Interview with White Oak Pastures Market Development Manager, Jenni Harris

A view of White Oak Pastures

When I first met Jenni Harris, I simply knew her as the effervescent college pal of my good friend Jon. She was humble about her work, never letting on that her father's award-winning ranch, White Oak Pastures, was cornering the market for grass-fed and humanely slaughtered beef. After reading about the ranch in Barry Estabrooks, "The Need for Custom Slaughter," I decided to interview Jenni- the Market Development Manager for White Oak Pastures- about food, sustainability and her favorite things to eat.

Mooooooooo.

What is your favorite food tradition?

Being a gracious southerner, we like everything fried :) Having the ability to roll anything in flour and throw it in oil is a beautiful thing.


What is your favorite dish to prepare? Do you mind sharing the recipe?

I love the off-cuts. That being said, my favorite cut of beef is cow tongue. I grew up eating everything from the nose to the tail, which I believe is the most important part of selling beef. When that animal was slaughtered, it gave up its filets, ribeyes and New York strips – but it also gave up its tongue, liver and heart. What gives us the authority to say what is edible/desirable? I believe that nose to tail butchery is as important as any other part of animal husbandry.
I love taking a few cow tongues, cooking them in the oven at a low temperature for many hours covered in salt, pepper, onions, garlic, BBQ sauce and red wine.

Jenni and her father Will Harris, accepting the 2011 GRACE (Georgia Restaurant Association) Innovator of the Year award.

Do you feel comfortable explaining where meat comes from to a child?

Absolutely. There is nothing to hide when questions are asked about the slaughtering of an animal – when you take pride in doing it humanely. It is true that an animal will lose its life, but there also comes a belief that it was put here for that purpose. Raising animals with dignity and respect and watching them express their natural instincts is truly rewarding.

It's all love.

What is your vision of the future of White Oak Pastures?

White Oak Pastures has striven to fill the demands of educated and sophisticated consumers that have expressed value in an alternative food production system. I hope that in the future, we can not only provide a tangible product for consumers, but an education on how they too can farm alternately.

White Oak Pastures' grass-fed beef is available across the eastern United States, and business is growing.

Describe factory farming in ten words or less. Describe sustainability in ten words or less.

Factory farming: efficient, confined, affordable, mechanized, centralized, intensive, industrialized, excessive, consistent, quick.
Sustainability: artisan, conscious, humane, slow, healthy, controlled, careful, passionate, ethical, succession-based.

Prompt/Place Entry 8

A blue, enamel sky shelters me as I perch on the concrete sidewalk once more. Not a single cloud scuffs its surface. The trees, the parched grass, the glittering fragments of rock all glow in the unencumbered sunlight. I am warm. I am light. I am happy.

There is no evolution of place in a human lifetime. Seasons pass- that is not an evolution. It is simply a cycle. I will not live long enough to watch new mountains push from the center of the Earth. I won't see the centimeters as they rise up. It takes almost no time at all for what was strange to become usual. I have lived in this city for two months today. I have perched on this spot week after week, contemplated its totality and juxtaposition. I now belong. This is not a strange place; this is my place. Change is only the interval between two sames. This is a season passing.

In the distance to my left, I see the tops of Georgia pines. I think of Janisse Ray, whose book I have recommended to so many people. I consider the way I felt reading her work. It was the first time I have ever recognized myself in a nature writer.

There are moments that happen (randomly?) in life where you feel the infinite connectivity between yourself and the world you occupy. Suddenly you know that you are meant to be in the world, and the world could not be without you. Most nature writing, I believe, is an attempt to explore connectivity. There is something happening all around us, all the time. We are vibing, giving off and receiving energy. Everything is connected and nature writing attempts to parse it apart for a moment. There are infinite ways to be connected- being disconnected is also one. Encapsulating these points is what nature writing can/should do.

A couple stroll by with a baby and a leashed puppy. All of them smile at me while I sit with my notebook. I smile back, feeling the vibrations from my lips echo through them, into the clear, cerulean sky.

Place Entry 7

1:34 pm

The corner at the end of my street (Atlanta, GA)

The heat has nestled in. The days of jumping from 75 degrees back down to 50 are over. We won't see another day below 70 for months and months.

Everything is weighed down. The branches droop slightly. Leaves turn downward, sighing, uninterested in the brutal sun. I am in the middle of a cacophony of bird calls. Their chattering seems eager, excited, rushed. Maybe I am projecting.

A car- red, covered with the yellow-green pollen layer that has blanketed the entire city- takes the turn at the corner too fast, narrowly avoiding hitting a silver sedan, kicking up gravel, dust and exhaust.

An open-faced sun highlights the insidious pollen. I see it on my black and white shoes, along the white concrete edge of the sidewalk. I can see it on the leaves of the ivy growing up my oak tree pal. This has been torture for most of the city's residents. I am struggling not to itch my hands and face. Liquid fills every cavity in my face, creating pressure and a struggle to breathe.

Atlanta, I was recently informed, is the worst city in the country for allergy sufferers. It is not just the thick, yellow dust of pollen. It is the pollution as well. In the past 15 years, Atlanta's population has boomed so greatly that the majority of the state (63%) now lives in the metro area. Fourteen lanes of traffic on city thoroughfares spew exhaust in all directions. This layer of detritus is invisible but thick. It is pulled into my lungs as I breathe the hot, dusty air.

Another car drives by. A woman pushes a baby in a stroller. The chubby child sleeps heavily, scratching at its eyes through dreams.

Prompt Entry 7

At the base, my heart begins to palpitate. A succession of steps, no more than twenty, ascending to a height no more than 12 feet. The walls-- I am not entirely sure they won't close in on me. They never have before, but, after all, a thing can never be proven, only disproven. It only needs to happen the one time.

A creak with the first step. My right foot hesitates briefly. I weigh the importance of the trip, clutch the rail and proceed to the second.

There's no one here but me. Sure. No one else.

I break into a running climb. In less than 30 seconds the whole ordeal is over. My ribs relax a little around my lungs and heart. I do the thing I want to do the least; I have to be sure.

I look back. Nobody's there.


It was probably the horror movies that did it. I've been watching them since childhood. Much to the chagrin of my parents, my grandmother used to let me stay up late every weekend watching marathons with her. The Omen, Psycho, The Good Son, Salem's Lot, Halloween. I devoured them happily and with as much pleasure as the chocolate bars and 2 am popcorn. I love to be scared of a movie, to give myself over completely to the terror of the storyline, to take simultaneous comfort in having control over my actual, physical situation. Michael Myers wasn't in Grandma's living room; my only company was her and the dogs.

The problem is that I am a severely anxious person. I cannot and won't blame horror movies for this. In my mother's words, I come from "a long line of worriers." My mom won't watch a scary movie if you pay her. She will, however, spend every minute of a flight obsessing over the remote possibility of a crash. Horror movies don't make people fearful-- they simply posit new things to fear.

I am afraid of stairs. Well, not exactly. I am specifically afraid of being followed up the stairs, of the sensation that someone is behind me. The classic mistake of the female lead in a horror movie is to flee the killer by climbing the stairs. She ascends, glances over her shoulder and- SLICE. Her neck is cut first. The killer proceeds to slice and stab her vulnerable frame.

Every time I am confronted with a set of stairs, panic grips me. If I am in a group of people, I make them climb first-- to the point of being "weird" about it. It doesn't matter who's behind me; I am afraid of any and everyone following me up a set. The rhythm of footsteps so close behind me makes vomit rise in my throat. I become clammy and faint. I run. This becomes problematic in public places. Perhaps that's the secret reason why I sought acting as a hobby- to learn how to mask my anxiety.

Masking as the innocuous bottom of the wall-ceiling-wall rectangle, the base of the staircase forces me to question whether or not the trip is warranted. Do I absolutely need to go up? It is the last place for questioning. Slats of wood (bare in my home, fabric-covered in others) rest atop one another in the seemingly narrowing corridor. This optical illusion raises my blood pressure. Surely I won't fit through. Surely something will trap me before I reach the top.

The railing is my enemy in disguise. I can grip it for support, but what if it collapses? What if it slows my pace and gives the killer a split second advantage? What if I forgo it and trip, shattering my occipital lobes and nose, beginning the killer's work for him?

The victorious feeling of reaching the top stair is short-lived. That horrible moment must come immediately afterward. The look. Over the shoulder and down.

No one's there.

Place Entry 6

The air is chilly, and the scent of water is thick. Silver skies confirm the threat of rain. I like to be outside on sunless days. There are no shadows. Everything is sapped slightly of its pigment; the difference between painting with acrylics and watercolor. The cars at the intersection are as numerous as ever but seem to be moving slower than usual. They too must feel, as I do, that today is a day for reflection rather than action.

Deciduous trees have begun to flower. A few, like the sprawling oak behind me, remain bare of leaves, save the tangles of ivy growing up the trunk. Above me, I hear birds in careful conversation. A quick "kwe-kwe-kwe-kwe-kwe-kwe-kwe," and a longer, "kuhwehh." I don't know anything about bird calls. I see a dark brown shadow fly from a branch. I wonder if he is the responsible party.

Directly across from my perch is a sign welcoming residents to the COLUMBIA CITIHOMES APARTMENTS: AN ANDP & COLUMBIA RESIDENTIAL DEVELOPMENT. It is flanked by perfectly placed lavender and yellow pansies. A wrought iron fence keeps out unwanted visitors and the tumbling foliage of the older side of the street.

I wanted to get out here in the morning, early, to see this place at sunrise. I wanted to but I am not a morning person and never have been. So instead I'm here at midafternoon in the midst of the slower bustling Sunday. The lack of sunshine doesn't upset me; I got a taste of southern summer yesterday as the temperature climbed over 80 degrees. I'll never complain about the heat but, right now, I won't complain about the coolness either.

A couple of brown ants share the curb with me. They seem relaxed. Or maybe lost. I don't see their hill anywhere. Does a lost ant simply start over grain by grain- rebuild and forget? Does an ant know to be lost?

The gray sky sucks the color from the leaves, the birds, the pansies. The rain will come and then the sun and the technicolor world will exist again. The shadows will all be cast and the ants will move faster to avoid the burning rays.

Prompt Entry 6

In front of my mother's house is a 50-foot cottonwood. Its branches have been trimmed away from the ground about seven feet up. From there the limbs splay gracefully, turning slightly upward, toward the sun.

Its trunk is a purposeful hug's width around. It is planted on a small mound five or six feet from the front porch where a great, old pine was thrown from the ground during a windstorm in 1997. That had been the first year my family lived in the home which I now think of as "my mother's house."

I love this tree. When I come home from whatever faraway city I live in, I stop on the way to the door to say hello to the tree. I pat its thickly grooved trunk. My voice raises a half an octave when I speak to it, as speaking to a child or a pet. More than any room in my mother's house, or the house as a totality, the cottonwood is my place. I sit on the ground below it and its roots fit my hips and back perfectly. On warm evenings when my family eats or drinks together, I perch on a chair directly below its shady limbs and bask in the tinkling melody of its spade-shaped leaves. I have, on more than one drunken occasion, cried in the arms of the tree, clung to it in early morning hours, imagined I could feel its lifeblood flowing up from the ground to the tips of its branches, begged it for mercy or good luck or a second chance.

If this seems unnatural, it's because it is. I am overcompensating in the present for past mistakes. I identify too strongly with the tree. This is the nature of abuse.

You see, the tree began its life in the gutter on the south side of the house during the summer of 1999. My mom's then boyfriend plucked it and suggested we plant it in the front yard where the pine had been lost. My brother Jim and I hated her boyfriend and thought every idea he had was worthless. Our father had gone the way of the pine the year before.

So the cottonwood was planted, and the abuse began. It looked like an awkward stick plopped in the center of a pile of earth. "Stupid fucking tree, I hope you fucking die." Jim and I took cruel pleasure in the fact that our mother no longer punished us for swearing, forgiving us the extra anger. We ripped its leaves off and shredded them in front of it. Pathetic thing, it only had nine or ten.

The next summer the boyfriend was gone. This meant that Jim and I could have friends over whenever we wanted, which was often. We sat on the front porch and took pot-shots at the tree. Travis Panizzoli rode his bike over it and took out a third of its branches. It had grown some, but we were still bigger. Anthony McCormick lit a branch on fire. Jim smashed cigarette butts on its trunk. I tore off leaves in handfuls.

"Stupid tree," I leaned over it so my lips nearly touched it and whispered, "You're a waste. No one likes you."

By the following summer, I had lost interest in abusing the tree. Instead, I treated it with the same sneering indifference that my 16-year-old self treated everything and everyone. I didn't bother to look at the tree when I came up the driveway from Sarah and Heather Simms' house every night. It could have been that I was already beginning to feel the shame; I was just too much of a coward to face it.

The tree grew. It grew and grew. So did I, so did Jim. Grew and grew and grew. I read articles about the secret thoughts of plants, about how speaking to a plant makes a difference in the way it matures. Had we harmed the plant forever? Would it have thicker branches, more lustrous leaves, fluffier and more numerous cottonballs if we hadn't treated it so badly those first years?

This is when I began to make amends. This is when I began to cling to the tree.

Have you ever harmed a thing? On accident, you can forgive yourself and take solace in your bad luck/ignorance/lack of control. On purpose, there is no forgiving yourself, only attempts to atone. Today I hug the cottonwood every time I come home, I whisper niceties to strange trees in the new cities I traverse, and I attempt to treat every living thing with respect.

I hope that is enough.

Prompt Entry 5

Lead.

Arsenic.

Mercury. Cadmium.

Selenium, chromium, silver.

Non-point source means you can't point the finger. A little bit of rain collides with a little bit of metal, bears a mobile babe. Babe rolls, crawls and grows. Over, under, into. Compounding, expanding exponentially. Metal unable or unwilling to extricate itself from other metals. This is the most common type of water pollution in this (any)city. Non-point source: we know we don't know exactly where it came from.

I can't get away from water or I won't. I haven't seen a lake since I've been in Atlanta. I haven't seen a river. A creek snakes through newly developed lofts behind the train station. I am a frequent visitor. The water is a murky graygreen. If I focus, I can see the sparkle of heavy metals. I conjecture whereabout those poisons are coming from.

Calcium, iron, nitrogen.

Potassium. Sodium.

Hydrogen.

Oxygen.

This is the great paradox.

Our bodies thump a lovely assemblage of elements. Mostly we are two: hydrogen and oxygen. Mostly we are water. We need others: calcium, iron, nitrogen, potassium, sodium. The problem is that we need them in exact amounts. A human being is a delicate balance. Every red blood cell is surrounded by a membrane whose constitution is virtually the same ratio of salt to water as an ocean. Scientists point to this as evidence that we evolved from the sea. An ocean made solid.

I point to this as evidence that we need to pay attention to the water.

The water.

We use nitrates to fertilize our fields. The rain takes the nitrates to our stream and upsets the water's perfect balance. This kills certain wildlife, causing bacteria to reproduce grossly. Our water becomes bloated with nitrogen, potassium, sodium. Salts. When our blood becomes bloated with salt, our heart chokes and explodes. A heart attack. Think of the land as our heart.

It rained tonight. I was inside so I couldn't taste the drops as they thudded from the sky. It is ok; I will cry tonight at the illness of the Earth. I will taste the sickness I have consumed.