At Piedmont Biofuels we feel that creating new farms is a moral imperative.  When we were on the Moncure Rd., we helped build a farm in the yard.  And now that we are in Pittsboro, we are surrounded on three sides by sustainable agricultural production.

Jason has about a half acre under cultivation, along with a ninety food fired greenhouse on the Moncure Rd. which is currently the home of Edible Earthscape.

We launched it as an  “Incubator Project” with the idea of sending new farmers into the world.  Thus far it has sort of worked.  If we take credit for Piedmont Biofarm, and Edible Earthscape, we can say we had an active role in launching two new farming enterprises.  We need to launch 33 more.

How did we arrive at that number?  That was how many farms were on the Carolina Farm Stewardship Association farm tour the year Michael Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma came out.  People sometimes think that our project is just a crazy patchwork of happy accidents, but as you can see, there is rock solid logic behind everything we do.

We needed a bull dozer to bring on a third acre of production for Piedmont Biofarm.

We understand that most “activists” spend their time strapped to things to stop the bulldozers from rolling.  We order bulldozers to clear vacant lots for food, and greenhouses, and gravel roads, and the like.  Whenever we dip into the pristine Carolina forest which we inhabit, we generally have truckloads of metal and plastics and other debris to sort out and dispose of.

We are utterly committed to the creation of new farms.  Not all of our projects succeed.  We worked hard on the notion of Development Supported Agriculture, but the project went bust when the real estate market ground to a halt.  Many of our ideas are summed up in another one of our flops–building a farm in town.  Standby.  We will keep figuring this out. 

In the meantime, we try to put what we have learned about building our foodshed out into the world for all to read.  Sometimes we make our point.  Sometimes we get smacked down.  Either way we are in the game.  And we are going to launch more farms.  That is one of the things we do.