This time of year, it feels like everything is speeding up. The kids are back in school, the holidays are around the corner, and I don't know about you, but it feels like everyone is back from vacation and emailing me. But author and mixologist Mike Wolf is asking us to slow down, take the time to make a proper drink and in the process, get to know our garden, our friends, and our family traditions a little better. You might recognize his face from past stints at Husk Nashville or most recently Audrey, or his voice from Liquid Gold, a podcast he hosts with a fun menagerie of friends and industry vets. He's the author of Garden to Glass, Baratined, and the upcoming Cheer!, and his drinks have been featured in numerous publications from Imbibe Magazine to The Tennessean. So let's take his advice and drink in the season as fall begins to tease us with slightly cooler mornings and burnt umber beginnings on the dogwood leaves.

In 1954, when Dot Hubbard wanted to start a Virginia peanut mail order business from her home in Sedley, VA, there was no system for zip codes in the United States. UPS wasn't operating in Virginia and FedEx had not yet been founded. Nevertheless, Hubbard Peanut Company was born, with business phones on party lines and a fine recipe for cooking Super Extra Large Virginia peanuts. Marshall Rabil is her grandson, and remembers riding on the conveyor belt in the early 80's as a child. He has a passion for peanuts, for the beautiful slice of the state he calls home, and the idea of how his family business just might help strengthen that community. Virginia was the first known North American location for peanuts to be planted -- a crop brought over by enslaved Africans -- and today Hubs peanuts are some of the state's tastiest exports, and don't even get me started about that peanut brittle.

What if two of the 21st century's largest problems: rising seawater levels and excess carbon dioxide, could be leveraged into next generation sustainable agriculture? That was the daunting research question that Sam Norton posed when he was in graduate school, and what eventually grew into Heron Farms in Charleston, SC. Heron Farms' most recognizable product is the Charleston Sea Bean, produced in the hydroponic farm right off Meeting Street Road without any natural sunlight or freshwater. Chefs and home cooks -- including me -- have taken to it as a salt alternative, especially as a finishing salt type garnish, but it's by no means the only thing happening at this cutting edge company. From intense data collection and analysis methods to experiments that can help astronauts on space stations eat better, the humble, deliciously edible sea bean collecting seawater in its cells with every tide is just the beginning.

Vern's in Charleston, SC represents the culmination of Daniel and Bethany Henize's years of experience. They have worked in lauded restaurants around the country, including the now-closed Charleston institution McCrady's, as well as Animal, Jon & Vinny's, and Gjusta in Los Angeles. Located in a quaint corner building from the 1880s and named after Daniel's grandfather, the menu emphasizes of-the-moment seasonal ingredients and shareable plates. The wine program focuses on small producers with organic and biodynamic practices, and glasses clink all evening in a dining room that feels like a relaxed dinner party at a chef's residence more than one of the hottest restaurants to open in the city in the last five years. The love that this couple has for an industry that has been through the wringer recently is evident, and their commitment to excellence already at Vern's provides hope that the art of dining out and dining well has staying power.

According to the most recent data from the USDA, out of the 3.4 million farmers in the United States today, only 45,000 are Black. Deep in the maritime forests near the Edisto River in Dorchester, SC, Marvin Ross of Peculiar Pig Farm is one of that number. He started the farm in 2009, farming 15 acres of the 100 acres that his grandfather, Thomas Henry Ross, once farmed. It's where Marvin follows the tradition he was taught of raising and rotating hogs on wooded lots, allowing them to graze and forage, then supplementing what they find with heritage grains. This sustainable method of farming not only allows the pigs to live their "pig-ness" instead of being confined and crammed in huge lots, it also results in exceptionally flavorful meat. Some of the South's best restaurants -- including many whose chefs have been guests on this show -- serve Peculiar Pig Farm pork, from The Grey in Savannah, GA and Butcher & Bee in Charleston, SC, to Curate in Asheville. Marvin is standing on the foundation of family and community tradition and at the same time is forward-looking, focusing on everything from growing the diversity of livestock on his farm to cooking and catering with his own products.

A California girl now living in New Orleans, Joy Wilson, known more on the internet as Joy the Baker, never tires of the alchemy of baking at home. In 2008, Joy started a blog to share her indulgent, comforting, yet approachable recipes in her little corner of the internet, and the path since has been super sweet. She's a baking instructor, a three-time cookbook author, editor-in-chief of the Joy the Baker magazine, and she's been featured in numerous publications, including Food52, NYMag, TheKitchn, Better Homes and Gardens, and Country Living. Through it all, Joy proves baking is not about all the latest gadgets and high-tech gizmos, but about stepping into the kitchen with a monster sweet tooth, a curious attitude, and a willingness to practice coaxing something beautiful out of the oven.

Vishwesh Bhatt has been a part of Chef John Currence's City Grocery Restaurant Group in Oxford, MS since 1997. He started off as a prep cook at City Grocery and worked his way up to Executive Chef at Snackbar, where he has developed a menu that intertwines both Southern and subcontinental foodways. His new cookbook, I Am From Here: Stories and Recipes from a Southern Chef, celebrates and explores this intertwining of cultures through his own unique personal lens, and it was masterfully photographed by past guest Angie Mosier. Vish was Southern Living's 2019 Southerner of the Year and that same year won James Beard Foundation Best Chef: South. I wanted to catch up with him on his debut week before it took months for our paths to cross, but as is sometimes the case in the life of an independent podcast, my fancy remote recording equipment went wonky because of our respective locations, so we resorted to an old fashioned phone call. It was nevertheless a wonderful conversation, as you'll soon hear.

Sometimes, waiting for the conditions to be exactly right keeps us from seeing the opportunity in starting right now, even, literally, in our own backyards. But that certainly wasn't the case for one Charlotte, NC farm. Located inside the city limits off Brookshire Freeway is Small City Farm, owned and operated by Kim Shaw and Rohan Gibbs. Although it currently stands at three acres in a rolling ranch-house filled neighborhood, it was originally a ½ acre plot in the couple's South Charlotte backyard. Kim spent her childhood summers picking and packing produce for restaurants in Hilton Head, but she didn't actually set out to farm as an adult. Instead, she entered the food and beverage industry, and in the early 2000s found herself tending a garden for Chef Paul Verica while serving as the catering director for the Club at Longview. When her job was eliminated, she started growing produce and flowers full-time, and she's now grown into one of the region's most prized specialty producers, from delicate redbud flowers in the spring to Arkansas Traveler tomatoes in the summer and wide, deep green, winter collards that some of Charlotte's best chefs swear by. Small City Farm is a re-imagining of what we consider farming, and each season it proves how much creativity and ingenuity can yield.

If you've spent time in Charlotte, NC in the last 40 years, Barbara McKay's voice could be as familiar as family. One of the region's most popular media personalities, she taught a generation of viewers to cook through her consistent presence on WBTV during an era when viewers sat by the television with pad and paper ready to write down the recipes she demonstrated and dictated step-by-step. She's perhaps best known for her work as co-host -- from the early 1980s through the mid-90s -- of the daily noontime show "Top O' the Day", and then from there, she went on to create, executive produce, and host other lifestyle shows locally, regionally, and nationally. She launched two successful magazines in the Charlotte market (one of which saw some of my earliest bylines) and she's recently published Coming Home, a combination cookbook and memoir that shares a behind-the-scenes glimpse of a life spent in front of the camera.

Tucked under street level in the shadow of the South Carolina State Capitol in Columbia, SC, is The Whig, one of the best bars (in my opinion) in the South. There are good cocktails, string lights, taxidermy decor, gouda mac and cheese and burgers if you get hungry, and if you happen in on the right night, co-owner Will Green will be behind the bar, mixing cocktails and keeping the vibe chill with a calm, assuring demeanor. Will was a MFA student at the University of South Carolina when he pulled his first shift at The Whig, and years later he's moved into a leadership position as one of its owners, as well as also co-owning WeCo Bottle and Biergarten in neighboring West Columbia. He aims to elevate the dive bar personality of The Whig without making it lose its charm, and it's a tightrope he deftly traverses, while managing to keep a sense of humor about it all.