Making a Home, Part 1

Before there was a farm, there was 514 Franklin Avenue

The first home we made together was a shoebox rental about a mile from the center of Uptown Shelby. In-town, as they say. 

The air was thick with summer and loud with insects on the night Jamie asked me to come see the small brick house at 514 Franklin Avenue. I pulled into the driveway, on my way home from a reporting trip, to Jamie’s silhouette illuminated by the moonlight. It felt special that he was sharing his find with me. He showed me the dogwood tree in the front yard––his maternal grandfather’s favorite, and thus, a fortuitous sign. I peeked in the windows and ogled the fenced-in backyard with ample space for his dog Kooba, and perhaps one day, for my dog Isabelle. 

When Jamie moved into 514 Franklin Avenue, he brought a vintage dining table, a couch he thrifted for twenty bucks, a mattress and box spring, and a couple items he had in storage from another life—including a very fancy rug from an ex-girlfriend’s designer mother. When he asked me to move in later that summer, I demurred until the fall when my divorce was final. Though I had been separated for nearly a year, it felt important to walk into the next chapter free of the last. 

Until I met Jamie, the only thing I knew about Shelby came from two friends, a married couple I knew while living in Atlanta, where I was an ad school dropout and restaurant worker. I remember asking them about their origins and them telling me about a small town in North Carolina that no one had heard about. These two people, liberated and metropolitan, gave the sense that they had escaped. 

In the early days, I split my time between Shelby and my home in Charlotte, where I lived in an old mill village rental close to the city center. I worked part-time at a cheese shop and continued to freelance. I made pie infrequently, serving a small group of people, mostly friends, through an email list.

I’d work half the week at home and then pack up for the other half in Shelby where Jamie and I tried cohabitating on for size. The hour-long commute every few days was good training for the eventual move.  After a short time, the drive back and forth felt rote. Eventually, I started shuttling Jamie’s dog home with me to keep her company while he worked in the field. He’d come into town every Saturday where he worked a second job selling fish with his best friend at the farmers market.

Making the permanent move to Shelby held uncertainties. I had built a name for myself, and a substantial set of bylines, as a food writer in Charlotte. Though I struggled to make ends meet on the meager wages of a freelancer, usually working second and third jobs, I was happy with the autonomous path I had carved for myself. I had moved from Florida to Charlotte in 2010 with no clear idea of what I wanted to do. The small communications business I created out of necessity back in Florida and remote work with a digital marketing firm all but disappeared when I crossed state lines. I fell back on restaurant work, a trusty failsafe that had supported me since college, for the first two years in North Carolina, before discovering my passion for food and storytelling. 

Moving to Shelby meant disconnecting from the community that had sustained my work for several years. But by that time, my writing work had expanded outside of the Queen City. It occurred to me that I could be anywhere and do my work. In 2015, goaded by an inexplicable love, I leapt into the unknown and moved my dog, my cat, and my belongings to 514 Franklin Avenue. If you had told me 10 years ago that I’d follow a farmer to Shelby, North Carolina, I would have laughed in your face. 

My move to Shelby colored in the bachelor-shaped voids of Jamie’s new digs. Furniture appeared where there was none. Closets filled to capacity, books spilled into every room in the house, and 514 Franklin Avenue embraced us.

I spent my first year of small town living as the remote copy editor for a Southern food magazine while working my first (and last) season on the farm with Jamie. It was a magical year, fueled by new love and possibility, and monthly direct deposits thanks to the steady copyediting gig. I learned what it meant to be dog tired after a hard day’s work. I perfected my harvest squat and got a tan that has yet to be matched. 

At home, we dreamed, we nested, and we hustled. We talked of one day having our own property. The two farm plots where we worked belonged to Jamie’s parents and grandparents, respectively. We grew an abundance of beautiful vegetables, but any project that established permanence was out of the question. 

Struggle was not absent from those days, but neither was love. Our small rental became the central hub for my budding pie business and Jamie’s beverage business, not to mention all the seed packets, catalogs, houseplants, and ferments that Jamie kept. In the tiny, inadequate kitchen we cooked for friends and family. We invited folks over to share meals that stretched into our too-small living room, hosted candlelit dinners in our shoddy carport, and gathered folks in a backyard pocked with holes dug by the dogs. 

We prepped full catering events in that house, filling every imaginable surface with hotel pans, pushing daring feats of volume out of an incredulous kitchen. We set up grow tents outfitted with LED lights in our living room to nurture young seedlings. In the summertime, a six-foot table appeared in the living room to hold the tomato harvest, a rainbow of red, pink, yellow, green, and orange.  And we baked pie, so much pie, out of a home oven whose surface began to melt from overuse. We hosted overnight guests in our second bedroom, which also doubled as an office, storage room, and the cat’s room. We consoled heartbroken friends on the thrifted couch. We gathered folks around a dining table piled high with seed packets and papers, and said goodbye to Jamie’s beloved dog Kooba. 

We fought. We made up. Our bank accounts went negative. We were emptied clean and we filled back up. We got engaged one Christmas Eve. And our life expanded. 

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As this little project gets off the ground, I’ll begin adding more to the newsletter about what’s happening in real time on the farm and in our kitchen, the two places we occupy most.

ON THE FARM: Spring is making itself known here on the ridge, with alternating days of gusty winds and spring showers, followed by days that make your serotonin soar––Carolina blue skies, the greening trees and an abundance of song birds. Springtime is when we come alive too. Market season has begun and we are working to move through the myriad tasks that demand our attention. Jamie has entered the seasonal cycle of seeding, transplanting, and flipping garden beds. From here on out, he’s in perpetual motion. We’re three weeks into our first CSA, a task we tag team together. My baking business has added a second farmers market to the mix, which means GROWTH! This Saturday will be my first crack at doubling our production, and my first 3a-3pm shift. True baker’s hours. Say a prayer for me.

We’re also deep in planning our second event on the farm, a dinner with our friends from Lost Creek, West Virginia.

The farm is alive. We are in motion.

WHAT’S GROWING: Garlic, lettuces, arugula, spinach, carrots, beets, turnips, radishes, snap peas, and gorgeous fennel. Summer squash and cucumbers are en route in the greenhouse.

Jamie also works with small seed companies to grow and preserve heirloom and culturally specific seeds. Right now he’s growing out a Turkish okra variety, Cicek, for Two Seeds in a Pod, and a field pea variety, Hog Brain, to preserve seed for himself. Jamie showcased this particular field pea on The Key Ingredient, a delightful and educational food show made by our friend Sheri Castle.

Most exciting is an abundance of heirloom melons that Jamie seeded yesterday— Minnesota Midgets, Hime Kansen (a Japanese Icebox melon), Wilson’s Sweet, Prescott Fond Blanc, Desert King, and Dixie Southern Sweet. He’s a melon head, if you didn’t know. I’ve never met anyone who eats more melon than my husband.

WHAT WE’RE COOKING: We’re never not eating farm salads if there’s lettuce in the garden. Right now, it’s beautiful red butter lettuce and little gems. We shave hakurei turnips and radishes, and make pickle jar vinaigrettes with the pickling liquid left over from whatever pickle we pulled from the pantry. Often, we put an egg on it.

The fennel from the garden inspired a beautiful fish stew made with Vermillion Snapper from the Carolina Coast with a fennel-tomato-saffron broth.

Other than that, it’s radishes and roots many ways— made into punchy toppings for tacos, and garnishes for soups and sandwiches.