Sunday, May 15, 2011

Are you "Organic"?

hmmm....
How to answer?
Technically, we're not allowed to mumble the word organic because its been bought and sold by the USDA and the big agribusiness and mega farms.
That's fine by us though because when organic became "Organic" we stopped using the word.
Currently, the state of the word "Organic" is what we would describe as a travesty. Every year there are more and more "organic" pesticides, herbicides and fungicides,
there is less and less oversight by the governing bodies in charge of such things,
there is more and more control by the very same huge corporations that made organic necessary in the first place,
and we are getting more and more of our food ("Organic" as well as everything else) from foreign countries who have no over site at all (China).
Organic has been effectively been packaged and sold off to the walmarts, trader joes, and the whole foods of the world.
Along the way it left behind what we consider organic to be:
small farms who use absolutely nothing, none, nope, nada in the way of pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, or chemical fertilizers.
We're organic before there was an organic.
we're organic the way our great grandparents were organic.
No nothing farming.
That's us.
Always have been, always will be.

springtime on a farm








I'm never not surprised when it all works...



what's in a name...

"5lbs of Dirt?"
"What's that mean?"
Well...
When we first started out we didn't know nothing about nothing when it came to this farming thing. Humbly, we would drive around and ask as many questions to as many people as possible.
If we heard there was an organic grower two towns over...
there was a good chance that we would show up at her doorstep with a list of questions in hand.
If we saw you plowing a field in an interesting way...
we would stand and wait until you reached back to our end and pester you with questions.
Pile of rusting equipment sitting outside a broken down barn...
good chance to ask you what each thing was,
what it was used for,
how much you wanted for it,
and perhaps we could poke around inside that old barn of yours...
Through this we met a lot of interesting folks...
some of whom we have become good friends with.
We also received a lot of what you could call folksy, old timey wisdom:
Plants peas by St.. Patrick's day.
(followed by)
You're an idiot if your planting peas this early...
Garlic goes in by Columbus Day and out by the 4th of July...
The John Deere 4020 is the best damned tractor ever made.
and our favorite:
You're supposed to eat 5lbs of Dirt before you die,
it's good for you.