“Jeff Poppen has been farming for fifty years, since he was a teenager. By the time I arrived in Tennessee in 1992, he was already iconic there, widely known as ‘the barefoot farmer,’ freely sharing vegetables at public events, and evangelizing to anyone who would listen about local, organic, and biodynamic agriculture. I’ve always found him generous with his insights and wisdom, and over time we have become friends.
Whenever I visit Jeff’s farm in Red Boiling Springs, I experience a powerful sense of abundance. The vegetables are so big and look so healthy and vibrant, and there are so many of them. Every year, Jeff allows me to harvest a truckload of fall radishes and cabbages to ferment, and it barely makes a dent. Jeff talks about the vegetables as a by-product of his primary crop: good soil. That’s only one of the important ways in which he and I have so much common ground. Building soil fertility involves cultivating microorganisms, just as fermentation does.”
Sandor Ellix Katz
from the forward to “Barefoot Biodynamics”
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