When naming their new farm in rural Washington, Deepa Iyer, the daughter of Indian immigrants, and her partner Victor Anagli, who grew up in the Volta region of Ghana, wanted to honor this call and response tradition, so they christened their 21-acre property Ayeko. Located in the town of Enumclaw, Washington—40 miles southeast of Seattle—Ayeko is covered with fruit trees and raspberry and blueberry bushes and bisected by a creek.

“It’s magical,” says Iyer, who grew up in New Jersey.

The couple—who between them have two children and one full-time, off-farm job—are currently growing organic vegetables on one acre and have started a U-Pick for the berries. But in the future, they hope to invite other farmers and families who are Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) to join them.

“We want to share this land with other people,” Iyer says. “Our vision is village-style, everyone growing food—a life where kids can run out the door and don’t have to make an appointment to have a play date.”

As of today, however, Iyer and her family and community—along with others across Washington state and along the entire West Coast—are largely sequestered indoors as a result of the wildfires that are burning around the state and region. “We are concerned because there are fires very close to here . . . we are surrounded by dry grass and anything could happen,” Iyer told Civil Eats in an email. “Crops are looking affected by smoke; nothing has been lost to fire, but it feels like the season is over in many ways.”

A group of people work in the fields at Ayeko Farm. (Photo by Sharon Chang, courtesy of Ayeko Farm)

Before the fires, Iyer found out she’d been chosen as one of 12 recipients of the Castanea Fellowship, a two-year program that helps support a racially just food system. The fellowship comes with a $40,000 grant and a connection to a network of experienced farmers who get together for six “learning immersion journeys.”

Farzana Serang, executive director at the Castanea Fellowship, says Iyer is a valuable part of the cohort. “What’s incredible about Deepa,” Serang says, “is she’s been farming for 20 years, making culturally relevant food more accessible, and still considers herself new to the work.”

Discovering a Love of Farming

Iyer fell in love with farming the year after college, when she took a six-month soul-searching trip to India. While there, she visited botanical sanctuaries and worked on intentional farming projects. When she returned home, she found an internship with a watershed organization, Stony Brook-Millstone (now the Watershed Institute), which also had an organic farm.

It was there that she discovered environmental education. She would take school children to the pond and collect water samples that were full of tadpoles and dragonfly nymphs. “I didn’t even know that this type of work existed,” Iyer says. “You can be out in nature with kids as they discover their love of nature?!”

She also got hooked on organic farming. “I would stand on the truck and the guys would come in with the harvest and throw pumpkins at me,” says Iyer, who describes herself as “a tomboy to the death.” She caught all the pumpkins.

Now, at 42, Iyer still relishes manual labor. “Bending over and pulling weeds all day? I love that!” she says.

Iyer also spent a year as a teacher-in-residence at Slide Ranch, an educational farm on the coast north of San Francisco that connects children to nature. That experience put Iyer more firmly on the path of food systems education and led her to launch an urban farm collective in Oakland called (SOL), which she ran for six years before heading to Michigan State University to study the intersection of social justice and the ecological impact of our food and farming systems.

Anagli, who she met in Michigan, comes from a long line of farmers in Ghana. One of the first questions he asked her was, “How do you want to change the world?”  

“I’d never been asked that before,” Iyer says.

Eventually, the couple moved to Oakland with their young son and began the hunt for a plot of fertile land.

Twenty-One Acres in Enumclaw

They started searching for land with some friends, but everything they found within a two-hour drive from Oakland was out of their price range. Iyer, who has family in Seattle, shifted the search to Washington and in early 2018, she found the property in Enumclaw.

Sunflowers in the fields at Ayeko Farm. (Photo by Sharon Chang, courtesy of Ayeko Farm)

Iyer also landed a full-time job at the International Rescue Committee in Tukwila, where she heads up a community agriculture and food security program with refugees from Burma, Bhutan, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Through this, she runs four community gardens in South King County, as well as two market garden production sites, and she co-runs the Tukwila Village Farmers Market.

At Ayeko, the couple farms using organic methods—like composting and minimal tillage—though they’re not certified organic. They grow the usual suspects—beets, carrots, kale, lettuce, spinach, Swiss chard, and tomatoes—as well as foods that have roots in Iyer’s family food traditions, such as bottle gourds, which are light-green, smooth-skinned and so neutral tasting they’re “almost bland,” says Iyer. They’re also growing amaranth greens, or callaloo, as well as long beans, fenugreek leaves, and peanuts.

This kind of “cultural rescue” is very important to Iyer, who earned her master’s degree studying the food and farming practices of elder women in the Himalayas. “If we lose a vegetable type or variety, then we lose all the things that go with it—words, celebrations, colors, stories—so much richness,” Iyer says.

Not long ago, Iyer invited a group of her mom’s friends to Ayeko and one Indian-American woman in her 70s saw the long beans in the fields and grew animated. “All these conversations started happening about these recipes,” says Iyer. “‘Oh, my grandma used to make those!’ she said. Those are my dream-come-true moments.”

Because theirs is such a bare-bones operation—the crew is just Iyer and Anagli, and Iyer maintains a full-time off-farm job—they don’t yet have a booth at the farmers’ market or even a community supported agriculture (CSA) program.

So for now, their method of selling produce is very casual: they send e-mails to their community inviting them to come to the farm and get it or to access it at one of a few drop-off points in and around Seattle. They also started a U-Pick earlier this summer for their 400 raspberry bushes and hope to add blueberries soon. They have a number of fruit and nut trees as well, but those aren’t producing fruit yet.

Navigating Racism with a Dream of Bringing People Together

The Castanea Fellowship has been a boon, she says—both financially and emotionally. The grant will help with basic support operations like fixing the well and purchasing supplies and equipment, like a tractor. Iyer also hopes it will help launch some of their more ambitious projects, like creating an outdoor school for BIPOC kids or a co-op venture with other farmers.

Additionally, the Fellowship’s learning immersion journeys, which, for the foreseeable future, are all being conducted on Zoom, have been incredible, says Iyer. “It’s been super inspiring,” she says. “These are people who have been through so much and doing so much amazing work.”

The 2020 Castanea fellows, who include farmers, chefs, community organizers, and more, have been a source of inspiration for Iyer. Some, for instance “have been able to take [challenging life] experiences and build themselves into strong, positive people with a deep critique of our system and strong analysis of systemic racism and how it manifests in the food system.”

(Photo by Sharon Chang, courtesy of Ayeko Farm)

And although the work of running a farm in rural Washington has been deeply satisfying, living in a rural area as people of color has its challenges. “There are very, very few Black folks out here,” Iyer says. When they moved to Enumclaw, she jokes, Anagli and their kids doubled the town’s Black population. “All Lives Matter” signage abounds.

Two months after moving to the farm, Anagli was walking home from the bus stop when a white woman harassed him and threatened to call 911 because she didn’t think he lived there. The family also had their house robbed on the same day. “We went into a deep state of fear, and I just started feeling guilt, regret, and doubt,” Iyer says.

And yet, she holds out hope for reconciliation and healing within their community. “I keep thinking we can build community anywhere. If somebody is racist, it doesn’t mean they’re a bad person. We’re in a society that’s committed to systemic racism—it’s everywhere.”

Iyer is hopeful that the land and the food it brings forth can draw folks together. Before pandemic-times, the couple hosted the first of what they’d hoped would become an annual cooking and capoeira event called Grounded in Freedom. Though they cancelled the event this summer, they hope it’s safe to host it again next summer. In the meantime, Iyer hopes to connect with the Muckleshoot Tribe, which has a reservation nearby. “There’s a lot of opportunity to build community,” she says.

Lately, Iyer’s vision of subdividing the property and inviting other families to live there in a cooperative farming village is also much on her mind. She imagines there would be a shared meal once a week. Except for the indigenous folks, Iyer says, “The reality is that everyone’s grandma or great grandma is from somewhere else—we can all share those stories of our grandmother’s recipes.”

The post Deepa Iyer Is Farming for Social Justice appeared first on Civil Eats.

Yet the farm felt safe and welcoming, and everyone wanted to talk with farmer Jen Salinetti after so much time quarantined at home. People were “like moths to the flame,” says farm manager Matt Boudreau. “They had a lot of pent-up conversations in them.”

First CSA pickup of the 2020 season. (Photo by Alyssa Mack / LightFocusStudio.com; murals on the barn by Rebecca Patterson)

The open doors to the pickup spot had been painted with multiple value statements: “Black Lives Matter. No Human is Illegal. Love is Love. All Genders are Whole. Women’s Rights are Human Rights.”

These are sentiments that resonate deeply with Salinetti, a community vegetable grower and educator who started the farm with her husband, Pete, 20 years ago in the Berkshire Mountains in western Massachusetts. Jen is the outgoing face of the farm, the earth mother who welcomes all, while Pete tends to stay in the background.

Early on, the Salinettis were selling their produce to local restaurants, but they soon realized it wasn’t quite fulfilling them. “If we’re going to be growing food,” says Jen, “we want to grow it for the people—not just those who can afford a high-priced meal.” They made what she considers a moral shift away from restaurant sales and put more effort into growing their CSA service, which started with 10 members and increased to 80 before spiking to 200 this season.

Farming is an act of social and environmental justice for Jen, a stance the current COVID-19 crisis and protests over racial injustice have only confirmed. “As a person of color,” she says, “it is my responsibility to be speaking up and identifying ways that our current system has caused harm and disconnect, and offering skills to be able to reshape that.”

“If we’re going to be growing food, we want to grow it for the people—not just those who can afford a high-priced meal.”

Jen feels a total affirmation of the choices she and her husband have made, not only the decision to farm but also to make food affordable and be deeply involved with their community. In fact, she says, everything they have been creating for years places them in the perfect position to respond to people’s needs in this moment.

This year, Woven Roots has experienced a number of requests for financial assistance, and they are working with CSA members to ensure that income gaps are never a barrier to receiving food; if needed, they arrange a work or skill barter, a reduced-price “solidarity share,” or a payment plan. Jen is also deeply involved in educational programs that teach people how to grow their own food.

Maximum Yield in a Minimal Space

Jen was born in Colombia and grew up as a transracial adoptee in suburban New Jersey. As a child, she would sit on a little rock among the rhododendrons outside her parents’ house. “I remember feeling a fullness that was there,” she recalls. “I knew with certainty that there was something greater to be connected to. I didn’t know what it was, and I didn’t know it was food that would be the driving force.”

It wasn’t until she met Pete in college, where she was studying nutrition and agriculture, that the pieces started to come together.

Pete comes from a long line of gardeners; his great-grandfather immigrated to the U.S. from Italy with bean seeds in his pocket. Pete grew up in the Berkshires tending a large family garden with his father. When Jen first stepped into that garden and heard the story of the bean seeds, she immediately wanted to learn to grow those seeds, and she wanted to do it with Pete.

Pete and Jen Salinetti. (Photo by Alyssa Mack / LightFocusStudio.com; artwork by Rebecca Patterson)

Now, 20 years into farming, married with two children, the Salinettis have sharpened their focus on soil. Jen jokes that they are actually growing soil, and the vegetables are just a byproduct, but the couple manages to cultivate an abundance of produce in a very limited space.

On just under 1.5 acres, their small team grows more than 70 different crops using a biointensive, no-till method of regenerative farming that prioritizes soil health. Through intense study, observation, and trial and error, they’ve learned to maximize their yields—and on top of the 200 families they’re feeding through their CSA, they’re also selling produce wholesale to the local food co-op and natural food stores in the area.

To achieve a consistently high yield, they plant vegetables in permanent beds that are 50 feet long and 30 inches wide, with a 12-inch aisle between. They never till the soil, which would bring up old weed seeds and destroy the integrity of the soil structure. Instead, they aerate each of the 330 beds with a broad fork and gently incorporate compost into the top inch, relying on microorganisms and worms to take the nutrients deeper.

On a yearly basis, as the team adds organic matter to the top of the soil, the Salinettis say the weed seeds get pushed deeper and deeper, which is one reason the farm does not have a weed problem. When weeds do emerge, they manually remove them with a shuffle hoe before they reach an inch tall.

Tightly maintained rows of vegetables at Woven Roots. (Photo © Lise Metzger)

While the Salinettis plant the same family of crops in a given area, they constantly rotate them—and can turn over any given bed space as many as four times in a season. Once they harvest a crop, they move new plants into that space within a day. “Or else I won’t have enough food,” says Pete.

There is always something growing in each bed, even over the winter, and the team plants the breaks between the 50-foot rows with clover, which helps with erosion control, suppresses the weeds, adds nitrogen to the soil through its roots, and attracts beneficial insects.

“The beauty of being small is that you are forced to take care of every one of those beds as best as you possibly can.”

“The beauty of being small is that you are forced to take care of every one of those beds as best as you possibly can,” says Pete. “It’s not just for the crop that’s in the ground, but for the next crop going in.”

It’s a hands-on, labor-intensive process that requires long hours, and the farmers admit they don’t get much sleep during the growing season.

A People-First Ethos

The people-first ethos of the farm extends to the employees as well, and the Salinettis treat the farm crew like extended family. They are grateful for their farm crew manager Matt Boudreau, who has been with them for six years, and the five farm crew members who returned to work with them this season. Having Boudreau on board frees Pete up for deeper exploration of how to maximize yields so they can continue to expand their CSA and feed as many people as possible. This is especially important now, he says, as shopping in traditional grocery stores has become a risky endeavor.

“When I distribute to a store, I don’t know who’s getting the food, and I don’t know if they really appreciate it,” says Pete. “But when people come to my farm to pick up and they tell me how much they appreciate it, well, that’s why we do this.”

Traditionally, Fridays have been a day where one crew member would cook for the team with the farm vegetables, and everyone would eat together in the house. Those meals have been canceled this season, says Boudreau, “and that’s been the most heartbreaking part of all of this.” Now they sit together under the trees, each eating their own food.

One tradition hasn’t disappeared, though: Pete still brings coffee and tea out to the field every afternoon, and the crew stops for a break and conversation. Now, everyone brings their own mugs.

Pete pours the coffee at the afternoon coffee break. (Photo © Lise Metzger)

The Salinettis feel a responsibility to share their knowledge with their employees and hope to contribute to the training of a new generation of farmers who prioritize social and environmental health. “We can’t have farms without farmers, so the more people we can have go through our system and learn here, the more they can go on and spread that knowledge,” Boudreau says.

Spreading Knowledge and Power

Jen’s larger mission is to foster a deeper understanding of the soil and the earth, and she sees her educational work as just as important as the actual production of food.

Before the pandemic, the Salinettis and Boudreau offered on-farm workshops and intensives, as well as regular farm adventures for CSA members, and Jen looks forward to expanding the programming into weekly year-round study for both youth and adults at some point.

Farm Crew Manager Matt Boudreau. (Photo © Lise Metzger)

At the nearby Montessori School of the Berkshires, she has created a land stewardship program for students ages two through 13. She shows the younger students how to respect plants, beginning with tickling the roots before planting, and teaches seventh and eighth graders how to create a farm business by growing and selling vegetables and cooking for the school.

“Jen is teaching the kids how to be a respectful, loving, caring person through the medium of dirt,” says Jeanette Maguire, the director of communications at the school and mother of one of Jen’s students. “She really is the mother of the earth. She operates from an ever-expanding perspective of the more you give, the more there actually is for you.”

Jen is also on a team negotiating to bring environmental literacy and a student-led learning experience to the public high school in the Berkshire Hills Regional School District.

In addition, this spring, she began partnering with Multicultural BRIDGE, a local nonprofit working with vulnerable community members on equity and justice. The farm donates 30 CSA shares to BRIDGE’s constituents, as well as seeds, starter plants, and help starting new garden spaces. Through recorded lessons and interactive Zoom calls, Jen is teaching the immigrant women involved with the program how to grow food in the New England climate, helping them become more self-reliant.

Woven Roots Farm’s compost pile. (Photo © Lise Metzger)

Gwendolyn Hampton VanSant, BRIDGE’s CEO and founding director, is thrilled to partner with Jen. “It’s really quite beautiful to build and expand community in this time of stress,” she says. “Jen’s program is fostering empowerment in so many ways.” Jen’s way of teaching helps participants feel validated in the knowledge they might already have, VanSant continues. “Jen listens deeply, and she exudes a love and respect for the land.”

“I’m connecting to my own lineage and to my own ability to listen to and center women’s voices. I don’t think I would be experiencing the same level of collective uplift and joy if all we were doing was just handing out food.”

Jen’s vision is to help people reconnect with their ancestral wisdom and their relationship to the soil. In her work with the BRIDGE students, she feels just as much a student as a teacher. “I’m connecting to my own lineage and to my own ability to listen to and center women’s voices. I don’t think I would be experiencing the same level of collective uplift and joy if all we were doing was handing out food.”

Through her own lived experience, Jen has seen the inequities and the harm that BIPOC experience on a daily basis. “I’m committed to shifting that, to find ways to fight the system and bring the humanity back into who we are,” she says. She dreams of a solidarity economy, one based on mutual aid where everyone benefits—“not the current mentality of hoarding for the individual,” she says.

Strength in Community

Having developed a reciprocal relationship with their community from the start, the Salinettis have found that in challenging moments, their community has been there for them as well.

At the very beginning, Jen and Pete were selling vegetables through an increasingly popular farm stand. When a van hit the stand and demolished it and the young couple didn’t have money to rebuild, it was neighbors who convinced them to start a CSA.

Their biggest challenge came in 2018, when unrelenting rains destroyed their entire fall harvest. Pete took an exhausting and unfulfilling landscaping job, and they agonized over whether to quit farming. Ultimately, they found the strength to go on through their community’s support and their own commitment to growing food as an act of social justice. “We felt that our purpose and role within the community was far greater than a temporary loss,” Jen says.

The Salinetti home sits on original land of the Stockbridge Munsee people of the Mohican Nation. (Photo © Lise Metzger)

At the time, many of their CSA members paid far in advance for the next summer’s season and encouraged others to join. They made granola and baked goods for the Salinettis and wrote notes expressing their support. Jen remembers one CSA member said it didn’t even matter if there were only two vegetables to pick up; the farm as a place was just as nourishing.

“It was almost like a glimmer of what we are experiencing even more now,” says Jen. “In times of great loss and great suffering, it’s the people who we lean into and who lean into us who are able to carry us through. Our impact is so much greater when we’re working together.”

A similar phenomenon is true with soil, she finds. “On our farm, when there is balance, there is mutual flourishing; when there is imbalance, there is weakness and disease,” she says. “I don’t see—in the soil or in our communities—how we can thrive without interdependency.”

Jen sees the pandemic as a forced slowdown, a time to reconsider our relationship with ourselves and the earth. “We are being given the opportunity to create a new tomorrow, one that unites all of humanity and nature again,” she says.

Thinking back to her 8-year-old self, sitting on that little rock and dreaming of a larger purpose, Jen says, “This life I’ve chosen has, without a doubt, made me more connected to the earth and to humanity than I could have ever dreamed of.” And, in this moment, both Jen and Pete feel strong and ready for the necessary work ahead.

The post Farming is an Act of Social Justice at Woven Roots Farm appeared first on Civil Eats.

Taylor’s grandmother, Lola Hampton, was a sharecropper who, in the 1940s, had the opportunity to buy the 32 acres she had farmed. In addition to maintaining orchards of peaches, apples, and pears, Hampton raised chickens, goats, and dairy cows—and had a mule, of course. After Hampton could no longer work the farm, the land lay fallow until Taylor and her husband Ron Gilmore took over in 2010 and developed Lola’s Organic Farm.

Today, the operation is much more than an ordinary farm; it’s become a mecca for small organic farmers, hosting workshops and farm tours throughout the year. In her work as a farmer, educator, and advocate, Taylor promotes best organic practices, following the principles of sustainability laid out by the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movement (IFOAM) and encouraging healthy microbial soil through cover crops, crop rotation, and compost.

“I believe if a farmer chooses to grow good food, they should build healthy soil—that’s the key,” said Taylor. “Building a healthy [farm] environment is a good influence on neighbors. It enhances neighboring land through clean air, biodiversity, and good food.” In addition, she said, healthy soil improves “the whole community, benefiting bees and other pollinators as well as the farmers and farmworkers. It’s not a vacuum.”

In addition to managing the farm with Gilmore, Taylor works during the week as an associate professor at Florida Agricultural & Mechanical University (FAMU) in Tallahassee. There, she  coordinates Florida’s Statewide Small Farm Program, which focuses on providing education, training, and technical assistance for small farms. Rather than teaching formal classes on the FAMU campus, however, Taylor travels around Florida visiting sharing knowledge and encouraging organic methods. She returns home, three and a half hours from Tallahassee, to help her husband run the farm on weekends.

High tunnels at Lola’s Organic Farm. (Photo credit: Candace Pollock Moore / SSARE)

“Most [farm outreach] programs focus on large-scale agribusiness, leaving 80 percent of farmers [globally] underserved,” she said. In the U.S. and Florida, 90 percent of farms are small scale (although many don’t produce crops commercially). “Traditionally, many small-scale farmers—minorities, Indigenous communities, and women—are resource-poor, and outreach and extension programs often don’t reach [them],” Taylor said. These are precisely the folks Taylor focuses on through her efforts.

Her program visits farmers who invite them, she explained. “They discuss their needs, and we work together to map out a plan to enable sustainable, regenerative farming through education and available resources.”

Taylor also conducts group “capacity-building sessions.” These advertised group sessions offer information on sustainable agriculture and allow the community to see where their food comes from. During these farm-facilitated tours, the public can view the environmental benefits of healthy farming practices. “Farmers are continually learning, and we need to look at the big picture,” she said of these sessions.

Good Work Recognized

Her approach to helping farmers build their soil and improve their environments has earned Taylor a host of accolades, including the 2019 Organic Pioneer for Farming award from the Rodale Institute and a seat on the Institute’s board. Last month, Florida’s Commissioner of Agriculture named her Florida’s Woman of the Year in Agriculture “for her many contributions and outstanding leadership within our state’s agriculture community.”

Taylor also served on the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB), and in 2014, then Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack appointed her to serve on the Advisory Committee on Beginning Farmers and Ranchers (ACBFR).

“Jennifer impressed me because of her dedication to mentoring others who want to be organic,” said Diana Martin, director of communications for the Rodale Institute. “She spends her time off the farm advocating for small organic farmers, and she lobbies for those who can’t leave their cows in Wisconsin to come to Washington.”

A farm tour group at Lola’s Organic Farm. (Photo credit: Candace Pollock Moore / SSARE)

Martin said Taylor exemplifies the type of people Rodale tends to select for the Organic Pioneer Award, which was established to honor those who have faced the wrath of industrial agriculture.

“Early on, organic farmers faced adversity if they decided to avoid chemicals,” Martin said. “Many researchers had funding cut, so there was not enough research for solutions, and some [advocates] were even kicked out of their churches.”

Following in Her Grandmother’s Footsteps

“My family have always been farmers,” Taylor said. “Even as a child, I liked connecting to the soil, watching a plant grow. I have great memories of the farm, where we spent holidays, weekends, and a few weeks in the summer.” Gilmore had farmers in his family, too, giving them both close ties to the soil.

“Lola’s cows roamed through the woods so you couldn’t see them, but they came when she called them,” said Taylor. “Her chickens ran through the peach orchard, and that helped keep the insects down and provided manure.”

There was never a lack of food, Taylor remembered, noting that Hampton sold much of her bounty to neighbors and sent boxes loaded with fresh produce and canned goods to her family.

Photo courtesy of Rodale

“She also made pies, preserves, and canned vegetables, even meat—what we call ‘value-added’ today—so there was always food,” said Taylor. “She made soap and even made moonshine.”

Today, Taylor handles the business end of the farm, while Gilmore takes care of the day-to-day operations. They seldom use heavy equipment, but if they must use a big machine, they hire a neighbor.

The couple farm three of their 32 acres, growing strawberries, blackberries, muscadine grapes, persimmons, apples, and pomegranates, plus several varieties of kale, sweet potatoes, Asian eggplants, ginger, and turmeric. They sell their produce through a local co-op in Glenwood, as well as a community-supported agriculture (CSA) program. The portion of their land they are not farming remains woodlands.

Cover Crops and High Tunnels

Cover crops have become an integral part of Lola’s Organic Farm, providing a healthy biomass to the sandy, loamy Georgia soil. In 2013, Taylor and Gilmore received a $9,500 producer grant from Southern Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SSARE) to study cover crops’ role in building healthy soil and suppressing weeds on their farm.

Barley and hairy vetch as a cover crop in a high tunnel at Lola’s Organic Farm. (Photo credit: Candace Pollock Moore / SSARE)

Initially, the farm was plagued by Bermuda grass choking out their cash crops. The rampant turf seemed impervious to extreme weather, and it spread rapidly by above-and-below-ground runners, making it a highly obnoxious weed. Other local farmers used Roundup, burned off the grass, or used tilled the ground to get rid of the grass. But those methods leave dry, barren soil, something Gilmore didn’t want.

During the two-year grant-funded experiment, Taylor and Gilmore tested two plots, growing strictly cover crops such as iron clay cowpeas, buckwheat, and millet on one, and mechanical strategies such as bottom plowing, tilling, and weeding on the other. Their evaluation of the two weed-suppression methods found that the mechanical strategies alone left soil dry and reduced crop yield.

Meanwhile, Taylor says: “the cover crop strategy built healthy soil while suppressing weeds and increasing cash crop yields.” She is now such a fan that no cash crop on Lola’s Organic Farm gets planted without a cover crop incorporated into the soil first.

The success of cover crops in the fields led Taylor and Gilmore to try cover crops in two high tunnels they acquired through a USDA program offering financial assistance to farmers to extend the growing season.

“Tunnels allow a longer growing season, and we can work them during bad weather,” said Taylor.

In one tunnel, Gilmore planted hairy vetch and barley to fix nitrogen, and in the second, iron clay peas to build soil organic matter and resist root-knot nematode. The second season, he and Taylor planted yellow mustard to build organic matter and control soil-borne pathogens—a practice called biofumigation. Taylor said in addition to fixing nitrogen, barley also absorbs heavy metals such as copper, cadmium, and zinc, as well as salt, which can accumulate to toxic levels in high tunnels.

“They’ve done a great thing by taking cover crops into high tunnels for row crops,” said Candace Pollock Moore, Southern SARE program coordinator at the University of Georgia at Griffin. “SSARE grants allow farmers to see how well an idea worked on the farm … There’s as much value in learning what didn’t work.”

Advocating on Capitol Hill

In addition to her hands-on work with small, organic farms, Taylor also finds time for trips to Washington to advocate for her industry. Last year, representing the Organic Farmer’s Association (OFA), she went to the Hill with Rodale’s Diana Martin to secure increased funding in the farm bill for organic research.

“We were successful in raising research funding from $20 to $50 million,” said Martin. “We also protected the Organic Certification Cost Sharing Program, which reimburses up to 75 percent of  certifications costs, which are often a barrier to small, beginning organic farmers.”

While the conventional farm lobby is large and well-funded, small organic farmers rarely have to opportunity to take time off to lobby lawmakers. Taylor’s in-person visits to congressmembers and government agencies allow them to have contact with a genuine farmer, not slick professionals. This March, she and Martin will travel to Washington again to visit NGOs and legislators.

In the meantime, Taylor plans to continue the work she and Gilmore have made Lola’s famous for: pioneering organic methods, and training and advocating for underserved farm communities across Florida and Georgia.

The post Jennifer Taylor Educates and Advocates for Underserved Small Farms in Florida appeared first on Civil Eats.

Neaton and Privat are commercial fishermen who grew up on an off-the-grid homestead in this remote region. In 2012, the pair founded Salmon Sisters, a seafood and apparel company that is gaining national recognition and helping feed hungry Alaskans via the Give Fish Project. (Like many female fish harvesters, they choose the term fishermen to describe themselves.)

The sisters fish for salmon, cod, and halibut alongside their family members, including their father who still fishes during the summer months. Currently, the family has four boats with crews of up to five people.

Alaska produces more wild seafood than all the other states combined—and its strict conservation practices and pristine marine waters set it apart on the global market, according to a 2017 report by the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute. The state has written sustainable fishing practices into its constitution, and many entities—fishermen, scientists, conservationists, and government organizations—collaborate to make sure fish are caught by methods that maintain fish stocks and minimize harm to the plants and animals in the marine environment.

The sisters fully support and abide by the state’s strict conservation standards. While Neaton and Privat do not catch all five species of salmon found in Alaska, they are keenly aware of salmon’s cultural, environmental, and economic importance to the state, and they run their operation in ways that support independent fishermen and protect salmon as a resource. “People in coastal communities depend on the ocean for their livelihood, and their identities are very much tied to the sea,” Privat says. “Community life is centered around and inspired by the water and the life it provides.”

The apparel side of the company allows the sisters to continue to fish while also celebrating their industry and the lifestyle in Alaska. Salmon Sisters and its all-women team sells durable boots, hats, pants, and sweatshirts that depict the Alaskan way of life with nautical-themed prints that include fish, octopuses, mermaids, and waves. Their brand also partners with other fishing gear and sustainable goods companies like XtraTuf, Skida, and Rep Your Water, which provide gear for outdoorsmen while also increasing support for local conservation.

The sisters source their goods thoughtfully, from manufacturers that value fair labor practices, local production, and a commitment to recycled and organic materials, as well as sustainably sourced ingredients.

“We strive to tell the story behind wild Alaska seafood through quality products and design, and to strengthen ocean stewardship amongst our community,” the sisters say on their website.

Called Back to Alaska

Neaton and Privat grew up on a homestead near the water, and their family made its living from the sea harvesting fish. “We were given the opportunity to work on our family’s commercial fishing boat when we were teenagers, and from that experience learned about trust and the simplicity of life on the water and the honest work of a fisherman,” says Privat.

She describes their childhood as “unique, wonderful, and often difficult.” With a laundry list of chores, the sisters acquired a strong appreciation for working with their bodies and hands and in the company of their family.

“There was a lot of work to do to keep the homestead running,” Privat says, “like collecting and chopping driftwood for firewood and tending our garden and greenhouse, putting up salmon that we caught in our net, keeping our waterwheel and hydroelectric power running, making all of our food from scratch, picking berries, catching fish, and mending fishing nets.”

Both sisters left the homestead and Alaska to attend college. Neaton studied business and nutrition at the University of Vermont, and Privat studied English and art at Williams College and later received a Master’s degree in design from the University of Washington. She spent some time in Italy during school, where she learned to screenprint and began to create the products that would later become the foundation of the Salmon Sisters company.

After school, both sisters felt called back to Alaska. For them, and for many people in Alaskan coastal communities, the commercial fishing industry and ocean are less a livelihood and more a lifeline, passion, and calling.

Fishing, and the Land Hustle

Now, two of the family’s large, 58-foot boats fish for cod in the winter and salmon in the summer; the third 58-foot boat can be rigged to catch salmon or halibut. The other boat, a smaller 32-foot vessel, they use to harvest Copper River salmon including Sockeye, Coho, and Chinook.

Lately, the family is fishing mostly for Pink and Sockeye salmon in part of the Area M fishery, more formally known as the Alaska Peninsula and Aleutian Islands Management Area. To fish these species, they use a purse seine net and a skiff, setting the net between the boat and the skiff in a straight line, and over about 20 minutes, driving the two vessels towards each other, encircling the fish that swim into the net. They then draw the bottom of the net closed like a drawstring purse and lift the fish aboard the boat. Fishing in this manner requires trust, teamwork, and excellent communication amongst the crew.

One of the Salmon Sisters’ ships at sea.

After harvesting their catch, Neaton and Privat sell and deliver their fish to seafood buyers with processing facilities in Alaska in towns near where they fish. The fish are taken to the processing facilities where they are cleaned and filleted, canned, steamed, or left whole; then they are typically shipped frozen to domestic and international markets. All the fish sold through the Salmon Sisters website is caught by the fleet belonging to the sisters’ family.

When the Salmon Sisters aren’t fishing, developing creative ideas for new outdoor gear, or thinking of ways to contribute to their community, they are embarking on what they call the land-hustle.

“There is a tremendous amount of work to be done onshore as a fisherman in the offseason,” Privat says. “There’s always boat and gear work to accomplish, maintenance and improvements. Boats are pulled out of the water, scrubbed, welded, painted. New technology is installed; old engines are replaced. Boat projects are nonstop.”

In 2017, the sisters opened their first brick-and-mortar store carrying clothing and seafood products in a shipping container in Homer, Alaska, and they began taking their seafood around the state in a mobile pop-up shop. They have since opened larger brick-and-mortar stores in Homer and Seward, and the shipping container shop has moved to Juneau.

In the shops, they carry a variety of seafood, all frozen, tinned, or smoked. Customers can also order Salmon Sisters frozen seafood through the stores and have it sent to their homes.

Giving Fish to Fight Hunger

Shortly after founding Salmon Sisters, the sisters created the Give Fish Project to give back to their community. The project sets aside 1 percent of their sales of Salmon Sisters products to purchase wild Alaska seafood, which they donate to the Food Bank of Alaska.

According to Feeding America, close to one in seven people—and one in five children—face hunger in Alaska. And only one in 10 Americans eat the recommended two servings of seafood each week, according to the Seafood Nutrition Partnership, a nonprofit whose mission is to inspire people to eat more seafood through outreach and awareness-raising.

Since the inception of the Give Fish Project, the Salmon Sisters have donated more than 100,000 cans of wild salmon to their Alaskan neighbors in need. Seafood provides healthy omega-3s and numerous micro- and macro-nutrients not found in other proteins. Additionally, it plays an important role in Alaska’s heritage and culture.

“When the salmon run is low, it is hard for people to stock their freezers with traditional foods,” says Cara Durr, the public engagement director for Food Bank of Alaska. “It’s important for their diets and tradition to have access to that food.” Donations from Salmon Sisters and their Give Fish Project are an important piece of that, she says.

Environmental Stewards

As the climate and ocean change, as human development introduces new threats to the ocean’s health, as markets and the political landscapes fluctuate, Neaton and Privat emphasize that fishermen must speak up for their way of life and to keep their livelihood strong for the future.

“History has shown the effects of short-sightedness all over the world when it comes to a future for commercial fishermen and ocean health,” Privat says. “There has been an overall decline of fish stocks and healthy habitat due to human development, unregulated fishing, and policy that doesn’t take long-term sustainability into account.”

Amidst this, Alaska’s fisheries meet the Responsible Fisheries Code of Conduct set forth by the United Nations—the most comprehensive and respected fisheries management guideline in the world—as well as the Marine Stewardship Council and Fisheries Management Certifications. The management methods the state employs include stock assessments, regulated quota systems, habitat protection, and strict enforcement to ensure escapement goals are met. “Fishermen don’t get to fish until enough salmon have been counted by Alaska Fish and Game and made their way back to their home streams to spawn,” Privat explains.

“We can act as stewards of the resources we depend on in many ways through advocacy, involvement in fisheries management and regulations, marketing efforts, community organizations, and education,” Neaton adds.

Privat encourages people who want to support fishermen in Alaska and elsewhere, to “eat wild Alaska seafood at home; share it with friends and family. Visit Alaska and see where your fish comes from, understand its coastal culture, talk to fishermen and hear about what their work is like harvesting seafood.”

She also advises people to “stay tuned in to issues that could affect the environment and fisherman’s way of life and act—the Pebble Mine in Bristol Bay is a good example.” Pebble Mine in Bristol Bay is a concern for many Alaska natives. If built, the pit mine for copper, gold, and molybdenum would be one of the largest mines in the world. Because of its size and location, it runs a very high risk of polluting Bristol Bay, which is in the heart of salmon country and which supports a $1.5 billion commercial and sport fishery, according to the Save Bristol Bay website.

“We are salmon people,” said Alannah Hurley, executive director of the Tribes of Bristol Bay, in a recent testimony. “But salmon are more than food for us. Salmon are central to our cultural identity, our spirituality, and our sacred way of life that has made us who we are for thousands of years in the Bristol Bay region.”

Through Salmon Sisters, Neaton and Privat are trying to get wild Alaska seafood, caught in a way that honors the environment and culture of Alaska, into more people’s hands. “Supporting our business,” Neaton says, “is also supporting the health of our community and our fishing fleet.”

The post The Salmon Sisters of Alaska are Fighting for a Healthy, Sustainable Fish Future appeared first on Civil Eats.

At first glance, the pairing might not seem remarkable, but it’s not usually how Napa’s wine industry works. Most winemakers hire vineyard contractors to do the on-the-ground work—or they simply buy grapes from existing vineyards. “What I’m doing today, it’s what a lot of people did back in the ’60s and ’70s,” Herrera says. He admits that within his circle of winemaker friends, “they all think I’m crazy.”

But Herrera couldn’t imagine making wine without growing the grapes himself. On a Wednesday afternoon this fall, he was in the field, as he usually is, walking the slopes of Mt. Veeder to mark the land for a new vineyard. He talked lovingly about Veeder’s soil: “It’s just beautiful loam, a gold-reddish soil full of nutrients. It has a beautiful rich topsoil, but [since] it’s a hillside it’s also rocky, and drains really well.”

One of the grapevines that Herrera farms. (Photo credit: Rocco Ceselin)

This kind of attention to soil, the topography of the land, and the nuances of each vineyard’s microclimate is exactly what sets Herrera apart. He has his hands in every stage of his grapes’ growing cycles, and he tries to farm with as few inputs as possible, paying careful attention to soil health. This devotion to the land has deep roots, extending back to his great-great-great-great grandparents.

From Dishwasher to Winemaker

The Herrera family has made a living from the land as far back as they can remember. Herrera’s ancestors in Michoacán, Mexico, were subsistence farmers, and his grandparents farmed a 15-acre parcel in the village of El Llano, growing produce to feed the family and sell at local markets. As a boy, Herrera learned to love the soil alongside his grandparents and cousins, picking his first cucumbers and tomatoes at the age of four.

“Most of my practices are no different than what they were for my grandparents, way back,” he says. “My grandparents always said, ‘Value the most important elements in farming: the sun, the air, and the soil. Take good care of [the land], and allow the dirt to represent the produce that you are harvesting.’”

In 1975, Herrera’s father brought his wife and children across the border to the Napa Valley, where he worked in agriculture. At the time, Napa resembled El Llano: sweeping fields of produce beneath green hills. Herrera joined his father in the fields on weekends, eating cherries and walnuts as he helped with the harvest. “It was a beautiful childhood,” he says. “I loved everything about Napa, and for me it was very easy to want to come back.”

The family returned to Michoacán after a few years in the States, but Herrera felt pulled to the Napa landscape and the opportunities it represented. When he turned 15, he asked his parents for permission to return, knowing he could accomplish more in Napa than El Llano. He returned (first undocumented, and later earning citizenship), joined his older brother in the Valley, and enrolled in a local high school. In those early days, the brothers lived in a plant nursery, and Herrera washed dishes to support himself.

Over the years, he worked as a dishwasher, line cook, and manual laborer. After a summer of breaking rocks at Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars, Herrera’s work ethic impressed owner Warren Winiarski enough to land him a spot crushing grapes in the cellar. Herrera worked nights and attended school during the day. After three years, he was promoted to cellar master. “That’s where Mi Sueño’s story begins,” he says.

Herrera learned everything he could about winemaking during his seven-year tenure as cellar master, taking classes on viticulture and enology on the side. After he married his wife, Lorena, the two set their sights on turning their passion for farming and wine into a sustainable livelihood. Lorena’s parents had also came to California as migrant workers, and she shared Herrera’s love for farming and wine.

The Herrera Family. (Photo credit: Rocco Ceselin)

In Napa’s elite wine industry, many build their wineries from existing wealth. But Rolando and Lorena didn’t have that option. “This industry is [made up of] the wealthiest people in the world,” he says. “So how do you compete with that?”

The Herreras encountered plenty of barriers on the road to making Mi Sueño—Spanish for “My Dream”—a reality, but the most intractable was financing. “The winemaking wasn’t as difficult for us,” Herrera says. “We had the know-how. But just—how do we afford to buy grapes? How do we afford to buy barrels?”

In 1997, the Herreras produced their first 200 cases of Chardonnay. The wine quickly found an audience, selling out three vintages in a row. While the reception was thrilling, the success pushed the family into years of financial strain.

The Herreras kept Mi Sueño afloat by refinancing their house, riding lines of credit, and working multiple jobs. Herrera took a job as head winemaker with Paul Hobbs Winery after Hobbs hired him to consult with South American clients. At the same time, he built up a small roster of consulting gigs. “I’d wake up, go [to work], and come back to sleep for a few hours—it was around the clock, working seven days a week,” Herrera says. “All of that went towards paying the bills and buying a little more grapes. That’s how we did it.”

Paving the Way for Latinx Winemakers

Since those early, scrappy days, a lot has changed. Mi Sueño now produces between 8,000 and 10,000 cases of wine every year. The winery is internationally recognized, and Herrera’s wine has been served at three different White House dinners (the 1999 Los Carneros Chardonnay in 2001, the 2006 Russian River Pinot Noir in 2008, and the 2006 Herrera Rebecca Cabernet Sauvignon in 2010). Since 2004, Herrera has turned his full attention and energy to Mi Sueño—where he is both farmer and head winemaker—his vineyard management company, and his consulting work.

But a lot hasn’t changed, including Rolando’s tenacity and work ethic. “His attention to detail, from exploring different regions and different cooperages to estimating proper barrel aging, sets him apart from many other winemakers,” says Rich Aurilia, owner of Red Stitch Wine Group, where Herrera consults as the winemaker. “We’re very confident in the fruit we get because we know first-hand who’s out there taking care of it on a day-to-day basis.”

Rolando Herrera holding his healthy soil. (Photo credit: Rocco Ceselin)

Now that he’s found success in an insular industry, Herrera wants to break down doors for other Latinx winemakers to walk through. He employs a team of full-time, year-round workers, many of whom are Latinx. The Napa wine industry runs on seasonal labor, but by owning both his winery and his vineyard management company, Herrera can maintain a permanent crew and move employees between the vineyard and the cellar. This allows him to provide stable jobs and a consistent income to the team he calls family.

In 2010, he founded the Mexican American Vintners Association (MAVA) with a small group of other vintners. “It was no longer a question of whether we wanted to unite and form a group—it was a responsibility that we had,” he says.

The group exists, in Herrera’s words, “to be an inspiration, to be role models, to be a home and a hub for Latinos and minority people to come and ask us questions, and to show the path for all the new generations that want to do this. We don’t want them to trip on the same rocks that we did. We share with them our experience: what we did, what worked, what didn’t work.”

Aurilia adds, “He’s had a huge impact on other Latino people in the wine industry—whether they’re vineyard workers or people who work in barrel rooms or people who are interested in making wine. You can look at him and say, ‘If this guy can put his mind to it and do it, why can’t I do it?’”

Devotion to the Land

Today, Herrera Vineyard Management covers vineyards across the Napa and Sonoma regions—he and his team currently manage 40 acres, and they planted an additional 45 in 2019—Herrera lets soil variation and microclimates dictate his rootstock and irrigation choices. In the Carneros region, where he grows Chardonnay and Pinot Noir grapes, the soil is built from limestone, silt, and sand. In his Tierra Blanca vineyard (named for the soil’s white color), located in a cooler area closer to the Bay, he says, “We put a rootstock that can stay a little more on the top of the soil, not go too deep.”

But a dozen miles west at his Russian River vineyard in Sonoma, Pinot Noir grapes grow in completely sandy, loam-rich soil. Here, Herrera plants a more vigorous rootstock that reaches deeper into the earth. He also irrigates more frequently and in smaller amounts to compensate for the quick-draining soil. “Some of my vineyards here—and this is something I saw in Mexico—are only a quarter of a mile apart, but they have different soils and different microclimates [depending on] the land,” he says.

Rolando Herrera in his vineyards. (Photo credit: Rocco Ceselin)

Soil and microclimate aren’t the only things that inform Herrera’s choices. “Every year Mother Nature gives us a different growing season, and that alone creates hundreds of different variables,” he says. The subtle shifts in weather are what keeps Herrera in the field, testing his grapes against the humidity, temperature, rainfall, wind, and erosion of a given season.

In all his vineyards, Herrera farms in a way that prioritizes soil health. “I do everything I possibly can to minimize any herbicides and fungicides out in the vineyards,” he says. “One of the biggest challenges we have is weed control. I invest a lot in labor—moving weeds with a shovel—or mechanically, with instruments, instead of just spraying.”

To avoid erosion, especially during the rainy season, he plants cover crops and spreads hay on particularly steep areas. He visits his vineyards right after rainstorms to get a sense of the water flow and how his team can redirect water into creeks. “There’s not a lot for me to create out here, other than just continue to learn, learn, learn,” Herrera says.

Every harvest season, Herrera tastes every varietal until each one hits the notes he wants: ripe fig, honey, plum. “There are years when we have to drop 20 percent of grapes on the floor to get that quality,” he admits. But fine-tuning the grapes’ brix levels, flavors, and acidity results in a wine that is completely his own.

Herrera’s farming philosophy hasn’t changed much from the one his grandparents handed him in Mexico. His approach to farming is intuitive, almost innate, inherited from a long history of devotion to the land and attention to the soil.

“For me, there are really no secrets to being a great farmer,” he says. “If there are, I’d say: respect your land, love your land—and [put in] a lot of work. Some of my vineyards I’ve been farming for 25 years, and the more I’m out there, the more I love farming [them].”

Photos © Rocco Ceselin.

The post Rolando Herrera Is Blazing a Trail for Latinx Winemakers appeared first on Civil Eats.

Now living in Lizella, Georgia, Bowyer is working at an all-volunteer biodynamic farm in nearby Milledgeville. Today, he’s designing a watering system for the farm’s vegetables, poultry, and hogs that will automate a task now taking a couple of hours a day.

While his physical and psychological struggles continue, the farm gives him a purpose and a community, he says. “Getting out there is good, doing some hard work, whatever you may be able to handle,” he says. “Focusing on a small task kind of diverts your mind from all that pain… It gives you a small purpose.”

Founded by Army veteran Jon Jackson in 2014 as the first project of his nonprofit Stag Vets. Inc., Comfort Farms grows heirloom vegetables and raises heritage turkeys, hogs, hens, rabbits, and fish with the goal of helping veterans heal after their service. Veterans in immediate crisis—80 to 100 so far—work for days or weeks at the 20-acre operation while they wait for treatment with the Veterans Administration (VA)—and, if they’re interested, they can stay for longer.

Jon Jackson with some of his hogs. (Photo © Carlisle Kellam)

Most volunteer by the day, driving in from out of town or staying at local motels, but some live for about a week in the farm’s small cottage, which can house up to two veterans at a time, or in RVs parked on the farm. They find Comfort Farms largely through word of mouth from family, friends, or health care providers. Some, like Bowyer, have found it on Facebook.

A volunteer therapist screens newcomers and refers those with active addictions to rehabilitation centers so they can address their substance abuse before beginning work. While the farm does not provide formal clinical treatment, it does serve as a bridge to care, connecting veterans with a wide and supportive network of private therapists, people affiliated with the VA, and peer support. It also provides them physical activity, nutritious food, a structured schedule, and a sense of identity and purpose—all of which helps lay the foundation for healing. As the veterans connect with the land and animals through their work, they also begin to develop a sense of belonging among other vets, who innately understand what they’ve been through.

Jackson was inspired to start Comfort Farms in 2014 as he was leaving the military amidst the darkness of depression. “Because it didn’t exist, a place like this, I just decided, ‘You know what? I’m going to do it, I am going to follow my heart on this.’” he says. “I didn’t want any of my brothers and sisters to go through the same kind of thing [I was].”

The Trauma of War

Before founding Comfort Farms, Jackson served his six combat deployments as an Army Ranger, which the U.S. Army describes it’s “premier direct-action raid force.” Rangers, it goes on to say, are always “combat ready, mentally and physically tough, and prepared to fight our country’s adversaries.” With this role behind him, Jackson is well aware of the difficulty soldiers face coping with the transition from war zones to civilian life.

Perhaps the most discussed response to military combat is PTSD. But veterans can also grapple with depression and anxiety—thanks to their time in the field, but also thanks the pain of being separated from their families.

Many veterans also lose their peers, and that numbs them, Jackson says. “I go out to battle, I lose my friend,” he says. “One day I am picking up his body parts, putting them in a bag, sending them home. I go out the next day, and the same thing happens. You lose a sense of yourself because you have to survive in that environment. So when vets come home, the thing they deal with the most is detachment and dissociation from family, intimacy, and touch.”

Additionally, leaving military life, with its camaraderie and clear sense of mission, can be rough. Soldiers move from an adrenaline-pumping world wherein they have a core group of buddies to an unanchored life back in the United States.

“There’s a loneliness and social alienation that happens for people making a transition back to the civilian world,” says C Sabathne, 39, a licensed family and marriage counselor who has volunteered with Comfort Farms since its early days and helps assess the veterans who work at Comfort Farms. Sabathne served as an infantry machine gunner and rifle team leader in the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division from 2000 to 2003 and during the invasion of Iraq and then spent eight years—including deployments—with the Army Reserve. “People going from, say, commanding a squad of nine people [to] suddenly working point-of-sale at a retail store answering to a 24-year-old hipster can feel a loss of purpose and identity,” he says.

Additionally, Sabathne says, “Recently separated service members often—mistakenly—think of the title of ‘Veteran’ as being about something they did in the past, sort of a ‘has-been.’ In fact, being a veteran isn’t about what we did once when we were young. It’s about who we are right now because of it.”

A task as basic as working with sows and their piglets can help veterans reconnect with their feelings, Jackson says. Later, that connectivity can transfer to veterans’ personal lives. Jackson has dubbed his approach of healing through farming “Agro-Cognitive Behavior Therapy,” and he’s collaborating with mental health professionals to codify what goes on at Comfort Farms.

From Army Ranger to Georgia Farmer

Jackson spent his early childhood in Jersey City, New Jersey, with the Statue of Liberty and the New York skyline as the backdrop. As a young adult, he worked for six years in research labs for major pharmaceutical companies.

After September 11, Jackson, already facing a failed marriage, decided to enlist. He says the thought that occurred to him was, “Our country got attacked. There’s no time like the present—right now—to do something about it and be a part of the change.” His service ran from 2003 to 2015 and involved direct raids as a gunner on a Humvee with a .50-caliber machine gun, overseeing the movement of valuable equipment and personnel, and numerous classified missions.

Jon Jackson on his tractor. (Photo © Carlisle Kellam)

In 2013, however, the Army told Jackson he was not fit to deploy due to injuries sustained during battle, including traumatic brain injury. It was the same year he contemplated suicide.

Jackson describes himself as “100 percent disabled” by the combat tours; he was nearly killed 20 times by improvised explosive devices (IEDs), he says. The trauma of those deployments is still embedded in his body.

Four years ago, his wife took a picture of him with a flash camera, and that simple gesture  reminded him of the experience of being in the blast radius of an IED. “You see the flash before you hear the bang. My body’s response to the flash is—I’m ready. That [response] is primitive and primal way more than I can rationalize.” He ended up in the shower, fully clothed and sobbing, for an hour.

Jackson had been gardening a patch of his backyard in Columbus, Georgia, between deployments. In 2014, he created the nonprofit, with Comfort Farms as its first venture, and used a bank loan to buy 20 acres.

Jackson named the farm after a buddy from his unit, Capt. Kyle A. Comfort, 27, who died in  Afghanistan, from wounds he sustained when insurgents attacked their unit with an improvised explosive device.

Carlisle Kellam, a filmmaker producing a documentary about the farm, says its name works on multiple levels. “This isn’t just about comfort,” he says. “This is about getting out of your comfort zone and recognizing the fact that change has to be, or things are sacrificed for our well-being, whether it be people, animals, or other things.”

Jackson’s work on the farm over the last five years has helped him heal. “The farming practices that I use here have really helped me build back my skills for learning and recalling,” he says. “I feel sharp again. I feel as good as I was when I was an Army Ranger. I have a sense of accomplishment, a sense of giving back, a sense of service. For me, that’s just the most important thing.”

Interconnected Practices

Comfort Farms relies on private donations as well as sales from its bimonthly farmers’ market and weekly deliveries of produce and meats to restaurants in Atlanta. Jackson describes the operation as biodynamic, and each part of the farm is integrated and interdependent, reflecting the kind of connected life that veterans volunteering there need.

Jon Jackson admires a wheelbarrow full of North Georgia Candy Roaster squash at Comfort Farms. (Photo by Allison Salerno)

Jackson and his crew grow heirloom vegetables, including North Georgia candy roaster squash, Creole Georgia collards, and Sea Island white flint corn, in raised beds. He loves heirlooms because “the artistry is within the seed,” he says.

“The overarching philosophy is that… we need to listen to our land; we need to listen to our plants. As seed growers and seed savers… we have to produce food in a way where we can carry on the traditions and preserve things.”

The farm employs the no-till Hügelkultur technique, which relies on decaying wood and other compostable biomass for soil fertility, water retention, and soil warming. It does not use herbicides of any kind. “We don’t even use organic-approved pesticides for our farm,” Jackson says. “We go above that, and we will identify where bugs are and if they’re eating a certain crop, we will go ahead and let them have that crop and almost kind of sacrifice that crop so that way we can grow other crops.” Additionally, they rely on “good old-fashioned going out there and squishing bugs with our fingers,” Jackson says.

The farm’s rabbits produce the manure that fertilizes the vegetables. From late spring into early fall, black soldier flies lay their eggs in the rabbit manure, and the high-protein larvae serve as feed for the farm’s animals and fish.

Among the animals who live on the farm are about 50 Bourbon Red turkeys, 70 American Mulefoot hogs, 40 hens, and 150 rabbits. Jackson is drawn to heritage breeds because he loves their history and wants to model for other would-be farmers how to maximize profits. “I can’t get $20 for a chicken, but I can get $20 for a duck, and a duck grows faster than a chicken, so why would I grow a chicken?”

The animals live in large pens where they can roam, and they eat a selection of things that grow on the farm, as well as a silage mix that has been fermented with molasses from corn grown on nearby dairy farms and contains sunflower seeds. They also eat the black soldier flies. Their seasonal diets give the hogs a unique flavor profile for diners in Atlanta restaurants. Spring hogs, for example, have been fed all through fall and winter, and eat a lot of pumpkins and sweet potatoes. Winter hogs have eaten summer foods: squash, melons, tomatoes, and cucumbers.

(Photo by Allison Salerno)

The rhythm of work on the farm varies with the season. Right now, veterans are planting onions, garlic, cabbage, and beans, along with 10 varieties of carrots. They are also feeding and watering the animals, breeding rabbits, moving animals from pen to pen, and preparing rabbits and turkeys for slaughter. In these cooler months, they also work on the farm’s infrastructure, including building raised beds.

Having an Impact

Michael O’Gorman founded the Farmer Veteran Coalition in 2007 to help returning soldiers, a disproportionate number of whom are from rural areas, connect to farming. Americans who volunteered for military service after the September 11 attacks, including his own son, “went in with an enormous sense of purpose,” O’Gorman says. When they emerge, “farming can become their new mission,” he says. “It’s heroic. ‘We needed you to defend our country, and now we need you to feed it.’”

When O’Gorman founded his nonprofit 12 years ago, none of the 40,0000 groups helping veterans in the United States were focused on farming. Now 250 of them are. Jackson’s farm was one of the first, and he considers Jackson, who he views as charismatic and “larger than life,” as “a star among them.”

The first time Michael Wall, director of farm services for Georgia Organics, saw Jackson speak about healing through farming, he was deeply affected. “His story is very powerful,” Wall says. He believes Jackson has earned national recognition through speaking engagements and media coverage because he’s “a success story,” who is “also damn good at what he does.”

(Photo © Carlisle Kellam)

While Comfort Farms is not certified organic, it relies on many organic practices, and Jackson is a frequent keynote speaker at Georgia Organic’s conferences. “It’s very important to put up a successful model of a veteran and a Black farmer in Georgia, because both [groups] have been tremendously othered and disenfranchised by the agricultural industry for hundreds of years, and it hasn’t stopped,” Wall says.

Jackson’s range of vision is wide. For example, right now, the musty Quonset hut near the farm’s entrance stores farm equipment. Jackson would like to raise private funds to transform it into what he calls an “agro-culinary academy” to provide critical job training to veterans who have struggled with addiction, mental illnesses, and homelessness.

And that drive to help others can be contagious. Troy Bowyer says volunteering at Comfort Farms has given him a sense of purpose. “What Jon has built up is amazing,” he says, “and the more effective we can get it going, the more veterans we’re going to be able to help.”

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“They’ll be back—it’s their routine to run away and slowly return,” says her husband Worth Kimmel. “They’re both skittish and curious,” adds Hillary.

Since 2014, Worth and Hillary have run Pine Trough Branch Farm (PTB) in rural Rockingham County, North Carolina on 118 acres of pasture and forest land that Worth’s family has owned since the 1950s. The farm draws its name from Pine Trough Branch Creek, which runs along the property and flows into the headwaters of the nearby Haw River. In addition to hogs, they raise sheep and cows, as well as vegetables, shiitake mushrooms, and a variety of flowers—with a focus on building healthy soil and raising animals by the highest standards of animal welfare.

Harvested fall flowers. (Photo courtesy of Hillary Kimmel / Pine Trough Branch Farm.)

“Diversity is important on our farm,” says Hillary, wearing a denim button-up shirt and her hair in two long braids. In addition to enabling them to offer customers a variety of plant and animal products, she says, “we want to mimic the natural systems, and in natural systems, there’s biodiversity.”

While they’re not certified organic, the Kimmels describe their approach as “beyond organic.” They use ecologically centered practices—including composting, cover cropping, and natural mulching—which require minimal external inputs, including no synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, or herbicides, even those permissible in certified organic production. “We’re all about working with the resources we have here on the farm,” says Worth, his voice quiet and steady. “We have grass and shade and water—and all the things our animals need. We’re just trying to manage those things in a sensible and productive way.”

Hillary Kimmel harvesting garlic. (Photo courtesy of Pine Trough Branch Farm.)

The hogs and sheep at PTB Farm are Certified Animal Welfare Approved by the nonprofit A Greener World (AGW), and audited annually. (Their production system for cattle would also meet the criteria, Worth says, but because they purchase weaned calves from a nearby farmer who is not AWA certified, the cows do not hold certification.)

Emily Moose, director of communications and outreach for AGW, has been following PTB for years and admires the farm’s approach. “As second-generation farmers, [the Kimmels] have a very holistic perspective of how farming impacts communities and is impacted by communities,” Moose says.

As someone who happens to live downstream from them in a town that draws its water from the Haw River, Moose appreciates their stewardship on a personal level, too. “They’re farming in ways that consider the water, land, people, animals, and overall environment for future generations,” she says.

Two Paths Converge

Both Hillary and Worth, who are now 35 and 32, respectively, were raised on working farms and felt drawn back to the land after they graduated from college.

Worth’s grandfather, Owen Lindley, purchased the PTB property in the early 1950s, and Worth and his two sisters grew up on the land after their mother took over the operation in the 1970s. For three decades, they leased some of the land to a neighboring farmer who grew hay.

Worth Kimmel harvesting salad greens. (Photo courtesy of Hillary Kimmel / Pine Trough Branch Farm.)

“My dad grew most of our vegetables, and my mom canned tomatoes,” Worth says. Between chain-sawing trees into firewood, operating the tractor, and other farm tasks, he says, “I got a basic skillset from as far back as I can remember.”

Meanwhile, the daughter of 1970s back-to-the-landers, Hillary grew up on a farm in the North Carolina mountains, where her mother taught school and her father raised salad greens for restaurants.

Both studied at Warren Wilson College, and graduated two years apart—Hillary in 2007 and Worth in 2009. By the time they met at a winter solstice bonfire party in 2011, Worth had moved back to his family’s land and was raising animals and doing carpentry work on the side, and Hillary had moved back to her family’s land and was growing vegetables and waiting tables on the side.

The two fell in love, and three years later, they joined forces on Worth’s family land, which they opted for because of its close proximity to several farmers’ markets and the surrounding community supportive of local food. While both make long-term decisions on the farm today, Worth oversees the animals and mushrooms and Hillary tends the vegetables and flowers.

PTB Farm sells weekly at farmers’ markets in Greensboro and Winston Salem, to area chefs and butcher shops, and to members of its co-op, who buy farm credit early in the year and then spend it on whatever they want from the weekly market stands.

Freshly harvested salad turnips. (Photo courtesy of Hillary Kimmel / Pine Trough Branch Farm.)

Managing Animals to Benefit the Soil

As predicted, the young hogs change their minds and come rustling through the woods toward Hillary and Worth to accept the cucumbers. Their reddish coats match the clay soil, and they sniff and snort as they devour the treats.

A mix of the Tamworth and Duroc breeds, with long heads and efficient snouts ideal for foraging acorns, hickory nuts, black walnuts, earthworms, grubs, and grass (supplemented by local, non-GMO grains), the pigs are integral players on the diversified farm. “The hogs’ [manure] is a real fertility input,” Worth says.

A sow looking after her piglets in a farrowing hut in the pasture. (Photo courtesy of Hillary Kimmel / Pine Trough Branch Farm.)

Because the farm grew tobacco and hay for much of the last century, the soil was worn out and eroded when Worth and Hillary took over. By carefully managing the pigs—as well as the sheep and cows—moving them between pasture and forest paddocks daily or more using portable electric fencing, the couple has slowly rebuilt the soil’s health.

Unlike unmanaged grazing systems, which give animals access to all the land all the time, management-intensive grazing more closely mimics natural systems in which cattle, for example, storm onto a piece of land, eat all the grass, and then move on, returning perhaps once more in the growing season, once the forage has regrown, Hillary says.

Paddock-moving equipment on Pine Trough Branch Farm. (Photo courtesy of Hillary Kimmel / Pine Trough Branch Farm.)

“There are massive benefits to multispecies grazing, for animal health and land productivity,” Worth says. “Cattle, sheep, and hogs graze different strata of the pasture,” eating different levels, amounts, and types of forage, and they each offer specific benefits. “A 1,200-pound cow hoof has a different impact on the pasture than a 60-pound lamb hoof,” Hillary explains, and their manure isn’t the same either. “It’s up to us to try to be quality managers and use their impact to a benefit,” Worth says.

Sheep grazing. (Photo courtesy of Hillary Kimmel / Pine Trough Branch Farm.)

While the animals serve the land and ecosystem, they spend their time engaging in natural behaviors—and they have favorite sleeping spots and daily routines.

Five years of rotating animals over a field that at first had thin, weak soil has transformed it, they say. The soil now holds moisture, and it has “some of the best grass on the farm, for sure,” says Worth.

A Minimalist Ethic

In all they do, Hillary and Worth try to avoid consuming more resources than they need. Right now, they’re standing in a field with the cow herd, the early evening sun casting a glow on the animals’ red and black coats. “One of my guiding philosophies is working with what you have,” Worth says. “Sometimes that’s fixing something out here on the farm with a piece of twine or a stick that I pull out of the woods rather than driving back to the top of the farm to get exactly the right thing.”

He and Hillary live in one of the original structures on the farm, a near-century-old log cabin built as a hunting lodge in the 1920s; all of the farm’s fenceposts come from black locusts, red cedars, and other trees that grew on the property; the pair stockpiles grass from their pastures rather than bringing in hay to supplement the cows’ diets; and rather than maintaining their fence lines with Roundup or some other synthetic herbicides, they spray them with vinegar and keep them mowed.

Inside the century-old log cabin where Hillary and Worth live.

In the minimalist spirit, one of Worth’s first tasks when he took over the farm was build a low-input water system that’s both solar-powered and gravity-fed to distribute water from the well out into the fields for the animals—something he was able to do with the help of an $8,500 grant from the Rural Advancement Foundation International (RAFI).

To create the system, which he designed himself, Worth elevated an empty 1,000-gallon stainless steel milk tank onto a pedestal inside the former corn crib on the highest point of the property. A solar-powered pump fills the tank from the nearby well, and from there, gravity carries it through about 4,000 feet of buried pipe to about 20 different distribution points out in the pastures.

“We’re trying to make use of as much solar energy as possible,” Worth said. “The pasture itself is solar powered; that’s where all the energy for the grass production comes from. We’re taking that one step further with the water system.”

The Kimmels’ outdoor kitchen and corn crib, which houses the low-input water distribution system that Worth designed and built.

AGW’s Emily Moose points to the low-input water system as a sign of Worth and Hillary’s innovation—and forward thinking. “They’re thinking about not just in how to get from this week to next, but how to make sure they’re setting up systems that are going to thrive in a world in which climate change is increasingly impacting agriculture,” she says. “They’re creating a resilient system.”

Sunrise to Sunset

Hillary and Worth work sunrise to sunset nearly every day except, checking on all the animals at least once, moving them between paddocks, feeding them supplemental grains or grasses, managing irrigation when it hasn’t rained, watering seedlings in the propagation house, harvesting vegetables from the gardens and tunnels houses and mushrooms from the logs down by the pond, and working the markets every Saturday. Aside from a part-time helper in the garden, the pair works the farm pretty much by themselves.

They acknowledge they’re in a privileged position in that they own the land they’re farming and have close access to a supportive community. But it sometimes feels exhausting. “It takes all of our time and then some,” Worth says. “There’s almost always something going undone, which can be a little bit mentally taxing when you’re trying to be finished a workday.”

Additionally, the couple live on below-poverty wages, do not have any long-term savings, and rely on the Affordable Care Act for healthcare—“basic things like that that weren’t as big of a deal when we were 25,” Hillary says. “There’s a financial sustainability element we haven’t exactly worked out.”

Nevertheless, they plan to keep going: “We can exist on very low wages,” she says. “We’re only exploiting ourselves.”

Worth and Hillary Kimmel outside the corn crib after a long day of work.

Another difficulty the pair faces is the processing part of raising animals. “We put so much care and effort into raising the animals really well, and the slaughterhouses do a really good job, but it’s out of our control for that short amount of time,” Hillary says. Occasionally, the facilities do not cut the meat exactly like she requests on behalf of certain customers, for example. “For me, it’s one of the most challenging parts of the business.”

Part of the Conversation

Kau, a restaurant, bar, and butcher shop stationed in a former mill in the nearby city of Greensboro, began sourcing meat from PTB after its butcher, Taylor Armstrong, met the Kimmels at the Farmers Market and later took them up on their offer of a farm tour.

He appreciates the thought Hillary and Worth put into the animals’ well-being. “I’ve been cutting meat for 16 years now, and it’s the best pork I’ve ever tasted,” he said. “Happy pigs are important to them, and it’s reflected in the quality.”

He also appreciates the nature of his relationship with Hillary and Worth. “I talk to them on the phone directly when I order, and Worth delivers everything himself,” he says. “It’s as personal as it gets.”

The pair enjoy being a meaningful part of their customers’ diets and spend a lot of time talking with customers about their practices, in addition to offering recipes. “We’re increasing consumer education and being a part of a nuanced conversation about ecological, sustainable, organic farming,” Hillary says.

The mushroom logs at Pine Trough Branch Farm.

Like Armstrong, Greensboro resident Christi Helms first encountered the Kimmels at the weekly market and soon began volunteering out at the farm. As a co-op member, Helms buys most of her meat and veggies through PTB—and gets especially excited when she sees shiitake mushrooms, padrone peppers, and their green salad mix on the table, as well as their pork sausage and ribeye steak.

A big fan of Joel Salatin, Helms says the Kimmels approach farming in a similar way, by creating a continuous cycle of reaping and restoration: “They’re farming basically like he does, rotating the animals on a daily basis and making sure the impact on the land is minimal and the animals are very, very happy,” she says. “They’re an excellent example of the way farming is meant to be.”

As the sun drops lower in the sky, a red steer tagged E1 approaches Hillary and Worth, likely hoping for a treat. “This is a beautiful bovine animal,” Worth observes of the steer, who truly is quite handsome. “He’s not bothered by flies or the temperature. And he’s got quite a sheen to him.”

With their chores complete, the pair jumps in the golf cart to return to the top of the farm, leaving E1 and his companions to continue munching the grass and enriching the soil. They’ll be back tomorrow, to lead them to fresh ground.

Except where noted, all photos © Christina Cooke

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But instead of heading into the halls of Congress in a power suit, Taylor drives into the parking lot of a condo complex near the U.S. Capitol, where she pitches a tent, sets up tables, and unpacks heaps of vegetables. On a recent day, they included orange and purple carrots, dark green cucumbers, heads of green cabbage, green beans, and a milk crate of hardneck garlic. This mid-summer week, she also has baskets of blueberries, red gooseberries, yellow plums, heirloom tomatoes, Presidio rice, and bags of hand-milled flour.

Then she awaits the arrival of 25 of her community supported agriculture (CSA) subscribers, who’ve signed up to retrieve their weekly share from Three Part Harmony, a farm she established three-and-a-half miles from the White House.

Taylor at a CSA pickup site in the city. (Photo by Cassie Chew.)

“I started with six CSA members on my porch, and now we do almost 200 shares, three days, and seven locations,” Taylor says.

Taylor’s efforts have not only led to the first production-focused organic farm and CSA accessible by bus or bike to D.C. residents. They have also led to the passage of legislation encouraging D.C. landowners to give their property over to agricultural purposes, helping make the nation’s capital a more friendly place for urban farms.

The field at Three Part Harmony farm. (Photo © Lise Metzger.)

District Councilmember David Grosso helped Taylor in her policy work. “She set up a model that wasn’t just about community gardens, but more about the expansion of urban farming, to grow quality food closer to the source of consumption,” he said. “It wasn’t about sharing a plot; it was bigger than that.”

Marla Karina Larrave, an advocate for justice in food and farming policy and Three Part Harmony CSA member, says, “She’s definitely the people’s farmer. In terms of farming, you’re talking to the most awesome person in D.C.”

Returning to the Land

Taylor’s venture into farming took root during a self-described “quarter-life crisis.” With a degree in U.S. foreign policy and Latin America, she worked as a human rights advocate before quitting to spend nine months in Guatemala on a project to promote healing among women recovering from the trauma of civil war.

Then, instead of continuing a career path in diplomacy when she returned, Taylor signed up to volunteer at a food co-op. A vegetarian since her teens, she wanted to learn more about food and have enough to eat while she was unemployed. She also began volunteering at an organic farm in rural Maryland.

“I was doing a lot of weeding and transplanting and more weeding,” Taylor said. “I loved it. I was like ‘Oh my gosh, I never have to turn on a computer again.’”

(Photo © Lise Metzger.)

A dozen years later, her passion for farming has become her profession. “My favorite times this year were when I went to the farm on a Saturday afternoon, locked myself in the fence by myself, and worked until the sun went down,” she says.

Corn harvested at Three Part Harmony Farm. (Photo © Lise Metzger.)

With farmers on both sides of her family tree, Taylor’s connection to the land runs deep. But Taylor doesn’t see her pivot into agriculture as unique to her personal family history. Rather, it’s something she shares with many African Americans, who despite family histories of farm life that include exploitation, are rediscovering the land, redefining their role in the profession, and recognizing the power of food production in revitalizing their communities.

“I’m in part of this return generation—young Black farmers who are returning to the land after having skipped a generation,” she says.

But in order for Taylor to make her newfound mission to provide organic fruits and vegetables to her adopted community in D.C. a sustainable operation, Taylor also had to rely on her diplomacy skillset.

The “I Want D.C. to Grow” Campaign

During her years as a farm hand, Taylor rose from volunteer to member of the vegetable crew to co-manager for the farm. In that time, she learned the most successful strategies for growing vegetables in the D.C. region, where warmer temperatures alter the growing season, as well as how to run that farm’s 485-member CSA.

But after five seasons, Taylor grew tired of the 90-minute round-trip commute. With ideas on starting her own organic farm that she could bike to, she found a two-acre plot of unused land owned by the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, a Catholic order of missionaries.

Within D.C.’s 68 square miles, small plots of land then were being cultivated to grow food to donate to low-income residents. There also were gardens set up to teach people how to grow vegetables. “But at that time in 2012, we didn’t have a farm in D.C. that was dedicated solely to production,” Taylor says.

While the Oblates supported her mission, their attorney worried that leasing the land for a commercial farm could subject them to a property tax assessment. Passed down to Taylor, the bill could make it hard for her to get a farm up and growing.

“We needed a lower property tax rate on land that was in agricultural use, which actually is a model that people have done all over the country since the ’70s to save family farms,” Taylor says.

(Photo © Lise Metzger.)

While hauling in compost to build up the farm’s soil, Taylor simultaneously worked with Councilmember Grosso, students at a pro bono legal clinic, and food and farming advocates on “I Want D.C. to Grow,” a policy campaign designed to support her own goal as well as others interested in farming in the city.

Their efforts led to the passage of the D.C. Urban Farming and Food Security Act, which allows a 90 percent reduction in property taxes to owners of vacant lots who create partnerships with independent urban farmers. Known locally as the “D.C. Farm Bill,” the legislation allows property owners who are exempt from taxation to pass the exemption to the farmer. It also allows would-be growers to submit proposals for leases to cultivate unused public land.

When the D.C. Farm Bill took effect in April 2015, Three Part Harmony became the first farm to benefit. Now, the policy is poised to clear a path for more urban farming in D.C. In 2020, the city’s tax and revenue department will implement the abatement procedures for property owners, says Ona Balkus, food policy director at the D.C. Office of Planning. Balkus is excited about the potential more production farms on unused city property, and even on rooftops.

“Once the urban farming tax abatement goes into effect, private properties will be eligible for the tax credit if they lease their land or their rooftops to urban farms,” Balkus says. “Given the high price of land in D.C., rooftop farms on new real estate developments are a promising way to bring more fresh food to District residents.”

A year after requesting proposals, the city is expected to finalize five-year lease deals with two applicants this fall. Jeremy Brosowsky, who since 2010 has run a business that provides compost to urban farms, is one of those applicants. He credits the “I Want D.C. to Grow” campaign for making his idea possible.

“If this program didn’t exist, the farm couldn’t exist,” Brosowsky said. “Gail is an important advocate for the community and a talented and relentless urban farmer.”

Organic Production in the City

During the years she spent working on the D.C. Farm Bill, Taylor couldn’t sell any of the vegetables she was growing on the Oblates’ property. To earn start-up money, she built a greenhouse in her backyard and began supplying starter plants to local hardware stores and neighbors operating community gardens. She also launched a small, porch-style CSA, which she ran by growing vegetables in her backyard and in the backyards of friends and neighbors.

Taylor watering plants the first year she did a backyard CSA by riding her bike around to three different plots each week. (Photo by Helina Chen.)

Heading into its eighth season, Three Part Harmony offers pesticide-free vegetables, herbs, and cut flowers. Designed as an “edible landscape,” the cultivated rows on the farm’s two-acre plot feature three-foot walkways to allow visitors to “get up close with their food.” Taylor’s technique also includes the companion planting of crops that enhance each other’s growth. She might plant a row of bunching onions and come in three weeks later with romaine lettuce.

“We’re constantly putting in things that can share space together,” Taylor says.

To add nutrients and organics to the soil and allow it to rest between plantings, Taylor also plants a third of the farm with oats, rye, and crimson clover as cover crops, or “green manure.”

A Group Effort

Three Part Harmony takes its name from her father’s often-repeated description of the collaborations her family of musicians created together. Its organic growth is due to efforts of the community of friends and neighbors Taylor has cultivated who come together and do their part, she says.

In addition to volunteers who help with the harvest, some CSA members donate their front porches to Taylor to help with distribution.

Gail Taylor and a helper work on the farm. (Photo © Lise Metzger.)

They also help build the farm’s online presence and offer professional bodywork to help Taylor and her two part-time farm hands recover after long days of planting and harvesting. A family member created the farm’s logo, which pays homage to the Monarch butterfly and Taylor’s family’s path during the Great Migration.

Taylor has enlisted nearby orchards and farms run by women and farmers of color to add variety—products like fruit, cheese, honey, rice, herbal items, and eggs—to her weekly CSA menu.

“Two years ago, when we went from under 100 members to over 100, my staff and I went around to all of those farms and said, ‘We want to scale up. This is what we need,’” recalls Taylor.  “That was the first time [other farms] started setting aside some of their acreage and growing just for us.”

One of those growers is Gale Livingstone, a former government IT contractor, who met Taylor at a conference for new farmers. They bonded over the novelty of being young African American women launching production farms. Livingstone began providing organic eggs and vegetables for Taylor’s CSA.

This season Livingstone has relocated to a three-acre plot of land closer to D.C. “My long-term plan is that I’m trying to buy some land in Maryland—a much larger piece of land—so that I can incorporate animals into my operation,” Livingstone says. “I’m hoping to have Gail become an integral part of that—she’s super-organized and is great at managing people, which is one of the areas that I tend to need help with.”

A Deeper Connection

In addition to scaling up her CSA, Three Part Harmony has also donated food to soup kitchens and food pantries. Through her efforts at the farm and within the community, Taylor aims to build an operation that disrupts the historical racism and oppression upon which food systems have been operated, provide alternatives to corporate-based food production, and meet the community’s needs on a deeper level.

(Photo by Cassie Chew.)

As residents within cities like D.C. seek greater food options and policy makers look to urban farming and community supported agriculture to solve challenges such as malnutrition, health disparities, and disinvestment in urban communities, Taylor’s work can serve as a model of urban farming that’s innovative and member-driven.

“People are going out of their way to support this CSA. They’re not saying, ‘I paid this much and this is what I’m getting out of it,’” Taylor says. “A lot of people are saying ‘I paid this much money, and I’m supporting these Black women farmers.’ We’re two right now, but maybe one day there will be more.”

Top photo © Lise Metzger.

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The couple’s reach spans from launching a thriving organic farmers’ market to teaching organic certification and training certifiers in a dozen countries including Japan, Russia, Jamaica, and Iran. In recognition of their varied and impressive work, they earned the 2019 Farmers of the Year award from Midwest Organic and Sustainable Education Service (MOSES).

“This award is an opportunity for the organic community to recognize farmers who exemplify the best in organic agriculture: outstanding land stewardship, support of biodiversity and innovation on their farm, and a willingness to share everything that they’ve learned with other farmers,” explains Lauren Langworthy, interim executive director at MOSES. “They’ve helped grow the knowledge of so many farmers working in this sphere and championed many issues to positively impact organic family farms.”

Riddle and Ford’s farm is on a five-acre parcel of a cooperatively owned 360-acre property that lies just west of the Mississippi River in the verdant hills of the Driftless Region. Organic since 1975, the perennial fruit farm bears blueberries, elderberries, cherry plums, black currants, aronia berries, honeyberries, juneberries, and plums—all grown through practices that prioritize soil health.

“A philosophy of ours is, ‘We grow health,’” says Riddle. “I mean that with the type of foods we grow, but also that we keep the land healthy. We protect water quality, we’re enhancing biological diversity, [and] we’re helping create healthy, vibrant living soils.”

After all, he adds, “Healthy soil leads to healthy plants, to healthy animals, to healthy people, [and] to a healthy planet.”

Pioneering Organic Standards

Riddle grew up in Iowa, where he enjoyed a large family garden. His mother, the lead gardener, never sprayed chemicals and always followed the advice from her mail-order organic gardening magazines. Ford grew up in Florida away from farming; her awakening came in college when she discovered the back-to-the-land movement. In pursuit of property to farm on, she landed in southeast Minnesota, where she met Riddle.

The two were married at Wiscoy Valley Community Land Cooperative, where they’ve been residents and members for nearly 40 years. The cooperative started with just a handful of people a few years before Riddle and Ford arrived in the area. Today, it consists of 20 adults and their families. The group reaches decisions about the land through consensus, but individuals and families independently manage household decisions. The group holds weekly meetings, because as Riddle says, consensus requires a lot of communication.

Jim Riddle during a 2018 tour for Extension agents. (Photo courtesy of Blue Fruit Farm)

The couple first farmed annual crops here under the name Wiscoy Organic Produce. In the mid-80’s, they worked together with other local farmers to start the Winona farmers’ market. From the start, the market required vendors to grow or make their products within a 50-mile radius of Winona. It was slow going at first, but the couple cheerfully reports that the market is now the place to be on Saturdays in Winona.

By the ’90s, Riddle and Ford were struck by the lack of national oversight and standardization when it came to organic practices. In response, they formed the International Organic Inspectors Association (IOIA), which they led through its first eight years from the comforts of their own home. During this time, they moved away from farming to focus on their work in organic inspection and inspection training.

“We had entered a wide-open niche where no one else was doing this work and there was a huge need,” Riddle says. “We just kept getting requests from all over the world.”

In 1997, Riddle helped to revise the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)’s first proposed National Organics Standards, which are still in use today. In 1998, he played a central role in getting the state of Minnesota to adopt an organic certification cost-share program to lower the cost of certification. In 2002, the program was nationally adopted with its inclusion in the farm bill.

Ford was also the first organic inspector to work with organic farms in the paths of oil pipeline development, helping to define policies designed to protect the organic integrity of farms facing those circumstance.

Riddle sees real organic farming practices as vital to protecting water quality, sequestering carbon in the soil, enhancing biological and genetic diversity, and protecting animal health and welfare, and he is concerned by the USDA’s oversight of the label. Currently, the agency is allowing huge dairy and poultry factory farms to be certified organic as well as hydroponic operations that grow plants in containers of nutrient solutions rather than soil, he says, and they are not stopping imported conventional grains from being sold under the organic label.

“These actions by USDA undermine the integrity of, and consumer confidence in, the organic label, at a time when we need to greatly expand the use of real organic practices to protect human and planetary health,” he says.

He hopes that in its next Farm Bill, the U.S. will invest in real organic production systems by creating a national organic transition support program that offers financial and technical assistance to help farmers, including new, beginning, and socially disadvantaged farmers, convert to organic production.

And, he sees hope for the organic movement in young people: “I am heartened when we host young children at our farm and we help open their minds to the values of connecting with nature and eating healthy foods” he says. “I am also heartened by the number of young people who are interested in producing food in harmony with the earth… by the growth of farmers markets in small towns and big cities, [and]… by the work of the Real Organic Project, the Organic Farmers Association, and the National Organic Coalition, to protect organic integrity.”

A Focus on Fruit

In 2009, the pair found themselves in a position to apply what they learned from farmers around the world when a five-acre, deer-fenced portion of their communal property became available to farm. “After considering what else was being grown locally and climate change issues, I said—let’s grow blueberries,” Ford says.

Jim Riddle offers information and blueberries during a tour of Blue Fruit Farm. (Photo by Craig Johnson, courtesy of the Winona Daily News)

Riddle’s initial response was that blueberries prefer more acidic soils. To solve the soil problem, the pair thought organically. They began planting with a combination of peat moss and high-quality compost topped with elemental sulfur, both of which work to acidify the soils. “You continually do that, but you adjust how much you need based on your soil test results,” Riddle says.

They decided to grow blueberries alongside other berries that are adapted to their soil type. In 2010, they started their three-year planting plan and now grow blueberries, aronia berries, honeyberries, juneberries, elderberries, and plums.

With organic farming, Ford explains, “You have to be a problem solver. There are always solutions to problems.”

Riddle quickly let go of his early resistance to blueberries: “I like to say that blueberries are hard to grow, but they sell themselves. These other things are easy to grow, but we have to sell them,” he says. “The fruits we grow are fairly unusual; we’re still introducing people to them. We’re actually building community around these unusual fruits.”

Creating Ecological Diversity

In addition to cultivating native prairie directly adjacent to their fruit, Ford and Riddle grow plants like hyssop and clover between plum trees to provide pollinator food and habitat. “We’ve got something blooming here until frost,” says Riddle.

Prairie Moon Nursery also calls the Wiscoy Cooperative property home. They currently manage 40 acres of restored prairie within the community, directly adjacent to the farm. The prairie provides pollinator habitat and a natural extension to the farm’s healthy soils and clean water. In the fall, the farmers earn extra income harvesting native seeds for the nursery.

“Diversity is key to being successful,” Ford says.

As a property that’s been farmed organically for nearly 50 years, the farm has enjoyed a long reprieve from synthetic fertilizer or pesticide applications, and perennial production allows the soil to build complex bacterial and fungal structures that bolster disease and pest resistance. In contrast, the farmers say, conventional agriculture that relies on tilling degrades soil communities, is energy intensive, and reduces soil’s capacity to absorb water.

Riddle points out a cistern that collects rain from the barn roof and provides enough water to irrigate their five acres. The blueberries require the most irrigation; the other plants often require none at all. The ability of locally-adapted perennials to source their own water underscores reasoning behind the couple’s choice of crops in the face of climate change. The diversity in the fruiting rotation also allows for resilience. If one crop gets hit hard by a weather event, another that fruits earlier or later is likely to avoid the brunt of the blow and can compensate for losses elsewhere.

Combating Pests with Researched Approaches

Despite these farming practices, a few pests persist. To dissuade fruit-eating birds (most notably cedar waxwings), the farmers discovered early that they needed to cover their acreage with netting. They also operate a sound system intended to scare off birds. In addition, they employ a deer fence surrounded by an electric raccoon fence.

Jim Riddle hosting 50 YMCA campers ages 3-8. (Photo courtesy of Blue Fruit Farm)

Both farmers strongly endorse talking to neighbors to share knowledge, talking to other farmers and experts, and familiarizing yourself with the research that’s already out there. When a family of badgers took up residence in the barn, for example, they invited “Ranger Ed” from the Fish and Wildlife Service over to have a look. He suggested they try a radio. Once Riddle and Ford began playing NPR, the badgers left and haven’t been back.

Ford emphasizes that the best pest management practices come from knowing as much as you can about all the stages of a pest’s lifecycle and interrupting those stages in as many places as possible.

Preparing for a Transition

The couple is currently in the process of readying themselves and their community for a big change. They have plans to spend more time with their daughters’ growing families in Minneapolis and New Hampshire, and will soon be passing Blue Fruit Farm into the hands of Katie Lange, a Winona native who has worked on the farm for the past two years. Lange, whose commitment to her work reflects her investment in the farm’s philosophy and practice, is eager to take on the challenge.

While Riddle is wistful about the change, the community that they’ve helped nurture sees it as a continuation of their work.

In this effort, as with the rest, says Lauren Langworthy of MOSES, “Jim and Joyce have created a welcoming environment for making the dreams of sustainable farming futures a reality.”

Top photo: Jim Riddle, Joyce Ford, and Katie Lange. (Photo courtesy of Blue Fruit Farm.)

This article was updated to include Jim Riddle’s thoughts on the current and future states of the organic movement and organic standards.

The post The Minnesota Farmers Who Helped Shape Organic Agriculture appeared first on Civil Eats.

Luckily for eaters in the Washington, D.C. area, he chose the latter. Thomet is driven to farm by what he sees as a world in crisis—unbridled consumerism, environmental disasters, mass shootings—all of it related to the same combative approach to existence. Disconnected from nature, humans attempt to solve problems with heavy artillery instead of seeking to understand the root causes of disharmony, he says. Blinded by the pursuit of wealth, they lose sight of their ability to do good.

Observe his work and evidence of that dysfunction disappears. In its place are endless rows of immaculate lettuces, kale, and scallions; lush fields of grain, overwintered onions ready to be harvested, caraway, dill, and peppermint plants sprouting up; and an orchard of kiwi and fig trees.

“I am a person who functions in a pioneer situation,” Thomet says, and his daily response to an era of bleak climate change predictions is simple: Get to work. “What is my place in it all? I will always have a piece of land, and I obviously know how to drive a tractor,” he says. “You need to have models that we can look towards to say, ‘Hey, that can work.’”

Next Step Produce, which Thomet runs with his wife, Gabrielle Lajoie, is a compelling model. For close to 20 years, the couple has been at the forefront of sustainable farming in southern Maryland, growing staples including grains to diversify the local food economy and building soil health with regenerative practices.

Farming Step by Step

Thomet grew up on a farm in Switzerland and arrived in the U.S. as a young man, by way of New York City. “My first thought was to get the hell out of there,” he says, and he hit the Appalachian Trail. Later, he worked at Caretaker Farm in Massachusetts and then at the famed biodynamic Hawthorne Valley Farm in upstate New York.

In 2000, he started farming on an 86-acre parcel of land about 50 miles south of Washington, D.C, in Newburg, Maryland. After he married Lajoie, she became a crucial partner on the farm, and they laid out what would be Next Step Produce’s enduring philosophy: commitment to growing nourishing food in harmony with nature.

Over the years, Thomet became a well-known player in D.C.’s local food movement. Many know his wild salt-and-pepper beard, Swiss accent, and intensity from the many years he was a fixture at the Dupont farmers’ market.

Next Step now has a small direct-to-consumer business but primarily sells to restaurants and small-batch food brands. In Baltimore, the farm’s vegetables and grains are featured on the menus at Woodberry Kitchen and Artifact Coffee. Keepwell, based in Pennsylvania, uses Thomet’s bitter lemons to make vinegar. And his grains are baked into plentiful loaves at Seylou, often referred to as D.C.’s best bakery.

“We both love what we do. He loves farming; I love baking with local whole grains,” said Seylou co-owner and head baker Jonathan Bethony. “I’m just trying to use the beautiful products that he has grown and to keep that chain of integrity alive.”

A Spiritual-Scientific Approach to Farming

Next Step is a certified organic farm, but that’s not where it ends. Thomet is a prolific reader and has tapped various agricultural and spiritual philosophies to hone his approach. The farm isn’t certified biodynamic, but he uses some biodynamic practices and believes in many principles of anthroposophy, the spiritual philosophy developed by the founder of biodynamic farming, Rudolf Steiner.

At the base of all of Thomet’s thinking is a central tenet: If something goes wrong on the farm, it’s because some element is out of balance. For example, he uses some of the protocols sold by farm consultant company Advancing Eco Agriculture, which promotes the idea that pest problems are caused by trace element deficiencies in soil. In other words, if minerals and other nutrients in the soil are balanced properly, plants are resilient and insects and diseases don’t go after them.

“The first question should be: ‘How do you create a healthy plant?’” he says, as opposed to simply attacking whatever is causing the problem.

Of course, nature is unpredictable, and that doesn’t always work perfectly. Two years ago, Thomet had a heavy infestation of aphids on his sorghum. Still, he approached the issue with the intent to save the plants, not kill the pest. “We sprayed potassium silicate to strengthen the cell wall,” he recalls. Doing so “strengthened the plant and pushed the aphids back.”

Russell Trimmer, a farmer-turned-baker, worked at Next Step alongside Thomet and Lajoie for about three years. “He pulls from a really broad base of knowledge, and that open-mindedness and willingness to experiment and decide for himself in a very scientific way has been huge,” Trimmer says. “Of course, that only gets you so far, unless you have a really crazy work ethic to follow through.”

Trimmer says that Next Step’s operations were notably efficient, so that work that would have taken an entire season to complete at another farm could be completed in a week. But he was initially drawn to the job by a simpler promise: communal vegan farm lunches. While other farms feed their workers PB&J on the go, Lajoie cooks farm fresh vegan meals and workers sit down with the family (which now includes three teenage daughters—Mikayla, Raphaelle, and Hazel), offer thanks for the food, and eat together.

The vegan ethic also extends beyond the table. The only domesticated animals on the farm are three happy dogs and a few chickens. (“They’re pets!” Thomet says, matter-of-factly.) Instead of manure, plentiful compost is made from hay, straw, and leaves and amended with minerals and trace elements. Through a system of compost application, crop rotations, cover crops, and mineral balancing, Thomet has slowly regenerated the soil on the farm, which was once depleted by years of extractive, conventional tobacco farming.

So far, he says he’s increased organic matter in the soil by about 1 percent, an accomplishment that can take decades. In addition to growing nourishing food, he sees building healthy soil that can sequester carbon as one of the essential tasks of the modern farmer.

Building a Local Food System to Feed a Region

Thomet also thinks deeply about his role in the regional food system in relation to what other farms are producing—or not producing. For instance, in his area, there are many small farms growing vegetables but very few producing grains or sweeteners.

Noting rising demand for local grains, he started planting them in 2010 and attracted the most attention for growing rice, a crop that hasn’t been commercially grown in the Chesapeake region for more than a century. If others are currently growing it in Maryland and Virginia, it’s not enough to even register on the most recent USDA Agricultural Census. Thomet is also using a system called System of Rice Intensification (SRI). Instead of using flooded paddies, SRI involves keeping soil moist and amending it with compost and other nutrients. This requires less seed and water and reduces methane emissions, which result from bacteria that thrive in flooded fields.

In addition to rice, Next Step’s grain rotations now include barley, buckwheat, millet, oats, rye, and various wheats.  The operation eventually inspired Trimmer to start baking.

“The grains that we were growing and milling… it was pretty special,” he said, “and I saw that even Heinz really had to hustle in order to sell these things … that no one at the market knew what to do with it, how to bake with the whole grains.”

Trimmer went on to bake with local grains at Sub Rosa Bakery in Richmond, Virginia. He then ran the bread baking program at Woodberry Kitchen, where he used Next Step’s grains. Now, he’s buying grains from Thomet for his own bakery, Motzi Bread, also in Baltimore, which is currently operating on a membership model and will open a brick-and-mortar shop later this year.

Putting Hope in the Ground

D.C.’s Seylou also owes part of its origin story to Thomet. Co-owner Bethony says that when he was trying to decide on a location for his bakery, he considered New York, Colorado, and Washington State, but decided to set up in D.C. out of a desire to work with Thomet, who he considers a kindred spirit. “He cares about healing the land and healing bodies with nutritious foods. That’s his first priority,” Bethony says.

Today, the two have a close, working relationship. After realizing that a healthy farm system requires multiple crop rotations, Bethony adjusted his baking to work with less common grains such as millet, buckwheat, and rye. He now bases his recipes on whatever Thomet grows at a given time, and Thomet experiments with growing new grains on his behalf, too. The result is a Seylou menu that includes options like gluten-free bread made with pearl millet or German-style bread made with whole wheat, rye, and buckwheat.

“We do our best to make it delicious and accessible, but it’s something much deeper than just business or showing off,” Bethony says. “It’s about keeping the money here in the region and helping farmers like Heinz to survive. If more bakers and restaurateurs don’t start thinking like this, these guys will go away.”

In fact, while Thomet is the farmer, he comes back over and over to the impact that buyers and eaters have on the food system. Unlike at a factory, “We take something very little, put a bunch of hope in it by putting it in the ground… and we are able to produce genuine wealth with sunlight, air, and soil,” he says. “But we farmers are about 1 percent of the U.S. population, and out of that, about 1 percent is organic.”

In order for farms like his to survive and for other farmers to follow in his footsteps, he says, consumers need to show up at farmers’ markets, ask questions about carbon sequestration and regenerative practices, and use their resources to support food that supports healthy bodies and a healthier planet.

“The questions are ‘What are people for?’ and ‘What future do you want?’ and ‘What are you actively doing to make it happen?’”

All photos © Lisa Held.

The post A Maryland Grain Grower Takes Regenerative Agriculture to the Next Step appeared first on Civil Eats.

One of the farmers the company signed up with is Rick Clark, a fifth-generation farmer in Warren County, Indiana, located in the west-central part of the state, between the Wabash River and the Illinois state line. Clark’s family has lived on the farm since the 1880s, and today the farm encompasses 7,000 acres.

While Clark produces non-GMO corn and alfalfa for Dannon, as well as profitable cash crops, including non-GMO soybeans for a Cargill facility in Lafayette, Indiana, he does much more than that: he has also developed a unique system for building soil health. Across his property, Clark uses regenerative practices including diverse crop rotations, no-till methods, and cover cropping, and he is striving toward the tough task of combining no-till practices with organic certification.

Clark is one of a small but growing number of farmers who are adopting regenerative agricultural practices to build soil health. (Others include Gabe Brown in North Dakota and David Brandt in Ohio, who were featured in David Montgomery’s book about regenerative agriculture, Growing a Revolution.) His farm offers a practical, proven example of how regenerative farming methods can transform agriculture.

Rick Clark roller crimps fixation clover, crimson clover, oats, radish, and peas. He will plant corn right after this process.

“Diversification drives the system,” he says. “I care deeply about building soil health and will sacrifice yield to maintain soil health.”

Big brands and organizations are paying attention. In 2017, Clark was honored as Dannon’s Sustainable Farmer of the Year. More recently, Land O’ Lakes honored him with an Outstanding Sustainability Award, and he was also a regional winner of the American Soybean Association’s Conservation Legacy Award.

Greg Downing, an agronomist with Cisco Farm Seed, who has worked with Clark for several years, calls Clark’s commitment to soil health “150 percent.” “I think Rick saw early on that building soil health was simple: that when you have something growing all the time and are doing crop rotations, you are doing good things to the soil,” Downing says. “You are going to regenerate a lot of life, biology, as well as minerals.”

According to Downing, a key to Clark’s success is his willingness to experiment and find the best ways of doing things. “There are no barriers for Rick,” he says. “There is no textbook saying you should do this and shouldn’t do that. For him, there’s always better, there’s always more, and finding out how to do more. He’s an experimenter with capital ‘E.’ When you talk about the phrase ‘thinking outside the box,’ well, I don’t really think Rick has ever been in a box.”

Because of his success, Clark’s farm was also chosen, along with 15 other farms in the U.S., as research subjects for soil health experts as part of Danone North America’s $6 million soil health research project. The project aims to identify ways to regenerate soils and provide training in soil health best practices to farmers.

Tina Owens, senior director of agriculture at Danone North America, cites Clark as one of the project’s “shining examples.” “This is real on-the-ground change we are talking about, and we have seen first-hand that Rick exemplifies that level of change,” Owens says. “When we talk to other farmers and other growers in our network, we refer to Rick as an example of the right things to do.”

Clark is happy to share his knowledge of regenerative agriculture with other farmers. He is often asked to speak at conferences and presented at the National No-Till Conference this past January in Indianapolis. As soil health gains traction among farmers nationwide, Clark is confident that others can succeed as he has. “I’m just a farmer in Indiana,” he says, “and if other farmers have a plan and care about building soil health, they can achieve these things, too.”

Soil-Friendly Practices, Like ‘Farming Green’

Clark says he learned soil health practices from a neighbor. “We conversed about what he was doing, and when I had the opportunity to have total control of the farm [in 2010], we switched everything to no-till and cover crops,” he says.

Additionally, Clark has planted all non-GMO crops since 2014, when a nearby dairy asked him to grow non-GMO corn for feed, resulting in his partnership with Dannon. Non-GMO seed is cheaper and yields as much as GMO seed, Clark says. (Because conventional row crop agriculture is so dominated by genetically modified seed, there is very little research into the benefits of growing non-GMO seed.) Beyond the economic incentives, Clark says, “I just prefer to not plant GMO seed, and I want to have a symbiotic relationship with Mother Nature.”

Clark has also put in place a number of practices aimed at increasing soil health, which he defines simply as “decreasing inputs and increasing yield.” “If your inputs are going down, and your yields are going up, how can you not be building soil health?” he says. “That is exactly what this farm is doing.”

First, he rotates his crops. In addition to adding nutrients such as nitrogen to the soil, crop rotation interrupts pest and disease cycles, reducing weeds, insects, and the need for chemical pesticides. One-third of Clark’s farm is in a three-year rotation with corn, soybeans, and wheat. Another third is in a four-year crop rotation—corn, soybeans, wheat, and alfalfa—for a dairy that produces milk for Dannon. And the final third is in transition to organic.

Secondly, Clark practices no-till farming. By not plowing, which disturbs the soil, the farming method reduces soil erosion and sequesters carbon, which mitigates climate change. He has practiced no-till farming with corn for 10 years and soybeans for 15 years.

And finally, Clark has planted diverse “cocktails” of cover crops for the last 10 years. Each fall before the next spring’s planting, he plants a mixture he calls “gunslinger” on his corn fields. The mix includes five crops that each performs a necessary function for soil health: Haywire forage oats build biomass to protect the soil; sorghum sudangrass promotes the growth of beneficial mycorrhizal fungi; tillage radish helps break up compacted soil; and Austrian winter peas and balansa clover add nitrogen, an essential nutrient. On his soybean fields, he plants cover crops such as cereal rye in the fall before planting soybeans the next spring.

A field of cover crops including a mix of oats, radish, peas, fixation clover, and sorghum sudangrass.

As with his main cash crops, Clark emphasizes the importance of cover crop diversity. “I’m going to put out as many things as I possibly can in that cocktail for diversification. “We can fall into a trap of a monoculture in cover crops just like we can fall into a trap of monoculture in cash crops.”

He plants corn and soybeans directly into the cover crops in the spring, a practice he calls “farming green.” “We will not plant our corn or soybean crops unless it is into green growing cover crops,” he says.

He has realized many benefits from farming green. Planting cover crops has helped build organic matter and improve soil health, which has increase crop yields. “We’re extremely profitable,” Clark says of his farm. The practice has also improved water infiltration, because rain penetrates into the soil instead of running off, and it has created a protective “armor” for the soil by adding nitrogen, preventing erosion, and smothering and out competing weeds.

Corn planted directly into Clark’s cereal rye cover crop in the spring.

Since he began farming green, Clark has dramatically decreased the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. “We use no seed treatments, no insecticides, and no fungicides,” he says. “We are to the point where we have nearly eliminated synthetic fertilizers. We only use a little nitrogen on our non-GMO crops. So our cost of production is extremely low.”

Transition to Organic

After reducing chemical inputs, the next logical step would be to grow organic, and Clark is doing that for the challenge. “I also want to continue to make the farm better for the next generation,” he says.

He is transitioning 2,000 acres and will have 400 acres certified organic this month. He plans to grow organic corn using his system of cover crops and no-till.

Clark admits that practicing no-till in organic is a challenge. Few organic farmers practice no-till farming; many continue to plow their fields to eliminate weeds. “Some people think [no-till organic] sounds crazy, but that’s normal for me,” Clark says. “If I can get this figured out, it should be a pretty big deal.”

Many farmers who convert to organic face challenges selling their transitional crops, but Clark has an advantage: “I can use alfalfa as my transition acres,” he says. “It is easy to grow, and I can sell it to the dairy.”

Clark is confident he can produce strong yields of organic corn this year, his first producing a certified organic crop. “At $10 a bushel [paid for organic corn], that is quite a return on your investment,” he says. Conventional corn currently earns around $4.23 per bushel.

Regenerative, Not Sustainable, Agriculture

Regenerative agriculture, with its focus on soil health, is a major trend, and Clark is on the leading edge. But he doesn’t use the word “sustainable” to describe his practices. “That means staying the same,” he says. “I prefer the word ‘regenerative,’ and I have a systematic approach to regenerative farming.”

Clark holding a tillage radish cover crop.

Regenerative agriculture is about creating balance, he explains. “The fungus-to-bacteria ratio is getting in balance. Predator-to-prey insects [are] getting in balance. That is why I don’t need to use insecticides,” he says. “I don’t have the imbalance of corn rootworm eating my roots—I have the predator that preys on corn rootworm in my system.”

With the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization recently warning that more than 90 percent of the earth’s soils could be degraded by 2050, there is an urgent need for the soil-building practices of Rick Clark and like-minded farmers.

“We have got to figure out a way to stop this erosion and losing our topsoil, because it’s not coming back,” Clark said. “I hope that I can build a system that can be adopted across different regions. I’m not trying say my system is better than anyone else’s; I’m just saying that the system I’m working on is working for me and my farm, and I think it could work for other farms. We can all make a difference for being good stewards of the land, building soil health, and being conservationists.”

A version of this article appeared in The Organic & Non-GMO Report.

Top photo: Rick Clark standing in his field of crimson and balansa clover cover crops. (All photos courtesy of Rick Clark.)

The post Regenerating the Soil Transformed this Indiana Farm appeared first on Civil Eats.

The nine-cuerda (slightly over 8.5-acre) farm is perched on the top on the Monte Carlo neighborhood of the island. Scattered in between fruit and nut trees, beehives, and fallow land, Pérez Quintero and Jorge Cora grow organic vegetables on around 40 beds, laid out over two sides of a gently sloping hill.

The view of the Caribbean Sea from the top of Finca Conciencia. (Photo © Sarah Sax)

Home to roughly 10,000 residents, Vieques has no major, commercial source of locally grown produce, so Finca Conciencia is trying to fill that gap and build a food sovereignty movement on the island. In addition to growing vegetables, they do that by keeping bees, giving workshops, saving seeds, and holding community kitchen events through a collective they formed in 2015 called La Colmena Cimarrona—the Maroon Beehive—a name that hints at their unique strain of runaway bees, their politics, and their own histories.

“If we can produce more ourselves and become more food sovereign, maybe that can lead to an awakening in the political sphere in Puerto Rico—and even more so in Vieques,” Pérez Quintero explains.

The half-dozen rustic buildings at various stages of disrepair, lined strategically at the highest point of the farm to catch the view of the Caribbean Sea in the distance, are a reminder of the devastating impact Hurricane Maria had when it tore through the island in 2017. While the farm is slowly rebuilding, its main focus is on growing vegetables for the farmers’ own consumption and to sell to restaurants on the island.

Most of the vegetables that Finca Conciencia sells are leafy greens. Many of them go to the island’s growing restaurant businesses. (Photo © Sarah Sax)

The 30,000-acre island has long struggled with food access and availability. Puerto Rico, which consistently ranks higher for food insecurity and hunger than most other parts of the U.S., imports roughly 85 percent of its food—that number jumped to 95 percent after Hurricane Maria. Food insecurity on Vieques is compounded even more by an irregular and unreliable ferry service. Earlier this spring, for instance, both cargo ferries to the island were broken, cutting off residents’ access to gas, milk, eggs, and fresh produce.

In addition to food insecurity stemming from its remoteness, Vieques has been battered in many ways over the years. The U.S. Navy used half of the island as a weapons test site for more than six decades before finally ending in 2003, eventually turning that half into a National Wildlife Refuge that is also a Superfund Site. And Hurricane María slammed into Puerto Rico in September 2017, killing 3,000 people and cutting off electricity, gas, food, and supplies for weeks to Vieques.

Jorge tends to lettuce grown under a shade net with beehives in the background. (Photo © Sarah Sax)

“What Jorge and Ana are doing is both unique and necessary,” says Sylvia de Marco, who runs a vegetarian boutique hotel on the island and sources greens and other produce from the farm. “Vieques has so much potential—we can grow year-round—it’s amazing not more people are doing it.”

Raising Produce and Pollinators

Originally from the city of Arroyo, Puerto Rico, Cora has been working with bees since 1996. He came to Vieques to buy queens from his predecessor, Mike Diaz, after Hurricane George destroyed his hives in 1998, and he never went back home. Diaz gave the land to Cora when he retired, marking the start of Finca Conciencia, 12 years ago.

Pérez Quintano, also from Puerto Rico, arrived five years ago to participate in a workshop. Inspired by what Jorge was doing—and the very obvious need for more food sovereignty on the island—she decided to stay as well.

The “agro-api-artisanal farm,” still recovering from the Hurricane María, currently produces around 150 pounds of food per week, mainly green leafy vegetables that it sells to residents, restaurants, and hotels twice a week in the island’s port town of Esperanza. The farmers, and the day laborers who help work the land, consume the rest of their produce.

Jorge Cora working on the beehives. (Photo courtesy of Finca Conciencia)

The farm is part of La Colmena Cimarrona, the larger collective that Pérez Quintano and Cora founded to create agroecology training opportunities, as well as provide administrative and fundraising support for like-minded organizations. In addition to teaching workshops on composting, organic farming, and seed-saving, the collective runs a community kitchen, community gardens, and a group for women working in food security. Its long-term goal is to train enough farmers around the island to eventually have a local farmers’ market.

The collective also runs an apiary, spearheaded by Cora, that raises Puerto Rico’s unique hybrid bees—a hybrid of “killer” African bees and a European strain that is gentle and resilient to many of the parasites that plague European honeybees. “They call them wild, or ‘killer’ bees,” says Pérez Quintero. “But they’re not. It’s the same kind of racist discourse that was used to describe indigenous and enslaved people.”

Cora, who has been developing different hives to keep the smaller, hybrid bees, agrees. “The bees are a hybrid, like us Puerto Ricans. You can’t manage the hybrid bees the same way you do European bees.”

Around 80 percent of the island’s 150,000 bee colonies were wiped out during Hurricane Maria. To save their dozen beehives during the storm, Pérez Quintero and Cora strapped them to pieces of wood and tied them to the sturdiest trees.

Since then, however, the apiculture side of their business has slowed down a bit as they focus their efforts on ramping up vegetable production. But both are adamant that there is no separating bees from agriculture. “We live inside of the bees; they are connected to everything we touch and eat and use,” Cora says. “We can’t live without them.”

‘Banks of Life’ and Seed Saving

I’ve come during the dry season, but even so, because of the winds, low rainfall, high levels of evapotranspiration, and lack of irrigation, farming on Vieques is a challenge.

“There isn’t much to see at the moment,” says Cora. “On the main island, the earth is productive when it rains, but in Vieques it’s harder—the soil is drier, and the rain is less. In reality, the climate here is more like a desert.”

To get around that, Cora developed a type of narrow, long, raised vegetable beds based loosely on traditional farming techniques used by the indigenous Taíno, in which long furrows collect and hold water when it rains. They look similar to double-dug beds used in bio-intensive agriculture, but they are longer and higher. The farm doesn’t adhere strictly to any one system, but is adamant about not using agrochemicals or industrial techniques.

The beds are designed to retain as much water as possible. (Photo © Sarah Sax)

“We call these ‘banks of life,’” says Pérez Quintano. “During the hurricane, for the most part they stayed intact,” even if much of their farm didn’t.

A view of the farm’s double-dug beds. (Photo courtesy of Finca Conciencia)

About half the beds are currently growing leafy greens, eggplants, and peppers, and the other half is going to seed. Pérez Quintero has been dedicating herself to generating seeds that are locally adapted to the conditions in Vieques since she came to the farm five years ago—both to lessen dependence on outside sources and to generate seeds that will flourish in the unique local climate and soil conditions of the islands. For now, the seeds are mainly used on the farm and exchanged at the workshops the farm regularly holds.

In the Wake of Natural Disaster

Recovery from Hurricane Maria was even harder for Vieques than for the rest of Puerto Rico; electricity didn’t fully return there until January 2019, and the hospital still operates some of its services out of trailers.

“We effectively had no health services, no dialysis, [and] no diabetes medication after the hurricane,” remembers Pérez Quintero. “It was a real crisis.”

Despite the damage the farm took from the hurricane, access to fresh food wasn’t as much of an issue. They harvested everything they could and distributed some of the provisions, built a model garden at the Catholic church, and started a women’s group through the collective to work on food security and health issues.

Pérez Quintero and Cora saw Maria as a way to bring awareness to the issue of generating more food security on the island. “That’s what we want to tell the people here,” Cora says. “There are going to be more times where there is no ferry and no food—and they have to be prepared.”

Food Sovereignty as a Political Statement

The land on which Finca Conciencia is built is what is known locally as “rescued land,” or land that belonged to the Navy but was overgrown and not in use. Residents like Cora’s predecessor Mike Diaz came and cleared the land, effectively laying claim to it.

A sign in the reserve below Finca Conciencia reminds visitors that Vieques was used for 60 years for war games by the U.S. Navy. (Click image for a larger version) (Photo © Sarah Sax)

While that land is recognized by the government, it has no clear titles, making it easy for people to claim and sell it. The most lucrative buyers are eyeing land for hotels and vacation homes for one of Vieques’ main industries: tourism. Because the island was inaccessible for so long, development has been slow, making it a paradise for off-the-beaten-track travelers. The surge in wealthy, absentee owners, however, means that prices for land have skyrocketed and buying land for farming has become all but impossible.

For Pérez Quintero and Cora, the history of Vieques ties in with what they are trying to do today with their farm. La Colmena is in the process of setting up a community land trust to claim some of the remaining, unsold land to use for food production.

“Agroecology and agriculture in general is, in its own way, a way to rescue Vieques from the gentrification, land speculation, and displacement that we are seeing,” Pérez Quintero explains. “We have a lot of absentee owners—we need more people that are actually here in order to change things.”

Finca Conciencia and its associated collective hopes that its work will advance social, economic, and environmental justice and sensitize people to the issue of food—and political—sovereignty.

One of the anecdotes Pérez Quintero likes to tell is from just after the hurricane. The farm had started a soup kitchen using radishes and arugula, ingredients that produce rapidly, “things that before the hurricane people would have potentially found gross,” she says. After eating canned food for weeks and seeing little aid and help from elsewhere, one of the men on the island turned to her and said, “Look, I’m not actively fighting for independence right now, but I think we need more of it.”

That seems to be the essential mantra of the farm: To free ourselves, we have to feed ourselves.

“It’s not an easy way to make a living,” Cora concedes, sitting and watching the Caribbean Sea break on white sand beaches in the distance. “But someone had to show that it could be done. And we’ve done that—aquí estamos—we are showing that it is possible. And that’s not nothing.”

The post Finca Conciencia Is Building Food Sovereignty on Vieques Island appeared first on Civil Eats.

Julie Ramon-Pierson, president of the San Xavier Co-op board, grew up hearing stories about her grandparents and great-grandparents cooking traditional O’odham foods such as tepary beans, squash, and corn, and she remembers seeing her mother harvest and clean the native beans. She hopes the co-op will help resurrect narratives like the ones she was raised with.

“The primary goal of the co-op is to create economic development in the community, re-educate people about traditional foods so they can prepare them at home to adopt a healthier lifestyle, and preserve O’odham values, like respect of land, plants, animals, and elders,” she says.

The Tohono O’odham Nation spans 4,460 square miles in Southern Arizona and includes 28,000 enrolled tribal members. The land is divided into 11 districts, and the San Xavier District is home to about 2,300 members. Founded in the early 1970s, the co-op leases farmland from the landowners, called allottees, and about 90 percent of its 25 to 28 employees are O’odham tribe members, according to Gabriel Vega, the co-op’s farm manager since 2018.

The welcome sign outside the entrance reflects this agricultural history; it’s a shield painted with a traditional planting stick and feathers representing a blessing. In the center is a sprouting seed, considered “new life,” and the four parts represent seasons containing the cycle of the sun, rain, moon, and wildlife. (Photo by Rudri Patel)

While the co-op grows alfalfa as its primary money-maker, other parts of the property are home to orange, plum, and apple orchards; an assortment of vegetable crops; and native foods such as tepary, pima lima, black, and white beans, wild mesquite trees, and pima wheat.

In addition to growing and selling crops, the co-op hosts blessing and spiritual ceremonies and provides educational opportunities for the tribal community. In early March, for example, it hosted a cooking and culture workshop for women tribe members.

Jacelle Ramon-Sauberan, a doctoral student at the University of Arizona, is focusing her dissertation research on water and land rights, as well as the impact of the San Xavier Co-op. She sees the co-op’s impact as three-fold: “It keeps traditional ecological knowledge alive, assists with food sovereignty, and allows the community to know its history,” she says.

There is a real effort, says Ramon-Sauberan, to keep doors open and educate people. If a member of the O’odham community wants to learn how to cultivate a certain food, she says, the co-op creates a teaching space to achieve this goal. More importantly, this attitude helps foster a “communal spirit among the members” that extends beyond the organization.

Bringing the Water Back

Though the O’odham has built an agricultural history in the Sonoran Desert over the course of thousands of years—one that recently helped earn Tucson the honor of becoming the first U.S. city designated a UNESCO Creative City of Gastronomy—the tribe’s farming legacy has been threatened in recent decades by a conflict over the desert city’s limited water supply.

Traditionally, the O’odham people structured their fields to channel water into planting areas, using the Santa Cruz River as the main source. When Tucson began to develop, however, its water demands drained the aquifers from the area, and by 1950, Vega says, “much of the agriculture ceased.”

San Xavier farm manager Gabriel Vega. (Photo by Rudri Patel)

When the farm formed in 1971, it fought to reclaim tribal water rights and reintroduce farming practices that had been halted during the dry years. In 1975, the San Xavier District sued the City of Tucson over water rights. Ten years later, the Southern Arizona Water Rights Settlement Act granted an allotment of 56,000 acre-feet of water yearly from the Central Arizona Project—enough to sustain roughly 900 acres of land.

“Water to this community is a sacred element,” Vega says. “To have a running flow of water is fulfilling the prayers of the O’odham people.”

During the period when water supplies were nonexistent, the connection between the land and its people diminished, according to Vega. “Wells went dry [and] farming decreased,” which led to the loss of agriculture and tradition, and a rise in diet-related diseases like diabetes.

When water returned, it opened the door to reintroduce native foods, a healthier way of living, and a pathway to reconnect to the land. And that’s where San Xavier comes in.

Even with the busy undercurrent of activity, the farm is a tranquil space where a palpable sense of peace permeates the air. This isn’t accidental, according to Vega. “Many of the O’odham elders wanted this area to return to an agricultural community,” he says.

Sustaining Tradition by Saving Seeds and Cultivating Wild Plants

Although the water has returned to the area and re-enabled agriculture, healthy eating habits are slower to catch up. Vega says for many people the reality of day-to-day life on the reservation includes fast food.

To reverse this trend, San Xavier Co-op is preserving the “genetic resources” stored in seeds. Though the O’odham have 19 different varieties of corn, San Xavier has access to only two. Recently, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) awarded the farm a grant to build a 2,400-square-foot cold storage facility to preserve its seeds.

“The plan is to go door-to-door in the community and see if families have corn seeds that were lost in the last few decades,” Vega says.

A large nursery houses several different varieties of seeds. (Photo by Rudri Patel)

Organizations like Native Seeds/SEARCH (NS/S) help preserve indigenous seeds and serve as a repository to protect cultural heritage. Although there isn’t an official partnership in place, Laura Neff, an associate at NS/S, says that San Xavier Co-op recently received two community seed grants from the organization. Additionally, San Xavier sells its products in the Native Seed/SEARCH retail store. With efforts like these, the O’odham people may be able to return to the foods their ancestors enjoyed.

Another focus at San Xavier is cultivating wild foods. In the past, the O’odham relied on the pods of mesquite trees to supply them with protein. Once the pods dry, the O’odham harvest, mill, and eventually turn them into flour. “Traditionally it was eaten with water, and these high nutrients provided energy,” Vega says.

Diversity of Sustainable Crops

San Xavier Co-op remains viable—and able to aggressively pursue growing native foods—“because it invests in alfalfa crops, its best-seller on the farm,” Ramon-Pierson says. But the focus on income doesn’t mean sacrificing what is good for the land, Vega emphasizes. The co-op is Certified Naturally Grown, he says, which means it grows everything without synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, or GMOs.

“This farming community has been here for several thousand years, and there is an intentional purpose to how the O’odham use the land,” says nursery coordinator Cie’na Schalaefli. Keeping it chemical-free helps the tribe maintain its traditional values.

Orchards line the property near the side of the farm. (Photo by Rudri Patel)

The co-op has also formed a partnership with the Compost Cats program through the University of Arizona, a student-run organization that collects food waste and scraps from local businesses, processes the material at the San Xavier Co-op, and sells it as compost to the community.

The co-op constantly looks for ways to diversify its offerings in order to stay afloat, Vega says. San Xavier has a blossoming partnership with both the food bank community and Tucson schools, says Ramon-Pierson, where it sells broccoli and melons. It also runs a catering business that blends seasonal indigenous O’odham foods with non-traditional items like tortillas and tamales.

Several other projects are in the works or already underway, Vega says. “Bridgestone, the tire company, recently contacted the co-op about the Gualye, a woody shrub which thrives in the desert Southwest,” he says. The interest is to produce rubber for tires. There’s also the possibility that hemp production could begin on the property, he adds.

Giving Back to the Community

Even though the farm looks for numerous ways to be profitable, the O’odham Nation is the first priority. Workshops like the Wild Harvest teach community members how to harvest, process, and prepare traditional foods such as cholla buds from a cacti, also known as ciolim, mesquite, and prickly pear.

A colorful mural serves as a reminder of San Xavier’s ancestral roots. (Photo by Rudri Patel)

“Once they learn how to harvest, they can do this on their land at home, bring it back to the farm, and we pay them by the pound,” Vega says. This fosters economic resiliency and a way to reintroduce traditional foods to children and families.

The workshops also cover the basics of how to cook foods like tepary beans—which can easily boiled in water with chiles—and sends participants home armed with how to search for online recipes used in making traditional O’odham meals. A resurgence of traditional foods, according to Ramon-Sauberan at the University of Arizona, is working to reduce the rates of diabetes and other health issues among the O’odham people.

San Xavier Co-op’s multi-pronged approach to caring for its community, is merely a “continuation of what’s in their ancestral genes,” Vega says. “Not many spaces that allow you to pay your bills, take care of your elders, and adopt a healthy way of living.”

[Editor’s note: This article was updated to correct Gabriel Vega’s time working on the farm and the fact that the tribe is looking at producing hemp as a new crop.]

The post An Indigenous Community Deepens its Agricultural Roots in Tucson’s San Xavier Farm appeared first on Civil Eats.

On a quiet day in early March, Andy and Melissa Dunham’s farm, just north of I-80 in east-central Iowa, is a place of unlikely intersections. A steamy greenhouse full of newly planted seed beds is half buried in ice and snow. An old-fashioned red barn looks out over a newly maturing grove of hardy kiwi vines and chestnuts. And in a few months, the couple’s rows of carrots, beets, and kale will be surrounded by vast corn and soybean fields that stretch to the horizon.

Grinnell Heritage Farm (GHF) once looked like the fields that surround it, which dominate most of Iowa’s landscape. But today, it’s home to one of the largest community supported agriculture (CSA) farms in the state. The Dunhams grow 40 to 60 types of certified organic vegetables, herbs, and flowers for their members and 10 to 12 wholesale crops including kale, cabbage, onions, carrots, parsnips, and beets. They pack up to 250 CSA boxes a week in summer, fall, and winter.  And a small herd of 15 cows, which they keep mostly to support soil fertility, also provides meat and feeder calves in the fall.

Steve Moen, a longtime customer and produce buyer for New Pioneer Coop, which has several stores throughout the state, raves about the quality of GHF root vegetables and cooking greens. “They set a high bar for quality, and they do everything right,” he says. “They are great to work with.”

Grinnell Heritage Farm from above. (Photo courtesy of Grinnell Heritage Farm)

In providing for their devoted customers, the Dunhams employ an impressive array of soil-building, conservation, pollinator, and ecosystem practices—and, set in the middle of Big Ag country, they demonstrate how agriculture can benefit the land and the community. Organic certification gives them a way to talk with customers about their farming practices, but their philosophy extends well beyond the requirements.

“If you can name a conservation practice, we’re probably doing it,” says Andy, ticking off a list of just some of their efforts: no-till and minimal-till farming, pollinator habitat, hedgerows, rotational grazing, and more.

Even though the Dunhams have spent a lot of time building a resilient, environmentally focused operation, recent weather extremes and changes to the retail environment have put their farm (like many others) in a vulnerable place financially. While Grinnell Heritage Farm escaped the recent devastating floods that drowned fields and towns along both sides of the Missouri River in western Iowa and eastern Nebraska, a number of other climate- and industry-related challenges remain.

The Light-Bulb Moment

Grinnell Heritage Farm, in Andy’s family for five generations, started back in 1857. Like most farms in Iowa, it began as a diversified operation, with livestock, forage, fruit trees, vegetables, and grain, and over time it was converted to corn and soy. By the time Andy’s grandparents were ready for someone to take over, their 80 acres of commodity crops had become less and less profitable.

(Photo courtesy of Grinnell Heritage Farm)

Andy grew up in the small town of Hopkinton in northeast Iowa, riding along on farm calls with his dad, a large animal veterinarian. Despite his family history, farming wasn’t something he considered doing until joining the Peace Corps as an agricultural extension officer in Tanzania. Soil fertility was a huge limitation for farmers there—people spent half of their yearly income on fertilizer. With an acre to tend, he began learning soil building, composting, and organic methods.

“I put a shovel in the ground, and a light bulb came on,” he says. “I realized this is what I wanted to do.”

After a year on an organic farm back in the States, he came home to his grandparents’ farm in 2006. He started growing vegetables on three acres, expanding production over time to 20 acres, with the rest in pasture, hay, fruit trees, and wildlife habitat.

Andy and Melissa, who both turn 40 this year, married in 2007. With her creative energy and background in accounting and his farming knowledge and experience, the farm is now their full-time livelihood; they’ve invested in a greenhouse, packing shed, loading dock, barns, and drip irrigation. They value the flexibility of the work and the time it grants them with their three children, Collin, 20, Emma, 10, and Leonora, 7.

Planting tomatoes and lettuce in the hoop house. (Photo courtesy of Grinnell Heritage Farm)

In addition to Andy’s aunt Janet, the farm employs four people full-time, year-round, as well as two to three seasonal workers. Unfortunately, affording health insurance and providing for employees is difficult given that wages rise faster than produce prices, and Andy and Melissa are finding it increasingly hard to find help.

From ‘Moonscape’ to a Conservation-Focused Operation

Nevertheless, the Dunhams are continually learning and expanding their efforts to build soil and make the farm ecosystem more resilient. They grow cover crops on 85 percent of their acres, waiting as long as practical to maximize nutrients before plowing them in. They use a no-till drill for planting in some areas and minimal till elsewhere to avoid soil damage. In areas without good drainage, they use raised beds. Over 10 years, they say, their soil organic matter has more than tripled.

On a cold March day, the Dunham’s cattle and calves munch hay next to the barn. Andy estimates they’re standing atop a four-foot layer of manure and compost that will become fertilizer once the weather thaws and the cows move onto pasture.

“We started with basically a moonscape,” Andy notes. “Now we’re seeing that former prairies like this have unique potential to lock up carbon in the soil.”

They also devote a lot of energy to creating a habitat friendly to pollinators. “Beetle banks” are among the practices they’ve adopted as part of a collaboration with Bee Better Certification from Xerces Society of Invertebrate Conservation. The raised earthen berms, planted with native grasses and flowers, attract pollinators, and also provide habitat for nocturnal ground beetles that feed on potato beetles. Hedgerows provide shelter for bees and buffers against pesticide drift from neighboring cornfields.

Grinnell Heritage Farm carrots for sale at New Pioneer Coop, Iowa City. (Photo courtesy of Grinnell Heritage Farm)

CSA memberships and wholesale accounts are their primary source of income.  Their most important wholesale buyer is FarmTable, a food hub based several hours west in Harlan, Iowa. The local food aggregator, which deals in fruits, vegetables, dairy, meat, eggs, honey, and other local products, picks up and distributes GHF produce to retail stores and restaurants in Omaha, Lincoln, Des Moines, and other urban markets.

FarmTable Owner and General Manager Ellen Walsh-Rosmann, a fellow farmer, says the Dunhams are one of the hub’s largest vegetable suppliers. Buying from GHF gives her a good variety of products and a long season, she says, and it’s especially important for stores that want organic produce.

In addition to the food hub, Whole Foods Market buys from GHF for their west Des Moines store and their regional distribution center, and GHF delivers directly to other accounts, including a dozen CSA drop sites across eastern Iowa.

Weathering the Challenges

Last year was a rough. A cold spring and hot, dry summer were followed by two months of drenching rain, flooding, and an early freeze.

After coaxing a good crop through the heat, two-thirds of an acre of carrots rotted in the field just before harvest, and they lost $150,000 in overall sales. Wholesale deliveries that usually last well into February ended in November. And for the first time ever, GHF cancelled one week’s CSA shares.

The losses forced the Dunhams to borrow more than usual to pay for seeds and other costs ahead of the 2019 season. In addition, they’re shifting their planting schedule to finish earlier in the season to reduce risk, and they asked CSA members to purchase 2019 shares early to help with up front costs.

Shoppers at New Pioneer missed the carrots, but Moen says many are aware of the devastating weather and are already looking forward to this year’s crop. The store found other suppliers to fill the gap, but local produce is a key distinction for the 35-year community-owned store. FarmTable sales were also hurt, according to Walsh-Rosmann; without the beets and carrots from GHF, some customers dropped orders for other local products as well.

In addition to climate-related issues, changes in the grocery industry are another concern, even when the weather cooperates. Long-time customers like New Pioneer and other regional grocers have lost sales to national chains like Aldi, Costco, and Trader Joe’s. The larger chains don’t carry local produce, so the lower sales affect not only the stores but also their local suppliers. One major chain, which used to allow individual stores flexibility to buy and set prices with local growers, now caps prices in a central buying office, cutting out most local farms.

“I think most people aren’t aware, or don’t think about the fact that none of the produce at those chains is local,” says Andy. “They don’t realize how much difference it makes to us.”

An Uncertain Future

The Dunhams are thoughtful and deliberate about the choices they’ve made for their land. Their mission is “to farm our land in a way that will leave it better for the next generation, giving our children, grandchildren, and beyond the opportunity to harvest the bounty we see on the farm today.” To share those values with their community, they’ve started holding regular gatherings, dubbed “HaPIZZAness,” that bring neighbors and families to the farm for wood-fired pizza, music, and wagon rides, creating connections that are about more than vegetables.

A HaPIZZAness flier. (Photo courtesy of Grinnell Heritage Farm)

Still, the challenges of climate change and economics weigh heavily. As the arid/humid boundary at the 100th Meridian continues moving east, expanding the drier parts of the country, shifts in weather patterns and planting zones, as well as drought, flooding, and extreme weather events, are all predicted to increase. Crop damage and pest and disease pressures will be especially harsh in certain parts of the Midwest, and windows for planting and harvest in the region will grow shorter, according to reports from USDA, ag business leaders, and climate scientists.

Additionally, a 2018 Cornell University-led study predicts that a 1-degree Celsius increase in summer temperatures could quadruple the frequency of crop losses and points out that with so much reliance on just two crops, corn and soybeans, the Midwest is especially vulnerable.

“We were at a farmer meeting on climate change [co-sponsored by Iowa Interfaith Power and Light] last week, and even the big conventional farmers with 5,000 acres or more say they feel trapped,” Andy said. “A lot of them would try different practices if they could afford it. With the right incentives and policies, they could change in one season.” But the current system doesn’t encourage farms to take risks and invest in practices to be more resilient; instead, Andy thinks, “we are rewarding the wrong players.”

For Walsh-Rosmann, the evidence of a changing climate is already here as the Midwest deals with the recent historic floods. The farms that supply her are all safe, but she’s been delivering relief supplies to nearby communities, and the destruction is heartbreaking. “Do we weather the storm and hope the local food system is more resilient than the rest of conventional ag?” she wonders.

The Dunhams worry that another year of weather extremes could force them to scale back or take on more debt than they are comfortable with. The web of community and economic support—grocery stores, small distributors, food processors, and restaurants—is interdependent, and farms like theirs are at risk across the U.S.

“If we can’t make a go of it, on some of the best soil in the world, with a pretty competent farmer, the lights are going to go out for a lot of people,” Melissa says.

“My life is what I make of it, and I can’t complain unless I do something about it,” adds Andy. “But at some point, just being a good example won’t be enough.”

The crowd at a HaPIZZAness event. (Photo courtesy of Grinnell Heritage Farm)

The post Grinnell Heritage Farm is Farming Against Type—and Against the Odds—in Iowa appeared first on Civil Eats.

In the end, Emily doesn’t manage to open the gate. But knowing each cow is just one part of the philosophy behind this no-slaughter farm that puts the highest emphasis on animal welfare. “I can’t conceive of not knowing the names of all the cattle, knowing their histories,” Abrahams says. “It’s important to understand who their friends are, who they’re related to… I wouldn’t want to do this if I couldn’t be completely hands-on, because I think there’s so much value originating from that.”

Andrew Abrahams and his wife, Krista, established Long Dream in 2011 on a 90-acre home farm, plus hundreds of acres of grazing land, in Northern California’s Sierra Nevada foothills. The farm is home to 190 heritage-breed cattle, plus chickens, donkeys, emus, guinea fowl, horses, pigs, seven working dogs, and one alpaca.

At most dairies, farmers are not on a first-name basis with their cows. One farm can have hundreds or thousands of cows that eat in indoor stalls or crowded feedlots. These operations push cows hard to increase milk production, which often translates into twice-a-day milkings, hormone injections, and too-frequent pregnancies, with calves separated from their mothers just hours after birth. After three or four years, when a cow’s milk production starts to decrease, she is sold and slaughtered for hamburger meat.

But Long Dream and other independent farms are beginning to challenge traditional dairy practices by prioritizing animal welfare over high-volume milk production. Under the Abrahams’ care, the cattle at Long Dream live mostly outdoors in large, fenced areas and have daily access to acres of hillside pasture. Rotational grazing provides abundant feed, which the farm supplements with hay, alfalfa, sprouted barley, and small amounts of grain and minerals. They breed cows every two years or less, and calves stay with their mothers for at least nine months. Meanwhile, chickens have free range of the farm during the day and sleep in airy coops at night as farm dogs patrol for predators.

Cattle like “Captain” have their names printed on ear tags, but the Abrahams family knows all of the animals on sight.

“We want the animals to feel like they are free, as much as someone working in an office,” Andrew says. “They have some responsibilities. They have some constraints on their existence… But we can have them live really happy lives with their families.”

While Andrew manages the farm operations, Krista works in the farm’s state-certified Grade A dairy and milk products plant known as “the creamery.” Their four children—ranging in age from 5 to 29—handle various farm duties, such as milking cows and collecting eggs. The farm currently milks about 30 cows once a day, and each cow produces up to three gallons of milk per day.

The farm pipes fresh milk directly to the creamery, where Krista makes butter, ice cream, yogurt, and four kinds of cheese. In addition to the Tahoe Food Hub, they sell their products at the Old Town Auburn farmers’ market and online through Amazon and the farm’s website, which touts “dairy re-thought from the cow’s perspective.”

“What sets them apart is the quality of their product,” says Carol Arnold, CEO of PlacerGrown, which runs farmers’ markets and advocates for Placer County produce. “It’s small batch, family owned, and the taste is extraordinary. There just aren’t [many] dairies in Placer County; they’re the only one I know of that sell to the consumer, so it’s really special.”

Disrupting the Status Quo

In challenging what he calls “a house of cards” of large-scale dairy farming practices, Andrew admits there are many details to think through, like how to encourage lactation extension in mother cows. “It’s not just that calves can stay with their moms,” Andrew said. “It’s actually very important for them to stay with their moms.”

The cows chow down on breakfast before being released to the hillside pasture.

“Take a big guy like Lassen here,” he says, pointing to a young bull standing on the other side of the fence. “He’s still living with his mom and still nursing from his mom, even though he’s a year and a half old. That’s part of keeping the milk production going. Why do you want to keep the milk production going? Because otherwise you need to keep producing more animals on a yearly cycle like regular dairies do. And then what do you do with all the animals?”

The latter is a question many ask of Andrew and Krista: On a no-slaughter farm, where the animals would only die of natural causes and not be used for meat, what do you do with all the animals, particularly those not active in milk production? The Abrahams have designed their operations to allow all their animals to stay on the farm for their entire lives.

“Our analysis shows that we can produce dairy products economically while providing a home for all our milk cows, bulls, and their offspring for their natural lives,” Andrew says. “The key factor is to carefully control breeding and calving. As necessary, we can reduce our calf and milk production to guarantee sanctuary for all and maintain the environmental health of the land.”

Andrew and Krista do not know of many farms that manage their animals like Long Dream. “We’ve met enough people and we’ve visited enough places to know that there are not many people practicing things like this,” Andrew says. “There are clearly people who want to. But disrupting something is not for most people.”

“Long Dream is helping to change the perception of dairy,” says Susie Sutphin, director of Tahoe Food Hub, which promotes Long Dream products to 70 restaurants in North Lake Tahoe. “As consumers become more conscious of their food choices, they start asking questions; Long Dream is more than amazing dairy products, but an education in our food system.”

Surviving a Landscape Designed for Big Players

Andrew and Krista see a market for high-welfare dairy products, and they hope that by de-coupling milk from meat production, their products will appeal to consumers who might currently be purchasing milk substitutes for animal-welfare reasons.

Clara Abrahams points out an alpaca as she leads a Sunday morning tour around the farm.

Over the past decade, nearly 17,000 U.S. dairy farms—mostly small and family-owned—have gone out of business as the average herd size and overall milk production have increased. In California, which is the nation’s largest milk-producing state, the average herd size is 1,304 compared to a national average of 234. More than half of California dairies produce at least a tanker load of milk per day, or approximately 1.5 million pounds of milk per month.

The way the dairy industry exists in California is a function of both economic pressure—or specifically, farms seeking economies of scale—and regulatory pressure, says Dr. Peter H. Robinson, a dairy specialist with the University of California at Davis Cooperative Extension Service.

“It seems to me the urban population would like to see smaller dairy farms, but the politicians we elect have designed a regulatory system that makes it hard for small operations to stay in business,” Robinson adds. “If we don’t like the system we’ve got—and some people clearly don’t—I think one answer is to simplify state regulation.”

Andrew and Krista have felt the burden of a regulatory scheme designed for large commercial dairies. “To pass regulation, you need to have specialized buildings, specialized infrastructure. You need to pass inspections all the time. There are a ton of regulations to deal with,” Andrew says. “Gradually, we try to get people to understand that one-size-fits-all really does not apply to regulating something as complicated as milk production.”

He and Krista hope Long Dream can serve as a model for what is possible outside the mega-dairy system. “Our view is that there is room for some fraction of current production to come from small, geographically diversified farms where the highest standards of animal care and safety can be maintained,” Andrew says.

Free-range chickens spend the night in airy chicken coops (left) and lay their eggs in cozy red sheds (center), where they feel safe from predators.

He sees multiple advantages to the smaller, regional approach—improved animal welfare, better management of greenhouse gases, lower transportation costs, and faster delivery of products to market.

A Mission to Educate

Although the Abrahams family makes and sells dairy products, they do not view their farm as a typical productional agriculture operation. Instead, these two problem-solvers—Andrew has a PhD in astrophysics; Krista is an attorney—see their mission as two-pronged: education and research. That’s why they offer farm tours on Sunday mornings and overnight farm stays in a four-bedroom guest house.

On a cool Sunday morning in January, four guests arrive for the farm tour at 7 a.m., in time for the morning milking. It’s not quite sunrise, but roosters are crowing from their perch in a nearby tree.

Roosters greet the new day from a tree at Long Dream Farm.

“Our chickens think they are good fliers, so they like to roost high up in the tree,” says daughter Clara, 14, who helps her parents escort guests around the farm.

After a quick visit with the calves, the four visitors join Andrew for morning milking—the top attraction on the Sunday farm tour. Then Clara and her brother, Frederic, lead the tour group on a walk around the farm, with stops to feed carrots to the horses, visit the emus, and see the windowless red boxes where the free-range chickens like to lay their eggs.

Chad Eatinger, his wife Jane Hong, and their three children made the three-hour drive from San Francisco for their third overnight stay in the farm’s guest house. A year earlier, they came with friends who were visiting from Spain. “We came to hang out with our kids and it was too fun, so we keep on coming back,” Hong says as one of her twin daughters asks if a nearby cow is a mommy. Hong smiles and adds, “Obviously, my kids love this place.”

Chad Eatinger takes his daughter for an early morning walk. The Eatinger family has made three overnight “farmstays” to Long Dream Farm.

Farm tours will continue to be on the agenda as Long Dream Farm transitions to a nonprofit 501(c)3 corporation, which Andrew and Krista believe will help them expand research and educate the general public about “a superior—in our view—form of human-animal partnership and food production” that is small-scale and geographically distributed.

“All this space can be used in a combination of preservation, recreation, and food production,” Andrew says. “That’s kind of what we wanted to prototype with the nonprofit, to be able to have school outreach and groups coming for educational programs. The basic education is—how do animals work, and how can you interact with them? Because that’s emotionally satisfying. I think it’s therapeutic to people.”

Frederic and Clara Abrahams hand out carrots so the farm’s tour group can feed the horses and alpaca.

The second prong of the farm’s mission—research—takes many forms, including basic observation of animals living long, productive lives within their family groups. Andrew tells the story of a rooster that taught its offspring its own “funny” walk. Krista has observed mother-cows and grandmother-cows helping to raise calves. And then there was the story of a tiny calf that liked to hang out with a huge Scottish Highland bull.

“This tiny calf would dash underneath fences, go under gates, and he would hang out with his buddy,” Krista says. “When you’re trying to exert control, you see a bull as a very dangerous creature. But it’s like he’s a big brother, too. You don’t need to impose a vision of order when animals are organizing themselves…

“There’s a lot more going on while the animals are living their own animal life than we are taught in our picture books,” she adds. “And it’s much more complex.”

This article was updated to reflect the fact that Long Dream Farm includes several hundred acres of land for grazing in addition to the 90 acre main farm.

All photos © Joan Cusick.

The post At This Small, Family-Run Dairy, Animal Welfare Comes First appeared first on Civil Eats.

“They were the only ones left on the ranch,” she said, recalling the heartbreaking specter of how hard her uncle and her grandmother, who was then in her 80s, had to work to barely scrape by. “I think I felt the weight of what they were trying to hold together, and I thought how unfair it was for me to expect that they could just keep it together until I came back someday.”

So she decided to stay.

Carman Ranch began as a few hundred acres Carman’s great-great-grandfather Jacob Weinhard—nephew to the legendary Northwest beer brewer Henry Weinhard—bought for his son Fritz in the early 1900s. Under Carman’s watch, the operation now spans 5,000 acres of grasslands, timbered rangeland, and irrigated valley ground nestled against the dramatic peaks of the Wallowa Mountains. Hawks, eagles, and wildlife greatly outnumber people in this isolated northeastern corner of the state, originally home to the Wal-lam-wat-kain (Wallowa) band of the Nez Perce tribe.

Distinct from most cattle operations in the U.S., Carman’s cattle are 100 percent grass-fed well as grass-finished. (The term “grass-fed” is not regulated, so it can mean that animals have only been briefly pastured before they’re sent to a factory feedlot to be finished.) The ranch primarily produces cattle and pigs, which it mostly markets to wholesale accounts, though it sells a lesser amount of meat as “cow shares”—or quarters of beef ranging from 120 to 180 pounds purchased directly by consumers.

The entrance to Carman Ranch. (Photo © John Valls)

Equally if not more important to Carman, however, is the focus on what she calls the “holistic management” of her land. This involves constantly moving the cattle and paying careful attention to the rate of growth of the animals and grasses. By this system, the steers select the forages they need to grow and gain weight, and the grasses get clipped, trampled down, and fertilized with manure, resulting in fields that are vibrant—they retain water, resist drought, contain abundant organic matter, which contributes nutrients and carbon, and are highly productive without the addition of fertilizer.

Amanda Oborne, vice president of food and farms at Ecotrust, a regional nonprofit organization working on social, economic, and environmental issues, said Carman inspired Ecotrust’s food system work by helping her understand the challenges of creating local beef and pork markets, the complexity of scaling an agricultural business with integrity, and the importance of grasslands and large grazing animals in fighting climate change through carbon drawdown.

Oborne remembers Carman walking her around the fields of the Zumwalt Prairie, a preserve owned by the Nature Conservancy that is on the western boundary of the ranch, and picking at blades of bunch grass as she explained how the native species create pockets of nutrition for migrating birds through the winter, and how the long, perennial roots scaffold a whole cathedral of structure and life under the soil.

“It’s Cory’s ability to tell these stories, to explain the flaws of the dominant system without imbuing judgement or animosity, and to partner across every divide—be it age, gender, class, political philosophy, or hometown—that makes her such an effective and innovative thought leader,” Oborne said.

Introducing Holistic Management

Within a year of returning to the ranch, Carman met and married her husband, Dave Flynn (the couple have since divorced), and started a family, which includes three children, Roan and twins Ione and Emmett.

With a fifth generation of the family living on the ranch, the challenge became not just figuring out how to maintain her family’s business and regenerate the land, but how to leave a viable legacy to pass on to her children.

“You don’t have a ranch so that you can sell it and retire; you have a ranch so you can pass it on—that’s sort of in the DNA,” Carman said. “It’s what gets priority, and [you] grow up knowing that there’s something more important than all of you as individuals.”

Photo © John Valls

While Carman respects her family’s history and that of her neighbors, she is pursuing the inverse of the methods used on most of the nation’s cattle ranches since the middle of the last century—methods also used by her father, who died in a ranching accident when Carman was 14, and by her uncle who took over.

“It was the fertilizer era,” Carman noted of her uncle’s initial resistance to the idea of leaving forage in the pastures. “It’s like in those first few decades when fertilizer worked really, really well. You could just take everything off of the land that you could possibly grow and sell it—and then pour more fertilizer back on. And it worked. Until it didn’t.”

With an eye toward her legacy, Carman went to her uncle with the idea of raising grass-fed beef. “I will never forget what he told me,” she said. “He said, ‘Why don’t you do something people like? What about jerky?’”

The thing that she knew—and that her uncle didn’t—was that there were people in more urban areas who were willing to pay a premium for healthy food. “He had no context,” Carman said. “It’s a paradigm shift.”

While Carman had been around cattle her whole life—and the animals she is raising are direct descendants of the Herefords Weinhard originally brought to the ranch—she had no idea how to finish the animals on grass, since much of that knowledge had been lost in the industry’s rush to finish cattle faster on grain in feedlots.

Carman began to research and implement a practice called holistic management, which is based on the idea that grass is your crop, and a portion of it needs to go back into feeding the land and the soil microbes. A tool of regenerative agriculture, holistic management integrates social, economic, and environmental factors to help the farm or ranch succeed economically, improve the health of the land, and provide local communities more nutritious food.

“Our neighbors are still grazing [their pastures] into the ground with this idea that if you’re not grazing it, you’re wasting it,” Carman said. “For us, that is our nutrient base that we’re putting back into the ground. We’re going to get more productivity by leaving more behind.”

Cory Carman examining the grasses on her ranch. (photo © Nolan Calisch)

As for her uncle’s reaction to the changes he’s seen since she came back 15 years ago? Carman said he’s now her biggest fan.

“If you come to the ranch, he’ll say, ‘You would not believe the root systems in these grasses,’” she said. “He didn’t see the vision [before], and now I think he does.”

Blazing a Trail Toward a Robust Regional Food Economy

Initially Carman and her husband sold beef in shares, where customers would commit to buying a half, quarter, or eighth of a carcass. They were eventually joined by a neighbor in Wallowa, fellow grass-fed beef rancher Jill McClaran of McClaran Ranch, and they were able to start supplying wholesale clients including Oregon Health Sciences University (OHSU) in Portland, and Bon Appétit Management Company (an on-site restaurant company, since acquired by London-based Compass Group).

“We slowly started building up this little business,” Carman said. “We raised cattle, finished them on grass, processed them, owned the meat, arranged for distribution through different entities to get the meat out, and then we froze it. It was super tight, but we were kind of scraping by.”

After a customer chipped a tooth on a piece of bone that made it through the grinder at the processing plant and sued, Carman created two LLCs to reduce her liability. Then she took on investors in 2017 to expand her reach. The additional capital allowed Carman to work with larger wholesale accounts such as New Seasons Market, a chain of West Coast grocery stores. Working with a core group of six like-minded producers with ranches from Oregon to Nevada, she is able to supply meat year-round.

“Our purpose in the world is to prove out this model where you can do it the right way,” Carman said of her producers, who agree that building soil is a primary focus, “with layers of values that we’re living toward.”

A woman in the male-dominated field of ranching, Carman notes that women constitute much of her team: she employs a woman ranch manager and director of business development; she has partnered with other women ranchers like McClaran to supply wholesale clients; women serve on the Carman Ranch board and comprise half her investors; and she considers women to be among her most innovative customers.

Photo © Nolan Calisch.

The model Carman has built so far has already proved an inspiration to other Northwest producers looking to scale up their businesses. Ecotrust’s Oborne said that much of what the nonprofit built at the Redd on Salmon Street, a development designed to support local food enterprises and scale a more robust regional food economy, was based on the work Carman has done.

“Many other regenerative farms and ranches in rural Oregon and Washington are now following in her footsteps and building their businesses in the Pacific Northwest thanks to the trail Cory has blazed,” Oborne said.

Hillary Barbour, director of strategic initiatives for Burgerville, a restaurant chain based in the Pacific Northwest, said its journey with Carman began in a pasture on Carman’s property, when she pulled a chunk of cover crop from the ground, held it triumphantly above her head, and said, “You see, we’re soil farmers!”

Barbour said her company believes Carman’s commitment to soil, human and animal health, and maximizing the value of production for the regional economy aligned with Burgerville’s vision for the future, cementing the relationship going forward.

Beef that Brings it all Together

Calling grass-fed beef “an elegant nexus of all of the issues,” Carman believes that cattle are a necessary component of fertility for every cropping system. That’s because the bacteria in the rumen of the cattle makes what she refers to as “the soil/food web” more vibrant. When we harvest the cattle, we harvest the micronutrients out of the soil, she said.

“The soil/food web needs to be totally functional to get the micronutrients, [and] that’s what we’re missing in our food right now,” she said.

It’s not only that there’s a better fatty acid profile in grass-fed beef, Carman said of studies showing that grass-fed beef is higher in omega-3 fats, vitamin E, beta-carotene, and conjugated linoleic acid (CLA). She points to what she calls the human health epidemic of chronic illness and disease, believing that it’s related to how incredibly degraded the soil is from overuse of fertilizers and other industrial practices.

Saying that grass-fed beef is an important catalyst that brings farmers and ranchers together, Carman feels that it’s a place to start the conversation about regenerative agriculture and rebuilding the food system.

“The push is always for any brand to go national,” she said. “Instead, we need to think about production on a regional basis and build out and support appropriately scaled infrastructure. That’s where you can really have the magic.

“Those are all the things we’re trying to prove out with our little model.”

Top photo: Cory Carman portrait © Nolan Calisch.

The post How an Oregon Rancher is Building Soil Health—and a Robust Regional Food System appeared first on Civil Eats.

Bickford is speaking about the 950-acre organic grain farm in the Driftless Region of Southwest Wisconsin, which he has managed and owned through several incarnations across the span of four decades. Bickford is in the process of transitioning the farm to the young couple seated across from him.

Bickford’s successors, John and Halee Wepking, hold sweat equity in the farmhouse renovations. In exchange for their work, they live here with their growing family on the farm they now co-manage with Bickford, who lives just down the road. The couple holds no familial relation to Bickford, and met him through a Craigslist ad. But, Halee says, to the nodding of heads, “We have become a family.”

Even the farm’s title is in transition, with the old-guard Bickford Organics easing out of the spotlight to make room for Meadowlark Organics, a name adopted by the Wepkings to carry the farm into the future.

Meadowlark Organics is an organic farm that specializes in growing grains: wheat, rye, polenta corn, and buckwheat. They also grow hay and recently added a small beef herd of around 20 breeding cows to the mix. With plans to continue diversifying with the addition of a granary and flour mill, Meadowlark Organics is poised to lead the Driftless region of Wisconsin into a new era of local, value-added organic grain products grown with an eye for soil conservation and land stewardship.

All this has been made possible by Bickford, who—in wanting to ensure his farm found the right heirs—allowed an enterprising couple to realize their dreams in an industry where many newcomers struggle to ever achieve viability.

Though the Wepking’s children, a three-year-old and his baby sister, are with their grandmother on this day, a countertop collection of toy tractors suggests that the kids usually fill the kitchen with life.

“It’s my responsibility to see the operation survives because they have a family,” Bickford says. “I take that quite seriously.”

Farmer ISO Protégés

Bickford, who has carried the farm from its beginnings as a confined dairy, through its transition to rotational grazing, and on to its most recent incarnation as an organic small-grain producer, only began to think about retirement around 55.

Bickford’s children are now adults following their own paths—and though he has a son who farms with him, he would prefer to stay out of the farm’s management. So, Bickford has had to pursue a less conventional route to transitioning the farm.

Lucky for all, just the right eyes landed on the ad Bickford posted early in 2015. It read: “I am seeking a forward-thinking individual or couple to join my 950-acre organic farming operation … Ethics and trust are a cornerstone of organic farming and are important to my operation. I want to share my 40 years of farm experience with someone who is willing to work to improve my farm.”

The Wepkings met working in the kitchen at Prune in the East Village of New York City. A Wisconsin native, John had always dreamed of farming, and Halee, who is from Arizona and holds a degree in modern dance and years of professional experience in kitchens, was eager to support this dream. “I was always moving toward what felt important to me,” Halee says. “Farming, producing people’s food—that felt important.”

When the Wepkings moved back to Wisconsin, they hoped to farm on John’s family land. When that proved infeasible for reasons beyond their control, they began to look for other options.

The initial investment necessary to raise livestock alongside grains at a marketable scale limited the Wepking’s ability to start from scratch. To create the farm they envisioned, they sought an established operation managed by someone willing to build them and their vision into the farm’s future.

When the Wepkings answered Bickford’s ad, they were still wet behind the ears. But they shared Bickford’s values—they wanted to farm as land stewards using practices modeled by balanced ecosystem function. In teaming up with Bickford, they found a perfect fit.

Forging a Path Forward Together

“My first month on the job was a blur,” says John. He spent much of that first stretch alone on a tractor with three times the horsepower of anything he’d ever operated. Halee had given birth to the couple’s first child just a few weeks into the new arrangement, and through these earliest days Bickford was nearly absent—a fire had burned a building on his property, and as happens on farms, he was pulled in opposing directions.

Before joining Bickford, the Wepkings gained much of their understanding of farming practices through online research. Halee says they both gleaned as much as they could from resources such as Practical Farmers of Iowa and MOSES.

When they finally did get to work side by side, John says Bickford shared knowledge of another sort. The veteran farmer knows how fields will carry water after a rain, when to plant or weed, and what grows well where and why. In short, Bickford knows the intimate details of his land and its seasons.

Three years into their arrangement, their roles have developed definition. Halee takes the lead with the kids, manages marketing, keeps the books, and collaborates on planning decisions. Bickford is mechanically inclined: he likes his tractors and enjoys the hands-on aspects of farming. John, Bickford says, “is the boss.”

“John has very good skills at organization,” Bickford continues. He “has a grasp on the organic plans and the food that we’re going to grow.”

Extending Rotations, Diversifying Production, and Looking to Value-Added Products

John soon demonstrates his ease with planning as he launches into a description their crop rotations. “When we started, it was a pretty typical Southern Wisconsin rotation of corn, soybeans, and small grain—in spring, start with small grain like oats or barley to establish alfalfa and make hay, then plow that alfalfa under for corn again,” he says. “What we’ve done is extend that into fall with planting grains.”

They also transitioned the spring grain mix to include spring wheat for bread flour, and last year, they started growing buckwheat. “So we’re looking at more of a six-to-seven-year rotation as opposed to four to five,” John says.

On top of these changes, with the aid of a Farm Service Agency (FSA) microloan, the Wepkings have introduced a small beef herd to the mix. The cattle allow the farmers to keep their soil nutrients in a closed loop, and the longer crop rotations allow them to, in Halee’s words, “limit tillage; manage weeds, pests, and diseases; and grow and conserve our soils.”

Bickford has always been open to adaptation, but thanks to the Wepkings, he has come to truly value diversification.

“Our current agricultural system is not going to support family farms as is, so we have to be thinking of how we diversify, where we capture value,” Halee says.

Along with the new crops, Meadowlark has expanded into value-added products such as milled flour and polenta that they sell to area co-ops, restaurants, bakeries, and consumers at markets and online. They have already invested in grain storage bins, and their long-term plans include a grain cleaning and production facility as well as a small flour mill. Ultimately their hope is to create an organic grain hub to supply the region with locally produced, consistent products on a scale that keeps pace with the burgeoning local markets.

ORIGIN Breads, an organic bakery based in nearby Madison, already bakes exclusively with grains sourced from Meadowlark Organics. When the small-scale bakery opened two years ago, owner and head baker Kirk Smock says he was faced with a decision: “Organic or local?”

With Meadowlark Organics, he and his customers get both. Meadowlark now plans their yearly production with ORIGIN Breads in mind, but allows Smock to pay for his purchases incrementally. The arrangement is somewhat unconventional, but Smocks says it is one of the many benefits to the relationships that grow through sourcing locally.

The focus on relationship-building is reflected in the farm transition. The Wepkings and Bickford have yet to work out the fine print, but they’re okay with letting the transition take shape organically. Bickford sees himself easing into full retirement within five to 10 years. In those years, the group plans to continue to evolve alongside their ideas about how best to delegate responsibilities and ownership. For now, they’re content to know they share a vision and common goals.

When asked what others might learn from their experience, Halee says, “You don’t need to have a certain salary; you need to be secure in your life. You need to have a path forward in your future. It’s about our common goal and our values. It’s about maintaining this land organically.”

Bickford chimes in, “And about feeding people healthy food.”

The post Three Generations, Two Families, and One Organic Farm Model Succession appeared first on Civil Eats.

The Lemondeses named their farm Elly’s Acres in honor of their eldest daughter, who was born severely disabled. (Elly Lemondes died in 2016 at age 16.) John, Martha, their 13-year-old daughter Olivia, and nine-year old son J. J. put in long hours returning the land to health.

In just a few years of farming, Lemondes has rehabilitated the land and implemented sustainable management practices; he’s established a thriving flock of sheep from which he derives both wool and meat; and, in addition to building his farm from the ground up, he has become an advocate for veterans interested in getting into business of agriculture.

Though the farm is Lemondes’ first, he is not new to agriculture. In his youth, he picked strawberries, worked with livestock, and made hay, and he earned a Bachelor’s degree in agriculture from Penn State University. After almost three decades in the Army, where he rose to the rank of colonel, Lemondes was ready to take the discipline, organization, and team-management skills he’d developed and put them to work on a farm.

“I never knew how long my military career would be,” Lemondes says, adding that he views it as a detour from the pursuit of his “lifelong desire to farm.”

Since the Lemondeses took over the land, they’ve worked to alleviate flooding in the barn and barnyard, demolished an unlivable house, renovated the farmhouse, and replaced miles of hazardous fencing. At the same time, they’ve reclaimed land that had reverted from pasture to scrub and planted pasture forage—grasses and other food for grazers—for the first time in decades. Having revived it, the Lemondeses see their land, with its mixture of fertile pastures and woodland acreage, as perfectly suited for the Rambouillet sheep they raise for their extra-soft wool as well as meat, with the goal of taking part in the emerging and lucrative field of dual-purpose ranching.

Over the years, his initial flock of 20 sheep has grown to over 100 animals in a closed flock, all bred on the farm and carefully selected for their genetics. Lemondes rotationally grazes the animals, allowing the land to grow back healthier than it would with intensive grazing, and the flock is never fed grain or given antibiotics. Moveable electric fencing, combined with livestock-guarding dogs, corral the flock to protect it from predators and thieves.

Lemondes says knows he’s doing the right thing for the land, in part because his pasture has so few parasites compared to most, and his sheep haven’t needed worming in several years. His grazing rotation is designed to balance the land’s carrying capacity with the density and frequency of grazing, keeping the manure from building up and creating nutrient runoff into the watershed. He also makes sure to distribute the animal’s manure carefully on the land to reduce watershed exposure risk. “If you are going to farm anything, you can’t farm what your land won’t support,” he said.

John Lemondes leading a farm tour for a group of farmer veterans. (Photo © James Bemus.)

It will take him several more years of breeding to reach the 500-head flock he knows his land can support. But Lemondes has already begun applying the lessons he’s learned—about grazing, of course, but also about making the most of financial support for farmers and veterans—to become an advocate for other veterans and sheep farmers in New York and nationwide.

“John was a leader in the military, and now he is a leader in the effort to help other veterans become farmers,” says Michael O’Gorman, executive director of the Farmer Veteran Coalition (FVC).

A Lifetime of Gathering Wool

Although Lemondes’ 100-sheep flock is already larger than many other New York sheep farms, he hopes his expansion plans will help Elly’s Acres get out of a tricky middle place. Each of their sheep generates seven to 10 pounds of wool when sheared.

“We’re already a large farm, but not enough to be a big player” in the commodity fiber industry, he says. “We sell wool directly to individuals, to the local wool pool, and whole fleeces at the CNY Fiber Festival. We don’t sell wool to a commercial processor directly, but we do so through the wool pool. Wool, in low volume, is a challenge.”

According to Susan Schoenian, a sheep and goat specialist at the University of Maryland Extension, the average sheep farm in the United States has fewer than 30 sheep. “[They] have little to no impact on the commodity wool market,” Schoenian says. “Large producers are more likely to sell wool to a mill or warehouse, though some wool pools sell wool through warehouses. In commodity markets, Rambouillet and Merino sheep reign.”

Though this is his first time raising sheep, Lemondes has experience in the wool industry from his time in the military. Part of his job in Army acquisitions was to expand its use of domestic wool, which the military uses in everything from dress blues to berets, as is required by the Berry Amendment.

He became an early supporter of wool after seeing a newer process, known as superwashing, in action. By rounding off the fiber through a specialized washing process, superwashing makes wool fibers less itchy, and less likely to shrink or mat together. Lemondes sought—unsuccessfully—to have the military invest in superwashing equipment in partnership with the American Sheep Industry; today Chargeur’s Wool in South Carolina owns the only superwashing equipment in the U.S.

“Wool is an amazing fiber,” Lemondes says, listing many of its benefits: waterproofing, odor-reducing, flame resistance, biodegradation, and anti-microbial properties along with its durability, colorfastness, and comfort.

While Lemondes continues to expand his wool sales, he is also getting into the meat market. Currently, the farm sells its meat primarily via word of mouth to local markets—Greek, Iraqi, and Moroccan cuisine are among the many that prominently feature lamb. And although the potential for domestically produced lamb is relatively untapped, Lemondes is betting that will soon change. “People who have bought our product love it,” he says.

Having only recently acquired reliable internet access—an ongoing problem in rural communities—the Lemondeses are only just beginning to find their way to social media and new customers as they build their flock and develop their markets. But they’re betting on demand picking up as people recognize the benefits of wool and lamb.

Nothing Sheepish About Asking for Help

While the Lemondes are building their flock, they are also working off-farm, like more than half of the farmers in the U.S.

John works in the defense industry and handles the farm’s general labor and strategic planning. Martha has a job in human resources and organizes farm deliveries and events and focuses on the business development. The couple hires out most of the shearing, but family members—including the children—do everything else. Olivia specializes in lambing and health care, while J.J. handles barn cleaning and helps with firewood and other chores.

“You’d be foolish to not have off-farm jobs when starting out,” Lemondes says. “We’re not going to allow ourselves to go bankrupt in order to farm.” Because they own their land, the Lemondeses are in a better position than many; investing in and improving land is even riskier when you lease.

While Lemondes did have savings, unlike many beginning farmers, he is concerned that sometimes well-meaning programs such as those encouraging veterans to enter farming might be “pushing people into something where the deck is stacked against them, whether they realize it or not.”

John Lemondes leading a discussion among farmer veterans. (Photo © James Bemus.)

Many veteran farm programs offer a path to self-sufficiency that many veterans embrace, having given their prime years to the military. The Farmer Veteran Coalition (FVC) was born in 2007 out of a gathering of California farmers organized by O’Gorman with a goal of finding and creating farm jobs for those returning from active duty. Today, FVC offers training and support, with chapters across the nation; Lemondes is the president of the New York chapter, has hosted a tour of his farm for other FVC members, and convened a state-wide conference for farmer veterans through Cornell’s Small Farm Program.

“Beyond Col. Lemondes’s leadership of FVC’s New York Chapter, he serves as a role model of successful entrepreneurship in agriculture,” says Dean Koyanagi, a farmer veteran program associate at the Cornell Small Farms Program. “Aspiring farmer veterans can learn from his story of transferring military service skills to tangible attributes necessary to meet the challenges of farm ownership.”

Since 2007, the number of veteran-focused programs has grown significantly. The USDA now offers training programs; the National Center for Appropriate Technology’s Armed to Farm program and AgrAbility also offer programs and resources. Lemondes has taken advantage of some resources, including Cornell University’s Farm Ops program, and has found the education to be invaluable.

“[The Farm Ops program] gives you direct exposure to professionals who are experienced and knowledgeable,” he says. “I learned a ton.”

But knowing what to do and how to do it, and even where to turn for help, hasn’t made the journey painless. For instance, Lemondes hasn’t found it easy to work with the local Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) office, and see problems with the structure of programs like NRCS. According to Lemondes, the long-term contracts required under many conservation programs can rule out funding options for those who might have to sell the farm prior to the contract ending, requiring farmers—who are already going under—to pay back the funding immediately. And strict program regulations specify the use of protocols that might not work on all farms. He’d like to see more flexibility in these programs that would meet the individual needs of more farmers.

He’s also had difficulty accessing conservation programs such as the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) or the Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP). (He says he’s still waiting for a check for an EQIP project he completed in March 2017). And the income threshold needed to be competitive for some government grant programs is rough for small and beginning farmers.

Lemondes has become a farmer-activist. Over the past four years, he has written about his experiences as a beginning farmer, and testified in front of the House Committee on Agriculture about the shortfalls and potential benefits of Veteran Farmer programs.

“Dealing with the government has been exceptionally difficult,” Lemondes says. “I want to be part of the process that turns it around.”

John Lemondes shearing one of his Rambouillet sheep. (Photo © James Bemus.)

The post This Veteran Learned the Value of American Wool in the Army. Now He’s Raising His Own Sheep. appeared first on Civil Eats.

There, several dozen pretty, shiny, ombré-coated cows—Holsteins crossbred with Jerseys, Milking Shorthorns, Dutch Belteds, Ayrshires, Brown Swiss, and Norwegian Reds—munch from piles of haylage while they wait for the surrounding fields to dry out beneath a weak sun.

Engelbert Farms’ cows. (Photo courtesy of Organic Valley)

The Engelberts have been raising dairy herds around here for six generations. In 1980, they started moving toward organic, after Kevin Engelbert, then 24, took over the farm from his father and started moving away from chemicals. Other local farmers “thought we were nuts” to abandon a practice then considered essential to dairying, says Engelbert, but he persisted, and in 1984, Engelbert Farms became the first certified organic dairy operation in the country. Engelbert went on to help develop the standards for organic dairy in New York, and later served on the board of the National Organic Program.

Though Kevin has now largely turned the operation over to sons John and Joe, he and his wife, Lisa, 57, are still a daily presence on the farm—manning an on-site store that’s frequented by neighbors; managing a wholesale business that sells organic beef and some cheese to restaurants, wineries, and stores in the Ithaca region and elsewhere; and helping with fieldwork. They recently spoke to Civil Eats about their history with organic dairy, as well as its fraught future.

When did your family start farming here?

Kevin Engelbert: They came to Nichols in 1911. Five or six cows was all anybody had then, plus a flock of chickens and a few pigs and sheep. We owned quite a lot of small little farms 100 years ago, and [my sons] have continued to buy farms as they become available. Counting woods and pasture, I think we now own around 700 acres, and we lease another 2,300 acres within a 15-mile radius of the farm. That gives us enough land to support the families that work for us, plus our 250 dairy cows, 80 beef cows, and the organic grain we grow.

Were there once many farms like yours around here?

Kevin: When I was young, in this general area there were seven farms, with one right across the road, and probably 50 dairies in the town of Nichols. We’ve only got five farms left. Because of the lack of parity pricing for milk and the high cost of doing business in New York, young people have said, ‘What do I want to do that for?’ It’s almost impossible to make a living at dairy farming. Our sons [aged 29 and 33] are the youngest dairy farmers in town.

You decided to convert to organic almost 40 years ago. Why?

Kevin: My dad was first in the area to stop rotating crops. Instead, he started rotating chemicals. We were getting huge yields in late ’60s, early ’70s because of the way my father was farming. When he couldn’t control the weeds with the chemicals he was using, new ones would come out and he’d start using those. Eventually, it killed the soil; there was no life in it at all. I remember in 1979, plowing 200 acres that had been planted with corn three years earlier. I found six earthworms and cornstalks that had never broken down.

My dad was also the first to keep his 120 cows inside—and part of that was because they were so sick they couldn’t walk up on that pasture. It was all they could do to go out to a bunk feeder to eat, then go back inside to lay down. They would get infections in their udders; their feet wouldn’t grow properly; they wouldn’t breed back; and when they did have a calf, they wouldn’t expel the placenta—they’d get milk fever; they’d get sores; they’d seem perfectly fine then just drop dead. We took some of them to Cornell [University] to see what was going on, and they had cancer. I finally realized there had to be correlation between the $25,000 a year we were spending on chemicals and the $1,000 month we were spending on vets trying to keep our cows alive.

Was it difficult to convince your father to do things differently?

Kevin: We experimented with cutting back on chemicals in 1980, then went cold-turkey in 1981. At first, my dad was dead-set against it. It went against everything he had learned at Cornell and done most of his life. But he did make the leap eventually. In the late ’80s, he said, “If everybody farmed the way you do, we’d be a lot better off.” I took that as quite a compliment.

Lisa Engelbert on the farm. Photo by Lela Nargi

Lisa: When we first stopped using chemicals, we [started] cultivating our corn instead of spraying it. But not much else changed in the management of our farm. In 1987, we started crossbreeding our cows, and in 1989 we fenced in all of the prime farmland near our barns, and started doing intensive rotational grazing with our herd.

How long did it take for you to notice a difference, once you stopped the chemicals?

Kevin: We went from having a vet on the farm every Thursday morning, to every other week within a year, to once a month probably within another year. But it took seven years for me to have enough confidence to sell all our spraying equipment.

Yours is the first dairy farm to certify organic. How did that come about?

Kevin: In 1984, I found the Northeast Organic Farming Association of New York [NOFA-NY], which back then was one person. She said, “We don’t have any organic dairy standards; just write down everything you do and we’ll look it over.” Organic certification was just for vegetables then. So I wrote down everything we did—crop rotations, how we treated the animals—and she came out and looked at our farm. A little while later I got a call saying, “Okay, you’re organic.”

After that, I got on NOFA-NY’s standards board and helped refine them. The practices haven’t changed much, except now there’s no antibiotic use at all, and meaningful pasture is required during the grazing season [rather than being “encouraged”].

Did anyone actually want organic milk back then?

Lisa: Right before we got certified, we sent out surveys to every natural food store in New York and Pennsylvania. They were vastly in favor what we were trying to do; people were starting to question how their food was raised and who was raising it. But there was just no way to get it going. So our organic milk went right into the conventional market.

Photo by Lela Nargi

Kevin: I think the first milk we shipped as organic went to Natural By Nature, but they didn’t have enough demand [to take all of it]. We didn’t ship all our milk as organic until 2001, when we switched over to Organic Valley’s CROPP Cooperative. [We still] sell them 5,700 gallons of bulk raw milk a week in summer, and 10,000 gallons in winter.

The price for all milk is so low right now. Do you think organic will be able to weather this slump?

Kevin: I hope it stabilizes for our sake and our sons’ sake. But right now I just don’t know. Aurora [Organic Dairy, which supplies low-cost organic milk to Walmart and other outlets] is building another processing plant in Missouri. They’re going to set up more CAFOs that confine cattle, and [continue to] buy illegal grain from foreign countries. If the government enforced the Organic Food Production law to keep that illegal milk off the market, small family farms would instantly have a market, and they’d thrive.

The Real Organic Project is issuing a sort of “beyond organic” label. Will that help?

Lisa: The USDA Organic label was supposed to be the gold standard, but some certifiers have looked at grey areas in the [organic] rules and [let them slide] rather than looking at their true intent. We actually chose not to have the USDA label on our products; we wanted the quality to be our selling point, and we feared exactly this corporate takeover of the organic industry that’s happening now. But I’m concerned that the Real Organic Project label could create more confusion [for consumers].

Many people don’t realize that “organic” can mean very different standards of milk quality and care for cows. Are there other misconceptions you wish you could disabuse them of?

Kevin: People don’t understand what it takes to farm, how much work is involved, and that farmers need to be taken care of. They’d much rather buy cheap commercial food than locally produced food that’s high quality. But you either pay your farmer now or pay your doctor later—we proved that with our cows.

Has diversifying helped you stay in business?

Lisa: Yes, and we’re lucky because even though our hill ground isn’t suitable for anything but grass and pasture, we’ve got a lot of silt loam river-bottom ground. We can use it to grow enough organic soybeans, wheat, oats, and corn to [feed our cows] in their grain rations and also sell to other organic dairy farms. We also keep a small amount of our milk back to make cheese and sell organic beef.

Kevin: The grain business is over half of our income now, or close to it; a lot of organic farms depend on us for their grain. When the government did away with parity pricing in the 1980s, there was no way to compete; you either had to get bigger, diversify and have another source of income, or you had to lose assets and equity. The government doesn’t think long-term, they don’t think sustainability. As long as food is cheap and plentiful, that’s all they care about.

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