Whether It's Fire or Climate Change, Farmers Tough It Out
Green City Market dinner focused on challenges for Finn's Ranch and Seedling
Rays of Hope
Wednesday’s sunset. I always have a great appreciation for the beauty of nature. When stuff happens and things get tough, the beauty of nature sustains me.
Strength and Sustainability on the Farm
Alex Finn (with the microphone in the above photo) is owner of Finn’s Ranch, a sustainable livestock operation in Buchanan, Michigan. She was selling meat at a Chicago farmers market in July — around the peak of the summer outdoor market season — when she got a phone call that rocked her world: A on-farm building that stored crucial equipment and a big portion of the farm’s inventory had been engulfed in a devastating fire.
But like Tracey Vowell of Three Sisters Garden — whose own story about overcoming a major fire was published in Wednesday’s Local Food Forum — Alex utilized her own strong will and lots of help from the supportive local food community to enable Finn’s Ranch to survive what could have been a catastrophe and move on.
Peter Klein of Seedling Fruit in South Haven, Michigan, also has dealt with capricious circumstances, including a fire that destroyed equipment. But his biggest concern right now is a more implacable enemy: global climate change, which he believes is a threat not only to his own business, but to our region’s entire fruit industry.
Alex and Peter shared their stories of resilience at a Green City Market Sustainable Supper held November 16 at Dorothy’s Bistro in Chicago’s Logan Square neighborhood. The conversation was led by Mandy Moody (at right in the photo below), executive director of Green City Market, where both Alex and Peter are longtime vendors.
Mandy started out providing some background on Finn’s Ranch:
The family goes to great lengths to ensure all of the animals on their farm are fed a natural diet and/or supplemented with non-GMO feed. All of their animals are grass-fed, grass-finished and pasture-raised. The Finn family strives to be 100 percent self-sufficient by working toward owning all of the land they farm and raising all of their own crops.
Mandy then summed up Seedling Fruit:
If you stop by the Seedling booth at Green City Market, you won't just find the classic Midwestern fruits such as apples, peaches, pears and cherries. Seedling also grows unique smaller fruits such as gooseberries, cucamelons and quince. On the farm, they work hard to preserve the layout and practice regenerative ag, which means they avoid tilling the soil. They plant cover crops, use buffer strips to prevent erosion, and use drip irrigation for water retention.
Most of the program then focused on the farmers’ responses to the threatening challenges that they have faced.
Alex described how the July fire had totally destroyed everything that was in the barn used as an operations center at Finn’s Ranch, including freezers that housed meat that they had planned to sell through the entire year.
The losses were immense, but they were fortunate that they had some inventory stored in a Chicago warehouse. And if there was any luck at all, it was that the fire occurred on a Saturday, when Finn’s Ranch had a lot of product on hand at Green City Market and other farmers markets were they were selling that day.
There was little time to process the damage before the Finns had to return to Chicago for Sunday markets; this is their livelihood and they couldn’t afford to skip a day. “It’s just the resilience, you have to keep going, no time to cry over spilled milk,” Alex said.
The generosity of the local food community kicked in immediately. “The support of the community has been amazing,” Alex said. “Green City Market has been absolutely important. They help us create a fundraiser page. As soon as this happened, Mandy gave us a $5,000 check from Green City Market, no questions asked, whatever you guys need. With that money, we were able to buy a used freezer to start putting meat away again.” [Green City maintains a Farm Forward Fund to support its vendors who face urgent needs]
She continued that this kind of rallying is a differentiator compared to being a vendor with a big national grocery chain:
“The community has been so incredibly generous, not just with money, but with affection, with support, continuing buying from us. And it's not just the community of customers, but also the other farmers, the farmers market organization. That just gives you the strength to keep going. It's not like a Walmart or a big box store, if you are a vendor for a big supermarket and you didn't deliver that day, they'll cut you off…
“The markets in general, it's just like a family. It's a community that is there to help you. People will call us like, do you guys need trucks? What do you guys need? How can we help you? Do you need space in our freezers? Do you need any type of support? So it's been wonderful.”
Mandy turned to Peter and asked how much a future threat climate change is to fruit farmers like him. He replied, “I would say that it's already here. And as a fruit farmer, that's what we're facing. I haven't had a full crop on my fruit trees in probably eight years. That's how long it's really been going on, and we see the effects of this kind of every day.”
Peter said that the rapid seasonal changes that have become more common in recent years can have an especially devastating effect. He noted that there was a recent three-day stretch in mid-November when temperatures plunged from 70 degrees to 50 and then 32. “I'm not sure I'm not going to lose like 20 percent of my trees,” he said. “Fruit trees are not built for that. They're built for the sort of slow gradual changes to hibernation.”
Noting, “I don't know if there are any answers to that,” Peter said the best thing that local fruit lovers can do for farmers is to be flexible in their buying habits. “If you're at the booth and I say to you, ‘Man, our peaches froze out,’ don't just walk away. What helps us is if you buy what's there… What else do you got? What can I get? How can I help you?”
If you are a farmer and have a resilience story to share, please reach out. Local Food Forum would be happy to publish it.
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