Financing Our Foodshed (29 page)

Staying Connected to Our Friends You could say Slow Money NC was really born, or at least conceived, in the Shakori Hills Festival of Music and Dance Sustainability Tent. That’s where Lyle, Jordan (who runs the festival), and I began talking about doing micro-lending in our community.

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When Mark and I first moved to our rundown farm at the end of a dead end road, we had grand plans to convert it into a pottery. We were blessed to have Gene, a retired Air Force pilot living down the lane. He provided tools, free labor, encouragement, and friendship. His wife, Marie, showed me how a Southern vegetable garden could be transformed into a fabulous summer meal, and I still think of her when I put a lush plate of freshly picked sliced tomatoes in the middle of the table. No fancy sauce or topping or recipe — just the simple pleasure of tomatoes at their best, and maybe some salt.

Slow Money is like a good neighbor because you can ask a neighbor for help. Needing money for a simple farm venture can be a disaster. The banks won’t help, grants are complicated, and it’s awkward to approach people and ask them for money.

Slow Money can help this be less awkward. It’s been done before, so it can be done again. And there’s simple paperwork to make a loan official.

We can share what we’ve learned from doing dozens of these now, and hope it helps.

It turns out that what’s most important to our survival is our connection to other people, especially our neighbors. In good times, we may just seem to co-exist, waving as we drive by, but in the wake of a disaster — be it flood, fire, or earthquake — it is the personal ties among people in a community that determine someone’s survival and then recovery. Those who fare best aren’t the ones with the most money or power. They are the folks who know a lot of people—who live in neighborhoods where people know who lives where, and what they might need in a difficult situation.

“Long before rescue professionals can reach everyone, neighbors are busy improvising, sharing what they can, and getting to those that are most vulnerable,” said Daniel Aldrich in an interview with National Public Radio (July 4, 2011). A political scientist who studies the impact of natural disasters and author of the book
Building Resilience: Social Capital in Post-Disaster Recovery,
he concludes, “communities are not the sum of their roads, schools and malls. They are the sum of their relationships.”

Aldrich suggests each of us can do something on our own. Instead of practicing earthquake drills and building bunkers, we could reach out and make more friends among our co-workers and neighbors to “build up these stocks of trust and reciprocity” that we may need to call on in difficult times.

Bringing in outsiders to help, like the kind of large-scale government interventions we see after floods and earthquakes, is most effective when they are guided by someone with a working knowledge of the community.

In an email correspondence, Aldrich told me how his own experiences as a survivor of Hurricane Katrina and as a scholar of disasters have shown him the true power of neighbors around the world. “At the end of the day,” he said, “it is our neighbors and friends who provide assistance when we need it most.”

Slow Money wants to be that kind of neighbor — one that can be of help, and maybe even help save your farm or food business.

One of our favorite neighbors is up the road in Silk Hope. In fact, you could say that our Slow Money project got its start there.

Jordan Puryear, who started and directs the Shakori Hills GrassRoots Festival of Music and Dance, has been thinking about the issues involved in Slow Money for years. He was the one who loaned me Mohammed Yunus’s book,
Banker to the Poor,
several years ago. It tells the deeply inspiring story of how Yunus started the Grameen Bank in 1983, a bank that was devoted to providing micro-loans to the poor to break the cycle of poverty. Since then, billions of dollars have been loaned to millions of families in rural Bangladesh, and hundreds of institutions around the world are now attempting to reduce poverty through micro-lending.

Jordan and I both felt there must be some way to bring the concept of the Grameen Bank to our community. We just hadn’t quite figured out how — yet.

For Jordan, the practice of sustainable living was a part of the GrassRoots mission before the newly popularized sustainability label even took off its training wheels.

Each year, the staff and core volunteers involved in Jordan’s festival have pushed to make it more green, creating new ways to reduce the event’s carbon footprint and educating festival goers in the validity and practice of being good stewards of our precious planet — and of one another.

I know that’s been our goal at the festival Coffee Barn, which I run with a crew of loyal volunteers for the four days and nights of the twice-annual festival.

We started using compostable cups, spoons, folks, plates, etc., back when they were difficult to source, and the cost was exorbitant. We’ve eliminated plastic water bottles entirely, in favor of selling reasonably priced stainless steel or glass containers.

But it’s at the Sustainability Tent that the direct link to Slow Money is greatest. Pierre Lauffer coordinates a series of talks and workshops on sustainability that run throughout the weekend. A few years back, we began talking about creating “The Bank of Good
Ideas,” as a way to provide the loans and services banks weren’t offering. So, by the time Jordan, Lyle, and I heard Woody talk about Slow Money in May 2010, we had already tilled the ground for that seed. It was an easy one to germinate, and it’s been a steady grower.

At the next festival, we talked about our new Slow Money project and the importance of voting with your dollars. A chef from a restaurant in the next county and his wife seemed interested in the idea. They came back again to the next festival and shared their experience.

“Last year at this meeting I took away just one idea from this group,” Chef Mark told us. “I have one small vote, and it was every dollar I spend. I started buying more local food for the restaurant. It just changed the way I look at everything.”

We get one small chance to make a difference with every conversation we have. It’s nice to know that our conversations under the Sustainability Tent are getting results.

Frank Ferrell has owned Ninth Street Bakery in Durham, NC, for 30 years. His business is an institution there, as is he. He and his wife, Mo, first opened their doors in 1981.

Frank wrote to me about their 30-year history:

They also added an additional oven so they could make hearth-baked artisan breads.

Frank and I have worked together for the last eight years. For four days twice a year, he delivers dozens of delicious pastries to the Shakori Hills Coffee Barn each morning when the sun is barely up. They are delicious, high-quality baked goods, and they all sell. People rave about them, and I couldn’t run that Coffee Barn without him. He and his staff are a pleasure to work with, and he even uses his BioBus to run friends to and from the festival. When the festival got rained out one spring and was struggling to cover their costs, Frank was quick to contribute to the cause.

Along with supporting the festival and local and seasonal farming, Ninth Street also has ties with many environmental and social justice groups: Habitat for Humanity, Eno River Association, Ellerbee Creek Watershed Association, NC WARN, Clean Energy Durham, Earthshare, Bull City Tipping Point Bike Ride, and many more.

When he asked if I would help him figure out how to get community financing to add a deck to expand Ninth Street’s seating capacity, I said “You bet!”

I know that Frank is well loved in his community, and I expected there would be a line of friends wanting to help him with his deck project. It was just a matter of getting the word out. It would be up to the potential lenders to decide at what level, and under what terms, they would loan Frank their money. But we could certainly host a Slow Money NC gathering at his place to bring everybody together. We hold similar gatherings several times a year throughout the state. It gives people who are interested in local food, alternative economies, sustainable farming, moving money from Wall Street to Main Street, and restoring soil fertility — any or all of the above —
a chance to get together, talk, eat, and have fun. We call it “staging conversations,” and in every case, powerful, impactful networking is the result. Often, a part of that impact is that more Slow Money loans get made.

With the new draw of beer, cider, and kombucha on tap, and all the expanded meal options, it was a perfect time for Frank to add more seating. The weather makes outdoor eating a pleasant option here in central North Carolina for most months of the year. Frank’s son, Frances, who would be construction manager for this building project, had drawings for a wooden deck that extended out the back door over a small section of pavement, with railings and wooden tables and benches. Located right in the heart of downtown Durham, with plenty of free parking after 5
PM
, I could see it quickly becoming a popular gathering spot.

Some nights, Frank envisioned, he would also offer live old-timey, folk, bluegrass, or Celtic music. There are very few places in our area where you can go to hear those types of music, but there are plenty of local musicians who play them very well.

First Frank checked with his landlord, as his proposed project would certainly add to the value of the building. Would they help fund this upgrade? They said they were willing to give him a partial break on one month’s rent, but that was all.

That’s when he gave me a call. Would this be something Slow Money NC could help him with?

I asked Frank to fill out the “Borrower Information Form” that is on the Slow Money NC website. The form then comes as an email to me, so I’ll have all the basic information about a project in one place. For example, question #1 is: Tell us your story. Who are you? What is your business idea? Tell us your plan. Feel free to get into the details. Another is: What will your sales be? What do you anticipate your profits/your margins will look like? How will you make the money to pay this loan back?

The answers help us determine if the project matches the Slow Money mission.

Not surprisingly, if you know Frank, his Information Form made for fun reading. Here’s a sample:

In answer to the question: “Did we forget to ask you something?” Frank wrote, “Yes...we also supply our pastries to the Coffee Barn at Shakori Hills. The Coffee Barn is run by a beautiful, hard-working, loving, and spiritual person. Her name is Carol Hewitt.”

Hah! Flattery will get you everywhere. We then began a back and forth of emails as we tried to outdo each other with compliments. Have I mentioned yet how much fun Slow Money is?