Organic isn't just a marketing buzz word. At least not on small diversified farms like mine. Organic means risk, it means more work, and it means inevitable losses. It takes extra time and labor to produce food that is safely grown without pesticides, fungicides, herbicides or chemical fertilizers - and it doesn't always work! Sometimes the bugs are too quick, the weeds get away from me, or our radishes have some bug bites.
As a younger, perhaps naive farmer just starting out, I had no sympathy for 'conventional' aka chemical growers who sprayed their crops. I could not fathom how you could justify mass killing of bugs and soil life - which impacts the entire food web, contaminates water, and harms the humans that eat the crop, too. Even large scale certified organic growers, like those that supply grocery stores, still spray pesticides - just those that are considered 'safe' by the USDA. I vocally opposed these practices, condemned conventional growers, and chose not to get certified organic by the USDA because I did not want to be complicit. And then one day, I had my first big crop loss.
A bed of carrots that I had nurtured through weather swings, watered daily for two weeks, painstakingly hand-weeded and cared for was destroyed by pests almost overnight, right before harvest. Demoralizing, sure. But the biggest hit was not just the loss of income, but also the loss of labor, resources and revenue. That bed of carrots did not just net me $0 - I lost money on it. In that moment, I had some sympathy for conventional growers. For just a moment, I thought about how much easier it would have been to just spray the crop and not have to worry about it again. Especially when farmers already have a laundry list of worries to stress about. Then, the moment passed. I looked around at the butterflies and the nesting birds and the soil teeming with life. I remembered the big picture: the ecosystem that I have the privilege to steward, the trust of my customers, the satisfaction of this work.
Even when a crop is lost or has some imperfections due to pests, it's still worth it to me to see the frogs hunting among the turnips, the birds catching caterpillars for their nests full of hatchlings, and your kids crunching into radishes straight from your Veggie Box. That radish may have some bug bites, but if the bugs aren't eating it, then honestly, neither should we...
Read on for easy meal ideas based on this week's harvest!
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