Q&A / NEIL TAYLOR, farmer: ‘I grow a good product, and I stand behind it’

If you’ve eaten at some of Atlanta’s top restaurants, then it’s possible you’ve dined on carrots, chard or figs grown on Neil Taylor’s 11-acre Ellenwood farm. A fixture at the Saturday Peachtree Road Farmers Market, Taylor will be among two dozen Georgia delegates to the international Terra Madre conference in Turin, Italy, this week. Foodies consider it the cradle of the international slow food movement. Slow food’s mission: Get people to buy food grown or raised locally and preferably organically, take it home and cook it. Taylor’s on a mission to bring in converts —- one mouthful at a time.

Q: You’ve been at this what, 14 years now? How did a retired captain in the Army Corps of Engineers wind up growing and canning his own blueberries?

A: We always raised a big garden when I was a kid in Kentucky. When I retired from the Army, I started a CPA job. But my arthritis was acting up so bad that the VA hospital was giving me medicine and massages. Then finally somebody said, “Capt. Taylor, you need to be active, really active.” So, I gave up the CPA job, and I started becoming a farmer.

Q: Wait. This farm started out as arthritis treatment?

A: Yes. And I didn’t care to work for another man. I wanted to be free.

Q: Do you even think most people know where their food comes from? Do they even think about what they’re shoveling into their mouths?

A: They’re so busy that they don’t even care. It’s about what’s convenient. A lot of people will go to the grocery store and buy bananas out of season and out-of-season avocados. We’ve got everything available for people on a year-round basis. But there is a season to eat certain crops. God invented a system, I didn’t. He invented it; he set it up.

Q: Sounds like a good bit of your job is proselytizing —- for the crop. Do you talk this way to your clients at the farmers market?

A: Hah! If I get the opportunity, I do!

Q: OK, then how do you convert the nonbeliever —- that an organic way is the way?

A: Taste. Most adults’ taste buds are already messed up. But if you take your young children, I’ve seen it, and share with them the little grape tomatoes, the little blueberries, the little figs, you ought to see their eyes light up. The children taste something in those items, and they want more of it. Our taste buds have been adulterated because we ate all those fancy foods the chefs are making up.

Q: You sell to the fancy chefs!

A: I do. But some of the chefs try not to adulterate it and add so much stuff until you can’t taste the true produce. They are going back to the true, slow food movement. They’re cooking more simple. But you know what, some of the best cooks in the world were moms that had families and stayed home.

Q: Well, why do you do it?

A: A passion. I know what I’m doing is right. I grow a good product, and I stand behind it for my people, and I don’t hurt their health. The people that own the franchises, the Pizza Huts and the hamburger joints, I’m sure they go to church but, when they go to St. Peter and knock on the door and he asks them, “What did you do?” And they say, “I served up the nastiest, filthy hamburger. …” I’m serving up wholesome food.

Q: Since we’re talking about virtue, how much food in your pantry and refrigerator comes from your garden vs. the grocery store?

A: Well, I’m probably at 50 percent. This morning for breakfast, I had bacon and eggs. The bacon was conventional.

Q: You’re going to Italy to talk about organic mustard greens and Mutsu apples. That’s a big carbon footprint. Why go?

A: People from all over the world are going to go there. People that are probably doing some of the same things I’m doing. There may be a language barrier, but we’ll go and see and visit and talk and get some ideas. It’s probably not that different from a preacher going to a Southern Baptist convention.