Tom Spicer, owner of Spiceman’s FM 4010 produce, cleans a grouping of picked carrots from Spiceman’s garden behind the store while speaking on the phone with a client. (MICHAEL DANSER/ The Daily Campus)

“This, here, is the epitome of urban farming,” he said, extending his calloused hand to unclasp a Budweiser beer cap with a plant sprouting from it. Tom Spicer bent over and pulled a weed, maintaining his pride and joy.

“It has always been in my blood,” he said, his voice revealing the slightest bayou twang.

He continued meandering down the rows of dirt of his garden, Spiceman’s FM 1410.

Spicer’s idea for Spiceman’s FM 1410, commonly referred to as Spiceman’s, has been in the making for over 15 years. It was not until five years ago that Spicer came upon this plot of land. Although it took Spicer a year to reach the owners, he signed the lease for this garden oasis in November 2005.

Spiceman’s is a farm-to-market outlet that provides items from Spicer’s garden, such as top-sourced, quality produce  like  mushrooms. His clientele includes some of Dallas’ popular restaurants as well as retail customers and foodies. Spicer’s literal job description is owner and operator. However, he would rather call himself a “flavor monger.”

Flavor monger: noun, a person who is constantly in search of old and new school ways to bring food to its supreme state of being.

“Tom and his agrarian cohorts are an eclectic bunch,” said Tommy Dudney, an analyst by day and a foodie by night.

“Every time I’ve been by the shop, it’s been manned by either himself, his son or the pony-tailed, rosaceous-riddled Cole who always makes for good conversation. The whole crew usually looks like they haven’t bathed in days, and there is almost always an open bottle of booze laying around.”

Spiceman’s, located on the 1400 block of Fitzhugh Avenue, has numerous functions.

“People wouldn’t be able to fathom what I do,” Spicer said. “They’d have to follow me for a month, [rather] a year to understand.”

His all-encompassing perspectives of business, restaurants, cuisine and gardening make this 55-year-old gardener doubt the sincerity of others who are attempting to shadow the local food trend-fluff. Spicer’s application of farm to table is not because of a trend, but instead, a diverse family background.

His mother is from Copenhagen, Denmark, and his father is from Waycross, Georgia, a town at the center of five colliding highways.

 “So that makes me a Danish cracker,” Spicer said.

There were foods that his father liked, such as southern fried chicken and biscuits, but his mother found a way to use her European background to put an international spin on the southern classics.

“Our mother cooked all kinds of food, which is where we both got our adventurous palates,” said his sister, Susan Spicer, chef and owner of Bayona and Mondo restaurants in New Orleans.

Early on, Spicer took part-time work with food delivery trucks, where he learned how to package things and what products chefs looked for.

“You get an opportunity to do different things, if you’re lucky enough, so I did a few different things, and after I kinda got burned out on that … things connected with the land, and then I started growing,” Spicer said.

Soon after Spicer took to the land, showing that he had an “affinity for growing stuff,” his mother informed him that he was following in his grandfather’s footsteps.

Spicer is a stickler about quality, which means not just knowing how products are going to be used, but how to pack and ship them, a process called post harvest.

“He always has the best selections of mushrooms, and you can pick up an assortment of ‘shrooms for 10 bucks, called the ‘dime bag special,'” customer William Crouse said.

Past the vintage case in which Spicer stores his vast supply of mushrooms is the store’s exit and the entrance to his garden.

“I wish you had the perspective that I do with this, because attached to this building was the ugliest monstrosity of a shed,” he said.

Approximately 30 feet from where the shed used to reside is what Spicer likes to call the “poop deck,” soon to be the new home of his port-a-potties. The port-a-potties will provide sufficient privacy compared to the current makeshift bathroom that contains a stained toilet placed in the back of the store. Perhaps he also strategically placed the poop deck behind huge bushes of marvelous smelling scented basil—a natural air freshener.

While describing his pest problems and how big farms do not have the time to find out what their populations of pests are, Spicer walked toward the compost pile.

“I know what my pests are. I know what I’m looking for,” he said. At that moment his Japanese-named-bully-dog, Bunzo, started chasing a cat. Spicer hoots, “Go get ‘em!” Shady, the old brain dog, observantly strides along.

The Converse-donning gardener uses a natural pesticide, which is a combination of seaweed extract and fish emulsion. The smell reminds one of a soggy marina that a trash barge has just anchored in. The smell reminds Spicer of being at the Louisiana beach. “You would think it’s my cologne,” Spicer said.  

A fish emulsion and seaweed cocktail, compost and knowledge of how our ancestors grew things sustain Spicer’s garden, which consists of five recently farmed beds, three of which have been planted recently.

His compost material comes from Dallas restaurants, including Park on Henderson Avenue. It is more economical for restaurants to give Spicer their food waste like bones and fish heads than to pay the fee and unload it at the dump or have a catering service haul it away.

Although Spicer is happy to receive compost for his garden, he is discerning as to what he will actually use. There are certain things that are great for his garden and other things that are not. “It’s a win, win situation,” he said. “But I am not a dump.”

When it comes to the local food trend, Spicer and Spiceman’s is the opposite of what many would expect. Although sustainability means money and flavor, it does not necessarily mean an astronomical payoff.

Spicer is atypical because he is a purist about what he does and does not throw words like “local” around without knowing and practicing what they truly mean. He thinks that this current local movement is just a bunch of “lip service” and people trying to uphold it, but they lack the experience and knowledge that he has. “I am not out here trying to take advantage of a trend. I was out here doing this way before. It just makes more sense,” he said.

“You can’t worry about what other people are doing. All you can do is hope that other people ‘do,'” he said.

According to Spicer, many young whipper-snaper-knuckle-headed chefs will buy three out of 50 items locally and then claim to be local, themselves.

“To me, that’s like a comb over. The local product comb over,” he said.