November 3, 2008
This past weekend, Randy and I attended our first Carolina Farm Stewardship Association annual conference in Anderson, SC near Clemson. CFSA envisions a regional food system that is good for the farmer, the consumer and the land. The professionalism of the group with many PhD researchers, business owners and professional farmers both within academia and the market place was inspiring. All food served was locally produced within a 50 mile radius with wonderful vegetables and meats produced by farmers that respect the “pigginess of the pig” per keynote speaker Joel Salatin of Polyface Farms made famous in Michael Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma.
We attended the event with the intention of finding a farm manager. Randy is interviewing for positions post graduate school and we are going to need help on the farm or turn the farm into a full time profitable enterprise. He found out Thursday afternoon as we were leaving for the conference that he has an interview as Director of Farming and Forestry with the Biofuels Center in Oxford, NC. http://www.biofuelscenter.org Of course, I think he is perfect for the job. But it made the trip to a sustainability conference all the more exciting and real!
Not only did we find potential help for the farm but we discovered so much more- a vibrant movement! As a result, we signed up for the Farm Incubator Program to become an educational farm to host a new graduate of one of the Sustainable Farmer Programs in the Carolinas and which will lease a parcel of land from us. Randy and his family will teach this new farmer how to do conventional farming but they are graduates from the new sustainable programs around the state and will teach us methods in organic farming. Very cool, eh?
Randy and I also found other crops we want to explore: mushrooms, specialty cut flowers and canola to make food grade oil for local restaurants to use and then contract with to pick up the used oil for delivery to the new biodiesel plant in Stokes County. It was a very creative group that inspired creative thought in us!
I also found that Organic farming is HARD! No wonder it costs so much!
On Friday, I attended an all day Organic Certification workshop put on by “Mr. Organic” himself, Jim Riddle. Jim was a founder of the Independent Organic Inspectors Association and currently serves as chair of the National Organic Standards Board. Here is a synopsis of his
On Saturday, Randy and I attended “Taking Your CSA to the Next Level, hosted by Elisabeth Henderson of Peace Works CSA of Newark, New York. She has been doing this for over years. Organic vegetable production via a CSA is an advanced farm program. Certified Organic farmers go through a three year process to prove that their methods of production are certified organic.
In the mean time, while our farm is transitioning to organic certification and we get our intern settled in, we are looking into specialty cut flowers. I went to this workshop on Sunday morning. The Association of Specialty Cut Flower informs growers in the production and marketing of field and greenhouse cut flowers. They provide information on growing techniques, marketing strategies, and new developments in the industry. By joining this organization, we will get to know the top researchers, retail and wholesale buyers, suppliers and other successful cut flower growers. We decided upon perennial cut flowers and spent the four hours driving home discussing where we would move the iris bed, where we would plant sun flowers, hydrangea, lily and peony, columbine and more butterfly bushes. We love flowers now not only for beauty but for profit too!
