Family farming and Alex Miller Ph.D. is a match made down on a New Market farm – 1,000 acres known as “Lick Skillet.” His great grandfather liked what a neighbor said back in 1918 – “That land is so bad you’ll have to lick your skillet to get any food off of it.”
Seven generations later Lick Skillet is going strong, and Miller is the 7th generation farm boss on what is a dwindling number of family farms in the Volunteer State. He recently spoke to the Rotary Club of Farragut, and his program was “Tennessee’s Disappearing Farms.” This busy man is a farmer, author and professor in the University of Tennessee’s Haslam College of Business.
Miller, a down-to-earth riveting speaker, is a huge advocate of “buying local.” At Lick Skillet they sell locally to anyone wanting home-grown food products without the chemicals and conditions of factory operations – grass-finished beef, pastured pork, pastured lamb, pastured poultry and free-range eggs.
He shared some fascinating statistics:
- In 1919 Tennessee had 280,000 farms. Today there are 66,000. Every four hours a farm closes.
- Tennessee is ranked second behind Texas with policies that endanger the health and future of the state’s farms.
- 70% of the world’s small farms are scattered around the world and are not in the U.S.
- 25% of the big-rig trucks you see are hauling food products — which means the food is being produced in environmentally suspect factories and filled with chemicals and pesticides.
Alex Miller Ph.D. speaking to Farragut Rotary.
Miller discussed the benefits of buying from local farmers versus buying from industrial farms that import meats from other countries, having the already packaged products inspected at the U.S. border in an effort to obtain the USA label and make you think it’s grown in our country.
“This is very misleading. These products are imported from overseas, as far away as Australia, and once they arrive here they get a USA label stuck on them when in fact they are not subject to U.S. regulations,” he explained.
Lick Skillet sells directly to the public at its Jefferson County farm and will even deliver to your front door. They also have community drop-off points or you can shop at the farm. They deliver to almost all Knoxville zip codes. Home delivery has a $15 charge and is free if the order exceeds $150. They also sell at most of our local farmers markets. Orders have to be placed by 10 a.m. Tuesdays for deliveries the next week and will be delivered frozen between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. on Thursdays.
The farm’s address is 800 Lick Skillet Lane, New Market TN 37820 and the phone number is 865-344-1160. If you are interested, they give free tours of the farm on Sundays. Here is the LINK to their farm website that is full of information and more details. Miller said there is a contact form on the website that is the fastest way to contact someone.
To explore membership in the Rotary Club of Farragut, call 865-659-3562. Farragut Rotary meets each Wednesday at 12:15 p.m. at Fox Den Country Club.