Brian Miller

Brian Miller lives in rural east Tennessee with his partner, Cindy. Since 1999 they have owned and operated Winged Elm Farm: a 70-acre working farm of pastures, orchards and mixed hardwoods. They direct market pork, lamb, mutton and beef to customers in Knoxville and Chattanooga. A native of Louisiana, Brian’s guiding influence in life is to know that everything begins with a roux.

Brian blogs at The South Roane Agrarian.

Kayaking with Lambs: Excerpt

We have spent many years planning, building, and repairing the infrastructure to support multiple endeavors, to make the farm resilient, to create and sustain a place where the absence of one species simply indicates another cycle, unremarked in the larger scheme.

November 9, 2023

Brian Miller's farm

Kayaking with Lambs: Excerpt

Somewhere—the gravel road I grew up on, the wharf I fished from, the woods at the end of the road where we roamed, the edge of the bayou where we fought off pirates to keep them from landing—is no longer. It is now an anywhere of pavement, sidewalks, a Walmart, hotels, casinos, and housing developments. Anywhere is nowhere.

October 25, 2023

Ginger

Keeping Her Place

Farming livestock involves a daily exertion of power over life and death.

September 11, 2023

Columbanus

Notes on Community

Maybe we are just Irish monks in a new dark age emerging, copying texts for a future generation to decipher. Yet involvement in where we live is the tapestry of who we are.

December 10, 2021

Sugarbag bee

Living Life: Do You Really Need an App for That?

That we have begun to confuse understanding with outsourced expertise is not a surprise. The apps are merely the latest indicator of our disconnect from the natural world.

June 29, 2020

Seeds

Still Missing the Sweetwater Fruit Market

Nothing is duller than a prepackaged seed packet. What started in January with the hopeful perusal of vegetable catalogs ends in February with the arrival of parsimonious clutches of lonely seeds, each variety sprinkled into the bottom of a small envelope. Like the childhood prize in a box of Cracker Jacks, the reward is always less than one had hoped for.

May 19, 2020

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