Financing Our Foodshed (12 page)
Read Financing Our Foodshed Online
Authors: Carol Peppe Hewitt
I was imprinted at a very early age to love farms. The smell of manure sends me right back.
In the rural area of northwest Connecticut where I grew up, my father was the local veterinarian. When I was young, he was a large-animal vet. Everywhere around us, as you drove out of town into the rural countryside, there were farms. Miles and miles of them, one after another. There were many more cows than people. As a child, I would ride with him from farm to farm, as he’d check on a cow that was calving or test a herd for disease. While he was busy with the cows, horses or pigs, I would go and play with the kittens that were inevitably there (the progeny of barn cats charged with keeping the mice down). Or I’d go find the farmer to get a pint of top cream to take home. Over the next couple of decades, as it became less and less feasible to make small farming profitable, one by one they each closed down or were sold. By the time I left for college, there were only three working farms left.
The near extinction of family farms tugs at the heartstrings of those who understand their value. One of the most compelling reasons to eat local may be that if we don’t, one day soon we may
wake up to discover that there
are
no local dairies or farm stands — no local food to be had at all — leaving us completely dependent on whatever the food industry decides to ship to us — on their own terms.
I was raised in a very small town. I could bike or walk to the shops (we called it “going uptown”). There was a pharmacy, a butcher, a shoe store, a hardware store, etc. Pretty much all you needed for subsistence living in small town, USA. We were especially lucky to have the Colonial Movie Theater and its candlepin bowling alley in the basement.
Every one of the businesses in my town was locally owned, as were the car dealerships, the gas stations, and just about every other business in all the surrounding small towns. There were numerous produce stands along the country roads that opened seasonally to sell apples, squash, tomatoes, maple syrup — whatever bounty was overflowing from the nearby farm.
It was a lovely place to grow up — a place of interdependence where everybody knew everybody. I am quite nostalgic about rural life and its strong small-business culture and vibrant small-scale farm economy.
My appreciation for that interconnectedness drives the passion I have now for trying to rejuvenate small-scale sustainable farming.
I know we can never go back to those days. We can only go forward. So the question becomes — what is the forward we’re marching toward? What is the future we’re creating?
Even in the face of inflated land prices (the result of wealthy second-home buyers from the big city) and land-to-value ratios that are not conducive to farming, there are new small-scale farmers in the corner of Connecticut where I was raised, and there are three farmers markets where they can sell their products.
They are part of a positive trend. The USDA reported a total of 7,175 farmers markets operating in the US in 2011, up from 2,863 in
the year 2000. This growth suggests a parallel rise in the number of small- and medium-sized farms.
According to the report, there are 217 farmers markets in North Carolina, which put us 10th in the nation for total number of farmers markets. We have five of those markets right here, in my rural county of Chatham. With 100 counties in our state, I suspect the statewide total is well above the USDA figure. (Source:
usda.gov
)
We are also seeing the emergence of mobile farmers markets. Some, like LoMo in Raleigh, are targeting food deserts with the goal of bringing fresh, local food to areas where it is not usually available. And, as consumers are willing to seek out and even pay a premium for well-prepared local food, farm-to-table restaurants are growing in number.
Some farmers markets have now made their way through the tangle of red tape and are able to accept food stamps (now called the Supplemental Nutrition Program or “SNAP” benefits). Clever programs to supplement those benefits when they are spent on local products are starting up as well. Let’s hope this is a growing trend.
Credit: Bett Wilson Foley
Drawing a Line to Farming
I did not grow up on a farm; I just thought I did. We had a horse named General, a large and elderly Paint who would barely walk no matter how hard you kicked him. But we loved him.
We had a barn and I thought it was beautiful. I loved the gambrel roof and the hayloft. We spent hours up there building forts with the hay bales, carefully avoiding the massive bees and horse flies that shared the space with us.
Then there was Beatrice, the pretty Holstein that my eldest brother, David, raised and showed at the Goshen Fair. One year, she and he did so well they made it to the Eastern States Exposition in Springfield. That was a big deal. He washed and groomed and fussed over her tail, and we were enormously excited and proud. I’m sure somewhere he still has the ribbons they won together.
Out in a cage were a few pheasants, and we had a couple of pigs. Every so often Dad would bring home a baby goat or lamb that needed to be bottle-fed. I still remember how soft they were and how they smelled, and the way they would suck on my fingers. Once they were grown, Dad would “take them back to the farm they had come from to be with their brothers and sisters.” Sure. Turns out that was a euphemism for taking them to be slaughtered. Discovering this later in life was much more tragic than finding out there was no Santa Claus.
The barn had a stall just for bunnies. They were my favorites. I would sit in the stall and let them climb all over me. First we had two, then six, then twelve, and...well, you know the story.
We always had a family of guinea pigs, a cage of gerbils, a turtle or two, and some goldfish. My youngest brother, Vincent, added a new twist: iguanas. Then boa constrictors. One night, he announced his big green iguana had gotten out. I worried for a while that it might show up in my bed, but after several days, we kind of forgot about him.
With all those animals, I was sure I lived on a farm. Years later a
real
farmer set me straight. “Sounds like you grew up on a game farm, or maybe a zoo,” he chuckled. Either way, I loved living with a joyful, constantly changing menagerie.
Farm-to-school programs are being supported with local, state, and federal dollars; even hospitals are realizing that sourcing local food is worth the effort (though one might think they would have been leading this effort!).
We need to keep finding new ways to make small- and medium-scale sustainable farming economically viable. That includes sending them all the business we can (including our own), working to remove obstacles in the path to their success, and addressing their needs for access to affordable financing.
Hi Carol,
My name is Kelly Brott, and I am a student at CCCC [Central Carolina Community College] in the Sustainable Agriculture Program. This past December you were a guest speaker for the marketing class I was enrolled in, being taught by Robin K.
I was wondering if you had some time available to go over some aspects of my business financials and see if my business would be a good prospect to receive a loan through the Slow Money project?
I would greatly appreciate any guidance you could provide me. I hope to hear from you soon. Sincerely,
Kelly A. Brott
Owner, YKnot Farm LLC
I remembered Kelly. She was a soft-spoken woman with an unusual story. She had recently retired from the military and was trying to set up a farm as a second career. She had a llama and a flock of heritage-breed chickens. Her husband was still in the military and had recently been stationed out of state. They had a teenage daughter, Kayla.
We set up a time for a visit, and she told me a bit more about herself.
She and her husband, Tim, had both been in the US Air Force for the past 16 years. They had lived all over the world, but their dream was to eventually settle down somewhere.
When Kelly reached retirement age, they found a 22-acre farm in rural North Carolina that was within a reasonable drive from Fort Bragg, where Tim was stationed. They settled in, moved their daughter yet again, this time into her sophomore year of high school. But this time they made a promise to her. No more moves. No more new schools. This time, they were staying put.
In discussing options for the next step in her life, Kelly asked herself: “Why not turn my love for animals, wide-open spaces, and being my own boss into my next career path?” “Why not!” quickly became her new mantra. “And the name stuck,” she said, “though the spelling changed a bit when we began to design a brand. ‘Why not’ became YKnot Farm.”
So they got busy building the type of farm that would allow them to raise beef cows, broiler chickens, laying hens, ducks, pigs, and goats. They wanted to raise grass- and forage-based livestock as humanely as possible in the most natural environment they could create. They were adamant about recycling everything they possibly could to reduce their carbon footprint. Kelly planned to renew the soil with compost, making good use of the natural fertilizer her animals would be producing.
About then Tim, who was still on active duty, got transferred to Maryland.
This time, Kelly stayed behind. They had a farm — or at least the bare bones of one — and they had made a promise to Kayla that they meant to keep.
Kelly says about her new career:
Now the hard stuff began. I asked myself — how do I make this happen? My prayers were answered the day I found the Sustainable Agriculture Degree Program at Central Carolina Community College! After one semester it became clear that I could make my dream a reality and YKnot Farm, LLC officially opened for business on June 16, 2010.
Kelly already had a BS degree in Management Studies and an AA in Information Technology, but she enrolled in the Sustainable Ag Program to further her knowledge of farming practices. Kelly may be soft-spoken, but she is also brave, determined, and hard working — traits she would need in order to build and manage a farm
and
raise her daughter mostly on her own.
Luckily, Kelly connected with the Sandhills Farm to Table Cooperative, about 30 miles south of her, in Southern Pines. They said they would take most everything she could produce. She also set up a booth a few times at the Asheboro Farmers Market, which was 30 miles in the other direction. And she hoped, eventually, to sell wholesale to local restaurants.
So, one rainy, rather miserable day, Lyle and I headed out to talk to Kelly and see her farm. After driving about 15 miles on sparsely populated country roads, I felt like I was in the middle of nowhere — which proves how easy it is to forget how very
somewhere
rural stretches of fields with only an occasional farmhouse really are.
Finally we saw the sign for “YKnot Farm.” (If we’d kept driving another 30 more miles or so, we would have found ourselves in Pinehurst, home to the famous Golf Course No. 2.)
As we drove up the driveway, the rain began to pour. All I could pick out was a llama, a few sheds, and a flock of smallish chickens. Up at the end of the driveway was a doublewide and a pickup truck. We dashed through the rain and knocked on the door.
In spite of the weather, we managed a brief farm tour with Kelly and then settled into the utility shed (to avoid the pair of rambunctious dogs in the house) to talk about her hopes and dreams.
