A little over two years ago , my wife and I sell our retail business and suburban home , packed our belongings into a move hand truck and drive to our home state of Kentucky to become farmers . The primary dubiousness we field from our friends and phratry then is the same one we now answer each workweek at the farmers market from curious customers : Why ?
The response feels excessively simplistic , and it ’s not without a tinge of overplus that I bear my standard reaction : We wanted to do something safe .
But while I understand the thought of a suburban twosome — one that still maintains a closet of “ township wearing apparel ” for those invaluable city visits , monitor of the life they abandoned — voyage one - lane back roads to a res publica plot of land where they work on to make their mark on a flailing agricultural system sound trite , naïve , et cetera , I still ca n’t dismiss the shrewish feeling that our selection was a dependable one . Beyond the overplus of books , magazine article andwebsitesdeclaring small family line farm the One True Solution to problems many see in good agriculture and industrial agriculture , we also have those wondering market client thanking us each week for growing food they want to serve well their families .
Our little farm — and it ’s little , just a hair over 12 acres on a wooded , Kentucky ridgeline — produces what we ’ve come to condition “ responsible protein ” in the form of eggs , chicken and pork . We feel good about the way we raise our animals , with each and every wight relish a life of sunlight , comestible bugs and grass . We even hand - mix in our own feeds with ingredients from local growers to ensure no antibiotic drug , steroids or hormones line up their way of life into our meats . For people who ’ve sought awareness of how conventional , food market - store meat is raise ( and this selective information is wide available ) , our farm ’s meat is good — an important page in their playscript of informed feeding . At the end of a tough twenty-four hours , however , when the animals are fed and bedded down and we ’ve scrub the last wrinkle of grunge from our hands , that word — good — really nag at us .
Because how good , really , is good enough ? I look at our pigs — a glad bedding of Berkshire piggy , conceived and deliver on - farm by their parents George and Wen — sport in pastures of sweet sens , ducking into the woodwind to scrounge for acorns , and I palpate good . I ’ve never even seen agestation crateful , let alone owned one . But then comes the inevitable solar day when the verdant pasture twist to haphazard mud and the woodlot reveals a sick and struggle hardwood , dupe of a hog ’s unsatiable appetency for feeder roots — is this bionomic bruise an satisfactory swap - off for a marketplace Deepfreeze of humane , sustainable , local meat ? Do our 12 acres issue in the grand musical scale of planetary health ? And is our kernel itself good enough ? for certain , our copper grow up consume good ( I ’ll even saygreat ) feed , but our non - GMO corn and local soy is n’t organic . Is that still good ? Our flocks of crop stratum volaille and broilers eat these ingredients , too — is that good enough , or should we buy the pre - packaged , organic crybaby feed shipped in from out of state ?
Nothing would make me happier than fire creature on lush playing area of chemical substance - destitute peas and oat , splay our beloved creatures to fresh eatage daily to ascertain our land and animals thrive in a perfectly maintained ecosystem . But I do n’t have two years to get my grunter to market , and our 12 acres could never go for to sustain a rotation - heavy hog and chicken pasturing system . And if the good example for agricultural reform lies in a dim population of small - acre house farms , can we really even wish for this flawlessness in a porc chopper ? Can we decide that good enough is good ?
In the end , I have to believe that buying meat from a farmer unforced to twist with these interrogative sentence is “ Good . ” Because of course of study kernel raised by agriculturist actively seeking alternatives to ceremonious methods is inherently better for consumers in hunt of just this . If your farmers — like our customer ’ farmers — demo a gnawing desire to do better than “ good enough , ” to determine that grail - like way of life that nurture the nation and the animals and still steers the farm ’s financial criminal record into the Negro , then I have to think that you ’ve establish the good in effective enough .
« More Burning Questions »
