Food Safety

Take Action: Rescue Local and Organic
Farming in the Food Safety Bill!

The U.S. Senate will vote shortly on a sweeping overhaul of federal food safety law (S. 510).  The House food safety bill passed last year (HR 2749) included several measures that potentially threaten small-scale local farmers and organic producers, including a blanket application of complicated monitoring and traceability standards -- regardless of one's farm size — and a potential $500 fee for any farm engaged in onsite processing (i.e., maple syrup production, sun-dried tomatoes, salad mixes, etc.).
The vast majority of recent food safety scandals in the U.S. — E. coli on fresh spinach, melamine in dairy products, Salmonella in peanut butter — were all linked to industrial agribusiness practices.  There's no doubt that industrial agriculture and its international supply chain need better oversight.  But, family-scale local and organic farms are probably the safest in the nation -- they are part of the solution, not part of the problem -- and need to be protected!
What You Can Do
Now is your chance, as a supporter of sustainable family farming, to help fix these problems. Senator John Tester (D-MT), a certified organic farmer himself, is proposing an amendment to S. 510 that would exempt small-scale farmers and food processors from the most burdensome regulations.
Please contact your Senators today and ask them to support the Tester amendment to S. 510.  Call the Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121 to find their phone number: 
For the more information on the amendment, go to:
http://www.cornucopia.org/2010/04/action-alert-rescue-localorganic-farming-in-the-food-safety-bill/
Your Voice Makes a Difference.   Thanks for your support of organic, local and sustainable farmers!

Frontera Grant

We are proud to announce that we are 2010 Frontera Farmer Foundation Grant Recipients!


http://www.rickbayless.com/news/index

MW Organic Fest

Todd and I just returned from the Upper Midwest Organic Conference.  I can’t write too lengthy of a report here, because my head is swimming with so many other things.  All of the workshops I went to were highly charged and emotional.  The most heart-palpitating session had to do with the state of organic seed and the slippery slope of allowing genetically modified alfalfa and sugar beets into our food system.  These seeds are already out there, but efforts by organizations such as The Center for Food Safety and others are trying to spread awareness to the public and to our government.  A lawyer spoke at the convention about his involvement with a current battle to reverse the “okay” already given to GM alfalfa.  Please read more about this by the group that seems to know most:  www.centerforfoodsafety.org and stay tuned.  The result of GM alfalfa could lead to the disappearance of this crop as organic, because it is hard to control the spread of pollen.  If an organic alfalfa field is next to a GM alfalfa field, one would contaminate the other.   Since alfalfa is used as pasture for cows, milk that is now certified organic may ultimately lose their label.  This is how I understand it.
We use alfalfa as a perennial green manure crop.
Since GM sugar beets are currently allowed, organic table beets and organic chard are endangered.
If you want to know even more about this topic, you can do what our friends do:  1) rent one of two films:  Food, Inc and/or The Future of Food, 2) inadvertently consume an entire bottle of wine (per person), and then 3) make a hysterical call to us asking us what to do next.  What to do next?  Keep informed by visiting www.centerforfoodsafety.org from time to time and tell your friends about what you learn.  Support organic products whenever you can.

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