FreshEarthFarms.com
Farming since 2002
Lives and farms in Washington County

Talk about being a CSA farm.
We’ve been a CSA for four years, and we deliver to the Twin Cities. The thing that’s interesting about how we do things is traditional CSAs pack boxes and deliver them, but since we’re 20 min from downtown St. Paul and 30 min from downtown Minneapolis, there’s a million people within 30 minutes of the farm. The majority of people actually pick up at the farm. The places where we do have delivery we have members do the delivery for us, since they’re coming out anyway.

Who inspired your environmentalism? We’re 100 organic but not certified since we only do the CSA and not wholesale. We’re the only ones that represent our product so we don’t feel the need to get certified. What I’ve heard from other people is certification is geared to mono-crop farms, since each crop has to be certified. We grow 150 varieties, and I don’t know if we would need to certify every variety.

What’s one positive thing that encouraged you early on?
My wife and I lived out in California, and we bought a house and decided to grow things in our backyard and started having fun with it. Our friend’s son was selling magazine subscriptions and one was Organic Gardening, and we had a house and thought we’d subscribe. We started doing it ourselves in our backyard and found the produce was a lot better tasting. That was in 1992. Then we bought the farm 10 years later and continued from there. I don’t have a good sense as to how one farms chemically.

Has anything been a struggle?
There are always lots and lots of struggles but one of the benefits of the CSA approach is you have a commitment to your members and your members have a commitment to you. If we have a really poor year you still make the same money, and you may have some fair weather fans, but if you can build a core set of people that support you, then you don’t have as much of a push to sell.

Is it hard to be organic with so many crops?
We have about 150 varieties, the nice thing about vegetables is they come in sets and categories, and each of those categories and families of crops have their own problems, so it’s not you like have to know that broccoli is different than cabbage, just that there is a problem on the brassicas. It’s somewhat tricky, and it’s far trickier than if you just had corn and soybeans.

I found that a lot of people join our farm because we have a lot of diverse crops, we attract a lot of adventurous eaters, we found the more adventurous the eater the more they’ll stick around with the CSA. What I found with the CSA is people who join stick around because they can’t get all those things at the farmers market. Bok choy or kohlrabi you can’t always find. At farmers market there are a half dozen crops that are cash cows like tomatoes and potatoes, the rest of those things don’t sell. I brought bok choy to a farmers market and didn’t sell a single one. Stores carry some but not a lot. Having a diverse mix of products adds to the interest of our members, and from our side it’s kind of nice because I remember one year where we didn’t have tomatoes until September but we had peas until August. Whatever the year gives us, one of those crops will do well.

What inspires you to keep going?
In the CSA business it’s the members of the farm that keep you going. I took the approach to have fewer customers buying more things. We could do it ourselves which would be costly, and resell it. Our fruitshare is run by a guy here who brings in certified organic fruits, a lot from the Stewart family at Columbia Farms, and the guy who runs it handles the supply side and me and other CSAs sell to the customers.

What have you witnessed changing about the sustainable community in the last 5 years?
A lot of people are becoming more interested in organic, the numbers have gone up dramatically in the last 3 years that I’ve seen. I think there’s a lot of interest from both the consumer in the store and people who are interested in buying local food as well, it’s kind of both.

What do you envision the world will be like in 5 years? In 10?
I think the trend will continue, I think what’s probably going to happen is the businesses are realizing the value of organic. People aren’t really in tune with what organic is. I differentiate between the large farm organic and local farm. Large farms are still doing mono crop and shipping it 2000 miles. The small local farms are growing things that aren’t shippable like heirloom tomatoes, so I think the trend may be that locally grown is as important as organic. I think the organic side has been pushed a lot and people are thinking, ‘I can get cheaper organic food at Wal-Mart’, but I think that’s not the same as local organic.

Where do you get your information on the environment?
One nice thing is having the CSA farms through the Land Stewardship Project, we have a list serve where we can get to know similar farmers and people are very helpful when people ask questions. Another source is books, for things like pest identification; I have 6 or 7 books I reference. And then basically the internet, searches and websites.

How do you, in your own circles of family and friends, impart your sustainable practices?
We hire people at the farm who frequently want to start their own farms, they come and learn how it’s done. The CSA members learn a lot about us based on our newsletters we send every week and coming to the farm and participating and helping out. We usually have working farm days during the season where people come out and help us plant or mulch or weed or harvest or whatever they want to do. Certain ones are scheduled and other times people say, ‘I have some vacation time and say why don’t I come out and give you a hand?’

The other thing is being close to the city there seems to be a lot of people who want to come visit farms.

What are three things you do to be green?
Growing things organically is pretty green, I don’t know if there’s any other two. From a business perspective that’s the whole focus of the farm. We put all the things back into the soil and nothing goes to landfills. One thing we tried that’s not green is plastic mulch, that works well but you have to dispose of it so we felt we weren’t doing it right. That’s allowed under organic standards, but just because you’re organic doesn’t mean you’re green. That’s kind of in our philosophy.

What do you think is the #1 thing people can do to reduce their impact?
There seems to be a lot of things, if you think about all the energy that we in America use it’s a humungous amount relative to other countries, so if people could find ways to reduce their energy footprint by foregoing air conditioning or lowering heat or reducing travel. So long as people are living the lifestyle their living and spending the kind of energy they’re spending …I don’t know the answer to that dilemma. I think unfortunately America has grown up as an energy economy and will stay that way until something happens.

What's a favorite seasonal recipe of yours?
Here is a recipe I enjoy. It is easy and tasty. Voula's Greek Salad is a recipe from a former neighbor of mine who happens to be Greek. So I guess it is an authentic Greek salad. And most importantly, all the ingredients
are available at the same time.

Voula's Greek Salad
2 Medium Cucumbers Peeled and cut into wedges
4 Medium Tomatoes cut into wedges
1 Medium Sweet Red Onion sliced
1 package Feta Cheese soaked in water
2 Tablespoons Fresh Greek Oregano (whole leaves or chopped)
½ Cup Olive Oil
¼ Cup Red Wine Vinegar
Salt & Pepper to taste

Combine cucumbers, tomatoes and onion into a bowl. Crumble Feta Cheese over vegetables. Add fresh oregano. Pour olive oil and vinegar over the mixture. Add salt and pepper to taste.

All images courtesy Chris James.