My friend Jon made one of the first cornbreads I remember liking. I was a picky eater for a long time, but since realizing that peanut butter & jelly do indeed taste good together, I’ve been catching up. It was a basic cornbread, made in a cast-iron skillet, with jalapenos and cheddar cheese bits. Did it have corn off the cob mixed into it as well? It was summer time, late august, when we were harvesting corn by the bucket full and eating our fill moments after. Jon invited the crew and some other folks over to his backyard for a potluck/BBQ/drink around a fire evening. There were a few chickens clucking their way through the yard and Steve had his guitar. Steve also brought cornbread, but said Jon’s was better and it was. Everyone was happy, but nothing was particularly extraordinary.

I’ve been friends with Jon for four years now. While not farming together, we’ve made food, walked in the woods, and listened to records. In the summertime, we’ve gone swimming. We’ve had a few mini-adventures. Once we travelled to Vermont. Over the long weekend, we went to three farmer’s markets, two co-ops, and one bakery. We ate bread and/or pizza at every stop. (This is what happens when you get two farmers, one of whom is an aspiring grain grower and the other a serious snacker together.) Another time, we drove North to hike and explore Skowhegan. There’s a farmer’s market there, and The Pickup, a local foods cafe in the same building as an operational grist mill. They make excellent bread and pancakes. These trips were out of the ordinary. Mostly, we make food, walk in the woods and listen to records.

Try as we may to let a sunset soak in and recognize the happiness in regular, daily happenings, the beauty of normalcy is that it flows in everyday life without glittering and flustering and making our hearts beat any faster. Does that pre-work bowl of oatmeal make the same splash as cinnamon buns on a holiday morning? Not likely. But, do those cinnamon buns sustain us? There are people who walk in our front doors with such frequency that we may keep stirring the pot of soup before giving them a hug. (If we hug at all, because didn’t I just see you a few hours ago at work?)

Jon, I guess you’re oatmeal? Which, if you are what you eat, this works out on a lot of levels. Thanks for being the backbone to so many good days. Thanks for always playing your guitar and singing “Goin’ Down the Road.” And thanks for answering my questions. If you’d like to get to know Jon and why he’s such a special bowl of oatmeal, keep reading. You can find him, his cornmeal, and other produce in the state of Maine at several farmers’ markets and at the 3 Level Farm store. This is the inaugural year of his own farm, Good Morning Farm, and if he doesn’t fall asleep in his fields trying to weed in the dark of night, it should be a grand success.

My questions and Jon’s responses are what follows.

do you have a favorite cornbread recipe? if so, what is it?
I can get you a recipe if you like, but my preference is for sweet, cakey Northern cornbread. Half whole wheat flour, 1/4 or more white sugar. I think the flavor and texture also offer a better compliment to adding cheddar cheese, jalapeno, and scallions than the thin Southern style. Both styles need to be baked in a preheated cast iron skillet to come out right.

what got you started on the whole corn/grains growing train?
I guess it wasn’t until I visited Salamander Springs Farm in Berea, KY that I saw small scale grain production as a viable cash crop. Susanna Lein has been homesteading and market gardening on marginal hunting land that she started clearing in 2002. She raises an absurdly high percentage of her own food year round, attends a weekly farmers market through the summer, maintains a CSA subscription, and grows for a health food store in Berea, all without grid electricity, bought in fertility, or tillage. A large part of her business comes from mail order sales of corn meal and dry beans. When her work slows down a little in the winter, she can grind and bag custom orders at a time when her other markets are essentially dormant. From the beginning, I aspired to be as self sufficient as possible on the farm but grains always stood out as requiring more land, more specialized equipment and expertise than I had available. Susanna taught me how much is possible with a little creative thinking.

what makes you so certain of maine?
I like Maine because it is New England, where I grew up. I’m close to family and old friends, I have personal associations with the climate and the landscape and the culture. I like the seasons in the Northeast. I like the remoteness and the independence that comes with it. But at the same time, I feel the quality and value of community and socializing to be much stronger than in regions of southern New England. As I see it, daily life here is more immediately connected to the “natural” world. Even if it’s just surviving in the cold, there is a wild character to the place has to be tolerated.

what is a good day: spring/summer/fall/winter?
Spring: I wake up and throw one last log into the wood-stove in the prop house and give everything a drink before breakfast. I spend the morning filling 72s and sowing seeds and trying to keep the feeling in my finger tips. In the afternoon, I waddle through the mud and work to refine my mental picture of each field through the season, what’s going into them and what’s coming back. I eat fresh greens, scallions, and old root crops.

Summer: I wake up in the dark and start running right away. Bringing in head lettuce, cut salad, bunched greens and getting them washed and cooled as early as possible. I scramble to get 10 more things picked and packed before breakfast, but then I remember the cucumbers are ready too, and the peas, and the broccoli. I begrudgingly eat some cereal and drink some coffee (is there really no faster way to boil water?) then run back to the fields with a stirrup hoe and start making the rounds through each bed. My lunch hangs off the plants I tend to. I try to move irrigation around and stick some transplants in the ground before I leave 30 min late for the farmers market and watch the mornings harvest walk away in $10 and $20 increments. I get home and briefly nap before starting over again.

Fall: I bundle up and bring a thermos out to the carrots or onions or rutabaga or what not and settle in to it. One bin after another comes out of the field, goes through the wash station, and gets packed into the root cellar. There’s something hard to articulate about emptying a field and filling the cellar. At some point, I have to take off a few layers, then a little later I have to put them back on. I go warm up my cabin by roasting squash.

Winter: The snow is still falling. I shovel out walking paths and clear off the drifts from around the high tunnels but spend most of the day looking out the window, reading, writing, on the phone. The power stays on and nothing breaks.

what got you into farming? what made you stay into it?
Reading the dust jacket of a Michael Pollen book

what do you listen to in the wash station?
I listen to the way water drips off vegetables differently. Sometimes, I hear birdsongs. Sometimes, tourists will pull up and yell at me, “Y’all got any sweet corn?”

anything else?
I trust you to use your creative license to obscure my foolishness.

All photos credited to Nora P Carr.

Also, I’m no cornbread expert, but I made this recipe to go with chili the other night and we all agreed, it was one of the more perfect cornbreads we’ve had.