their crops, truck them to local markets and sell them before they are 24 hours off the vine, and one word that hardly comes to mind is "slow."
The field, 5 p.m. Friday

A lunch break of fried okra wasn't until 3 this afternoon. Work, on the other hand, started at 0-dark-30, before the sun peeked over the ridge and climbed high enough to burn the mist off the bottomland.

Friday is a "pick day" at Snow Creek Family Organics, and that means everything else has to wait. Everything but cabbage and cucumbers, carrots, purple-tinged okra, butternut squash, muskmelons and eggplants.

All organic, these are the stockpiles of the homegrown revolution. And up in Stokes County, five minutes from the Virginia line, Methura Spradling, 31, is the advance guard — a field marshal in dusty brown Crocs and a pony tail, with just one battle plan today.

To pick.

If the wind whips up, he'll pick. If a soaking rain comes and electricity crackles in the air, he'll pick. There is no time to lose because tomorrow is a market day.

Within 12 hours of harvest, Snow Creek's crops will be loaded into Spradling's faded blue GMC van and headed south to Greensboro.

Some will go to the Farmer's Curb Market, where vendors will be massing at sunrise, and 3,000 people will have crowded into the old barn-shaped building by the time the market closes at noon. Other products will be unloaded at East Carolina Organics warehouse in Pittsboro to be distributed fresh to restaurants and stores across the region.

And there is a third, little-known outlet catching on by word of mouth: The pick of Stradling's fields also goes to individual customers who made a lump cash investment at the start of the season, and now receive a weekly delivery.

The arrangement is called "community supported agriculture." But John Hendricks, a Greensboro engineer who has bought a share of Spradling's produce for three years, has a plainer name for it.

"I just call him my farmer because, theoretically, that's what he is," says Hendricks, who picks up a $25 bushel of assorted produce each week at Deep Roots co-op, then splits that three ways with friends. "It's very affordable. And it's good to have that personal connection with someone who's growing your food."

Meet the new face of North Carolina farmers, and their customers. It's an intriguing, complex portrait.

Part of it is familiar. The ox-drawn plow Methura Spradling's brother-in-law uses to turn hard soil under. The spring freezes that shrivel the buds and summer droughts that wither the vegetables. Heirloom seeds and gnarly, ugly fruit more flavorful than the supermarket version.

But it's also a face we haven't seen before. Weekly e-mail alerts announce what's ripe and what time to get it. Intricate delivery networks run on retreads and 16-hour days.

At heart, it's a battle of time and distance — an awareness that something is on the brink of perishing. Something bigger than a van full of watermelons.

As a drive down many a two-lane road attests, North Carolina leads the nation in loss of farmland to development. Meanwhile, food sources are concentrated in the hands of larger, more distant farms.

Slow food proponents argue that local farms offer sustenance not only for the body, but the community as well.

"This is for future generations," Spradling says, surveying the field where his work is done — until he rises at 5:30 a.m., bathes, loads the van and heads to market. "I don't want to leave behind a bigger problem than the one I found."
The market, 8 a.m. Saturday

A chef chooses produce the way an artist chooses colors. Decisively. Quickly.

Poker-faced behind sunglasses, Beth Kizhnerman will walk the length of both outdoor pavilions at the Piedmont Triad Farmers Market before buying so much as a cherry tomato. Then, she walks it again.

Trained in France, she apprenticed in food prep, spending 12 hours at a stretch on a single task — peeling garlic, say, or separating the red mesclun leaves from the green ones. Giving the owner of Bistro Sofia and Smith Street Diner what you might call a practiced eye.

"They're hard as rocks," she says of a cart of imported peaches, not needing to feel them. A peck of wrinkled chili peppers: "They're hydrating. They've been out too long."

But the watercress from Mount Airy: "Perfect." Randolph County cantaloupe: "Oh, that's good." A Carthage-grown canning tomato she holds to her nose, smelling the stem, then scooping up a box for $6.

"It smells like dirt. It smells like a tomato," she says as she loads the diner-bound carton into the trunk of her Prius. "A supplier would charge $15."

But as with any household, it's a delicate balance. Even at her French-style bistro, with linen tablecloths and a wine list, Kizhnerman has to keep within a budget to stay afloat: Food is a third of her costs.

Organic local lamb is a cut above, but out of a small, independent restaurant's range. The local organic dairy has excellent products, but the bistro is no longer on its delivery route. Making that connection is hit-or-miss, and it's not every day that a chef on a restaurant schedule can scout bargains.

Likewise for households, nothing can compete with the convenience of a 24-hour supermarket. Still, local farmers are little by little making up the difference in quality and price. In season, for example, organic tomatoes sell for $2 and $3 a pound, less than they fetch at chain grocery stores.

And it's a better deal for the farmer: Even though roadside stand prices are cheap, farmers get to keep what they take in. Selling to wholesalers, in contrast, farmers get pennies on the pound, and the wholesaler, the packager and the retailer get the profit.

A case in point is Randy Bettini, a slow-food farmer who supplies lettuce and greens to Bistro Sofia in both summer and hothouse winter months. A part-time farmer specializing in shiitake mushrooms, Bettini waits for customers to come to him at the farm stand he mans each afternoon off Summit Avenue near Bryan Park.

"I don't have to buy all those chemical fertilizers and pesticides, so I can afford to sell zucchini for 50 cents a pound," Bettini says. "Pick it at its ripest point, cook it and eat it. It doesn't get simpler than that."
The kitchen, 5 p.m. Saturday

There's a lull before the dinner hour, a pause between the all-day chopping and grinding and trimming, and the moment the gas range at Bistro Sofia fires up again.

Nothing is left to chance, and "simple" is easier said than done. For instance, tonight's special: "Flounder in papillote with a julienne of summer vegetables, pearl pasta and Bistro garden herb butter."

The fish is line caught, instead of trapped in big nets. The difference? Less trauma, no long rigor mortis. It filets easily. It tastes better.

Earlier, sous chef Steven Tholkes ducked out back to snip thyme, basil and tarragon from the garden. In a week or so, the tomatoes will be red — and on the menu.

Tholkes went to the American Culinary Institute. He learned the chemistry of it.

He can buy a bag of chanterelle mushrooms from who knows where, reconstitute them in hot water and add stock to make them taste the way they should. Or he can buy them from 100 miles up the road, sauté them in butter and get that incredible flavor.

It is all in a sunset-to-sunset journey. From the afternoon when Methura Spradling harvests his crop, to the dewy morning Beth Kizhnerman sees the sweet, clean Yukon Golds at the market, to the evening when sous chef Steven Tholkes carefully arranges the rack of lamb and potatoes "daupinois" on the plate, it all leads up to one moment.

That's the moment Barbara Davis, sitting at her regular table near the bar, unrolls her napkin and picks up a fork.

She was a chef in Napa Valley, and makes a living writing today. But at times, there are no words. Rack of lamb is one of those times.

"That lamb — so simple," Davis says, then pauses to describe the potatoes — a casserole of Gruyere cheese from Virginia, local shallots, a pinch of nutmeg. "Oh, my God, those potatoes were good."

Contact Lorraine Ahearn at 373-7334 or lahearn@news-record.com