January 16, 2017 I came home dancing on air after a meeting with the young owners and crew of Vicia Restaurant, soon to open in St. Louis. They will be working with the already-well-known Union Loafers (Bakery) to create fabulous locally-sourced breads for their fabulous locally-sourced vegetable-centric meals. As Michael described the menu, it will feature vegetables with meat on the side rather than a centerpiece of meat with veggies sort of an afterthought. And of course veggie-centric means in-season veggie-centric. Can it be more delicious? These kiddos have roots in St. Louis but have traveled to the coasts and become educated on the best strategies for converting eaters into health-conscious, flavor-conscious eaters. Michael and wife Tara took jobs at Stone Barn in New York’s Hudson Valley where a lot of NYC money has made it possible for small farms to survive. Another of the crew worked in Berkeley at Chez Panisse, Alice Waters’ mecca of locavore chef-erie. If that’s a word. But the thing I liked best about the meeting was the respectful way they talked about farmers. The truth is that the system has made farming so risky and farmers so indebted that they have to take on more and more acres to make ends meet. They have to make the equipment pay its way, see? Equipment alone can run into the millions of dollars. And processors want CHEAP inputs, so the poor farmers are squeezed from both ends. High debt and low prices when they sell their products. To break this cycle, we have to create more markets! And that’s what Vicia and Union Loafers—and a bunch of other young entrepreneurs—are aiming to do. So, at the beginning of this blogging I said my blog would be about rural culture. The more I think about that, the more I see that debt is a big part of it. It ain’t right but it’s so. As one of my bluegrass musician deejay friends used to say, back when there were live deejays on the radio.