Certification, the 2015 update

We’ve got “organic farm” signage posted at the edges of our farm (usually in the midst of thick hedgerows, such as this one). We communicate regularly with our neighbors, but it’s helpful to let all possible farm workers on neighboring farms know our status too.

I have written about the organic certification process many times over the years. Back in 2009, I published an article in In Good Tilth making a strong argument in favor of the certification process and questioning the use of the phrase “beyond organic.” I can’t find any online archive of that article, but you can see a little blurb of my article in this Utne Reader blog post — I only just today read all the comments below that heartily disagreed with me! (By the way, I still don’t like the phrase “beyond organic” for many of the reasons that it irked me so many years ago!)

However, in 2012 I ate my words a bit when I wrote about our  decision to “uncertify” our farm (i.e. drop our certification for a few years). Interestingly, there are comments on that post that criticize me/us again. Clearly, there is no winning position in this particular game! Some people favor the clarity, ease, and verification of organic certification; others favor the grass roots anti-government position. I suppose now we’ve been in both camps over our prior nine season. Perhaps we now have a better understanding of why or why not a farm would make the choice to pursue certification. I do still understand the position of chafing under the government ownership of the word “organic” — a word that started with small local farms and now is stamped on all sorts of foods that, for various reasons, don’t meet the original ideals (I’m thinking here of processed foods, imported items, and items grown by massively large corporate farms).

What we learned from our own experience is that the primary difference between a certified organic farm and a not certified “organic” farm is paperwork. We know this, because the way we grew on our land during our break never deviated from our ideals. (In fact, if anything, taking a break from the certification process gave us a little extra flexibility to experiment with how we wanted to manage our land. The certification process often assumes that a grower knows how he or she is going to proceed through the season, and in those years of growth we just really didn’t always know the details up front. We learned a lot as we went, always making choices consistent with our ideals and consistent with NOP standards (NOP = National Organic Program).

Nonetheless, I’ll tell you what: when I go to the store, I buy certified organic foods. Yes, indeed. Given all the labeling confusion in the marketplace, it is a label I still reach for. Of course, I prefer local food (generally, most of our food comes from our farm), but — yes — I am happy that I can buy organic ketchup in a bottle. Because my kids love ketchup, and I could never make enough in our crock pot to keep up with their one bottle a week habit.

But perhaps more useful for you all to know, after taking an important hiatus, we’re back in the certification game as a farm too. For those of you who don’t want to do back reading on the blog to learn why we got out, I’ll summarize: in 2012, we expanded our acreage (from 20 to 100+ acres), had a second child, and added animals to the farm. Basically, something had to give that year. And, we needed time on the new land to get to know how we wanted to use it before we started making maps and filling out forms.

After a few more seasons, we were ready to do that work. So, part of our work this winter was revising maps, making seed lists, and making our new “organic systems plan” (a long document that covers a wide range of topics relating to how the farm operates, including things like pest and fertility management). Thankfully, we had lots of prior experience with the process! Then this Tuesday, we had our organic inspection. We always have a few butterflies in our stomachs before this happens, even though we know we’ve done all our homework — our farming practices are organic, and we keep good records. But, just like with doing taxes, there’s always that nervous feeling that maybe we didn’t do our homework exactly right and the inspector will find a missing piece in our record-keeping system. But of course he didn’t, because it was all there. (If you’re wondering, all the record keeping required by certification is useful stuff on a farm — dates of sowing, fertility application rates and dates, harvest logs … it’s all stuff we keep track of anyway, but being certified takes the process to just a slightly more organized level!)

This recent inspection also had a bit of a celebratory/reunion feeling to it, because our inspector was someone who has inspected our farm several times before — including our very first year ever. It felt sweet to embark on this process again with someone who was present for our first time through it all. (This was especially surprising to us because we are actually working with a different certifying body this time — Stellar, a program of Demeter Association, the U.S. body of the same-named international Biodynamic association).

As I said, all went well, and we expect to receive official certification status within a month or two (mostly just depending on how quickly the application moves from various desk to desk in the final steps). You can bet we’ll post about that when it happens! We are excited!

But perhaps you’re still wondering why we decided to get certification again anyway … What differed in the feelings of being certified versus not that tipped the scales in favor of certification again? I think the best way I can describe the difference is that when we take those extra steps of getting certified, we feel a stronger sense of integrity about our whole farming enterprise. I want to emphasize that this is a statement about how we feel; perhaps not applicable to other farms. We acknowledge and still feel the pain and frustration that comes with the USDA’s ownership of the label. However, we feel good about participating in the certification process and being able to — without any reservation or caveats — tell people that our crops are ORGANIC.

Getting our crops certified organic is the first step in what might become a larger process. Next we’ll need to decide whether we want to get the livestock operation certified (a different deal with quite a few more challenges), but we can’t do that until their feed is certified (and since we grow their feed, that means our crops come first!). We may decide that it’s sufficient that all of our animal feed is certified organic. But we also want to further explore using Demeter’s Biodynamic certification process in future years (again, getting our crops certified organic is a first step here too). I wrote a bit about our early steps into the world of Biodynamic agriculture in this past newsletter. Those steps are in the possible future and represent opportunities for our farm to continue to grow, but they are by no means certain. One step at a time!

More and more I’ve been realizing lately how very much growth potential remains in Casey and my life. This is so obvious to me now, but in earlier years of my life I really pictured everything culminating in our early 30s and then just sort of coasting while we appreciated the life we’d built. Ha! I am so pleased to learn that life is not static after 30. Of course not — of course not! And yet from those earlier vantage points, I really couldn’t have begun to imagine the growth that would happen for us personally and on the farm in this decade of our life. I still cannot picture future decades either, but now I am more certain that growth will happen! (And, I also know that it will also probably be painful at times too!)

When I think of how much more we can learn about farming, especially by taking more time to understand Biodynamic growing, I feel so excited about the coming years. Other areas of our home and family life also present equally rich and exciting opportunities. On this sunny May evening, with this year’s organic inspection behind us, life is feeling just plain fun.

Anyhow, we’ll keep you updated on the certification news. For now, enjoy this week’s vegetables!

Your farmers, Katie & Casey Kulla

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Work at the hospital? You can eat our salad mix there now too! I keep meaning to mention that Willamette Valley Medical Center has recently started using our salad mix on their salad bar! It’s been a fun partnership, and I know at least a few of our customers have been happy to eat our salad during their shift at work. Harvest Fresh also started selling our salad mix earlier this spring, as I mentioned in an earlier newsletter! We love how local our farm is. Did you know that we’ve never sold any of our farm products outside of Yamhill County? We grow here; we live here; we sell our products. We love the many overlapping layers of our farm community! Including you!

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McMinnville Farmer’s Market has begun! Perhaps you noticed the activity at 2nd and Cowls last week — the farmers’ market season has begun! While we do not currently have a booth at market, we are happy to share the same general vicinity and afternoon with them. Many of our customers overlap, and we hope that our CSA members will have time to stroll over there after picking up their shares! Likewise, market customers are welcome to come down to our storefront to check out our offerings!

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Meet this week’s vegetables:

• Strawberries
• Sugar snap peas — Before we grew strawberries, the sugar snap peas were the super special sweet spring treat. They still fit that category to me! We’ve been munching on these all week. Remember that mayo-like salad dressing I mentioned a few weeks back? I’ve been making some of that for dipping our peas in. I add more oil to make it a bit thicker. Some honey and extra salt are delicious too.
• Fava beans
• Head lettuce
• Chard
• Braising mix
• Potatoes — I wanted to talk for a moment about a problem we have in our potatoes. Apparently, some of them (especially the larger pots and especially the Russets) have hollow spots inside. Unfortunately CSA members found these spots before we did in our own household (I think this is a matter of odds — we are only one of 120+ households eating our veggies each week!). The good news is that the spots are not rot; they were formed when the potatoes were growing. They essentially grew too fast to keep up and formed the cavities! However, it is still unpleasant to get big weird holes in potatoes! So we wanted to let you know that if you’ve had such holes, please let us know so we can get you extra potatoes. As CSA farmers, it is our assumption that our members are taking home high quality cook-able produce each week. In the rare event that this is not true, we’d like the opportunity to make it up to you! Thank you! … also, I wanted to mention that Casey has been making the kids some killer hashbrowns lately with our potatoes. He peels and grates them and squeezes out extra liquid from the grated potatoes. Then he puts loads of butter in a cast iron pan and fries the hashbrowns until they are cooked through and browned (putting the lid on at first helps with the first phase of the cooking process). With lots of salt, they are supreme diner-style indulgences.
• Sweet onions — Watch out! You might just faint from the beauty of these over-wintered sweet onions. I wish we knew exactly the magic that has to happen to grow onions this big and beautiful, but the reality is that it seems to be tricky. Very often we find that the onions bolt before sizing up, but then we get a good year like this and its really quite worth the continued trials (oh, and maybe following the Biodynamic planting calendar helps too!). Since these are sweet onions, they are quite mild and suitable for eating raw on salads and sandwiches. Eat those beautiful green tops, too!
• Green garlic
• Garlic
• Other special treats …

And this week’s extra goodies from the farm: Remember to bring containers when appropriate! Especially for eggs!

• Green garlic ferment! Finely chopped green garlicky goodness! $8/pint, $4/half-pint. Remember to bring jars if you have them. We bring some, too!
• Corn flour  — $5 lb
• Walnuts — $5 lb
• Eggs — $4 dozen — Time for an egg update. Our egg loving customers have noticed that our supply has dwindled. We’re working on it!
• Lamb — Prices vary depending on the cuts. We have roasts of all kinds. This is going fast, so if you want lamb, I recommend checking out the selection this week. We’ll take more animals soon.
• Pork products — Whoa! We learned last week that people get really excited about sausages and bacon! We sold out of the bratwursts and bacon, but we still have some of the Canadian style bacon and several hams. The hams range in size from 3-4.5 lbs. Prices vary! Check it out!!!!!! (And, yes we will take more hogs for processing soon!)
• Fresh pork roasts & belly — $8 lb. These are cuts that haven’t been cured at all, so “fresh.” We have lots and lots of roasts that make for delicious crock pot meat.
• Pork fat & skin — $3 lb
• Ground beef — Meat loaf? Tacos? Hamburgers? Yes, please! $7 for 1/lb packages