| Yesterday, a group of foodies from the CFSC conference hopped a bus and headed to Lancaster County, PA, which is home to quite a few old order Amish (also called House Amish I believe, because they attend church in one another's homes instead of in a church building). I will have pictures in the near future, as soon as my camera battery recovers from its adventures in Amish country.
I have to say, I really feel comfortable around farmers, and going to the Amish farms today drove home the fact that a farm is a farm. It's universal, no matter what culture you're from. Whether you're Amish or "English" (as they call us), weeding really sucks. Instead of seeing how different they are from us, I really came away feeling that we are very much the same.
More below about the Amish farm co-op we learned about today. |
| Back in 2006, seven Amish families came together to form a co-op. Keeping your farm isn't easy even if you're Amish. The land's expensive and you're subject to the whims of nature and the "free market," just like non-Amish farmers are too. These seven families started out with 100 CSA customers (from the CSAs already existing on 3 of the member farms), and they had some troubles that first year but they made it work.
All of the farms in the co-op are certified organic, and that has continued even as the co-op grows. In 2007, they went to 25 families, and this year they grew to 40 families. They expect next year to reach 60. Likewise, the CSA grew from 100 to 300 to 600, and they expect it will reach 1000 next year. In addition to requiring organic certification (and they are willing to help during the 3 year transition for anyone who wants to join the co-op) they also require the utmost humane care for all animals, and absolutely NO puppy mills. With the co-op's economic success, farmers are often willing to give up puppy mills, go organic, and improve their animals' conditions in order to join.
Believe it or not, some Amish (many, even) engage in conventional agriculture, pesticides and all. Their rejection of our cars and TVs and things does not extend 100% to all technology. Today we visited a farm with an electric fence powered by solar and other appliances using batteries and generators. We saw women operating gas-powered (I assume) lawnmowers. But, we also saw Amish traveling by horse and buggy and we spoke to a farmer who heats his greenhouse with firewood and vegetable oil in the winter time.
The first farm we visited belonged to a young man who was probably in his early to mid-twenties. He was relatively newly married with two sons, a toddler and an infant. He grew a variety of crops - tomatoes, lettuces, brussel sprouts, and a treat he gave us - celery. His father owned a dairy farm nearby. He showed us around a barn, built in the 1700s, where he had horses, cows, and chickens.
The second farm we visited was a raw milk dairy. The farmer was much older than the first one, with eleven children and one grandchild. His middle son, an eighth grader, hung out and chatted with us, and his daughters helped ring us up in their store at the end of our visit.
This farm practiced rotational grazing with its Dutch belted heritage breed cows as well as hogs and broad breasted white turkeys. As much of a grudge as I have against the poor broad breasted white, these turkeys were living out incredibly happy lives on pasture, gobbling to their hearts' content. The farm also raised rabbits for meat and guinea pigs to sell to pet stores.
Nothing drove home Joel Salatin's idea of "salad bar beef" more than looking at the pasture where the cows graze. It's not your typical lawn. You see all different kinds of grasses (the farmer could identify them all), and they grow quite tall in between grazings. The farmer told us that he rarely has to re-seed anymore because the soil is so good now from all of the fertilization the cows have given it over time. It's an incredibly energy efficient way of farming as they also do not need to harvest the cows' food since the cows harvest it themselves.
They use generators to power a bulk refrigeration tank where they cool down the raw milk and then pump it to a bottling machine. The bottling machine was build locally and invented by an Amish man. I have to say, some might call them backwards but they have succeeded in keeping an awful lot of business in their local community that would not have remained in a local farming community of ours (such as inventing and building that bottling machine). He also used a generator for a bottle washing machine that washes 50 bottles at a time (the milk sells for $5.50 per half gallon in glass bottles, but you get a chunk of it back - $2.50 I believe - when you return the bottle).
In the store, they had a long list of cheeses to sell, plus raw milk, yogurt, kefir, honey, maple syrup, sauerkraut, kimchi, pickles, and more. The farmer's daughters carefully wrote out receipts for each of us in their most professional manner. It was really gratifying to see such family unity and pride in their shared business enterprises.
So that was my very long awaited trip to visit Amish farms. Part of me would love to just move in and adopt that lifestyle. It's hard work with long hours, and it would kill my dreams of traveling to foreign countries around the world, but there are a lot of good things to be said for it as well. (One farmer told me he'd "go batty" if he had to work at a desk job... I can't say I blame him.) While I can see advantages to some aspects of our modern culture, there is an awful lot we can learn from the Amish. What a great day it will be when we figure out that they are good for more than just entertaining Harrison Ford movies. |
