Louisa Enright's Blog

Turkey Tracks:  June 18, 2014

Visiting Charleston, SC:  Part I

My family lives in Charleston, SC.

I live in Camden, Maine.

We visit back and forth, and I just came home from a family visit.  This visit was divided into three parts.

One goal this trip was to spend some time with Tara Derr Webb of the Farmbar and Deux Puces (two fleas) farm.   See url:  thefarmbar26.com.

Tara, in age, is exactly between my sons, who are 14 months apart.  She picked me up at the airport, and before too long, we were sitting on her dock–free for a moment as Tara’s husband Leighton volunteered to put the goats to bed.

Here’s our view–back to the house:

This kind of marsh grass is vital to the health and well-being of “the low country”–whose marshes and marsh creeks team with life.  The green is this year’s growth; the brown, last year’s.

Part of what Tara and I did was to mount a lacto-fermentation workshop–so we shopped for food most of one day.  A crucial stop was Grow Food Carolina, which is a local wholesale produce distributor that supports farmer’s within a 120-mile radius of Charleston. There we got boxes of beautiful greens.

A group of nine or so women came to the farm for the workshop.  Some were cooks, and some were artisans or entrepreneurs who will mount events at the farm featuring their work over the next year.  All, I hope, will enjoy the food they took home and will pass on what they learned.

In any case, they all seemed to enjoy the event.

Tara has forgotten more about food than I will ever know, so it’s always fun to eat/cook with her.  We made a number of meals, but we also visited a number of Charleston’s local restaurants.  One such was the newly opened Leon’s, which was delightful.

We also had, one day, a great hamburger at Sweetwater Cafe–where we sat outside at picnic tables.  The potato salad was so special.  And Five Loaves was another treat.

It’s a good thing I don’t actually live in Charleston as I would probably be a diabetic in two months time as the sweet tea is so delicious.

Tara has big, big plans for the Farmbar and Deux Puces.  It’s going to be a lot of fun to see how she develops her ideas in the years to come.