A couple years ago someone explained to me that Kate and I weren't "real farmers" at all - we were "lifestyle" farmers. They didn't mean it in the nicest way, but we decided we were delighted with the term! Despite the fact that the farm has been our primary source of income and we've been the largest CSA in New Paltz for several years running (we've decided to shrink a bit, so it won't last) our primary goal in vegetable production is NOT just to produce a maximum tonnage of food or cash each year from these acres. As embarassingly "groovey" as it sounds, our goal has been to produce health and happiness for ourselves and our members.

First and foremost, this farm is the primary source of the food we eat ourselves. The choices we make in our growing practices are not based on profits or yields as much as they are on what we are comfortable putting in our bodies. ALSO, since we don't have a big staff of workers, WE apply everything that goes on the crops!!! So we are not going to use something that we are not PERSONALLY comfortable putting down (since... we are the ones actually putting 100% of it down!)

So what are our growing practices?

Although everyone thinks we are, Huguenot St Farm is NOT an Organic farm! Here's a little background:

Regardless of growing practices, to call yourself "Organic" in the United States, you have to be certified by an agency approved by the USDA. The USDA readily admits that almost 50% of the agencies they approve for cerification are not following proper procedure, but whether or not the process is working, we do appreciate the need for a process.

We are NOT certified by any agency and so we can not be called an organic farm. Although there are many amazing organic farmers in the country and a crowd of inspiringly passionate people working on the USDA Organic program, we respectfully disagree with some of the practices currently used on USDA Certified Organic farms. We do not feel they are safe to the soil or consumers and we feel that recent science is proving our points.

We also have concerns about the process by which farms obtain USDA Certified Organic status. We feel that it might be appropriate for big farms selling into the anonymous mass-market food chain, but it is unnecessarily expensive and exclusionary for small direct market farmers. Also, because it is based on paperwork and paper-trail audits that are self-reported and self-maintained by the farmers it is proving to be too open to fraud. It doesn't need to be that way and in many parts of the world the situation is changing. That is not yet the case here in the US, though. Even Organic advocacy groups in the US are shying away from publicizing the current lack of credibility that is building up in the US Organic sector.

It's important to point out that we are not against organic farming, organic farmers and especially not against the USDA Organic program!! I have known the new USDA Organic Program Director since years before he took over the position and he's a simply amazing person who trule and deeply cares about organic integrity, organic ideals and even the very smallest organic farmers. I really can't think of a better person who could be in the position, BUT that doesn't mean that I don't think that the system he has to work within is not flawed. the process of certification should become more credible on large farms and more itself is inherently flawed. I don't want it to be dismantled, I just think it needs a complimentary system that is more open to smaller direct market farms... and... perhaps more controversially, I believe that current organic growing practices need to be adjusted to match up with current science so what we offer to consumers is truly safe rather than what is most convenient to agribusiness organic farms.

To that end, as an alternative to USDA Organic, we founded the Certified Naturally Grown program which is based on USDA Organic GROWING practices, but then gets a little more strict. Even more importantly, the program uses a more credible system of actual certification for small direct market farmers. Thousands of small farmers have applied to be a part of the program, and hundreds have passed the rigorous standards and peer-review process required by the Certified Naturally Grown program! Internationally Ron has worked for the adoption of this system (called a Participatory Guarantee System, or PGS) and now tens of thousands of farmers around the world are PGS certified Organic as well.

Ron served for two years as an international Organic Certification Consultant to the United Nations FAO and continues to be an active member of IFOAM (The International Organic Agricultural Movement) which is the primary coordination body for the Organic movement internationally.

So with that background are we at least PGS Certified Organic? No! Our lack of certification started due to a lawyers recommendation based on the perceived conflict of interest of us being Certified and on the board of CNG. It didn't seem to matter to our customers because we meet them face to face every week and we proactively explain in our weekly newsletters what we are applying on the farm to grow your vegetables. As the years have gone on, and our disapproval about the safety of some approved-for-organic practices has grown, our growing practices have actually strayed farther and farther from the textbook definition of Organic and towards something that I'm not really sure how to qualify but I believe is far more sustainable and healthy for us, the soil and our customers than current organic standards.

So, here's what we do:

WEED CONTROL: We don't use anything but mechanical cultivation or mulch. We don't use any annual plastic mulch (even though it is approved for organic production) but we do use small amounts of multi-year landscape cloth which we believe is more environmentally benign since it's re-useable and we know is easier to clean up (some plastic is invariably left behind and tilled into the soil with annual systems). The bottom line is that we DO NOT use herbicides in our growing fields - even the USDA Certified organically approved herbicides. Our landscape cloth is used on perennial crops like strawberries and stays in place for two years.

PEST AND DISEASE CONTROL: We feel that too many of even ORGANICALLY APPROVED pesticides and fungicides are far too toxic, not only to the environment but the farmer and the consumer. We will always choose to let crops die rather than spray them with products we don't think are safe - and we'll tell you WHY we are not spraying them (and why you will then suffer the crop loss while you may still see the same crop coming from other farms in the area!). If we do apply a product on our crops we will tell you what and why we applied it and most importantly why it passes OUR definition of "safe" - for us, for the environment, and for you.

FERTILITY MANAGEMENT: Our fertility program also differs (drastically!) from common Organic practices and we keep members up-to-date on what we do through the CSA newsletters. When we make choices about fertility that differ from standard organic practices (and we do!) we explain in the moment through a newsletter why we feel our choices are MORE ecologically sustainable and safer for our soil and for you. We do not subscribe to wholesale use of bought-in chemical fertilizers as being a sustainable way to farm BUT neither can we approve of the standard practice on organic farms of tons of salt-ridden, GMO/PESTICDE/HORMONE-laden factory-farmed waste-product manure which is currently the PRIMARY source of nutrients on USDA Certified Organic farms!

We're constantly surprised by how many people are unaware that most of the "sustainable and eco-friendly" organic farming industry rests squarely atop the waste products of the worlds most unsustainable factory farms, including manure, blood meal, bone meal and feather meal. Studies now show that the antbiotics poured into those animals pass through into the waste products and are taken up into supposedly "healthy" organic vegetables (especially root crops). Studies are yet to be completed on pass-through of growth hormones.

So.. what do we do? We are very lucky because we have an excess of land and so we are able to rotate complete fields and we can use green-manuring and fallow years to replace nutrients lost during cash crop years. Still, in a final soil analysis before we plant... we DO make mistakes (or have a cover-crop failure) and so sometimes we fall short (and some nutrients simply can't be grown in place, so need to be replaced through other means) but when we DO have to use outside amendments, we choose what WE feel is best and most sustainable for ourselves, the planet, the soil, and our customer's -and we promise to never use factory farmed manures. [The biggest corrective items we've spread in the last 12 years include soybean meal/alfalfa meal/peanut meal (for nitrogen), soft rock phosphate and potassium sulfate and, of course, limestone for calcium and pH balancing.]

IRRIGATION: We do not use the river for irrigation and instead irrigate out of the same spring water that we drink that has been tested clean and pollutant free, unlike the river. We've NEVER irrigated out of river and won't.

SEEDS: We don't use any chemically treated or Genetically Modified seeds here but we do NOT always buy organic seeds. We do when it's convenient, but... mostly we buy based on what varieties are best suited to our situation and will grow best here with the best taste and nutrient level.

So... if there are two varieties of broccoli, and we know one is better than the other for us... EVEN if it was raised non-organically (*as long as it doesn't have a chemical seed coating) we won't hesitate to buy it! This is an irony in the USDA Organic program -where people are proudly buying 1 pound of certified organic seeds (that aren't always the best for them) but then applying 10,000 lbs of factory farmed, pesticide-laden, hormone and antibiotic contaminated GMO contaminated waste PER ACRE. And THAT legally qualifies as organic?... or I should say "And THAT legally qualifies as organic!"

Ron, especially, LOVES to talk (too much?) and we both welcome any of our CSA Customers to come to talk to us about all the choices we make (and have made in the past) and the research and care that go into our decisions so that the food we grow is safest for the soil, for you and.... most importantly for the two of us!