Paraphrased

Lately, there’s been a lot of great press surrounding the small organic farm scene.  In this month’s Mindful Metropolis, there are two stories about two different farms, both started around the time we started.
Anyway, these newspaper articles have us thinking about how our own story might translate to this format.  We have had some time in the media spotlight, since our first year’s NPR story, but we feel that the best story about us hasn’t happened quite yet and that the NPR story may have missed something.
The story that seems almost expected is this, paraphrased:
Just a few years ago, a young urban couple felt disgruntled by the corporate work-a-day grind [The Man], so they shed their city shoes for farm boots and moved to the country to live off the land.  Their new lifestyle involves waking with the crow of a rooster and the physical rhythm and serenity of farm work.
Our story might be more like this:  
Many years ago, when they were young adults, two people separately decided they wanted to commit their lives to something basic and pure.  They met each other and became a young urban couple.  One of them inherited some land and thought the best use of this land was a little thing called food. The couple shed their city shoes, went into sizable debt, kept their other jobs, and stressed about the weather.  Their new lifestyle involves waking with heart palpitations and the physical discomfort and drama of farm work.
Todd and Julia have the same human tendency as everyone to stress about their jobs, off-farm and on-farm.  They sometimes don’t have time to cook.  They sometimes order pizza made with highly-processed ingredients for delivery. Like many new farmers now, they didn’t grow up farming and they don’t have degrees in vegetable growing or business management.  They don’t have a savings account.  The real story is that they jumped right into this world of organic farming with nothing but the conviction that they were headed towards the place they were always meant to be.
We were meant to be here.  And we’re not leaving.
When Todd and I hung out for the first time at a party together, he asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up.  I said that I didn’t have any great ambition. He said the same.  In fact, this is exactly what he said: 
“I don’t have any great ambition either.  I just want to be an organic farmer.”
What could be easier?
(sigh),
Julia

High Tunnel

The National Resources Conservation Services just approved our application for another high tunnel!  It is a cost-share program, but we will be mostly reimbursed.  Our third high tunnel!  Look out!
Todd is having dreams of melon….

Farm in Winter

How’s the farm in the winter?
To the question I frequently get:
The farm is fine.  The farm is cold and windy right now.   If snow is on the ground, it is eerily quiet save for the buzz of our electric lines and the chickens.
Right now, on the sunflower farm north of us, they are harvesting seeds with a gigantic moving machine.
I make lots of lists during every season.  Apart from our off-farm work, here is a list of what is happening in the winter months:


Marketing
Finding interns
Farm workshops
Grant proposal(s)
Setting deadlines for plant starts (started inside on light tables)
Seed shopping
Truck shoppingOngoing:
Manure pickup and composting
Chickens
Tractor repair
Truck repair
Body repair
Mind repair
-Julia

Scary Rooster

The rooster has me scared.
Just minutes ago, Puff Daddy defended his hens with an extra hardy thump and several charges at me in a very small and enclosed space.
Todd is usually the one interacting with the chickens and asserts his calm and masculine energy over Puff by picking him up and moving around and around in a circle to make him dizzy.  In a way Cesar Milan might swing a bird.  But tonight it was I who was assigned to collect eggs and shut the chickens in their coop.  


Let me set the stage:

5:30 pm, cold and snowing with gusting winds  
When I first entered the coop, I did a count to make sure everyone made it inside.  Everything was calm and cool.  The wind howled.  I felt decidedly content.
I checked their food, grabbed some eggs.
sound of feathers rustling
I turn slowly.
His scary eyes!!!!  His scary beak!!!!  His scary prehistoric feet!!!!!

If you were the pizza delivery guy from Mr. Giggles and had arrived only 15 minutes earlier than you actually did, you would have seen a sliver of light coming from the coop as it bounced a little side to side.  You would have heard screaming and kicking and the muffled sound of someone falling down in layers of chicken “bedding” followed by more screaming and thrashing.   Just when you thought it was over, more screaming and thrashing.  And, as the pizza delivery guy, you would have been even less likely the next time to deliver pizza to this lonely looking property in rural Manteno. Puff Daddy didn’t react at all to my air kicking but thankfully I emerged unscathed. I guess I’m embarrassed by the whole spastic incident, but not embarrassed enough to keep me from telling my story.  Let all be witness.
Runny yolks in my pocket,
-Julia

Winding down

Well, the soybeans are out of the ground.  Merle and I took a walk around the bare ground (trespassing, yes) and found our way behind a small plot of corn.  The soybean field makes an L, with the short end between corn and sunflowers.  Sunflowers!  What an eery thing to stumble upon:  a ten-acre army of sunflowers, heads down, drying.  I wonder what will happen to them…

Our own ground is a confusing mix of dried up fox millet (awaiting the flame weeder), still-green pasture, frostburnt vegetation, and stubborn lettuce seedlings.  Garlic went in yesterday.  Too wet to do anything else.
Went to a workshop on Food Safety and Defense last week to learn how to arm against fecal matter and disgruntled employees, not necessarily mutually exclusive.  Learned, again, how to wash hands properly: 20 seconds and don’t forget between the index finger and thumb.  Lock your empty barns so that a crystal meth lab doesn’t inadvertently sprout up in the night.
Todd and I are both missing the markets and the smiling faces of all our sharecroppers.  Thanks to all,
Julia

Exploited Farmers

Rereading my entry about the Farm Bureau rebuttal to Time’s article, I am struck by one huge irony:  the commodity farmers “at the heart of the quantity-over-quality” food system are among the ones being exploited.  Why would the Farm Bureau defend the current system?
And: What the heck is the Farm Bureau again????
I have tried to get this answer from my Country Insurance guy (not CountryWide) since they are backed by the Farm Bureau.  His answer involved a historical set up:  “back in the day,” “farmers helping farmers...”
By joining, I do know I get a 30% discount on eyeglasses.
I think that commodity farmers, many of them having been in the biz for all of their adult lives (40-60 years), are committed to the system largely due to the size of their investment.  The investment in machinery and land as a commodity farmer is gargantuan.  Legacy is really the only way to get in the game today.   For the committed commodity farmer, asking him to change his style of farming might be like asking Todd to stop skateboarding.  Or something like that.  There ARE organizations out there trying to persuade farmers to grow organic commodities, one being a certifying agency in Wisconsin called MOSA.   They help the farmer see marketing opportunities outside of the status quo.  Way outside.  Like Europe.
AS FOR NEWS ON THE FARM
Chickens are doing fine, by the way, as long as the dog is accompanied by a watchful human.  They are giving us about 9 eggs a day.
Frost last week took out our bed of chard.  If we don’t see some sun, we may not have more lettuce for market.  Come out sun!

New Friends

COOPERATING WITH DEER CREEK FARM
We were contacted earlier this season by a woman named Lorene.   She said she had met our neighbor, the one with the horses and more importantly the horse manure, at jury duty.  She said she and her brother-in-law had their own organic farm and we should stop by the Manteno market someday to say hello. 

When Todd and I got the chance we did stop by.  Deer Creek looked beautiful at market, everything carefully and prettily presented.  We liked them immediately. 

Todd decided to visit the farm and meet Jeff, the Head Grower, the “Todd” of the farm. He learned that Deer Creek was also in its third year, like us, and organic, like us, struggling with the same issue shared by all small business owners:  how to make it work.  Turns out, Deer Creek has distribution issues this year, NOT production issues.  Jeff set up his operation with a full infrastructure from the get-go, including many paid laborers, an irrigation system with organic fertilizer and weeding implements for the tractor.  But, as Lorene lamented, many of the plants were waiting in the ground with nowhere to go.
In the final days of market, as Peasants’ Plot faces its own issues (production-related instead of distribution-related), please welcome Jeff’s carrots, beets, and kohlrabi to market.  Be assured of the same quality as always:  harvested within 48 hours, held in coolers, no synthetic chemicals anywhere.