Bill Addison
8/1/2009
Greg Brown swore as a boy that he would leave the farming life behind. The second-oldest of seven children, Brown loathed his chores while growing up on the family hog farm on Hilton Head. But after careers as a restaurant cook and landscaper in Atlanta and Hilton Head, the forty-seven-year-old couldn’t deny his innate yearning to work the land. No pigs this time: In 2007, he and his wife, Maeda, bought a property in Barnesville, an hour south of the city, where Brown now grows a particularly kaleidoscopic lineup of specialty produce.
Greenleaf Farms (Brown’s landscaping business was called Mr. Greenleaf) came with a house built in 1825 and about six acres of land, two of which are currently planted with fruits and vegetables. Two acres may sound like a modest size to cultivate, but not if you are one man planting, tending, and harvesting dozens of different crops alone. Brown set out to differentiate himself in the market by planting less common varieties he discovers in seed catalogs. “Those catalogs are porno for farmers,” Brown jokes.
His plantings have the ring of erotica for gourmands’ ears as well. A sampling of this year’s offerings: purple and white heirloom carrots, spotted “moon and stars” watermelons, Jerusalem artichokes, Peruvian Purple potatoes, popcorn with blue kernels, red-veined Malabar spinach, lemon cucumbers, Cherokee purple tomatoes (“those are my favorite; I don’t care if I sell those or not”), stuffing tomatoes shaped like bell peppers, and mushroom logs on which he will harvest shiitakes in the fall. Herbs such as lemon balm and mint are made into teas that Brown sells at the three weekly farmers markets he attends. We walk past short, fragrant peach trees. “I may get a couple peaches out of these, but the last frost blighted the crop,” Brown says. “That killed me.” He plunges his hand into black gold, or ready-to-use compost, much of which is made from food scraps collected at the acclaimed vegetarian restaurant Dynamic Dish, where Maeda cooks.
Since he’s new to growing produce, every crop is an educational experience. And he’s relearning how to tussle with nature. During his first two years owning Greenleaf, he dealt with drought. This harvest, incessant weeds that have sprung up from the constant rain choked some of his fledgling vegetables. Between the farmers markets and a burgeoning Community Supported Agriculture business, “I hope to break even this year.” An urbanite might utter that kind of economic forecast with barely contained panic. Brown says it with the unflappable calm of someone who has the capricious ups and downs of farming life in his blood.
Greenleaf Farms, 201 Highway 36 Bypass, Barnesville, 678-596-6803. Greg Brown sells his produce weekly at the Decatur Farmers Market (Wednesday), East Atlanta Village Farmers Market (Thursday), and the Green Market at Piedmont Park (Saturday).
Photograph by Jamey Guy
This article originally appeared in the August 2009 issue of Atlanta magazine
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