♪♪ -Hi, I'm P. Allen Smith.

Welcome back to Moss Mountain Farm.

Now, we've known each other for a long time, and it's great to get back together.

You can't believe how this place has evolved over time.

Now, as you know, we're right at the foothills of the Ouachita Mountains overlooking the Arkansas River Valley.

I've been a gardener and a designer for, well, most of my life, and I love sharing that information.

You know, I like to show you how to do things and what things are.

But what I'd like to do is explore why we do things.

I think it could be a fascinating journey.

So today, let's spend some time together.

We'll take a look at the Big Sister Oak.

Look at pollinators in the garden.

I'd like to read a poem to you and explore one of my favorite artists.

But on top of all that, let's get into some of those heirloom tomatoes.

Not only are they beautiful, but, oh, they are so delicious.

So come on, let's get started.

-Funding for "P. Allen Smith's A Sense of Place" is provided in part by... -Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Company.

Since 1998, growing, saving and sharing rare heirloom varieties.

Seeds with stories and a sense of place.

Seeds worth saving.

NARRATOR: And First Community Bank, where community comes first.

-Just take a look at this magnificent tree.

She never fails to mesmerize me by her beauty, her scale, and her age.

She's well over 300 years old.

She's a post oak that we call the Big Sister Oak.

I have to say I have a great deal of reverence for the old girl, because she was here long before I showed up.

In fact, when I came here 20 years ago and began to transform Moss Mountain Farm, she was our North Star in terms of the design of this place.

I love place making.

I've really dedicated my life to place making.

And each day an each season, we all see the transformations that occur.

Place is so important to all of us and creating a sense of place I think is one of the most important things we can do.

It defines us, it reflects us, and it gives us comfort.

That's why it's so important to me.

If you know me, you know I love taking the ordinary and making something extraordinary out of it.

As we explore this together, we'll look at things that are tiny, seemingly inconsequential, but have major impacts on our lives.

We'll also look at grand gestures, what I like to call painting with a wide brush.

And then even though I have 12 principles of design, there's yet a 13th -- simplicity.

Simplicity is a marvelous thing, and how it can impact our lives and transform our places is not to be underestimated.

♪♪ ♪♪ When the season rolls into full summer, this particular place, the vegetable garden, well, it becomes quite extraordinary.

It is so abundant.

And you can see in this garden not only the vegetables growing, but it's really a lot of pollinator plants, like this beautiful purple coneflower, as well as all these daylilies that we've planted here.

When I say this garden is really an edible garden and that most everything in it is something you can eat, it really even comes down to the flowers because these daylilies and their petals are absolutely delicious.

But this garden has evolved.

It used to be strictly vegetables and fruits, but today it's become much more diverse.

And I love the diversity of this garden for a number of reasons.

It really supports the pollinator population that we've worked so hard to cultivate.

So I love mixing in herbs like this beautiful hyssop.

Isn't it gorgeous?

This one's called Blue Fortune and it's a great, great perennial.

You can see the bumblebees all over it.

You see, I don't think we need to get caught up in names and labels like this is the vegetable garden.

Everything in here has to be vegetable.

Much more aligns with the ecology of the farm.

if we think about diversity and how we can bring greater abundance that way to this particular space.

♪♪ Can you hear it?

What you're hearing is buzz pollination.

This is a tomato flower.

How many of us have really studied a tomato flower?

It's a gorgeous thing.

What's interesting about tomato flowers is that they have both male and female parts, so they are self-pollinating.

So why the bee?

Well, the bee, through buzz pollination, creates a vibration and it releases the pollen.

When the pollen is released, then it connects to the female parts and the fruit is then formed, the embryo.

The embryo is what we eat.

These insects are incredibly important overall here, and we've done a lot of work trying to improve them.

Of course, we'll get to that on another visit here at the farm, because it's a fascinating story.

They're Incredibly interesting creatures.

There are only two things that money cannot buy.

That's true love and homegrown tomatoes.

I want to talk practically about how to grow tomatoes.

A few things that I've learned over a long time of gardening.

You can see these are determinate types rather than indeterminate types.

And let me explain the difference.

A determinant is one that has a determined size or height.

The indeterminates grow wild and can grow up to 20 feet.

If you look behind me here, you'll see some of my Sungolds that have -- They're growing in quite a tussle and even up one of those tuteurs, so you can see the difference.

And what I'd like to do is cage them.

We just use this concrete reinforcing wire.

It's easy to reach through and collect the fruit.

The other thing you'll see here is clean straw.

I like to put clean straw around the base of the plants.

Tomatoes like consistent moisture.

They don't like wet feet, but they like consistent moisture.

So by putting straw down, in this case just some wheat straw, not hay because hay has a wide range of plants in it and their seed, and so you're going to introduce a lot of weeds, so clean straw works very well.

That will help reduce blossom end rot with tomatoes and will help keep them from splitting.

So what's so interesting about tomatoes is today the tomato we see is very different than the tomato that was first discovered in the Indies.

You see, it's a New World fruit.

In the Old World, there were no tomatoes until Europeans went to the Americas.

And those fruits were about this size.

And you can see it's a tiny little thing.

And since then there's been so much hybridization, so many varieties with a range of shape, color, productivity as well as flavor.

♪♪ ♪♪ Just look at the beauty here on this table.

I had to set the table with these gorgeous varietals just to walk you through them.

Tomatoes are roughly divided into three categories.

Slicers, you know, the big guys.

Paste tomatoes, very good for making sauces and things like that.

And of course, the little cherry types, they're absolutely delicious in salads, tomato salads, just with some capers.

This one is called Solar Eclipse.

And what I love about it is that it does look like an eclipse.

It is dark, dark purple.

And then over here, look, the sun is shining.

So marvelous flavor on this one.

And then one that I'm trying for the first time this year is one called Mad Hatter.

And look how dark it is.

Isn't it gorgeous?

And what superb flavor.

This one is called Pink Panther.

And you can see why.

It's got a beautiful sort of pink skin on it.

This one is called Lucid Gem.

And if you look at it, you could almost see the sun shining through it.

Now I want to talk about nutrition for just a moment, because one of the things I learned a long time ago that the darker tomatoes like this one, this gorgeous Mad Hatter that's really dark, almost black, they tend to have more lycopene, more nutritionally rich than the really pale ones like you see here with these Sun golds.

And then of course, these little Sunbursts, such variety.

♪♪ So you have to ask yourself what constitutes the flavor of tomatoes?

It's really about the genetics, how they're made up.

And many of these go back hundreds of years.

And the terroir -- where they're grown, the environment.

Not so much the environment climatically, but the earth itself, the place.

we hear about terroir with wines all the time.

But it also affects other things that we eat.

That soil, the minerals in the soil, they add to the flavor profile.

Let me show you something.

What I want to do is just cut this tomato and just look inside this beautiful thing.

Perfectly symmetrical.

It looks like a mandala with these radiating lines.

It reminds me of the beautiful rose window at Notre-Dame.

And just look at all of these seeds.

I mean, you might even think of these as little stars.

Stars, a part of a constellation.

It is a constellation of seeds.

And each one of these seeds holds its own genetic material capable of producing another plant.

That plant producing more fruit, each fruit having thousands, if not tens of thousands of seed from a single plant going on for decades and generations and another thousand years.

It's a beautiful cycle of life.

♪♪ ♪♪ Well, it's nice to come in where it's a little cooler.

You know, this happens to be one of my favorite rooms here at Moss Mountain Farm.

The main house.

I really call it my cabinet of curiosities.

Ever since I was a kid, I've been a hopeless collector of all kinds of things, but particularly natural history objects.

You'll see rocks and skulls and all sorts of things.

One of the things I like in particular is this sort of giant snapping turtle skull.

I've collected them over my entire life.

And then also, there are plenty of books here, some of my favorites.

You know, when we think about the universe, we always seem to look up.

I do -- the constellations and so forth.

But there's an entire universe, an entire universe below our feet.

And it's critically important.

I mean, without the microbes under our feet, we wouldn't have the basil.

We wouldn't have the tomatoes.

We wouldn't be here.

They're absolutely essential.

Now, this book, "Teaming With Microbes, it's kind of a primer on understanding this universe that's here before us.

It's all about the soil food, web, and they do a great job of helping us understand it.

But quite simply, if you think about it, just in a teaspoon of soil, there are billions of these microbes that are working all of the time.

And this is how you build great soil to grow anything you want in your garden.

♪♪ This little book is really deepened my awareness about place, about this place, about really what's beneath my feet.

And if you want to explore that more deeply, this is a good little primer to get into and to learn it.

But, you know, there's even more benefits than the food that we eat from the garden.

Getting your hands in the soil itself is so important and can change our physiology.

Now, a lot of people I hear say "Gardening is my therapy."

You've heard that, I know.

You probably say it yourself.

And indeed it is for me.

I love to go out and deadhead and prune and most of all, water.

You know, just letting the water run and hear it.

You get into kind of a Zen moment.

♪♪ But there is evidence, scientific evidence that by getting your hands in the soil, by allowing your hands to touch those microbes, to be a part of that, it does have an effect on us.

It calms us down, and we need that.

It's a very good thing.

And it's right here.

It's available to everyone.

♪♪ Now, I know a lot of people think poems are lofty things, but I don't think so.

I think they set our mind in a certain place.

As a matter of fact, I'd love for you to hear one of my favorite poems by American poet Wendell Berry.

It's called "The Peace of Wild Things."

Now, Wendell is not only a poet, but he's a farmer from Kentucky.

So I feel like we have a lot in common.

When I read this poem, it really makes me feel the tranquility of this place.

And I feel grounded when I go on walks and I observe some of the things and think about some of the things that Wendell touches on in his poem.

♪♪ "When despair for the world grows in me And I wake in the night at the least sound In fear of what my life and my children's lives may be, I go down and lie where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things Who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief."

"I come into the presence of still water And I feel above me the day-blind stars Waiting with their light.

For a time, I rest in the grace of the world And I am free."

♪♪ ♪♪ Painting is extraordinarily relaxing.

At least it is for me, and it allows me to take my thoughts and apply them in a way that I otherwise can't.

I've always painted ever since I was a child.

I'm not very good at it really, but I do have a go and enjoy it.

Probably the most memorable thing that ever occurred to me with painting was a trip to England when I was 17 years old.

I had a chance to go to a great house called Petworth in Sussex, and it was a beautiful display of an artist who I was to come to know and love the rest of my life, even today.

I've got books here on him, William Turner.

And for me, what was so interesting is if you look at Turner's early work, so you do these watercolor sketches, I consider him the first Impressionist.

And so I just love the feeling that comes through his work.

It's these quick sketches that he does.

Very impressionistic, often done with watercolor.

When I'm painting with plants, I'm organizing what a garden looks like.

I'm laying out the color, which I'm doing right now.

That is so important because it helps you formulate your mind and put these color constructs together.

And you can kind of build a picture.

As a student in England, I was taught that good garden design is good picture making.

And that's what I try to do is make good pictures.

We went around with these sort of black matted frames and looked through to see what a picture looked like and how to frame a picture and how to make it interesting.

And I think going through and looking at how Turner framed his pictures is important as really how the paint hangs on the canvas.

What I'm working on here now is I've become very interested in a genus of trees, a native American tree, Cercis or redbuds.

So there are some 60 cultivars of redbuds and they're such a great native plant.

And so what I've done is I've done different kinds of drawings here.

This is a sort of a plan view that shows going through kind of a forest of redbuds.

When you think about 60 cultivars, you can imagine the myriad of and subtleties of color and time of bloom.

This one has a great deal more movement to it, but it was this sketch here that really set me on this idea of a redbud tunnel or going through a pathway of redbuds.

And since then, they've become much more Turner-like, much more emotive.

There's much more feeling in these.

And I think that's what we have to get to.

It's really how do we feel about a space?

How do we feel about a place?

And I'm trying to capture that in these little sketches, these little paintings and then transfer that into the landscape.

♪♪ When was the last time you had a tomato sandwich?

I have one that is delicious.

And I make it every year when the tomatoes start coming in.

I just start with some really good basic bread.

I like my bread toasted.

Some people don't.

And then, of course, I use these marvelous homegrown tomatoes.

And then the mayonnaise.

The homemade mayonnaise.

Wait a minute.

You can make mayonnaise.

It doesn't take long.

Simple recipe.

You can find it on my website.

We use our heritage hens eggs.

These are from silver-laced Wyandottes.

You know, I'm big about chickens.

And what we have is a conservancy where we're preserving the genetics of these chickens.

And so the mayonnaise is really simple.

It's an egg, a cup of oil -- You want just a vegetable oil with not a lot of flavor to it because it can affect the flavor of the mayonnaise -- some mustard, some vinegar, some lemon juice, a little bit of salt, and you're there and it's so good.

So what I like to do is to slice the tomatoes.

And I like to slice them fairly thick.

You can see here about a half-inch.

Then I lay them out on a plate.

You want them to get really juicy.

And then I take salt and sprinkle on top, and I take a little pepper.

I sprinkle a little pepper on them, and then I turn them over.

Let them marinate in their own juices.

Do it all over again.

It's funny how when you bring the salt out, they get juicier.

Oh, gosh, this looks good.

And it smells so good.

Mmm, mmm, mmm.

Then I take the bread.

This homemade mayonnaise that I just made, very generous with it.

And I love black pepper, so I even add a little more black pepper on it.

And then I take these beautifully marinated slices of tomato.

I'm almost there.

I take another piece of bread.

Oh, this mayonnaise.

So good.

And then I add a little more pepper.

Put it on there.

And that is a beautiful tomato sandwich of which you can go, well, lots of different directions with this.

Add some basil.

Or if you want to make a bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich, just add some bacon and some lettuce.

Mmm.

Oh, my goodness.

This is so good.

So, so good.

Mmm.

A tomato is its own tiny universe.

Look inside.

You'll find a quiet sky of seeds.

Plant one and you become its bridge to the infinite.

We don't just grow food.

We grow soil and the soil grows us.

Our beautiful old Sister Oak reminds me that place holds us.

So here's to making home where we stand.

Not a do-it-yourself life, but an experience-it-yourself one.

May your corner of the world become a garden where hope germinates and where you grow.

Now that is a sense of place.

I'm Allen Smith and I hope you've enjoyed our time together as much as I have.

I'll see you here next time.

-Funding for "P. Allen Smith's A Sense of Place" is provided in part by... -Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Company.

Since 1998, growing, saving and sharing rare heirloom varieties.

Seeds with stories and a sense of place.

Seeds worth saving.

Learn more at rareseeds.com.

NARRATOR: And First Community Bank, where community comes first.

-Behind every episode of "A Sense of Place" is a story that extends beyond the screen.

Allen's companion coffee table book brings those stories together through more than 500 photographs he selected of the house, gardens, flowers, and animals that define life at Moss Mountain Farm.

Available at pallensmith.com.

-Learn more at my website, pallensmith.com, and dig a little deeper with our weekly newsletter and make sure you follow along with our social media.

-It all kind of happens for me in this space.

It's a place I can come and it stays sort of messy like this all the time so I can delve into it.

I think what kills the creative process, or at least does for me, is that if you've got an idea and you want to get it on paper, record it somehow, if you've got to come in and set everything up just to do it, then the creative spirit leaves you.

The idea is to create a space or a place where you're inspiring, or actually incenting the muses to come and sit on your shoulder and whisper in your ear.

♪♪ ♪♪