Documenting, studying, and celebrating the diverse food cultures of the changing American South.
INTERVIEWS
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Interview & photographs by Amy Evans Streeter.
Elizabeth Heiskell
Woodson Ridge Farms
110 CR 2068
Oxford, MS 38655
(662) 719-5305
www.woodsonridgefarms.com
I think that the farm is set up to be so many things, not just a vegetable farm—a place where people can learn more about vegetables, a place that children can come out and pick their own squash, and then go inside and cook their own squash. – Elizabeth Heiskell
Originally from the Mississippi Delta, Elizabeth and Luke Heiskell relocated to Oxford in early 2011 to start Woodson Ridge Farms. Luke brought with him agricultural experience from farming cotton and soybeans in the Delta’s rich alluvial soil. Elizabeth brought her vast experience in the culinary world, her training as a chef, and energy to burn. Together, they have a grand vision for this former cattle farm in the Mississippi hills. Elizabeth and Luke intend for their 80-acre produce farm to serve their local community, chefs in the region, and even their former stomping ground of Greenwood, Mississippi, where Elizabeth delivers produce each week. Elizabeth looks forward using the farm to teach, hosting coking classes and children’s events in the converted pole barn. Their ideas are as endless as their enthusiasm—and the variety of produce they grow. They harvested thirty-seven different kinds of vegetables in their first season.
NOTE: What follows is a portion of the original interview that has been edited for length. To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here.
Subject: Elizabeth Heiskell, Woodson Ridge Farms
Date: July 13, 2011
Location: Heiskell Home at Woodson Ridge Farms – Oxford, MS
Interviewer & Photographer: Amy Evans Streeter
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Amy Evans Streeter: This is Amy Evans Streeter on Wednesday, July 13, 2011. I am in Oxford, Mississippi, with Elizabeth Heiskell, and we are sitting at her kitchen table on her new farm in her—in her house that is on her new farm. And, Elizabeth, if I could get you to state your name and your occupation for the record?
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Elizabeth Heiskell: My name is Elizabeth Heiskell, and I am a chef, an author, a farmer, and, of course, a long-standing debutante…[This is] Woodson Ridge Farms…the man that farmed this land and was one of the first settlers in Oxford; his name was Mr. Woodson, so that’s where that comes from. And so we just kept it. I love it.
So him being one of the first settlers in Oxford, do you have an idea of what kind of date what we’re talking about?
I think 1816, 1806, something like that, but the 1800s. Let’s say early 1800s, just to be safe.
Can you talk about the size of the property and kind of the general topography of the farm?
I’m sure and certain that the topography was the same. I don’t know to what extent the size of this tract of land was during that time. Right now we’re 230 acres. We farm on about eighty acres.
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Can you kind of walk us through and describe the landscape and then what you have planted where?
Okay. So when you first come into the farm, you go through these brick gates that have been there and a cattle gap, you know, because, like I told you earlier, this was a cattle farm and so as soon as you come over that cattle gap, to the left we have the majority of the crops are there. So that’s where the chard is; that’s where the kale is; that’s where the—you know, thousands and thousands of tomato plants are. That’s also where our peppers are. That’s where the squash, the cucumbers. The bulk of the field is there.
And then if you look to the right, we just planted an amazing, amazing plot that will have all of our sunflowers and our beautiful heirloom pumpkins, which I am so excited about. I cannot wait for those pumpkins. And then as you drive up the driveway, you see to the left you see the pole barn and we also have our equipment shack, as I call it, but it’s just—it’s a huge sort of metal building that stores the tractors and different things like that. And then there are a couple of lakes. And then by the pole barn we have planted sort of our secondary backup crops. So we’ve got more squash there. We’ve got more arugula. We’ve got more lettuce. We’ve got peas, and those are all to back up the big crops in the front, so that once the squash up there starts to kind of die out, we’ll have another one coming right behind it.
Around the pole barn, we’re in the process of doing the raised beds, which will have herbs and flowers, so that’s really going to be something that I’m going to be so excited about. I cannot wait for that to come up. You know. And anyway, so we’re working on that. And then we have a lake behind that. And then at the far back corner of the property is where the house is where we live, and it’s sort of separated from the farm with a—with a pond that the girls swim in, you know, at least two or three times a day and that’s really kind of how it is. It’s very hilly. It’s really lush and very green. And it’s really, really beautiful because when you come in, you come down this tiny little tight driveway, you know, and you really have no idea where you’re going. And then as soon as you hit those gates and go over the cattle gap, it’s just like this immense, you know, rolling hills and farmland. And it’s pretty impressive to drive through. It actually—you know, it got me hooked and got me moved from the Delta, so it must be pretty impressive.
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I want to delve into the farm, but first let’s lay a little groundwork of your background in the Delta and Luke and how y'all met and what you’ve been doing before you got here.
Okay. So I’m from Rosedale, Mississippi, and Luke is from Sumner, Mississippi, which that’s basically both sides of the Delta. So my Delta bordered the Mississippi River and his was on the other side, you know, sort of with all of this wonderful land and farmland and everything in between.
But we actually met in Memphis, and then we married and lived in Memphis for, I think, about four years together and then had a longing to come back to the Delta. And so he started building homes and low-income housing developments in the Delta, and so we eventually made our way back to the Delta and have been there for ten years.
And during that time, he was building and I was catering. And then came to work at Viking Range Corporation, and now I’m the Lead Culinary Instructor at Viking Range. And which I love more than anything on the earth and—besides, of course, my children, my husband, and this farm [Laughs]—let me preface that in case they’re listening. But then anyway, and so now we’ve started this farm and we’re doing it together. And it’s been really, really good.
Tell me how you entered the world of food and cooking.
You know, it’s funny. It’s the only thing that I’ve ever done. When I was in high school my mom was friends with a woman in Memphis, Karen Carrier, who is a very well known chef and restaurateur, and she had a catering company, and I worked for her in high school. And then I would come back during college, and I would work for her in the summers. And then I did a little stint at the Culinary Institute, just for, you know, a couple of weeklong sort of classes. And then started catering on my own and it’s—it’s—it’s just something that I absolutely love more than—I mean I do. I just I adore everything about cooking. I mean I really, really do.
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Well tell me about when you were living and working in the Delta and cooking, what your relationship with your ingredients was and how that’s changed.
Well, you know, that’s the thing is that, you know, I think for so long we’ve always known better, but we didn't really do better. You know, it was easy to place that order with Sysco, or it was easy to go to Kroger’s and pick up whatever we needed…But now it’s becoming easier and easier. Yes, it’s still more difficult. It is so easy to pick up that phone and get that crap from Sysco. But once you start going to the farmers’ market, once you start seeing the difference, once you start tasting the difference, there is absolutely no turning back. And that is one of the most fabulous things that I have on my side when I am selling to these chefs that, even though they have to place another order with me, or even though maybe sometimes I show up and we weren't able to get all the squash out because it was lightning and it was thundering and they’re short on squash that day, you know, what they’re doing, though, is they’re putting up with it simply because now they’re obsessed. Now there’s no going back for them.
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Is there anything to the dynamic of you being a chef yourself and how that works and what you’re doing now?
I think that has everything to do with it because the bottom line is, I know what the chefs need because I’m a chef. I know that, you know, if I can't get them something and I know they’re expecting it, I need to give them a cell phone call immediately to let them know so that they can make other arrangements, and that’s what I do. We are there every Tuesday and every Friday in Memphis. We are there every Wednesday in Greenwood and every Wednesday in Oxford. So they’ve come to count on me just like Sysco, which they’ve never ever had that and basically like a rolling farmers’ market is exactly what I am.
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It’s different from most of the other farmers because we do grow such a variety. Right now I’ve got thirty-seven different vegetables that I’m taking to market, which is unheard of. I mean generally most farmers would have four or five at the most. We’re thirty-seven and that’s what they appreciate and that’s why I think it’s going so well.
Well and then you were explaining…within those thirty-seven vegetables, you even have a variety because of the sizes that people are requesting. Can you talk about that?
So let’s just say what we were looking at were squash, which I have seven different restaurants that want their squash the size of—I mean just something very tiny like, you know, three inches is as big as they want it. And then I have others that want standard medium-sized and then, thank you, God, for Amerigo’s. He wants them as big as bowling pins. And I’m not kidding you when I say that. And I just sort of fell into that with him, which was wonderful.
So that way, because squash grows in stages, you know, it’s not—and that is something that my chefs are starting to learn just by talking to me and listening to me is that, you know, they’re understanding that this is not, you know, it’s coming out of the ground. It’s a plant, and it grows in stages. So you know, you have to be mindful of that. So, you know, I know who wants the small. I know who wants the medium. And I know who wants the large. And so that’s how, you know, we’ve found a market for what’s here, and that helps tremendously.
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So was any of this land turned up when Luke got here in February?
None of it. None of the—this was nothing but just cattle ground from years before and then they were just cutting hay on it, so it was—there was absolutely nothing going on here. So all the irrigation, all the plots you see out there, you know, are just—been put in since the end of February, early March.
So tell me how Luke had any clue what he was doing.
Oh, okay. Well, yeah. I forgot to mention all that. Yeah, Luke grew up a commercial farmer, so he grew up doing cotton and soybeans and rice and milo and wheat and all of those sorts of things, which prepared him in a lot of ways for vegetable farming, but in other ways he still, you know, is a fish out of water learning every single day because with that sort of crop, you plant it, you water it, you watch it, you harvest it, you know that’s—that’s sort of how it goes. But that is an entire season, you know, you start in spring, you end in fall, you’re done during the winter.
Well with this you plant it, you water it, you harvest it every single day, so you harvest—you harvest—you harvest and then you plant—plant—plant and then you harvest—you harvest—you harvest then you plant—plant—plant because you have to have back crops constantly growing.
So right now we have tomatoes out there. We have 10,000 plants, but they’re in three stages, okay. So we have babies, we have middle, we have full size that I’m getting tomatoes off on now. And then you saw the transplants. We’ve got transplants in the barn that are sitting there waiting to go in. So that way we’ll insure an even, steady supply of tomatoes all the way through, hopefully, November, as long as everything goes—goes according to plan. And so, you know, that is one of the things that really is so foreign to him.
He is doing an amazing job.
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So where are y'all getting your seeds?
We get them from all over. Johnny’s Seeds has been a huge resource for us. And then we get a lot of specialty seeds online and just from different purveyors all over. We’re investigating that right now. You know, at this point we’re just trying to keep our heads above water, but that is something that we’ll look towards doing in the future, especially if we have a variety that we really, really love or if something, you know, a little odd happens and we end up with something that’s a little bit different than it’s supposed to be. You know, of course we’ll save those and replant if we like the product.
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So, does this feel kind of like an unexpected but natural progression in what y'all were doing and where your lives were going, to be here raising all this produce?
You know, I’m funny and I think, honestly, that we’ve been working all of our lives to get to this point. It’s very strange to say that, but I honestly feel like we have literally been working all of our lives to get to this point to where we are right now.
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Tell me about keeping one foot in the Delta and with taking your produce to Greenwood and then also your relationship with Delta Bistro.
Well that’s the thing is that, you know, being able to go over there and to come out of the hills and onto the flatland and see the cotton and the soybeans and all of that, you know, it kind of fills me back up for that need that I have to be in the Delta, which I didn't even know I had until we moved over here. And there’s just nothing like it. And so it is, it’s a gift to be able to go over there. And honestly, Taylor [Bowen Ricketts at Delta Bistro], I mean, you know, and somebody had said, “Well, my god. I mean you can't be selling that much in Greenwood.” You know, “It can hardly even be worth your gas.” It is. Nick [Seabergh, chef at Giardina’s Restaurant] and Taylor are two of the most conscious chefs that I have on my books. They’re two of the most creative. They’re fine with whatever I have. They’ll turn it into, you know, turn it into something. You know, they’re not rigid. They’re very accommodating, and they’re big buyers. They really, really are. And so it’s wonderful.
And of course the [Viking] cooking school, which we’ve sponsored, we’re partners with the cooking school, and so we donate vegetables to them, and they give us wonderful press. And you know, it’s—it’s so nice because now students that are coming in there from all over the world, from all over the country, are being able to have Woodson Ridge vegetables. And they’re seeing the difference. They’re learning the difference firsthand on what, you know, one of our tomatoes looks like compared to the one that they got at Kroger’s, which hopefully will inspire them to go back out and to seek and to search for, you know, better quality vegetables at their farmers’ market, you know or find a farm. Find a farmer.
You know, we’re here and we need help, and we need you to come and buy from us. I mean if someone pulled up here and said, “Can I buy some of your eggplant?” Oh my god, I’d say, “Yeah. How many can I load in your car?” You know, so don’t ever feel intimidated. If you see a farmer with a huge corn stand or whatever, you know, outside of town, go by and talk to him. You know, you’ll be surprised. They will probably be more than happy to work with you.
So do places like you know Delta Bistro and the Alluvian [hotel, which houses Giardina’s Restaurant], do they advertise the localized nature of their produce on their menu and—and what they’re cooking?
You, know it’s funny. Most of the restaurants will put locally grown cucumbers or locally grown tomatoes. Some of them go so far as to put, you know, Woodson Ridge Heirloom Tomato Salad, you know, which makes me very happy. Kelly English, he’ll put Delta debutantes so and so.
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You said he puts Delta debutante grown on the menu?
What he’ll do is he’ll put [Laughs] Debutante Farmer, which is a line that we’re sort of playing with and experimenting with. And it’s something that I can see as a brand for me at Woodson Ridge, Debutante Farmer at Woodson Ridge. So who knows, maybe a cookbook along the line of that, maybe, you know a—different, you know, articles written under that name. We are working on a Golden Bloody Mary, and we’re juicing these Golden tomatoes because we have so many of them, and then we’re making a Bloody Mary mix, which we’re going to can and sell as the Debutante Farmer Golden Mary.
And so this is something that’s kind of an offshoot of it…And it is very much a play on words because if you could see my nails right now, you would know exactly how funny that is that I still consider myself to be a debutante. Or the mud on my shoes, which are, you know, of course caked. And anyway, it’s kind of funny, so we’ll see where that goes. You may see Debutante Farmer on your next store shelf. We’ll see.
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You mentioned earlier that you haven't had any problem with disease. Are y'all spraying, or what’s your management and fertilization kind of schedule, if you have one?
Well you know, it depends on the crop, and it depends on exactly what it is. We have been so lucky that I hardly even want to talk about this. But the bugs have been to a minimum, worms to a minimum, you know, and we’re not spraying for weeds. We are hand-removing them, so whether that’s with the weed-eater or whether that’s with, you know, an actual sort of hoe and chopping, that’s what we’re doing. These are the vegetables that my children are eating, that I’m eating, that you’re eating, and I feel a responsibility. No, we are not organic. We aren't and but we try to do the best we can in order to provide as much as we’re providing and on such a scale like this—it’s not impossible in our climate, but it’s damn hard. And so we’re doing the best we can to be responsible with that. So you know, we’re minimally spraying for bugs and, you know, it’s funny though because, like we’ve figured out on certain crops the weeds are actually a huge advantage, so where we have our melons planted—because they don’t like to get sunburned, you know, they love the sun and they need to be in the sun, but they’ll get sunburned. And so the Johnson grass grows up on them it’s like a—you know, a natural shade for them.
So it’s kind of interesting how you sort of, you know, learn to use the weeds and different things like that in your actual farming practice.
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So there’s still a great learning curve and you still have a lot going on and every day is different, but what are your thoughts for the future?
Hmm, I don’t know. I mean I just hope that it keeps just growing and getting better and better and better. You know, I hope that there are a lot less questions, you know, on the farm [Laughs] and a lot more just knowing. You know, I don’t know but I just—I can see it in my head. You know, I can see what those rosebuds are going to look like. I can see people standing under that pole barn with a drink in their hand, looking out over the lake. I can see, you know, chefs from all over the country around that amazing smoker, you know, with whole pigs on there. You know, I can see all of this going on. I can see the chefs going out in the field and getting whatever they need, you know, and bringing it in and cooking it. I can see me doing that, you know.
My children running and enjoying this place, you know, and having their friends out and having barbecues and having, you know, lake parties and all of these sorts of things. II see a really, really happy future here that’s filled with lots and lots of things going on. You know, I think that the farm is so—it’s set up to be so many things, you know, not just a vegetable farm—a place where people can learn more about vegetables, a place that children can come out and pick their own squash and then go inside and cook their own squash. Because that, to me, is one of the most important gifts that, you know, that we can give children is the ability to cook and to know where their food comes from…I mean so who knows where it’s going to go. But I do think that anything that you work this hard for, it’s got to end up good.
Well and then tell me, too, you know when you were talking about that BLT and Benton’s bacon, which is not a Mississippi product [it’s from Tennessee], but it’s fabulous, but Donald Bender’s bread in Greenwood and your tomatoes and you know, John Currence is making his own bacon in town in Oxford—what this, you know, fresh, local food movement means for Mississippi and what do you think that means for Mississippi?
Well I think one of the things is that, you know, we’ve always been behind the curve. Okay, you know, behind California, behind New York, behind everybody and everything and you know with food we originally were the ones that grew everything. I mean everybody had a garden because we had the land. We had the space. The soil was fabulous, you know. We had the ability and that’s how a lot of us grew up if not, you know, our last—you know if not our generation, our last generation, at the very least.
But then, you know, we finally caught up with the rest of the world, and it all went to hell in a hand-basket and now we’re the most obese state in the Union. And now it’s time for us to get back to where we have always been, you know, which is growing our own food, cooking our own food. And I do think that slowly by, you know, by us having the farmers’ market, by the government finally giving coupons for mothers and children of WIC [a federally-funded health and nutrition program for women, infants, and children] and the low income that can take those coupons to a farmers’ market and use them just like they can use them at the grocery store, things that are making changes like this are going to help us to become a healthier, better society. And you know any time you know where your food is grown and have that gift it—it’s going to make all the difference in the world.
And you know, we’ve got the area. We’ve got the land. It’s not like we’re in New York and we have to go upstairs to the rooftop and try to grow a tomato. You know, it’s very simple. You know, the majority of people have enough room to do this, and I think just the more talk that gets around and the more that we help people understand how important it is, the better it’s going to be for everyone.
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So if I were to ask Luke…what the transition for him from big crop farming and his experience with that to doing this, what would he say?
Well I mean I think the main thing is harvesting every day, you know, having to harvest every day and having to plant every day, you know, because there’s never a break. That was always the funny thing with farmers is that, you know, they’d kind of work really, really hard to plant it. And then mid-summer, you know, they could kind of kick back a little bit. And then it was harvest season, so everything would kind of ramp up again. And then winter, full-on nothing but hunting, you know. [Laughs] I mean and so that’s not sort of what—what he’s seeing with all of this. You know, he works and has worked since February, seven days a week. He’s had one day off, and it’s five o'clock every morning. And but the thing that I know about it, even with all that being said, I mean he’s not complained once. I mean I think he’s happier than he’s been in—in years. But I think that probably would be the difference, you know, and hand-harvesting, hand-planting the majority of it and hand-harvesting is totally different than what he’s used to, you know.
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Does he share your passion for the final product?
Absolutely. Yeah. I mean you know it’s—he—he’s not the type, like nobody is out there jumping up and down like I am when I see them bring the tomatoes in, you know, or clapping my hands, you know [Claps] “Oh my God, look at those green beans!” You know, nobody does that because nobody is like me, but I can tell inside there’s a little person jumping up and sitting down, you know, inside going, “Look at me. I grew that. Look at me. I grew that.” I’m convinced there is somewhere deep down in him that—you know, that he is jumping up and down inside.
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One of the things that I really hope is that anybody that listens to this, if you’re anywhere near Oxford or if you’re passing through Oxford, we would love for you to come by and visit the farm. I mean that’s something that makes me prouder than anything is to be able to have somebody actually come here and see what we’re doing.
To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here.
