Introduction and Origins

It rains a lot in Beulah Land, and on those occasions we Mississippian Deltans often retreat to our front porch and allow water to seek its own level--metaphorically and literally. We live in old country seemingly suspended in time, carved from thickets, forests, swamps.  It is full of old porches, doubtlessly built by sturdy folk weathering a storm who realized the need of a place for restful, deliberate, and contemplative study of their and posterity's circumstances.  Our family's big, antique screened porch sits on the banks of Cassidy Bayou.  It is surrounded by lovely flowers, towering trees full of chatty birds, and the lazy, sprawling bayou drifting whimsically, seeking its own level, with only ageless, water-bound cypresses acting as compasses.  With an symphony of falling rain, I often plant myself on my porch's swing.  Work weariedn it's there I rest best, sense renewed life's promise with each rain drop, feel the air's dampness massaging a weary soul, view life from a different perspective, and reflect on our world and my station in it.

Invariably a breeze sifting through the screen kidnaps my thoughts away from this peaceful sanctuary.  Contemplations carry me to a world I want to be mine--a  place where all neighbors are friends, with no false witness;   a community where all  incumbent differences are dealt with harmoniously; a world that is whole again with fecund land and clean water; a recognition that we are all a part of nature and that humanity will be better stewards of it.  My kidnapped thoughts only ransom requirements are payments of thoughtful reflection on problems followed by action toward their resolution.

Two Brooks Rice is the product of years of reflection on our food production systems and how those impact our natural world.  Generations of our family have revered in the combination of nature and agriculture. Years of contemplative porch sitting in the rain led us to change many of our farming pathways with hope that our farm and our planet would gain.  Simply stated, we realized we must produce for humanity more food from less land while taking far more proactive care of the earth's resources, and this could only be achieved with more insightful stewardship of our farm's splendid blue earth.  We had to integrate our farm into the nature it was carved from so that it could mutually serve man and nature.  Needed encouragement amounted to recalling that a stray rice seed growing in a road ditch could produce as many seeds as its cultivated cousin, and learning, with a little oversight, nature was the best employable farm manager.   So, on our farm, we doubled down and paid our dues.  Gradually, through thought, trial, tribulation, and triumph our farm has yielded more food at greatly reduced expense to the environment.  Our Two Brooks system does not organically starve someone somewhere, and doesn't synthetically suffocate our planet.  Our production is predicated on the facts that less can be more and that both man and nature can be served equally.  Our farm, your food, and our earth are better for the reconciliation.

Two Brooks Rice is the product of reflection and reconciliation. Our ecocentric rice farming system is the consequence of study of our farm's and man's impact on nature, and our design of that system that accommodates each; we yield to nature to yield for man.  Our farm's blueprints were mentally sketched under a porch's wet roof to generate a measurement of  renewal  for our environment as well as innovative products to man.   

Perhaps everyone needs a front porch.