FireKat

Gaia’s Breath Farm – All in the Farm

Not many farmers start out with degrees in philosophy, but Mark Santoro, owner of Gaia’s Breath Farm, did. Mark finds that there are several connections between farming and philosophy.

Mark started the farm 10 years ago because he wanted to eat well. Since day one, the farm has been organic. However, Mark is now working on making the farm biodynamic and that’s where philosophy comes in.

Biodynamic farming means creating a whole farm organism that is balanced, with no inputs required. For Mark, this is a spiritual endeavor. Biodynamic farms are wholly sustainable and focus on the triple bottom line. They do not need fertilizer, hay, seeds, or anything else from another farm to continue.

According to biodynamics.com:

Biodynamic farmers strive to create a diversified, balanced farm ecosystem that generates health and fertility as much as possible from within the farm itself. Preparations made from fermented manure, minerals and herbs are used to help restore and harmonize the vital life forces of the farm and to enhance the nutrition, quality and flavor of the food being raised. Biodynamic practitioners also recognize and strive to work in cooperation with the subtle influences of the wider cosmos on soil, plant and animal health.

We are all connected.

Making a farm biodynamic is expensive. According to Mark, Gaia’s Breath’s prices are a bargain! While I did not look at the farm’s finances, I have never met a farmer who went into farming for the money.

Mark was a vegetarian for 20 years until he started his farm and saw firsthand how well the animals were treated. Since then he says, he doesn’t understand the “I don’t want to kill anything” argument for vegetarianism. According to Mark, you kill every day to live. Your body kills bad cells for you every day. Even veggies die and are reborn on the farm. So, that argument just doesn’t make sense to him.

Continue reading “Gaia’s Breath Farm – All in the Farm” →

August 19, 2016

FireKat

The Triple Bottom Line

Everyone knows the “bottom line” (it’s profit). Fewer people know the “double bottom line”, which measures the company’s or endeavor’s profit and the positive social impact. There is even an inspiring venture capital firm, DBL Partners, dedicated to investing in companies that make money and benefit society. But I had not heard of the “triple bottom line” until I read Gary Kleppel’s book The Emergent Agriculture.

The triple bottom line is about profit, positive social impact (for Kleppel this is maintaining the natural farm ecosystem), and “treat[ing] my livestock ethically and with respect” (2014, 30). Why is the ethical treatment of animals so important in maintaining the ecosystem? Kleppel explains that there are “three fundamental elements of durable societies. They are: environmental stewardship, economic viability, and ethical behavior” (2014, 29). The triple bottom line: sustainability.

Sustainability means that the techniques used to farm meet our needs, but do not hurt the ability of future farmers to meet future consumers’ needs. Sustainable farming is not only organic, but is also ethical and profitable (to a small degree at least – you don’t go into local farming for the money). It fits the bill of the triple bottom line.

Unfortunately, the current farming system favors industrial farms that are not sustainable – that in fact do hurt our ability to provide enough food for future generations. Industrial farms with chemical fertilizers and genetically-modified crops reduce farms’ biodiversity by wearing out the soil (killing all the bacteria, fungi, etc… that make up the ecosystem) and decreasing a crop’s genetic code to one that is susceptible to diseases instead of diverse. If a disease comes to a farm with diverse genes, it will harm some, but some will live. However, if a disease comes to a farm with plants with one genetic code, it will destroy that plant entirely. “Biodiversity is a buffer against… disaster…. diversity creates stability” (Kleppel, 2014, 24).

Continue reading “The Triple Bottom Line” →

July 4, 2016July 4, 2016

FireKat1 Comment

Rolling Stone Sheep Farm

Rolling Stone Sheep Farm is one of my favorite farms, so I have been waiting to write this because I really want to get it right and there simply has been too much going on personally (the birth of a niece, friends’ weddings, vacation, and my actual day job), I was worried I would not do it justice. So here it is finally!

Shepherd Frank greeted me, accompanied by Stella, an Australian Shepherd. While Stella is technically a herding dog, the sheep naturally get excited to move to fresh pasture (and will even cross the road!), leaving Stella without work. So she is the family pet.

I have arrived in the midst of lambing season. The newest lambs are still in lambing jugs bonding with their moms. Without the lambing jugs (if lambs and their moms are immediately sent back out to pasture), other sheep in the field will try to adopt lambs and the ewes can get confused. So they stay in the jugs for a bit.

Frank is currently growing his flock. This is his third lambing season. Right after birth, the mothers are sheared in order to help keep the lambs warm. The sheep’s wool is so well insulated that if they were not sheared, the babies would not get any of their mother’s warmth.

A mother in a lambing jug with her newborn twins.

Frank currently has 2 lambs being bottle-fed at home. “There’s no housebreaking sheep” he laughed. They follow his daughter, the “lambsitter”, around the house like puppies.

Outside, Frank has fenced off two 1-acre grazing plots, with access to the barn, for the two different breeds of sheep. Each set of sheep is protected from coyotes by electrified fence netting and the llamas, who are very protective of their sheep. As I walk with Frank in the pasture, Gus immediately spots me and comes over to check me out. I am with Frank, so Gus is not too worried. However, he still inserts himself between me and the closest members of his flock.

Llama Gus, wary of strangers, gets between me and some ewes with their lambs.

Continue reading “Rolling Stone Sheep Farm” →

June 21, 2016June 21, 2016

FireKat

Laurel Ridge & Stuff You Should Know

Talking with John Morosani, the owner of Laurel Ridge Farm, was quite the lesson. Jeff Cordulack, the Executive Director at CT NOFA, recommended I speak with John. And John schooled me. It was fantastic. So now I am going to drop some farm knowledge for you.

I am going to start with the most shocking thing I learned:

Just because a menu at a restaurant says it has grass-fed beef from Laurel Ridge Farm does not necessarily make it true. *Mind-blown.* It never occurred to me that menus would lie. It occurred to me that perhaps the beef was not actually grass-fed, but not that the beef did not even come from that farm.

Here’s what happened. A restaurant, who will remain nameless, bought meat from Laurel Ridge 2 years ago. Recently John found out that Laurel Ridge is still listed as one of the farms from which that restaurant sources their meat. Either that meat is gross or the menu is lying.

He also found out that a butcher shop in Hartford was selling “grass-fed” beef ostensibly from Laurel Ridge. The butcher had called and asked to buy beef, but had not actually ended up buying any meat from him. The evidence suggests that the beef being sold is not from Laurel Ridge and is not even grass-fed.

So John’s biggest question at restaurants and butcher shops is, Is this meat really grass-fed?

And it’s not an easy question to answer. According to John, the FDA recently shut down its unit dedicated to giving farms “grass-fed” designations because it is simply too difficult to know whether or not the cows are actually grass-fed. Sometimes (apparently) farmers buy mostly-grown (~12 month old) cows, then let them graze in a field for 3 weeks and then call them “grass-fed”. *Mind-blown* for a second time this conversation.

So what is an ethical meating blogger to do?

Continue reading “Laurel Ridge & Stuff You Should Know” →

April 6, 2016April 6, 2016

FireKat

Stone Barns Center – Dedicated to Diversity

Bio-diversity that is.

Stone Barns Center (SBC we’ll call it – I don’t think they do…) works hard to keep the land natural. Therefore, a huge amount of their land is actually woodland because that is the typical habitat in Pocantico Hills, New York. While this means less room for growing veggies and raising animals, it helps maintain the biodiversity, which means the farm produces healthier, more nutritious food.

Another part of promoting biodiversity is a 7-year crop rotation program. They rotate the crops in each field each year to maintain the soil’s nutrient content (planting milky oats and clover also helps with this) and to keep pests off the plants. It’s harder for the pests to find the crops they like when the crops keep moving!

Ladybugs are another form of pest control! They are higher on the food chain than the pests that often plague farms and keep the pest levels in check.

Birds and bees offer another form of biodiversity – pollination. Plus, the bees in the apiary provide the farm with honey. While some bee-growers take all of the honey away from the bees and feed them sugar water instead, SBC leaves enough honey for the bees to eat. This is better for the bees and better for the honey you get to eat as a result (taste and nutrition-wise). Continue reading “Stone Barns Center – Dedicated to Diversity” →

March 22, 2016

FireKat

Harder Than I Imagined

I have only just begun this blog and journey to only eat ethically raised meat and while I have received some great support, I am also finding it harder than I anticipated in a variety of ways.

First, it is tough having fun playing with the piglets and then discussing their slaughter. In the perfect world, I would not eat meat and I would raise all the pigs as pets. But that is not feasible. Firstly because I am not a farmer and secondly because if I were a farmer it would be financially crushing to do so, especially if we add lambs and chicken to the farm (and I would of course need a few dogs, goats, horses, and cats, and maybe some rabbits to join the pigs on the farm…). That is simply not going to happen.

But it would be pretty cool to have a farm with horses…

So I find that I often have to remind myself why I am doing this. Why visit these animals knowing of their impending death that will fulfill my (and lots of other humans’) desire for meat?

For starters, these animals would (most likely) not be alive if they were not going to be dinner at some point. Which begs the question, is it better to have lived than never to have lived at all? It certainly depends on which farm you are raised. If you are a cow and are given shelter as well as a large pasture to graze in where you eat grass and hay and kelp (for extra vitamins and minerals!), that is certainly better than living and eating in a feedlot. Being raised in such an ethical fashion also often takes more time for the animals to grow. So I am looking for farms whose animals live happier, and maybe even longer lives.

These animals are going to be raised one way or another. So, let’s support the farms that raise animals the better way. That’s why I do this.

But that is not the only challenge I have come across.

Continue reading “Harder Than I Imagined” →

March 2, 2016March 3, 2016

FireKat