A FARMER’S TRIBUTE TO ANTHONY BOURDAIN.

 I was standing in the garden Friday morning when I heard Anthony Bourdain had passed, and my heart broke open. I had never met the man, but I had lost a dear friend.I was nineteen when I first read Bourdain’s “Kitchen Confidential” on a whim that would come to alter my trajectory entirely. I was cooking at a chain restaurant at the time and happy there, but confused everywhere else.For me, college seemed like a chore that was just gearing me up for more chores. Unfortunately, college is what you do. I loved my job in the kitchen, in food, feeding people, but cooking wasn’t a profession, right? Cooking was something one did either because they were a failure or they were in college.Reading Bourdain’s book, however, changed my view of all that. Being a chef was something someone could do professionally, passionately. It was okay to fall in love with food. Cooking was not a career you had to fail into, you could choose it, or it was going to choose you anyway.I dropped out of college almost immediately and that summer sent my resume to chefs in Louisville. I quickly had a job in a kitchen working to become a chef, living the cook’s life of Bourdain’s description, yelled at daily, hungover always, and happy. I discovered fresh produce, gardeners, farmers markets, food, meals. I was my own Bourdain.When I moved to New York, inspired in part by Bourdain’s descriptions of it, cooking begot a several year foray into wine, and both careers led me into agriculture—and all the while Tony was in the background, hooting out publications unabashedly derivative of his own literary heroes, and deliciously funny.I read everything he published. Whole days of my life were spent watching his shows, including the short lived sitcom. His writing consistently inspired me to read more, to write more, to not just be objective, but creatively so.When I turned to farming, I hate-loved his views on agriculture. Like all of his work, they were challenging but almost always unarguable. He eschewed the term “farm-to-table”, for one, but supported the movement. In his writing he drew a direct if logical line between good agricultural practices and fine cuisine. “I don’t want animals stressed or crowded or treated cruelly or inhumanely,” he wrote in Medium Raw, “because that makes them provably less delicious. And often, less safe to eat.” It was Bourdain logic, nothing like my own, and I loved it.Bourdain’s opinions were almost exclusively incomplete because they were so whole. Curiosity was his guide and his adventures always revealed something surprising—to him and the viewer. He would take you deep into Muslim territory and show you the humanity there, then turn around and do the same in Trump Country.And this is why I think his loss stung me hard. He has always been there. I have always enjoyed his perspective. But more than anything, we need a Bourdain right now—right now more than ever.Throughout his work he used food as a liaison into the story of a culture—into its heart and its people. It was impossible to hate those he dined or drank with because he helped you to see yourself in them. You sat at those tables, on those rugs, around those fires. You didn’t eat the meals, yet they still seemed deeply quenching, allaying a bias, satisfying a fear. He was a soldier of and for perspective, deep in the Congo or post-Benghazi Libya, West Virginia, Puerto Rico, basements, jungles, or fields, fighting to illuminate a world of people living in misunderstood shadows.In that way, a war no one realized was being fought just lost its greatest general, and Bourdain’s death left us disorganized and unprepared, surrounded by divisions under a growing shroud of fear. But we are not without orders. Bourdain showed us what to do—to not just eat, but eat well, with curiosity, openness and a sense of adventure. He only dies if we forget that. Indeed, he dies when we forget, as he told the world in almost every possible variation, “When someone is offering you food, they’re telling you a story.” Eat it, share it, and prepare for the profoundly whole satisfaction of eating.- JesseONE ESSENTIAL POST SCRIPT: I wish Mr Bourdain peace, but he left a family, a daughter, for whom peace will no doubt be hard earned. And that breaks my heart. Please know that you are ever contemplating suicide, you can tell someone, talk to someone—your friends, your family, me, or a stranger at the suicide prevention hotline (1-800-273-8255). It will help. I know, I’ve been there. Nothing is irreparable. Depression is not your fault, and it can be treated. It must get treated because death is a possible outcome from neglecting this illness. Please seek help. It will get better—whatever it is.