Since mid-December, my daily routine with the SFA has changed. I still answer the e-mails that arrive every day, connecting news reporters with our member experts, inviting newbies to the SFA rolls, and forwarding the occasional pickle question straight to John T. But these days, I do all this SFA work—appropriately—from my dining room table.
After I married last August, the SFA and I struck a deal: I’d stay in Oxford to see through the annual October symposium, and then I’d relocate in December to finally live with my husband. These days, while Ned works with the Coastal Hydraulics Lab of the Army Corps of Engineers, I spread the gospel of Southern food from the SFA’s first-ever field office in Vicksburg, Mississippi.
There are a number of good connections between this town and the SFA. Vicksburg is home to the Southern Cultural Heritage Foundation, an organization founded with the help of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture in Oxford. Currently, the SCHF is host to the SFA’s traveling photography exhibition, Meet the Folks Behind the Food: The SFA Oral History Initiative at Year Three. Conveniently, I was able to deliver the photographs on one of my twice monthly Oxford commutes. Vicksburg also has a hot tamale tradition, documented by our oral historian, Amy Evans, and featured on the SFA’s Tamale Trail. And, importantly, the place is home to L. D.’s Kitchen, a soul food joint that serves the best macaroni and cheese I’ve ever tasted. (Note: L stands for Larry, but the D remains a mystery to most locals.) Vicksburg has proven a good fit for our first field office.
I had great visions of excess spare time before I moved, thinking—rather absurdly, I now realize—that an office away from the telephones would free up my schedule. I’ve quickly filled that spare time with new projects. With the urgency of phone calls removed, SFA has been able to devote my time to longer-term initiatives, like the Web site revision (coming soon) and the plans for a new membership database (to replace the overtaxed system we now use). We even wrote and received a $20,000 grant to support our oral history initiative.
Another SFA-inspired mission has also filled my personal time: the Vicksburg Farmers’ Market. Encouraged by fellow SFA member Anne Freeze, who recently helped jump-start a market In her new home of Columbus, Mississippi, I’ve worked with a small cadre of friends to organize a farmers’ market in downtown Vicksburg. Our early efforts were met with the usual skepticism brought to newcomer stirrings, but if you visit Vicksburg this summer, you’ll see the
naysayers shopping for squash with the rest of us. Our market hosts over 25 vendors and welcomes an average 600 to 800 shoppers each weekend. We sell ripe red tomatoes from local farmer Bill Freeman, sweet and juicy Smith County watermelons, and even coffee from the local coffee shop/folk art studio, Highway 61.
If ever you’re in Vicksburg, drop me an e-mail at the usual spot: sfamail@olemiss.edu. You’ll find me at the farmers’ market on Saturday mornings, but with a visit on a weekday I’ll show you around SFA’s newest field office and, conveniently, we can also have lunch there.
