Thoughts from a small farm during the midwinter lull

original-grist

Risky Business
Thoughts from a small farm during the midwinter lull
By Tom Philpott
10 Jan 2007
Before I became a farmer three growing seasons ago, I lived in Brooklyn, N.Y., and reveled in the array of top-flight local produce available from mid-spring to late fall. Long about January, though, a kind of local-food withdrawal would set in.

Winter on the farm.

By this time of year, the legendary produce aisle of the Park Slope Food Co-op would be given over mainly to dull vegetables trucked in from the mega-organic farms of California, Arizona, and Mexico. My beloved Clinton Hill CSA -- which introduced me to the community-supported agriculture model now in use at my own Maverick Farms -- was hibernating. And the usually bustling Grand Army Plaza Green Market would be operating in shell form, frequented by shivering diehards like me and a few dairy, meat, apple, and egg vendors.

I have to admit, while tending my winter braises and pining for spicy salad greens, I gave little thought to what was actually happening on the farms that sustained me during the growing season.

Now I know: Winter is the planning season on a small-scale farm, the time to sort out budgets, seed orders, and marketing plans, and figure out who's going to do what and when. Recently, while engaged in that process, I've been pondering lessons I've learned since coming to the farm that I wish I had known back when I was an urban local-food enthusiast.

One lesson I've learned viscerally: Small-scale farming is an inherently fragile process. In the summer months, farmers' markets across the nation bustle with vendors selling gorgeous produce at prices well above the factory-farmed wares sold at supermarkets. Surveying these vivid and life-affirming scenes, it's easy to assume that here in the U.S. we've managed to create a robust economic model for small-scale farming.

In reality, the economics of small-scale farming -- even close to booming markets like New York City -- are dismal. Large-scale industrial farming replaces human labor with energy-intensive machinery and health-destroying chemicals; the small-scale farms that supply the nation's burgeoning green market scene generally reject those methods, and are much more labor intensive. That means that the premium you pay for an heirloom tomato might not be covering its real cost of production.
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complete article here

Sadly, that farm is now surrounded by homes and places I roamed and dreamed are gone for ever.

It's interesting that some or most of the world's great religions were started by people who went away from society into the wilderness to immerse them-self in nature and try to understand eternity and infinity and answer the unknowing. The result was understanding that manifested itself as an awe at the divine, something lesser mortals worship today as religions.

:hi:

beautifully said.

I do not live in a big city (120,000) but the farm 10 miles outside the city has given me so much. In a few short months I will finally be able to live on this piece of ground. Nature is a great healer and certainly is able to put ones perspective of themselves where it ought to be.

I am bookmarking to read later.

be it on a patio 15 stories up, in buckets with tomatoes/peppers/eggplant/herbs. It doesn't take long to mind the nature of what you grow, or what doesn't grow for you. No matter how you cut it, there is no taste like the taste of something you grew from seed.

and boy is this ever the planning season. I've got seed catalogs by every toilet and a trip down to Oregon to Territorial planned and I'm setting up the lights and trying to find that other damn warming sheet and ..........Yikes. I remember a time when this was the slow season but now that I live up north, everything has to start so much earlier.