Growing Trust
(Page 5 of 7)
June/July 2007
By Barbara Kingsolver
She fine-tunes it a little more each year, but already her operation is an obvious success. The last time she had soil tests, the technicians who came to evaluate her compost-built organic dirt had never seen such high nutrient values. The greatest limitation here is temperature; she could keep tomatoes growing all winter, but the cost of fuel would pass her profit margin. In early spring, when she’s starting the plants, she economizes by heating the soil under the seedlings (woodstove-heated water runs through underground pipes) while letting air temperatures drop fairly low. Pushing the season early is more important than late, she says. People will pay more for a June tomato than one in October, when tomatoes are old hat, dropping off the vines in gardens everywhere. By starting in the spring, she can bring bushels of ‘Trust’ out of her greenhouse to thrilled customers long before anything red is coming out of local gardens.
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I observed that in the first week of June, she could charge anything she wanted for these. She laughed. “I could. But I don’t. I belong to this community, people know me. I wouldn’t want to take advantage.”
She is more than just part of the community — she was a co-founder of the hugely successful Ashfield farmers market. She sells to individuals and restaurants, and enjoys a local diet by relying on other producers for the things she doesn’t grow. “We don’t have chickens, for example, because so many other people do. We trade vegetables for eggs and meat.” Their favorite local restaurant buys Amy’s produce all summer, the last two months for credit, so that in winter she and Paul can eat there whenever they want. He deems the arrangement “a great substitute for canning.”
FOOD YOU CAN TRUST
Like many small farms, this perfectly organic operation is not certified organic. Amy estimates certification would cost her $700 a year, and she wouldn’t gain that much value from it. Virtually everyone who buys her food knows Amy personally; many have visited the farm. They know she is committed to chemical-free farming because she values her health, her products, the safety of her interns and customers, and the profoundly viable soil of her fields and greenhouses.
Farmers like Amy generally agree that organic standards are a good thing on principle. When consumers purchase food at a distance from where it’s grown, certification lets them know it was grown in conditions that are clearly codified and enforced. Farmers who sell directly to their customers, on the other hand, generally don’t need watchdogs — their livelihood tends to be a mission as well as a business. Amy’s customers trust her methods. No federal bureaucracy can replace that relationship.
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