Meet this week’s vegetables:
The holiday season officially begins this week, and what a joyous holiday it will be. For us, to be a part of your Thanksgiving table is a great honor. I can’t think of a more meaningful Thanksgiving for us than this one. At times it’s easy to forget the roots of this American holiday—true gratitude after a season of agricultural success. Our success this year may not have followed times of literal famine like the pilgrims’, but it does signify a new type of sustenance: the establishment of a more sustainable and local food source. And for us at Oakhill Organics: the beginning of our new life as a farm as well.
So much to be thankful for. We hope your list is long, as ours is. We have a holiday tradition of making our Christmas card a list of what we’re thankful for each year. This year, we are struggling with where to even begin …
And, we are also hopeful this week, in part because of the Oregon Tilth conference we attended last weekend. The conference title was ‘Feeding the Future’—a good gathering cry for a bunch of Oregon organic growers (and processors, consumers, etc.). We left the two days with our minds full of new ideas and ways of thinking about our farm. I attended a session about nutrition and organically grown food vs. conventional (organic tends to be more nutritious—not surprisingly). Casey listened to a talk that questioned the very boundaries between plants and animals and seed breeding—very thought provoking. And we learned more about what consumers think of when they see labels like ‘organic’ and ‘local’ on their foods (according to one survey ‘local’ matters more than ‘organic’ right now—interesting for us as local organic growers).
But, as always, the absolute best part of the two days was the people we met. Generally speaking, people our own age are less well represented at farming conferences. The average age of farmers in the United States is over fifty and rising each year as more farmers age and fewer enter the profession. But at the Tilth conference we met a solid handful of young farmers and those aspiring to be so.
We met David of Lost Creek Farm in Dexter, OR who farmed full-time for the first time this summer. He sold at three markets in Eugene and Portland, and it sounds like he did very well there. We also met a young woman with land in Sheridan who is already a very experienced grower and wants to someday soon farm her land—she’s considering doing a grain-based CSA (wheat, quinoa, etc.). How exciting is that? And, we met two couples who want to start CSAs serving Salem, and another woman in Forest Grove headed the same direction with her family farm (which is currently in conventional berries). We also met a few older farmers who are second or third career growers, who are bringing their experienced levels of professionalism to their new endeavors.
How did we end up meeting all these new farmer types? We presented at the conference, at a session called, ‘Success and the New Farmer.’ We originally suggested such a session to Oregon Tilth after attending last year’s conference and noticing a lack of discussion about new farmer issues. Of course having suggested it, we assumed responsibility of helping it happen. We are so glad that we did too. The room certainly wasn’t overflowing, but there was a solid group of people interested in what we and the other presenters had to share. It might surprise the more skeptical watchers out there, but for us here at Oakhill Organics, meeting new growers (including those in our own area) is very exciting.
We have felt for a long time that the success of any small farm requires establishing a strong local agricultural economy. Not every farmer feels this way—some have worked hard for years to establish their own business and consequently can become territorial about markets. Perhaps in the early years of organics this may have felt necessary, but we don’t see it that way today. We learned a great word once referring to the relationship between small farms as ‘cooperatition’—‘cooperation’ and ‘competition’ blended.
We loved that idea. It does take a formal or informal gathering of farmers to create a local market (whether that’s a literal farmers’ market or just to establish a local economy for produce). The way we see it, the more farmers there are in an area, the more people will become aware of local food. And, ultimately more important, the more people who can eat local food.
Although we plan to grow our CSA next year, already we can’t meet the demand we’ve encountered for locally grown produce. For example, as of today we’re planning to have 85-90 CSA shares next season (which could change). But we have over 130 people on our mailing list who will receive our brochure next week, most of whom are already very interested in the CSA concept.
We hope that this is just the tip of the iceberg. And we’re glad to know that others are stepping up to help serve this growing demand for quality, local whole foods (vegetables, fruit, meat, eggs, milk, possibly grains, etc.). Even outside of the recent conference, we’ve heard rumblings about two potential new CSAs in the Mac area. We’ll let those people announce themselves when they’re ready, but suffice to say we are eager to gain new compatriots and peers in this business of feeding people good food.
So, to return to our list of thanks, hope is definitely high on the tally. It’s funny how new this sensation is. I know that we’re young, but we’ve both grown up (as children and adults) aware of the many challenges facing our generation. Not even a year ago, these challenges seemed to outweigh any glimmers of positive change.
This season hasn’t altogether eliminated the problems we perceive. But in watching the regularity of the seasons again—this year more carefully than before—perhaps we simply see more hope in the cycles. I wouldn’t say we’re naively idealistic or think that we’re ‘changing the world,’ but seeing life and sustenance literally grow out of the ground certainly provides real tangible hope.
And that is indeed something to be thankful for. As well as you, our community. Thank you, as always. And enjoy this week’s vegetables!
Your farmers,
Katie & Casey Kulla
Oakhill Organics
