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About Oregon Coast today. (Lincoln City, OR) 2005-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 14, 2020)
A small food revolution “Teaching kids how to feed themselves and how to live in a community responsibly is the center of an education.” — Alice Waters un fact — Having been a journalist since I was 17, I’ve gotten to pen some amazing stories through fi rst- person experiences. • won a reporters’ pool to be “co-pilot” on one of the Blue Angels • camped with volcanologists in Honduras at the rim of an active volcano • helped a veterinarian near Pecos round up and vaccinate wild mustangs • took some veterans down Highway One in Vietnam on our motorcycles • made several 250-foot dives with SCUBA-clad scientists in the Sea of Cortez • one round of boxing with one of George Foreman’s sparring partners • spelunked GO BENEATH THE with cavers in Southern SURFACE WITH Arizona at a PAUL HAEDER just-publicly announced cavern system Th en there are the articles about chefs, farms, wineries and breweries. Spending hours on three occasions with JT — chef/ owner of Coast & Vine in Nye Beach — I dig back to my roots in sustainable farming, farm to fork activism and working around people who build the culture of healing mind and body with healthy, clean food. Jonathan James Trusty ( JT) is a 47-year- old master of many culinary arts, as a chef, sommelier and coff ee expert. When we kick around a rural county like Lincoln and smallish towns like Newport and Lincoln City, stumbling upon a sustainable, healthy and socially/ethically conscious restaurant is a fi nd. JT’s serious about supporting local farms, food producers, foragers, cider, wine F DEEP DIVE and mead purveyors. Th e relationship between restaurant and grower is one JT not only encourages, but he believes a tsunami-risk area like Lincoln County should be developing deep, long- lasting socially-dynamic communities in order to build resiliency to stave off some of the disastrous eff ects of an earthquake and ocean deluge. When he fi rst started in the food and drink business, in 1990 near Sacramento, JT conjured up secrets of coff ee growing- roasting-brokering by going down to the Bay Area to get his hands into those coff ee beans. “My mom will tell you this story how when I was 11 or 12, I was cooking meals . . . nothing like what she was cooking in our kitchen. You know, 1960s Betty Crocker stuff . It was the late ’80s and we were eating McDonald’s for lunches at school and we thought that was just wonderful,” JT says with a laugh, emphasizing the words “poisoning us” in many of our conversations stories recanting our broken food system. He recalls mother Deborah (Toledo librarian) and dad Robert (director of the Blue Water Task Force) taking the kid JT into wine country — the renowned Napa and Sonoma valleys. “You know, all of that stuck from age fi ve on. In fact, this restaurant is actually the product of that early exposure and education.” From espresso café to getting deep into the wine industry, to working with amazing chefs like Alice Waters, JT gives benediction to his mentors and his young staff , who he calls “the kids.” Moon, sun, air, water, fi re While pouring some incredible Scribe Winery chardonnay (Sonoma Valley) and Day Wines pinot noir (Dundee, Oregon), JT rises to the occasion as both proponent and practitioner of biodynamic wine and food. He tells me that biodynamics actually occur in the vineyard before winemaking takes place. “It’s simple --rain, sun, soil, moon.” Th e bottom line is “clean, organic, natural,” which is how JT runs his kitchen — a dream started when he was a child stomping around those farms, orchards and vineyards in California, now a place ravaged by drought, fi re, deluges. We toast the fourth-generation of farmers and vineyard tenders at Scribe, for this amazing organic wine, a gift of 120 acres that include perennial crops and nut trees. Deep Dive will continue online, as I explore JT’s years in France; his US Coast Guard days; and the new iteration of Coast & Vine — the quintessential oyster bar. His big push is being part of the Central Coast Food Trail and connecting a foraging-to- fork ethos to his purchasing of products, to cooking, then connecting many aspects of our Native American brethren on the Coast and in the region to the entire food web. Read on at www.oregoncoasttoday.com. ••• Paul Haeder is a writer living and working in Lincoln County. He has two books coming out, one a short story collection, “Wide Open Eyes: Surfacing from Vietnam,” and a non- fi ction book, “No More Messing Around: Th e Good, Bad and Ugly of America’s Education System.” oregoncoastTODAY.com • facebook.com/oregoncoasttoday • February 14, 2020 • 5