April 20, 2006

Kat Cline and Doug Christen brewing a batch of compost to use on their organic farm on Fowler Road. They will sell shares for their community supported agriculture project that will yield a variety of vegetables throughout the late spring, summer and early fall.

By Lauren Heaton

This summer, fresh, ripe organic vegetables will be available just a short step away from the land where they were grown, thanks to two local couples who have started organic farms right outside of Yellow Springs. Kat Cline and Doug Christen’s farm, Smaller Footprint Organics, and Jessica Bilecki and Andrew Manieri’s Heartbeat Community Farm offer not only an alternative food source, but also an alternative way of living and thinking about the benefits of community-supported agriculture.

Both farms and farmers just got their start this spring, Smaller Footprint on the corner of Jackson and Fowler Roads and Heartbeat at the end of Swimming Pool Road off of State Route 343. They offer their produce in the form of shares, each of which can supply one vegetarian or two nonvegetarians with a weekly box of fresh produce. Shareholders commit to a full season’s share and pick up their produce each week at the farm or a local drop point.

As first time business owners, both couples are offering 25 shares in their first year as organic growers. Each share costs $320, and includes a variety of seasonal produce starting with the spring broccoli, chard, scallions and peas, followed by summer beets, carrots, eggplants and rounding out the growing season with late summer melons, brussels sprouts and tomatoes.

Because of the demand for convenience, Heartbeat farm will have a dropoff point at the Emporium, and Smaller Footprint will have one at the couple’s High Street home in Yellow Springs and one at an Oakwood residence. Both couples will also sell their produce at local and area farmers’ markets.

One of the big reasons for their involvement in community-supported agriculture is to build community through the relationship between the grower and the consumer, both couples said. They want participants to come out to the farm and get acquainted with where their food comes from and how it gets from the ground and onto dinner plates.

The 12 acres at Smaller Footprint are owned by the Eric Wise family, who kept one of its fields fallow for three years with plans to farm it organically. The land is buffered from the potentially harmful pesticide and herbicide sprays from neighboring farms on all four sides by a homestead, a hill and several wooded areas. Cline and Christen are making a home-brewed compost concoction to fertilize their field and they plan to do as much farming by hand as possible, they said.

Smaller Footprint will plant intensively on just two and a half acres, incorporating mulching to avoid weeds, crop rotations to avoid pests and planting to attract beneficial insects. They will also utilize locally recycled products for their compost bins, their cold frames for starting seedlings and their fencing materials. Their goal is to minimize their impact on the earth and to try to encourage others to become more environmentally conscious, they said.

“We’re trying to help create a healthy environment and a healthy community,” Cline said.

Buying food locally reduces the need for fuel consumption, and organic farming methods help reduce the chemical impact on local watersheds, she said. Foods grown organically have a higher nutrient content because the soils aren’t treated with chemicals and stripped of their minerals by being overfarmed. And local foods are more nutritious because they are allowed to mature before they are picked. Cline also likes knowing that buying local food helps put money back into the local economy.

Bilecki and Manieri believe in a similar community philosophy, which they feel their farm will help support. “A CSA is not about buying vegetables, it’s about investing in a place and the farmers. It’s saying we support you and you will provide us with our food,” Manieri said.

Heartbeat Farm is located on 20 acres of land bordered on two sides by John Bryan State Park which has been untouched for nearly 60 years. Its former owners, Willis and Rod O’Connor, had a conservation easement placed on it and had always intended for it to be farmed organically, Manieri said. He and Bilecki moved to the property, now owned by Gerard Poortinga, just three weeks ago and have set to work on a web of mulch beds and raised beds, two growing methods that help the soil maintain its integrity.

They have talked about starting an organic farm together for several years, and they woke up extra early last week on the morning they were to plant cabbages, the first planting at Heartbeat. “Here we are, actually doing what we’ve been dreaming about, we’re actually farming,” Manieri said incredulously.

Manieri said he believes in organic farming as a “sound solution to global climate change and peak oil.” The current large-scale agricultural system in America employs methods that destroy the soil and consume fossil fuels, he said, and organic farming is the small measure he is taking to try to save it.

“For me it’s about sanity. This is a more sane way to produce food than buying it from Guatemala,” he said.

Both Smaller Footprint and Heartbeat are start up farms, and they need community input and involvement, their owners say. All four farmers hope that people will come see their farms, learn about their growing process and also offer suggestions about better farming practices to improve the way they do things, they said.

To contact Smaller Footprint, which still has about half its shares available, call 767-9920 or send an e-mail to smallerfootprint@yahoo.com. To contact Heartbeat farm, call 767-7995 or visit www.heartbeatfarm.com.

Contact: lheaton@ysnews.com