The guys who raised one acre of corn -- and bushels of public awareness -- in their 2007 film "

" will kick off the

tonight, talking about their latest project: a vegetable garden thriving in the bed of a pickup.

Curt Ellis, 30, who grew up outside Lake Oswego, and his best friend from college, Ian Cheney, also 30, will take turns giving the Muddy Boot keynote address, "Back to Back-to-the-Land." The fifth annual celebration of all things sustainable unfolds on the grounds of St. Philip Neri Catholic Church in Southeast Portland. The festival includes two days of music, family activities, panel discussions and workshops on urban livestock, edible landscaping and food justice.

"King Corn" is a buddy movie about two friends, neophite farmers Ellis and Cheney, who figure out fertilizer and food subsides and whip up a batch of high fructose corn syrup in their home kitchen. Their discovery of how corn figures in the American diet charmed the critics and aired nationally on PBS.

Ellis and Cheney, who grew up in New England, became friends at Yale, where they employed creative ways to educate fellow students about where their food came from. Ellis remembers turning sheep loose in the middle of campus and having sheep dog demonstrations. After graduation, the pair decided to make documentaries. Ellis' cousin, Aaron Woolf, joined the "King Corn" project as producer and director. Ellis and Cheney emerged from the impromptu film school to make "The Greening of Southie" (2008) about Boston's first residential green building.

New Yorkers now -- Ellis lives in Manhattan and Cheney in Brooklyn -- they are working on their latest project, "Truck Farm." Ellis is also deep into his nonfilm project, FoodCorps. He's choosing seven to 10 states where 50 young adults will work on developing Farm to School food systems and nutrition education.

Ellis returns to Portland often -- his parents still live near Lake Oswego. In a telephone interview, Ellis talks about his work as an agricultural advocate and the importance of learning how to water a tomato plant. His responses have been edited.

Q. Portland's Muddy Boot Organic Festival is sponsored by, among other groups, a Catholic congregation with a commitment to caring for the earth. Do you see a religious or spiritual element to the eat-local-live-sustainably movement?

A.

I do see a spiritual connection between myself and the food I eat and the work I do advocating for healthy, sustainable and fair food. When I was living in Portland, my wife and I attended Portland Mennonite Church and the pastor talked a lot about seeking the peace of the city, asking questions about environmental and social issues and the fact that we are, at the end of the day, all in this together.

That's what draws me to food and agricultural advocacy. It is the one thing that ties us all together: We all eat food that's grown somewhere, either respectful or disrespectful of the humans and animals involved.

Q. Do you worry that eating local, sustainable food can be more expensive than consuming processed or fast food?

A.

The good news about growing some of your food is it's pretty affordable. You don't have to have much land to grow a big harvest. Seeds, sunlight and water are cheap. But we are at risk of becoming a two food-system society, where the affluent are able to afford fresh, organic fruits and vegetables and carefully raised meat and the least wealthy are stuck eating fast food. We will have lost our sense of justice if we can't make good food affordable.

What can you grow in the bed of a pickup?

You can grow a shocking amount in a dirty old pickup truck. We harvested three shopping carts of fresh organic produce last summer. And the same this summer. Twenty different varieties of vegetables and herbs are growing. The most satisfying is arugula. You get a harvest every few weeks, enough for a big beautiful salad.

"Truck Farm" tells the story of this one brave pickup truck, her transition into being a garden and the amazingly creative people growing food in unexpected places -- in window sills, in vacant lots.

Q. You've taken the truck farm on the road. What sort of response do you get?

A.

People just like to see things growing. It reminds us of home, even if we didn't grow up on a farm. We have parents, great grandparents who grew up on a farm.

It's a real renaissance. All Americans, especially the young, are getting excited about agriculture. If you look around Brooklyn, not far from my office, people are growing food on rooftops on a commercial scale, supplying restaurants and families with food grown five stories up, in vacant lots in cities like Detroit. It is a national groundswell of interest.



Q. Why do you think people are so fascinated?

A.

Watching food grow gives us a sense of where we came from. To see food growing in the dirt helps us remember for a moment what good food tastes like. The times we share as humans, our most memorable times, are shared around the dinner table or eating outdoors with people we love.

When:

Friday and Sunday

Where:

St. Philip Neri Catholic Church, 2408 S.E. 16th Ave., Portland

Keynote:

7 p.m. Friday. Tickets are $25 at the door.

Festival:

Noon to 9 p.m. Saturday, noon to 6 p.m. Sunday. Admission is $5 per person at the gate, no charge for children younger than 12.

Schedule:

Q. Do you have those memories?

A.

I grew up hanging onto my dad's knees, watching him water the vegetables in his garden. Those are great memories, spending time with my dad and learning how to water a tomato at the same time.

Q. Someone once told me that everyone should plant a tomato. Can a simple act like that make a difference?

A.

Absolutely. We hosted the Wicked Delicate Garden Contest and challenged students to grow food in the most creative, funniest, stupidest places. We had 70 entries and gave prizes out to the winners. It was fabulous to see the look of joy in the pictures they sent in. There's something really wonderful about being able to eat something you grew yourself, something whimsical about a bean sprout growing in a tennis shoe.



Q. Someone tried that?

A.

That was the winning entry. Someone from Brown University turned a bicycle into a mobile garden. A middle school had an awesome disco garden ball with edible nasturtiums growing out of it. And there was a lunchbox farm from a grade school, a plastic, folding lunchbox that had a beautiful bean sprouting from it and a proud smiling girl standing next to her creation.

It's a simple thing to do, but it's satisfying. There is something innate in humans that makes us want to be around other growing, living things -- plants in particular. We are drawn to the magic of a seed sprouting and becoming something we can eat. Whether it goes back to a grandmother in Puerto Rico with a garden or my dad watering his Willamette tomatoes, that's as alive as you get to feel, when you're tending to another living thing.

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