Tours highlight life on the farm

The first time Trudy Matheny saw her farmhouse, she said she knew she belonged there.

“I fell in love with it,” she said. The January sun was setting, she said, and the view from her farm was “beautiful.”

“I thought, ‘Oh, this is great,’” she said.

Matheny’s farm is a few miles out of downtown Chapel Hill, but the gravel roads and deep ponds manage to turn eight miles into an eternity.

This weekend, as part of the 12th annual Piedmont Farm Tour, 34 sustainable agriculture farms, including Matheny’s Genesis Farm, welcomed visitors eager to learn a thing or two about working the earth.

Her farm grows a small variety of vegetables, herbs, fruits and eggs, and she sells her produce directly from her truck and to restaurants.

Before Matheny started her farm, she taught at Elon University and Wake Technical Community College after getting her doctorate in biological anthropology from UNC. She moved onto the farm when her Chapel Hill apartment’s landlord decided to sell.

“I thought, ‘You’ve got this farm, you’re blessed with this farm, let’s do something with it,’” she said. Tired of the commuter lifestyle, Matheny started running her farm full time.

John Soehner also lives and works the farm lifestyle, running a larger farm where he grows myriad crops, ranging from garlic to zucchini and even fava beans, typical to Mediterranean cuisine. He also sells his produce to restaurants and at the Carrboro Farmers’ Market.

With the help of his family and a group of “floater” workers, Soehner became a full-time farmer four years ago, after years as a fisherman on Long Island.

“Now I farm, and this is the last thing I’m doing,” he said while showing a tour group his strawberries.

Besides sharing her knowledge at the annual Farm Tour, Matheny also teaches throughout the year. From May to October, she runs the Genesis Farm School, where children up to the fifth grade learn about farming.

“What I was seeing is that the students did not understand where their food was coming from,” Matheny said of her years teaching college.

This concerned is shared by the Carolina Farm Stewardship Association, which sponsored the tour as well as four others in North and South Carolina.

“This is a positive sort of countertrend to the industrial,” said Roland McReynolds, executive director of the association.

Soehner’s farm serves as an example of alternative farming techniques. Unlike most farmers, who grow arugula in rows, Soehner grows his freely like grass.

“I do nothing by the book, not one thing,” Soehner said.

While he’s only been farming for four years, he said he likes working for himself.

Matheny has discovered a similar positive element to farm life.

“It’s great to not have to get up for an 8 o’clock class anymore.”

Contact the City Editor at citydesk@unc.edu.