Why be a food farmer?
Many good reasons exist, other than merely earning money, to be a food farmer, though getting paid is an important benefit. Working outside in nature is good for body and soul. Nature is a helpful, abundant teacher.
Seeing beautiful things such as redwoods, oaks, and flying birds can be pleasurable. I enjoy bringing freshly-picked berries up from the field to customers and watch them smile and start eagerly eating them.
Digging in the Earth, as I did as a boy, is a great joy. I also appreciate having my hands on plants and animals most days. My farm dog–a Catahoula leopard hound, whose job is to chase off predators, mainly deer and wild turkeys — also likes my hands and those of customers and visitors, on her silky, colorful coat. Winnie loves to play and entice me to join her.
As a child on my Uncle Dale’s diverse Iowa farm, I learned how to farm. We stacked hay (itchy), milked cows, (before dawn), and cared for chickens and pigs. Watching the chickens and piglets play was fun. Though we had plenty of corn — in the small state with the third largest ag economy in the U.S. — we did not over-plant it and thus create a mono-crop.
Such childhood remembrances drew me to Sonoma County, whose rural character we seek to preserve from various industrial, commercial, and urbanizing forces that threaten sprawl into the countryside. My first residence was in the early 1990s at a farmhouse owned by Westerbeke Ranch in the Valley of the Moon.
Farm memories from my childhood were so positive that when I finally grew up, in my forties, I reflected on when I was happiest in my life. It was while on my Uncle Dale’s farm. So in 1992 I left full-time college teaching and moved to the Sebastopol countryside. I bought a small rural spread, and made it into a productive food farm, specializing in boysenberries.
Organic practices — such as much mulch, compost, leaves, no till, and manure as fertilize — guide me. I eventually built the soil up so much that I no longer need to fertilize and basically dry farm, except when it reaches over 90 degrees during harvest, when I lay down hoses.
I joined the wonderful Sonoma County Farm Trails, which drew eager customers from throughout the San Francisco Bay Area to my farm and those of my neighbors. I was soon able to sell all the berries I could grow. I began hosting farm tours for families and educational, community, environmental, and spiritual groups, thus teaching people outside in the open field and on the forest floor created by a redwood stand, rather than inside in a walled classroom.
I don’t need to go to a gym, since I work in the field most days. Food farming is intensely physical, unless one is merely the owner or manager, thus not really a grower.
“In crisis there is always the element of opportunity, a chance to do things better,” writes Jane Bender, president of the Center for Climate Change Protection board in the Nov. 23 edition of the North Bay Business Journal. “Today we face a full-scale environmental crisis,” she adds in her article “Helping Build the Sustainable Economy.”
Food farming is not for everyone. It’s demanding, though also rewarding. It is hard to support a family by growing food, though it is possible. Many real farmers have off-farm jobs to help support families.
Groups such as the Farmers Guild and the Grange help people of all ages learn how to farm food and develop a community of support. “We need to woo folks back to the land,” says Sebastopol Grange president Jerry Allen. “Many individuals and families are emotionally and spiritually ‘de-hydrated.’ When one works in nature in the soil and with animals, the blessedness of nature steeps into and nourishes us.”
Shepherd Bliss
Dr. Shepherd Bliss {www.winewaterwatch.org} has contributed to two-dozen books. He hosts the new program “A Better World is Possible” on KOWS radio (kows.fm).
