It's always bugged me that the phrase "buy the farm" carries negative connotation.
My grandparents were self-sufficient Midwestern farm folk who taught me the joys of reading the weather, borrowing from neighbors, eating turnips raw from the garden, counting every blessing, and a myriad of other quiet habits that help me calibrate the health of my environment, my community and—perhaps most importantly—my food.
Last year my husband and I bought the farm (literally) and moved to Iowa to raise healthy meats and a family. Our dreams of grass-finishing beef, pork, and poultry using organic methods and diversified land management raised eyebrows (we'd been living the outdoorsperson's life in a ski town) and, I think, were dismissed by many people as wishful thinking. Who moves to Iowa, anyway? (Or Illinois or Ohio, or one of those vowel states in the middle there. People couldn't wrap their minds around it....) And farming? That's how we get ethanol, right?
Well, yes, Iowa does produce, in a good year, more than 10 billion bushels of corn, and at recent record-high prices that monoculture will gobble up vaster tracts of the nation's most naturally fertile farmland in the coming years than American agriculture has ever seen.The sheer biomass of it is staggering: in September and October, the grain elevators can't keep up and three-story mountains of the grain are piled on the ground, waiting to be transformed into animal feed (whole-kernel and mash ration), human food (high-fructose corn syrup), fuel (ethanol), components of plastics, preservatives (monosodium glutamate or MSG), and many more mind-boggling derivatives.
Furthermore, even as federal subsidies grossly estrange farm commodity supply from demand, Iowa farmers sustain a rate of profit loss comparable to that experienced in the Depression, according to economist Ken Meter.
But Iowa also nurtures smaller and more diversified ventures, not quite by the bushel, but very much in the spirit of family farming. We're not just back-to-the-landers, either. My neighbor, for example, supports his family by milking 45 Jersey cows (just as his parents did), and, if the benefits really start breaking the bank, he just might go organic.
Another neighbor breaks and trains horses for a living and, having grown up in the neighborhood, helps us find the best hay we can buy. One of the highest-caliber organic vegetable and herb farms in our tri-state region, Rock Spring Farm, is five miles from my house and run by my friends, Chris and Kim. Another friend—formerly a veterinarian—supplies a large percentage of the eggs used by our local liberal arts college. Meanwhile, I'm in my second year of direct-marketing grass-finished beef (did you know ruminants didn't naturally evolve to eat grain?), humanely-raised veal (suckled on the cow), and pastured pork (who'da thunk that pigs would enjoy rooting and ranging AND grow up to be tasty and well-marbled sans confinement?).
On a more regional scale, the Upper Midwest Organic Farming Conference, hosted a mere 45 minutes from my own gardens and pastures, is quickly galvanizing the future of regional food production.
My husband and I are now about six months from organic certification, and we've qualified for at least two cost-share programs to help us invest in our most important assets—our land and systems for its sustainable management. We drink the raw milk our two dairy cows produce and make our own yogurt and butter. We also trade out meat and eggs for most of our veggies, fruit, and herbs. It's a satisfying system that I'm proud of each time we sit down at the table—and each time I ship a box of beautiful, succulent, healthy meats to a family willing to get to know us and understand why we do what we do.
Is farming risky? Yes. Bucking the commodity system, advocating for enterprise diversification, and direct-marketing at living (and unsubsidized!) wages threatens daily to sap unhealthy amounts of our energy. It also strains our marriage as we learn to work together, burning both ends of the candle night after night.
