Webmaster’s note: The format of this column includes all of the Quill’s Endians participating at various times and in various ways! Phil writes this month’s column.
Why Three Acres?
I’ve been listening to some interviews with notable farmers and local food activists. The podcasts, put on by The Real Organic project, showcase the contrarian nature of people that belong to and love a place.
There is inherent in soil care a touch of philosophy, an outcropping of the results seen and unseen. The results are immediate and take lifetimes, so agrarians must, as Wendell Berry writes, count the humus as gain.
An interview with the late Michael Phillips, an orchardist and author from New Hampshire, reminded me again that the language of farming needs to change. His use of the term “radical diversity” in nurturing his orchard is foreign to the current agricultural monoculture model which drives the vast majority of the production in our country. His three-acre orchard contains 120 varieties of apples. The under story of his orchard received as much care as the fruit producing (income producing) over story.
When asked why three acres, his answer was about stewardship, not markets, income, or demand. He could properly take care of three acres of trees…so, three. I wonder if he would have liked more orchard, but his place and his stewardship limited him.
He relied on natural food stores and an apple CSA to sell his apples, eschewing the wholesale market that drives overproduction and the destruction of our farmlands and farmers. He shared his lifetime of knowledge in his books and in workshops, hoping, no doubt, to inspire the care in more folks. We need those folks as we move forward in addressing the myriad of issues surrounding our current agricultural circumstances.
The most vital part of agricultural reform is you. Nourishing, delicious, local food only exists when people make the concerted effort to patronize the local producers with business, encouragement, and an evangelical fervor. We need creative eaters with pantries and refrigerators that are filled with neighbors’ produce. We need systems that bypass consumer culture and benefit eaters and farmers rather than commodity traders and poison vendors. Farmers need you in their overall picture as we tend our places because it is an honor, as well as a responsibility to feed you, and… feed you well.
Heather and Phil Retberg and their three children run Quill’s End Farm, a 105-acre property in Penobscot that they bought in 2004. They use rotational grazing on their fifteen open acres and are renovating thirty more acres from woods to pasture to increase grazing for their pigs, grass-fed cattle, lambs, laying hens, and goats. Quill’s Endians are members of Halcyon Grange and publish a newsletter for their farm’s buying club of farmers in her area and generously permit us to share some of their columns with Grangers. Visit the Quill’s End Farm Facebook Page for more information.