Folks, I need to pause as we head into fall here and give you a little update on what’s around your farm. A few weeks ago I wrote about how the early monsoons and hail wreaked some havoc on our early season zucchini and spring lettuce crops. But there is some really amazing stuff going on that I would like to share so you know more about the farm/business/people you are supporting.
I honestly believe that this season and year will go down as the most transformative year that the farm has seen. This is our 13th season, we are in those awkward teenage years where you are trying to find your place in the world and wondering who in the world invented back hair? These are not easy years for our youth to go through and now I am realizing that they are not easy years for a business either.
We have been very fortunate in our youthful years to have asked for and received so much support from all of the communities we try and feed. We have found strong partners to help us keep pushing when at times it seems futile. Change happens slowly and so if you need to see Rome built in a day, the local food movement is not your place. This is a marathon of a mission and you don’t even get to put a cute “26.2” bumper sticker on your ride because there is no end to this marathon, there is just a spinach salad with fresh pear and goat cheese crumbles.
But the real crossroads for this year came in the form of a picture I saw. It was the front of a local food magazine and it showed 5 farmers in their mid-20s sitting on an old pick-up and all wearing ripped up jeans and shirts. It probably fit the idyllic picture of what people think the Organic farmers should look like, but it made me feel terrible. It made me think that the pendulum had swung so far from corporate agriculture, that now we can’t trust our food unless the farmer looks impoverished.
Where is the joy in that? Do we really want to go to a local food dinner and realize that no growers are at the table because they cannot afford it? That is not a local food industry that I want to be apart of, I’m sorry.
My local food vision has good food for everyone including the farmers who grow it. It has health coverage and dental coverage, and paid time off when you are sick or need to deal with family issues. This is the side of sustainable agriculture that people don’t talk about because it is not sexy. It is much easier to talk about small farms and keeping tractors off the soil, but then we end up perpetuating an agricultural industry that is not sustainable. We need to expand the discussion to include boring things like health care and making a living wage.
And that brings me back to your farm. All of those things that no one likes to talk about are at the foundation of this farm and business. Without our farmers and employees, we have nothing. The food we produce is tangential to the people that we surround ourselves with daily. Our mission is our team, and oh, by the way, we grow some amazing food for you and your family.
So this year has been about the little farm that could, going into its cocoon and transforming into the farm that has not only been here for you for 13 years, but will continue to be here for you (and your kids) into the future. Through this change, we have lost a lot of really amazing people. But our vision is about the future, not the past. So we finally have a team put together that is about a unified mission and everyone knows how important this small farm is to our communities that we feed.
At the beginning of this year, I challenged our team to remain laser focused on this shared vision and I promised them good things would come. Nine months later we are seeing the fruits of this focus. Our customer service to our members has never been better and your orders are being packed with an over 99% accuracy for the first time ever.
So I wanted to take this newsletter to thank all of our employees, but also let you know about the great minds and hands who work so hard to bring you the freshest, cleanest, and healthiest food around.
Cheers,
Farmer Monte