My story on anarchist coffeepreneur David Meyers and the nascent Chicago Coffee Confederation is up/out now at/in the Reader.

What didn’t make it into the story so much is the larger picture of the Chicory Center philosophy. Meyers’s On-the-Fly Farm is sort of operating at a low simmer right now, but the idea was (and remains) that a percentage of all the produce he harvests gets directed to low-income communities; for a while he had a table at the Humboldt Park farmers’ market and last year he donated it to Sarah’s Circle, a women’s shelter in Uptown. David describes himself, wryly, as an “advanced beginner” at all this food and farming stuff, but the larger quote, from which the lede was extracted, speaks to some deeply held ideals — and, it should be noted, was delivered punctuated by many self-deprecating giggles.

“Right now the farm is a placeholder. Pretty much everything I do comes out of anarchist activism, rather than an end in itself. It’s a way to build community and further these social goals, while getting to know people over a long period of time. I think we’re experimenting in an organic way and not a theoretical way, to create a new kind of village. I just realized that coffee was easier than farming and I should concentrate on that for the time being. But I do not love roasting coffee!”

Also, at some point during all this I wrote down a Wes Jackson line he quoted. It seemed pertinent. 

To wit:  “Farmers are the only people I know who wear the hats of their oppressor on their heads.”