TN Local Food Summit - Community building and cooperation

Jeff Poppen, a Midwestern farm boy, helped develop an organic farm and Tennessee homestead in the mid-1970s, and ten years later began applying biodynamic principals and making the preparations to do so. His livelihood comes primarily from vegetable and cattle grown on the 250-acre Long Hungry Creek Farm, where cows, compost, and community keep the land vibrant and productive. Jeff advocates for a more peaceful agriculture by mentoring young farmers and gardeners, along with a bit of lecturing, consulting, hosting events, and facilitating a few new farm enterprises. His style of old-time farming comes from paying close attention to what elder farmers thought, felt, and did, and by studying how farms were managed before agricultural chemicals were first manufactured on a large scale over one hundred years ago. Like his animals, he gets his food from the farm.