Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

market-farming - Re: [Market-farming] sorta OT - update on our organic certification process (long)

market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Market Farming

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: charlie taplin <vthick43 AT gmail.com>
  • To: Market Farming <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] sorta OT - update on our organic certification process (long)
  • Date: Sun, 13 May 2012 07:50:43 -0400

I have been in the organic business helping others and supplying products for over 20 yrs. (before it was cool)
I sort of retired from it and leased my wife's families 230 yr. old
family farm and certified it. I had some of your feelings
even knowing what to expect. It was the best thing I have
done. We sell by the veggies at a road stand and some
hay, raise about 300-500 layer pullets a yr. to sell and being
certified brings $16 ea.
It increased our sales 3 fold.

On Sat, May 12, 2012 at 10:51 PM, <KAKerby AT aol.com> wrote:
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
Snohomish, WA
Ruminations - essays on the farming life at frogchorusfarm.com/weblog.html

_______________________________________________
Market-farming mailing list
Market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org
http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/market-farming

Market Farming List Archives may be found here:
https://lists.ibiblio.org/sympa/arc/market-farming/
Unsubscribe from the list here (you will need to login in with your email
address and password):
http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/options/market-farming



--
Charlie at Floating Bridge Organics
"without power over our food,
any notion of democracy is empty"
Frances Moore Lappe




Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page