Her goats were producing so much milk that Katherine started making cheese, and then she had so much cheese that she started calling friends to come get it. This is the slippery slope of farming. Fleming told a similar tale back when I apprenticed at Celebrity Dairy. That was 1993. 25 years since I landed in Chatham. 25 years of friendship and community and Farmschool programs. Katherine and I go back farther, to Chapel Hill in the late 80s, and she goes way back, because she’s from here.
How is it that I get a friend who gives away chevre? That’s like having a money tree. And a soul tree. I guess that’s what it means to take root in a place. Katherine has roots, deep ones. Though mine are more shallow, they still hold me hard to the bedrock of home. I can’t seem to leave, now. I think about it, dream of blue ridge rocking chair views, fold upon fold of mothering bosoms fading into the mist, but the inexorable draw of community and culture will likely see me scratching at white clay, watching pink and baby blue sunsets at Screech Owl.