This week I am house sitting at a home that has a special perk: wireless Internet in the house! I have been saturating myself online, including some non productive catching up on friends’ latest photos, and some more productive perusing of websites of other small-scale farms. Last night I discovered a small farm in Vermont that offers a year round CSA, something I had not considered until then, especially for a farm in such a cold weather climate. Upon further investigation, I found that the farm employs people specifically to preserve the year’s harvest through canning and freezing. In this way they ensure that CSA members have access to farm raised food, year round. I was equally impressed and inspired, and started thinking more about successful marketing styles utilized by small farms.

So much of the motivation for farming the way that we do comes from a hope for a better future. Striving towards a means of producing food that is less resource intensive, more locally adapted, and respectful of ecology feels like an important route for agriculture to take. The most significant necessary ingredient in leading us to this kind of food future is a new population of willing and able farmers.  We offer our agriculture interns an insight and a working experience operating this kind of farm in a way that is well-aligned with our mission of "inspiring a just and sustainable future." More people practicing small-scale, locally rooted agriculture is laying the groundwork for self-sufficient, environmentally friendly, localized community.

It’s hard to compete with the Bay Area in terms of its foodie passion and support of locavore eating. Nonetheless, I find that people I meet from San Francisco or the Silicon Valley are still surprised to hear that I’m a farmer. I see a look in their eye that says, “Whoa… that’s crazy.” But the longer I farm, the more I wonder how much is wrong with our food system if people have never met a farmer. How much trouble are we in if people my age (27) haven’t heard of anyone choosing it as a career? Next time I get that look, I want to say, “Don’t you eat? How do you not know a farmer?"

Photo Credit: Laurie Aubuchon

On our field walk today we saw newly sprouted bush beans coming in healthily next to fifteen lines of hearty looking potato plants. At the same time our old strawberry patch is almost completely inundated with noxious bind weed and some of the tomatoes that we planted on Friday have already been eaten by voles. It also rained on us, which was both good and bad. Getting a little extra water helps our crops grow but it also made it so that we couldn’t get into the field to do some needed tractor work and planting. The rain will also increase the weed pressure on all our crops.

This is why I love small scale diversified organic farming. Everyday is a new and different challenge and I get to work outside with a small crew of good friends to grow some of the best food I have ever had in my life.

Front row from left to right: Jason McKenney, Nathan Hammer

Back row from left to right: Animal Husbandry Manager, Suzanne Allcroft, Jake Mendell, Aspen Kvicala, Taylor Hutchison

Our new Agriculture interns have arrived, marking the start of a new season on the farm. Taylor Hutchison joins the Farm Crew that grows our fruit and vegetable production, and Jake Mendell is the new addition to the Animal Husbandry team. We’re happy to welcome Taylor and Jake to Hidden Villa!

Last week I attended an event at Stanford University, Food Summit 2, aimed at bringing together "community activists, university scholars and others who are coming together to discuss strategies to address and solve the most challenging and important food-related crisis in our communities, our country, and around the world." Among the many panels and conversations was the implicit agreement that there is a food crisis happening and that any solutions will need to be interdisciplinary. 

(A brief plug: the third panel on Hospital Food was most excellent, and Marydale DeBor and Frank Turner deserve an extra round of applause for their candor and hard work.  They've taken the daunting task of reinventing the way hospitals feed people and created simple and elegant solutions.)

One of the earliest audience questions brought up an important, and perhaps missing, component from the day - Who is training young people to farm?  A good question, considering that at the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports 40% of farmers in the US at 55 years of age, or older.