Who is that guy? and for the record...

Update 2018: Nine years ago I publicly launched as Man in Overalls in Tallahassee, FL with this blog post following a few appearances along Tallahassee roadways in my overalls with big, colorful signs that said things like "Will Garden for Food", "Grow Your Own Food and Share it!", "We Can Grow Food!", and "HONK! For Food Gardens!" My dual purposes - rooted in the context of the Great Recession- were: 1)pay my bills by providing food garden support to those who could afford it and 2)develop a persona and business that I could leverage to contribute to efforts in the Deep South's "food movement" to ensure all could eat well. Now rooted in Jacksonville, FL, my locus of work has shifted, my perspective has expanded to think regionally, but these early roots explaining my aspirations still ring true. - NB, MIO

Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Nathan, Nathan Ballentine. Tallahassee's home.

Here's the gist of it: I love food. I love growing, smelling, giving, cooking, tasting, sharing, and eating food. And I live under the impression that other folks at least like food too. It's pretty universal.

- - -

I've been food-gardening since I was eight-years-old. My mother who grew up on a farm in west Florida, set me on the task of creating a vegetable garden in our front yard as a home-schooling project. As I remember it, I grew some bitter carrots, bug-eaten lettuce and a few bush beans. The next year, I carried on the project, but- back in school- it was no longer an obligation. It was just "my garden."

The second year, I planted sweet corn and watermelon. In the years to come, I grew tomatoes and peppers, potatoes, squash and cucumbers, beans, onions, pumpkins, collards, parsley and basil and every year: more sweet corn. In the years since, my food-gardening horizons have grown considerably. But more on that later.

From the time I was eight-years-old to at least ten or twelve-years-old, I subjected my family to daily garden tours. Upon pulling in the driveway and exiting his car, I'd invite my father to look at what was new. "Aw Nathan," he'd say. It's the same as it was yesterday." But, I was ready with counter evidence: "No, come look," I'd say. "There are three cucumber blossoms. And look! This tomato plant has a baby tomato. And the beans! Look right here," I'd be nearly whispering with the excitement, "They'll be ready to pick by, oh, probably next week. See 'em?"

I loved it, and I loved sharing it too.

Still do.

- - -

Before I go any further, I need to state clearly that my aspirations in launching as Man in Overalls is much larger than a business or a profit-plan. Yes, I have to pay my bills like everyone else. But, if it were just about making ends meet, I'd choose another path.

See, I want the Tallahassee to be able to feed itself. I want everyone in our region to end their days nutritionally satiated without worry about their ability to eat in the days and weeks to come. This is more than money can buy. Such a dream requires a mass-based social movement for fruition, a local-based city movement defined by popular participation in raising food for self and neighbor. My hope, therefore, is that my persona and business will serve as a platform from which I can help jump-start and sustain a food movement.

Starting a business with a social mission alongside the profit motive is an exercise in bridging the gap between the for-profit and non-profit worlds. Social entrepreneurship, I've heard it called. The truth is, I don't know how to do it. It's an experiment, like all my food-gardening since I was eight. Will it work? Is it doable?

I have lots of questions, most of which are circulating around this one: Can a food-gardening business stay in the black while it seeks to further a food movement in the Deep South?

Rumi once wrote: "And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without ever noticing it, live your way into the answer."

Perhaps. I welcome your advice, comments, and ideas. If you're wiling to share, I'd also love to hear your food dreams. Perhaps we can make a few come true.

- - -
If I can support you with a grocery-growing food garden dream...
If you'd like to support me...

in freely sharing my stories & expertise, please consider passing along this article to a friend or sharing on social media. Each of my articles take hours of resource gathering, writing, and editing, so I want to make sure they don't just sit on the digital shelf.

Respectfully,

Nathan Ballentine (Man in Overalls)
Itinerant Urban Farmer, Entrepreneur, Educator, Community Organizer
Growing in Jacksonville, FL. Connecting Globally.
(904) 240-9592
Email Man In Overalls at Gmail dot com
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ManInOveralls.com
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Why Can I Eat Bread in France, but not the USA?

Updated 10/31/2017 as the National Organic Standards Board meets in Jacksonville, FL. This may well be the most important thing you read this year for your health. (Originally written in 2015 while I was traveling-- and eating bread-- with my wife in France.) I've got a food riddle for you from Paris, France: Why can I eat bread over here when it makes me sick at home? I'll share my best guess in a minute, but first, a little personal background. Since my senior year of high school, I've not been able to eat much bread at all. For five years, I was severely hypoglycemic, and everything I ate had to have more protein than carbohydrates. That meant, in effect, that I spent my years of college beer-less and eating lots of salad with meat on top. I ate tons of vegetables, very little fruit, basically no carbohydrates to speak of, meat, nuts, eggs, and cheese. If I accidentally ate, say, meat loaf that was, unbeknownst to me, made with bread in it, I'd spend the n...

Man in Overalls - It's Like Washing Your Dishes

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Man in Overalls - The Valley of Food & Ag Startups: Warren Wilson College

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Man in Overalls - Growing Great Soil

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Man In Overalls - My Compost System

Composting, they say, is an art form. But, truth be told, I'm just too lazy for all that. My own compost philosophy is, "Crap rots in the woods, doesn't it?" But really. :) Whenever I think of home gardening systems, I always reflect back on my grandmother. She gardened up until the week she died at 93. She planted by the signs and assured me that's why her collards were not eaten up by bugs and were able to grow for 3 years running and up to 8 or 9 feet tall. She had a little rototiller, planted straight rows, mulched by spreading leaves to keep the weeds down. She threw out a little 10-10-10 from time to time and kept the cabbage worms at bay with Sevin dust. She hoed if the weeds called for it. But mostly, she harvested. Her pots were always full and her freezer always stuffed with produce: collards, mustards, turnips, peas, tomato gravy, squash, you name it. Now, I don't use 10-10-10 or sevin dust, and I'm not big on tilling. However, the thi...

Man in Overalls - Summer Garden Blues & What To Do

Welcome to mid summer in the Deep South! If you're anything like me, you're actively looking for excuses to avoid going outside this time of year. The heat doesn't so much radiate down from the sun as it seems to rise from the side walk. Rain helps- for about ten minutes- and then simply adds to the humidity as it vaporizes on the payment, so that it feels like you need a snorkel to make it from the house to the car, but of course, it only gets worse when you turn on the AC, and that first puff of hot air feels as though someone just wrapped your face in a plastic bag - not to mention that if you cut your grass yesterday, you're going to have to do it again... tomorrow. And, lets not even talk about how fast the weeds grow this time of year! Or the insects seem to multiply! Oh, home... :) Here's the good news: If your garden looks a little worse for wear, it's okay. Really. Mine does too. As much as I aim for- and largely achieve- a productive & beauti...

Man in Overalls - How to Start a School Garden: Design

Before you get to build your school garden like this, before you can help kids get their hands dirty like this, or teach kids in your school garden like this, there are a few things you've got to take care of first. The #1 most important thing you've got to do is build your team. I say- with no exaggeration-- that human infrastructure is THE most important aspect of developing a successful school garden. But, I already wrote about building your school garden team last time. Assuming you're on track with that, a simultaneous step is to begin developing your school garden design. Here are a few things to should consider as you develop a school garden design: Purpose In your school garden interest meeting, one of the first questions you should ask is: "Why are you interested in a school garden?" Interestingly, this question serves two purposes. First, it helps the team gel because there will likely be a lot of overlap in answers. This will ...

Man in Overalls - When to Plant Tomatoes

" Plant 'em in the spring. Eat 'em the summer. All winter without 'em's a culinary bummer ," as John Denver sings in "Home Grown Tomatoes." So, just when should you plant* your homegrown tomatoes? Or, more generally, when should you plant your spring food garden? (For an abbreviated version of this post revised & published in Edible Northeast Florida, click here. ) Since tomatoes along with other spring favorites like squash, corn, green beans, cucumbers, peppers, and the like are "frost sensitive" (in other words, they'll die if it freezes), it's all about the "last frost date" for your area. Unless you're a weather savant and remember the last freeze for the past twenty years, you'll have to do some investigating. You could look up your Plant Hardiness Zone on this cool "interactive" map from the USDA, and you'd learn that Jacksonville is in zone 9a, Tallahassee is in 8b, and At...

Man in Overalls - An Ode to Collards (Now with my recipes)

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