Each spring, we love touring new subscribers around the farm on opening day and greeting our returning members in the barn. They tell us that just walking up the long driveway to our old, red barn feels like coming home. The air smells different here, they say, and they suddenly forget about the stresses of their daily lives. They like visiting the barn with its tables of bright vegetables to pick out their own rather than receive them in a box. Members have even told us that opening day is their favorite day of the year or that coming to the farm is the high point of their week.
We know that community supported agriculture is not going to replace industrial farming, but as fossil fuels become scarcer and food integrity is threatened, food production is one area where re-localization efforts can have an impact. By creating local markets for organically grown food, food dollars stay in a local economy, people eat healthier, fresher food, and pesticide and fossil fuel use are minimized. Amid these changes, CSAs can provide knowledge and practices on which to base future food policies. In this globalized economy of disappearing farmland and “Fast Food Nation” of diet-related health risks, CSA offers new ways, in the words of Joni Mitchell’s iconic song, “to get ourselves back to the garden.” Putting our faces on food allows us all to grow together through the seasons of our lives, renewing our friendships, shouldering our losses, and celebrating our accomplishments.
On a typical Saturday afternoon during the farm season, I’m hanging laundry on the line next to the house as members pick up their vegetable shares from the barn. I hear children jumping on the trampoline down by the bunkhouse and others laughing and tossing sticks into the creek with attentive parents watching nearby. I see a mom holding a curious toddler who is eagerly poking blades of grass through the hexagonal wire fence to the chickens scratching in the hen yard. Just past the greenhouse, a couple of middle-schoolers take turns hanging upside down on the swing that sweeps thrillingly over the creek. Earlier that day a teenaged girl volunteered with her mother picking spinach in the garden. As the children, like the crops, return to Stonebridge each spring, we remark on how tall they’ve grown over the winter, as one season yields to the next.
As far as we can ascertain, Stonebridge has been organic as long as it has been a farm. Stonebridge has had several owners since it was established in 1911 as a dairy farm, but all respected what the land offered and looked to natural methods of growing. We don’t know all the details of Stonebridge’s history, but we can tell from the careful maintenance of the original structures and preservation of spaces for wildlife in the meadow, woods, and ditches that previous owners farmed as stewards of the land.
Given the development pressure in our area, the fact that Stonebridge is still a farm and not a housing development or part of the nearby cement plant is somewhat miraculous. Instead, Stonebridge has been farmed for over one hundred years in much the same way. Despite technological innovations, the basic rhythm of farming has changed little over the last generations: crops still need to be planted with the seasons and the weather in mind, the fields need to be watered in the dry Colorado heat, and crops must be harvested before the soil freezes in winter.
John and I both come from farming backgrounds: his from working on farms in Oregon during summer breaks; mine from visiting my grandparents’ farms in North Dakota each summer while I was growing up. Once I was on my own, I planted vast gardens, canned my own produce, and dried my own teas and herbs. Loving the feel of our hands in the soil gave us a head start on farming since we already knew a little about how food grows. Still, we both had more to learn from books and seed catalogs and magazines, other gardeners and farmers, and, mostly, from trial and error. We want to farm better, not just bigger, to meet the vegetable needs of our members as best we can in our summer-dry and winter-harsh climate.
One of Stonebridge’s guiding principles is to keep our agricultural land in local production because just finding the land to farm on today is increasingly difficult. As Marion Nestle wrote in Food Politics in 2002, “In 1900, 40% of the [US] population lived on farms, but today no more than 2% do.” In only two generations, families moved away from farming and farms, including my own parents, who couldn’t wait to get off the farm to join the new, urban landscape of the post-war 1950s.
Stonebridge is not exactly a “family farm,” at least not in the way we would traditionally think of that term. It has not been handed down to us from generation to generation, nor are we certain it will continue in the family after we are too old to farm anymore. We are not sure what will happen as we age, but we are committed to making sure the farm continues as a farm. We are hopeful that as people realize the benefits of growing food within their own communities, farms like ours may have a chance to continue for generations to come. For today, we will make the most of what we have by tending the land in the best ways we can.
“Are they ready yet?” Sweet red Jimmy Nardello peppers stuffed with Manchego cheese are roasting on the grill, one of the first delights of the pepper harvest. We saved these heirloom seeds from last year’s crop, seeded them in April in our greenhouse, transplanted the young peppers in June, trellised them in July, and watered, weeded, and watched over them until the first August fruits glowed carnelian amid the emerald foliage. Our mouths were watering as we awaited the blend of sweet peppers and salty cheese in one bite, our anticipation months in the making. “Are they ready yet?” could have been asked, though, about any number of endeavors at Stonebridge, from building projects to community events to the harvest of a wide variety of vegetables, fruits, herbs, and flowers. On a farm, we wait, we work, and the earth gives again.
And because the land here at Stonebridge gives to us so generously, we can give in return. “I don’t think I could share my farm like you do,” a friend once remarked.
“But,” I replied, “I don’t think of it as just my farm.” In fact, if I did, I would probably worry a lot more about getting everything done. I rarely refer to Stonebridge as “my farm.” Instead, I think of it as “The Farm,” because I know it has a life of its own beyond anything to do with me. John and I own the land, but it takes all of us—the barterers and interns who work with us, the subscribers who support us, and the friends and family who encourage us—to make this farm a viable, productive, and bountiful place for growing vegetables and community. Beyond that, the farm exists as a part of the natural world that shelters and nurtures us all. The land and the life that it harbors make this farm possible by giving us more than we will ever begin to know and more than could ever be tallied.
Farming is never easy. The relentlessness of the work and the unreliability of conditions can take their toll. Often, there is too much to do and not enough time to do it. Farming demands constant attention to some things within our control—what to plant and when and where to plant it—and many things that aren’t—the availability of water and seeds, and weather, weather, weather. Each season starts with a variety of factors that farmers must weigh in their decisions but always with a flexibility to change when necessary. If one crop fails, plant again in hope of better conditions. Or try another variety, different field, more water, less water . . . or again next year.
It’s all a gamble. Sometimes, even the tried and true doesn’t work. Even with our combined farming experience to draw on, each season begins with questions that we do our best to answer and then stake our hard work toward ensuring we are right. Each season carries its own risks of drought that threatens the fields, of machinery that might break, and of injuries that prevent the physical labor demanded each day. The worry of accident is constant in a life that includes tractors, chain-saws, old buildings, and heavy lifting. We’ve both made trips to urgent care for tetanus boosters and stitches with farm injuries like smashed fingers and rusty nail punctures. “Safety first,” we remind each other as we go out to work, meaning take necessary precautions, ask for help when needed, and keep our eyes and ears attuned to each other in the fields.
Relationships are not easy either, and John and I have had our bumps along the way. That first fall together amid stresses of work and family as I drove back and forth from town to