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As we drove from the front of the farm back to the crops, we learned about Sandhill Organics, and the land that they lease to other farmers to give them a safe place to start growing, where they can get support as they run into unforeseen issues in their first crops, and where they have certified organic land so they know the vegetables are growing in untainted soil and they can farm using sustainable practices from the outset of their farming career.
Our farmers grow on the last lot on Sandhill Organics – just over the crest of a small hill, so it feels more secluded than the rest of the land. The farm is much smaller than I had anticipated (5 acres in total), and I was amazed to think that all the food I’ve already seen at the market each week had come from such a small plot of land, and that there was still so much growing on the land that would feed us and the other CSA members for another three months. There was such a variety of plants growing on the land, too: a couple rows of one vegetable growing right next to a couple rows of something else, with flowers scattered throughout. It was such a beautiful farm as compared to large-scale industrial farms that I’d seen on family vacations when I was younger.
Our farmers gave us some scissors and put us to work filling a large box with fresh onions. Supermarket onions and some of the onions from our farm are cured so they can be stored in a cool, dry place for longer periods of time, but these onions would be eaten fresh, so we simply pulled them up, knocked off some of the dirt, trimmed the roots, and cut down the stalk, leaving the scraps to fall back to the ground were they will provide nutrients to the soil as they decompose. After the larger onions, we moved on to the last of the purple scallions for the season, bunching them up and trimming them to be ready for the market the next day.
Our last harvesting duty for the day was helping one of our farmers gather flowers for the bouquets she sells at the market. We got to talk with her then about how they got started with farming, and she told us a little more about their farming philosophy. Both of our farmers are passionate about the food they grow, and about living in a sustainable way and helping to educate others to be similar “future-minded stewards of the land” as they explain on their website. K and I chatted on our way home about how glad we are about our choice of CSA farm this year, and how our visit to the farm further peaked our interest in growing our own food, something that we’re looking into even more seriously than ever before, and that I’ll be writing about later.
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Be sure to check out my previous post in which I discuss helping with the eggs and chickens at Red Tail Farm.
I’ve mentioned before that K and I take part in Community Supported Agriculture (CSA). We paid up-front to receive a half-bushel of vegetables each week over the course of the 20-week growing season. Many CSA farms ask that members come to the farm a few times during the growing season; this wasn’t a requirement of our program, but this past weekend we decided to spend some time on the farm anyway to learn more about how our food is grown and where it comes from.
Red Tail Farm is an organic farm run by two wonderful farmers and their two interns about about 40 miles away from our apartment, a little over an hour’s drive on Chicago’s I-94. On saturday, K and I traced the same path that our food takes each Sunday morning from the farm to the market; not via boat or plane or a semi-truck from another part of the world, but just 40 miles north of the city. I might not be a biologist or physicist, but I do know that a simple 40-mile journey means our food is much fresher, and that much less fuel is burned to get our food to us as compared to the industrial food and even the organic food that is shipped to Chicago from various parts of the world to the supermarket produce sections.
When we arrived at the farm, one of our farmers showed us some of the buildings they use for starting the seedlings growing, curing onion and garlic, hatching chicks, etc. We went into the egg-preparing room (just a little free-standing room with a large two-basin sink, and lots of counter space) where we finished washing the eggs that would be brought to the market the next day, and packed them into cartons. I had never thought before about the care that is put into each individual egg: washing and drying each egg by hand after a very mild detergent is used to remove the initial grime, checking the eggs for hairline cracks or abnormalities, and one-by-one placing each egg into its carton. We also learned an interesting fact: Chickens love to eat eggs! We watched as one of our farmers tossed an egg over to some of the chickens that lived just outside the egg-prepping room and the chickens gobbled it right up, shell and all.
Later in the day we went into the field and got to meet the chickens who laid the eggs, and to collect the eggs that they had laid since the last collection. Most industrial eggs come from chickens living on factory farms with a sole drive on production and no concern for the living-conditions of the chickens; knowing this, it was so wonderful to see all the chickens (maybe 30-50, though they were moving around so much it’s hard to get a good estimate) roaming around their large fenced-in area (more to keep the foxes/coyotes out than the chickens in) just grazing on the grass or taking a break in a shade-tent the farmers built for them, and hoping we’d brought them even more food. The chickens’ area is moved every 2 days to make sure they have fresh grass to graze and that they fertilize the soil more evenly, and their fed and watered everyday by hand. These chickens were happy, and you could tell by the way our farmers loving called them their “sweet ladies” that there was a real relationship here, not simply that of coldly taking the eggs the chickens laid.
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Check out Part 2 of our visit, in which K and I harvest onions.
