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[Market-farming] sorta OT - update on our organic certification process (long)
- From: KAKerby AT aol.com
- To: market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org
- Subject: [Market-farming] sorta OT - update on our organic certification process (long)
- Date: Sat, 12 May 2012 22:51:59 -0400 (EDT)
I'm sitting here feeling a little foolish for sending this email, but I
have precious few other "audiences" to tell it to, so <lucky you> I'm
posting it here.
As some of you will recall, we made the decision to go for organic
certification earlier this year. That decision put into motion more
changes here, and at our rental ground, than I could possibly put into a single
email. One of the biggies was that we learned our landlord farmer has
thought about it for years, but figured he had some fatal flaws that prevented
him from applying to the program. Turns out they weren't fatal flaws at
all, but fairly typical of farms that have been managed conventionally and are
now considering organic certification. He is enthusiastically supporting
our application for our rented 14 acres, and he'll watch to see how that
goes. But he may end up certifying his entire place - 80 acres, if he
likes what he sees of this initial effort. Which would put the total
certified acres at just about 100, all because we got a bee in our bonnet to get
certified.
We churned through all the application paperwork over a span of nearly 2
months. Ugh. We're going for all three categories - Crops, Ruminants
and Non-Ruminants. Our application packet was 64 pages long, with very
little redundancy between the three categories (and yours truly didn't even
write any missives; just clipped answers). I guess even after we sent the
packet off, I didn't really consider it "real" because there was always the
chance that the reviewer would look through it, snort with derision, and send it
back stamped "No Chance In Heck Of Ever Being Certified". So I anxiously
awaited the reviewer's comments, and that letter stating whether our paperwork
was in order, needed some work, or was flatly denied.
While waiting, I had some changes to our overall plan that I figured the
reviewer would need to know about. So I emailed the general office yesterday and
said I wasn't sure who our reviewer was, but please forward these updates.
I got back an email only about 30 minutes later, saying "hi, I'm your reviewer,
I got your updates, and I just finished your formal application letter.
Want to go over everything now?" Gulp. I emailed "sure", and she
said she'd forward a PDF of the formal letter to me "for my
consideration." She warned me "not to take the questions personally, but
ours was a fairly complex application and there were bound to be questions that
came up." Great. So I got the PDF, but was afraid to open it for
awhile. Finally worked up the nerve (over another cup of my favorite tea),
and was pleasantly surprised to find that most of the questions or requests for
clarification were really rather small. A few items had me a tad worried,
but most were easy. I emailed her back with the few issues that I was most
concerned about, and she responded "give me a call. I can answer those in 10
minutes on the phone, while it would take half an hour to write it all
out." Dang, now I'm going to talk to her in person. Worked up the
nerve to call her, and we had a whiz-bang slam-dunk conversation, knocking down
one topic or question after another, bang-bang-bang. Got off the phone
with a few go-do's, but again nothing major. And then it hit me.
We're done with the paperwork portion. The next stop?
Inspection. At which point I started to think "oh, crap, I've got 14,201
things to do before then........"
So I spent most of the rest of yesterday bouncing between Cloud 9 and
"OMIGOD the inspection is coming up! Augh!" While the application
didn't feel "real" to me at first, now it's real enough. On the one hand,
they like what they've seen enough to warrant the inspection. On the other
hand, dang now I have to go out and do all those things I said I was going to do
this year. And in a way that meets a whole new higher caliber. So
I'm still vacillating between Cloud 9 and "OMYGOD", and probably driving my
husband crazy in the process. We have already decided that we need to get
him a Tshirt that says "I'm married to an organic zealot!" But at this
point, I'm starting to dare to think that we might be on our way to really truly
getting that certification, which would pave the way not only for us but for the
larger farm that we've been teaming up with the last few years. Scary
stuff. Exciting, but scary.
Thanks for listening. I just really didn't have anyone else to
tell.........
Kathryn Kerby
frogchorusfarm.com
Snohomish, WA
Ruminations - essays on the farming life at
frogchorusfarm.com/weblog.html |
-
[Market-farming] sorta OT - update on our organic certification process (long),
KAKerby, 05/12/2012
-
Re: [Market-farming] sorta OT - update on our organic certification process (long),
charlie taplin, 05/13/2012
- Re: [Market-farming] sorta OT - update on our organic certification process (long), Etienne Goyer, 05/13/2012
- Re: [Market-farming] sorta OT - update on our organic certification process (long), Road's End Farm, 05/13/2012
- Re: [Market-farming] sorta OT - update on our organic certificationprocess (long), Beth Spaugh, 05/13/2012
-
Re: [Market-farming] sorta OT - update on our organic certification process (long),
charlie taplin, 05/13/2012
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