Organic farming is growing food without the use of synthetic pesticides, herbicides, insecticides, fertilizers or genetically modified organisms (GMO’s). Organic food is synthetic chemical free! This is important because food grown with the use of synthetic chemicals contains traces, residues and often harmful levels of the chemicals used during its production. Each organically grown head of lettuce may look a little different than the one growing next to it - that’s natural! Chemicals were introduced to agriculture for various reasons, one of which was to make the vegetables grow more uniformly - easier to wash, pack and ship. Individuality in vegetables makes mass processing more challenging. We aren’t mass producing, packing and shipping our vegetables - we are growing them for the people who live right near us, in our community. We love all the quirky shapes our eggplants grow in, the way the tomatoes grow in just the right size for a tomato sandwich or a family size antipasto, and carrots that grow twisting around each other like dance partners.

Organic farmers are always looking ahead, asking what the effects of their actions are going to be on the future. They know that we must grow food for ourselves to survive, and that without healthy soil nothing survives. There is no sacrificing the means for the ends in farming, or in life on Earth. We cannot pollute and over work the land for a super crop now and live healthily ever after. Some of the methods organic farmers use are crop rotation, compost and other natural fertilizers, companion planting, and cover cropping to create and maintain nutrient rich soil.

The interdependency of life is what makes it work. For example, Monarch caterpillars only eat milkweed, and the adults pollinate the plants they drink nectar from. Farmers need insects to pollinate the crops. Organic farmers use natural pest and disease control methods which demand that the farmer be watchful, creative and informed. The web of life on a farm has wondrous intricacies and a farmer must pay attention to as many of them as she or he can.

You might see hole or two on your collard leaf where a cabbage worm passed through, or get a squash with a deer nibble taken out of it now and again, but you’ll know you are safe from toxins and carcinogens, that your vegetables are packed with all the nutrients healthy soil has to offer, and that the person growing your food is paying attention to whether anyone is going to be able to grow food there in 25 or 50 years. Overall we find that our CSA members are continually amazed by the vibrant quality and flavor in our vegetables - they’re gorgeous to look at and taste amazing!

A Note on Heirloom varieties:

One way that organic farmers have found to work with the Earth is to preserve the natural diversity of plants by preserving and growing heirloom varieties. In the past century the number of varieties of vegetables produced has diminished. It is common knowledge that biological diversity is the key to sustained life but conventional farming ignores that.
This goes back to that issue of easy packing and handling on a massive scale. It has gotten so bad that we think tomatoes look like one certain round, squat, evenly red variety pictured on the sides of trucks, boxes and sauce cans every where. In fact, there are more varieties of tomato than you can count on fingers and toes (as a start). There are golden yellow pear shaped tomatoes, small round striped tomatoes, deep dark purple tomatoes, tomatoes that are green when they are ripe…… Some tomatoes resist drought better than others, some come on faster in the Spring, some produce later, some plants are tall and spindly and others are thick and study, some do better in wetter summers. Some are more susceptible to certain fungi or diseases than others, or to certain insects……and that’s just tomatoes! It obviously makes sense to plant a variety of tomatoes, and other crops - it makes it more likely that we are going to eat well in any given year! And the taste testing is superb!

You have an exciting year of taste testing a wide variety of greens, tomatoes, cucumbers, squash and more ahead of you!