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[Market-farming] big day yesterday - had our organic inspection
- From: KAKerby AT aol.com
- To: market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org
- Subject: [Market-farming] big day yesterday - had our organic inspection
- Date: Thu, 2 Aug 2012 12:22:49 -0400 (EDT)
We had our organic inspection yesterday. We'd had plenty of
scheduling notice - learned two weeks prior that the day would be
yesterday. So we had plenty of time to get stuff ready. I wasn't
terribly nervous, but sorta nervous. I told my husband that if I started
chattering like a fool, to kick me or something.
By quirk of staffing, my inspector yesterday had also been my reviewer
until very recently. The WSDA Organic office had someone in their
office move on, so by luck of the draw my reviewer became my inspector
(and now someone else is my reviewer). So I got to meet her after all my
conversations with her as my reviewer. Nice gal. She also brought
along someone named from one of the other WSDA organic offices, to get some
practice doing non-ruminant certifications. It was sort of comical
watching them go back and forth, debating this-or-that piece of
certification philosophy. Such as, why clipping chicken primary flight
feathers isn't a violation of the NOP standards, but ringing a pig's nose would
be. We had done the former, but not the latter. It also turned out
that my inspector "likes to chat" just about as much as I do, so we got along
famously. My husband didn't have to kick me even once.
They were here for about four hours, which is about what we expected.
Summary - our rental hayfield and pasture passed with flying
colors. Our pigs passed with mostly flying colors, but they want to see
what sorts of shelter the pigs will have this winter. We took down last
year's winter shelter once the trees leafed out, so right now they just have
forest as shelter. We acknowledged that we give them more substantial
shelter in winter, but they want to see it. They also want to see better
rodent control measures, since the chicken-yard cats stay with the chickens and
don't patrol in the pig area. And finally, they want the chickens/rabbits
to have "more" sunshine than what they have now. There was some
philosophical disagreement on that point. The chicken shelter roofing
extends over the majority of the chicken/rabbit exercise area to provide
protection from aerial predators. So they couldn't really consider that
the chickens and rabbits had access to the "outside" even though
the shelter has no walls and sunshine comes pouring in through the open
southern end. So we're going to extend the fenced area to include a
yard covered with bird netting rather than a solid cover. They said that
would almost certainly be sufficient, but that our new reviewer would have to
give the final OK. The inspector was funny - she kept saying "OK, I have
to take off my reviewer hat, and put on my inspector hat, and tell you that your
new reviewer has the final say-so. I am just her eyes and ears now."
But we understood what she was getting at.
So, the much-dreaded inspection has come and gone. Now I know exactly
where to focus my attention to tweak the few items still on the list, for those
parts of the farm we wanted to certify this year. More importantly, now I
have a much better idea of how the certification process will go for those parts
of the farm that we planned to add to our certification next year. I had
told myself that I was going to take today off, but my head is already full of
"want to go take care of this or take care of that, and get moving on
such-and-such". Alas, the perils of being a Type A personality.
Bottom line, if anyone is considering going through this process, I'd say go for
it. Ours was apparently one of the more complicated applications they've
had in awhile, because we hit all three categories - ruminants, non-ruminants
and crop production. Lots of paperwork, true, and quite a bit of
back-and-forth between the details and the "big picture". But I have to
say, 99% of it was a very good mental exercise and/or new
documentation habits, for all the different aspects of our management
practices. My one "I'd do it differently next time"??? My gosh, do
this in winter! We didn't get started on this until March, and we were WAY
too busy to be messing with this stuff during the growing season. Some of
our production suffered as a result. But now we know. As soon
as things shut down for the year, we'll be working on our 2013
certification.
As someone on this list said earlier this year, Go Team! I'm glad to
be another step towards being on that team.
Kathryn Kerby, who might start wearing a "Go O!" t-shirt
frogchorusfarm.com
Snohomish, WA
Ruminations - essays on the farming life at
frogchorusfarm.com/weblog.html |
- [Market-farming] big day yesterday - had our organic inspection, KAKerby, 08/02/2012
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