“Rich people need organic food to survive.” Wait—is that a joke, or a reality in America today? Or both? The fact is that for all of us to survive in this new century we’re going to have to change the way we source food. And not just as individuals: We also need to re-formulate national policy in line with that same objective because, at the moment, long-standing government subsidies are crushing both our health and our environment.

Let’s Have a Fair Food Fight

You can almost hear Dick Cheney saying “organic food is a nice personal virtue for the radical fringe, but it’s not going to feed the world.” Actually, when you level the playing field, organic (and more importantly, sustainable) food comes out on top.

The fact is organic farmers don’t receive federal subsidies the same way conventional farmers do. Organic and small-time farmers receive “specialty crop grants” that are measured in thousands rather than in millions of dollars.  Sad truth: If you’re not growing corn, wheat or soybeans, you get the merest of crumbs from the federal table.

Myth: Organic Food is More Expensive

Today, organic food does cost more than conventional food. Watch an organic farmer hand-weed a row of carrots and you’ll immediately know why. Smaller organic farms require more time, attention and labor to get produce to market.

When I tell people that I like to talk to farmers about what they do, the first response is often “oh, gee, that’s such hard work.” But that’s not what farmers will tell you. They talk about their powerful connection to the land and its inhabitants. How they raised a huge pumpkin from a tiny seed or a calf into an award-winning milk-cow. There is incredible pride in what they can grow with their own hands and knowhow.

Robin Cockerline of Whippoorwill Farm in Lakeville, CT said “there is an amazing rhythm to farming, and scenes of indescribable beauty.”  For author and grower Michael Ableman, farming was just like falling in love. “Nature seduced me,” he wrote in his book, On Good Land. “When that intoxicating, blinding draw faded, a deeper relationship formed.”

Farmers enjoy what they do more than most of us.  A Gallup-Healthways poll of professions found that farmers came in fourth in terms of overall well-being.

Source: Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index

Judy Flint, who works as a personal consultant for NY Farm Net, said that farmers are “incredibly hard working.  Just really good people who love what they do, and being their own bosses even when they are working at the whim of the weather.”

Most farmers just squeak by financially, and yet they continue to love what they do.

The Pressure Can Be Overwhelming

So many things can go wrong.  The weather, a tomato blight, a tractor engine seizes up, an employee walks away at the absolute worst time, the freezer fails—and takes $10K in beef with it. The fact is that farming can be “a heartbreaking way to earn a living,” says family farmer Paul Wigsten. “It’s a horrible addiction. Probably worse than heroin.”

Farming is hard work, yet the farmers I meet are some of the most satisfied people I know. Odd, because in my experience, running a small business can be full of stress and often not a whole lot of fun.

What is different for farmers? Perhaps it’s just that being responsible for life pays tremendous dividends.

Farmers care for their animals and their crops. They’ll scratch a calf’s head, break the ice on the water trough in the dead of winter, raise crops from seed to harvest. Wendell Barry in Bringing It to the Table quotes Terry Cummins, the author of Feed My Sheep, on what its feels like to provide husbandry.

The feeling inside sort of just happens, and you can’t say that this did it or that did it. It’s the many little things. It doesn’t seem that taking a sweat-soaked harness off tired, hot horses would be something that would make you notice. Opening a barn door for sheep standing in a cold rain, or throwing a few grains of corn to the chickens are small things, but these small things begin to add up in you, and you begin to understand that you’re important.

You may not be real important like the people you read about in the newspaper, but you begin to feel that you’re important to all the life around you. Nobody else knows or cares too much about what you do, but if you get a good feeling inside about what you do, then it doesn’t matter if nobody else knows.

I do think about myself a lot when I’m along way back on the place bringing in the cows or sitting on the mowing machine all day. But when I start thinking about how our animals and crops and fields and woods and gardens sort of all fit together, then I get that good feeling inside and don’t worry much about what will happen to me.

But when you start to think of animals as protein and nature as a force that can be controlled, then something switches off in your brain, and you can make decisions that are good for business but not so good for animals and people. As we look to a new decade, it will be good to think about how we can reengage with our food in positive and sustainable ways.

Herondale Farm is a mixed livestock certified organic farm. We have gradually transformed a former dairy farm to accommodate  new inhabitants—our British White and Murray Grey cattle, Berkshire and Berkshire cross pigs and Cornish cross rock chickens (along with a motley crew of guinea hens and laying chickens who patrol for flies and ticks).

Healthy Animals Are Raised on Pasture

We like to raise healthy and happy animals, who spend as much time as they want in the pastures. Our chickens are a seasonal business, from spring through late fall, to ensure that they have grass as a big part of their diet. The pigs have access to the barn in the winter to stave off the cold, and they eat a lot of alfalfa baleage in the winter as well as an organic grain and soy mix. For the rest of the year they are rooting up marginal fields or woodlots. The cows graze the fields as long as the grass grows, after which they enjoy the alfalfa baleage and hay that we put up for the winter.

Our British White and Murray Grey cattle were bred to thrive on grass. These heritage breeds have never adapted to the feedlot system that forces hormone-filled cows to eat grain and forget about grazing. A grass-fed diet ensures meat that is tender, tasty, high in omega-3s and hormone free. Since our pastures are certified organic, our cows are eating grass completely free of herbicides and pesticides.

In essence, we are trying to turn back the clock—to produce meat and poultry that tastes as good as it did several decades ago before farms got turned into factories.

Heritage Breed English White Cattle

To place an order visit our online store or send us an email. Your order can then be shipped via UPS or picked up at the farm.

To visit:  Best to call ahead.  Here are our coordinates.

Dear Paisley CSA members,

Thanks to one and all for joining Paisley Farm CSA. I hope it was a positive experience for everyone. It was a pleasure for my staff and I to grow the vegetables that you ate for the last 22 weeks.

It’s an awesome feeling that our agricultural surplus allows you to be doctors, artist, moms, dads, inventors, hairdressers, actors, authors and even… bankers. Personally I enjoyed waking up every day knowing that I had the responsibility of growing good nutritious food for people who really cared and that good food was important to them. You have the right to good local food and thank you for making that choice.

We at the farm have learned a lot this year and have been humbled by Mother Nature. We know what works and what doesn’t work when you have 70 days of rain in a 90-day period! We also learned that in the end, the sun and the earth didn’t let us down. Maybe we didn’t get everything we wanted but it gave us what we needed.

Be well,

Mike Kokas, Paisley Farm

A Consumer Replies

Dear Paisley Farm,

Volunteering the week after your harvest party, I heard about the 90 friends who broke bread with you last Saturday. If I were able to be there I would have raised a glass to you and said, “thanks”…

“Thanks” for not poisoning the earth while growing and tending what the earth gives forth.

“Thanks” for working all hours, days and nights, for getting good food to those of us without a plot of land but with a burning need to feel connected to the land (and a healthy contempt for agribusiness).

“Thanks” for beautifully bundling all your bounty and presenting it in a way that shows you are as proud to grow it, as we are to eat it.