Ask not what your farmer can do for you. . .

So now we have our hands in the muck and mess on a daily basis and we know what it's really like to try our part in farming.  Though the labor is hard and the planning is all-consuming, we feel incredibly blessed to be fulfilling a mission of providing clean, healthy food to others.

Of course not everyone can be a farmer, even on a part-time basis.  Still, we all play our roles in the cycle of agriculture, from the bugs and grass, to the chickens and pigs, to the farmer, to each and every consumer of food. If even one link is missing from the chain, the whole system fails. Just as no theater production can go on without each and every person involved, so no farm can succeed without a cooperative effort from many.  Think of the animals as the actors, the farmer as the director, the cooperating families as the backstage crew, and you, the customer, as the marketing team that will showcase the farm to others.  The world will be our audience as we show that small, family farming is alive and well and is the key to healing the land and rebuilding community within our communities.

What can you do as a customer to contribute to the well-being of the farm?  Here are 10 practical tips for how you can promote local, clean food production and strengthen the circle of sustainable farm life:


1) Educate yourself... on why you should choose to purchase your food directly from a farm rather than from the grocery store.  (For great titles and informative documentaries, see the sidebar.)  An educated customer is a committed customer.

2) Get convicted...about the necessity of good food for good health and when you do, don't look back!  No one is perfect, but as often as possible choose farm fresh over grocery stale.  Join a CSA, buy meat in bulk, stop by your local farmer's market or roadside stand, learn how to cook.  It takes some effort, but you'll love the results!

3) Communicate...with the farmer.  Ask questions and offer feedback.  See if you can visit the farm to observe first-hand how it's all run.  Meet the animals who will one day give their lives for yours.  Get in touch with the beauty of self-sacrifice for the sake of others.

4) Spread the word...  Become a walking, talking billboard for your favorite farm.  Tell all your family, friends and co-workers how very delicious the eggs, chicken and pork are from Full of Graze Farm.  And if someone is interested (or maybe the worst kind of critic) buy a dozen eggs, wrap it in a big bow, and let them see the difference for themselves.  Share the link to our blog so they can see the farm in action and maybe order a product or two. If each of our customers sold our products to 2 people they knew, we'd be very happy farmers!

5) Offer... your services if/when you can.  Don't worry, I don't mean you need to offer your brawny arms for shoveling manure.  But perhaps you are a graphic designer and can offer to create a cool logo for the farm.  Or you are a photographer who can take gorgeous pictures of the land and animals to be used for marketing purposes.  Maybe you just know your way around a kitchen and can make a mean batch of cookies for the end-of-season customer appreciation pig roast.  Every little bit helps.

6) Reuse, reduce, recycle... Don't throw out those empty egg cartons!  Return them to the farmer to keep his costs lower, your prices lower, and save precious landfill space.  Just built a deck and have extra scraps of wood?  Before throwing them out, call your farmer friend to see if he can use them instead.  If you don't keep a big smelly compost pile in your backyard, save fruit and veggie scraps in a bag in your freezer so they can be fed to our piggies, who really do eat almost anything!  (If you do this, be sure the scraps aren't anything that's been bitten by a human mouth.  It can spread harmful bacteria to the pigs.)

7) Support... restaurants who buy food from local sources.  They are out there and they need your endorsement as much as the farmers who provide the animals, fruits, and vegetables.  When you go out to eat, won't it be nice to know your belly is filled with the same nutrition that you have at home?  Find these restaurants on websites such as www.localharvest.com or www.eatwellguide.org, (or, for those in our neck of the woods, see: cincinnatilocavore.blogspot.com).

8) Organize...your orders.  Maybe you don't need a whole pig and 20 chickens, but perhaps you know one other family who would love half that pig and 10 of those chickens.  Order together.

9) Order early... Small-time farmers have to plan carefully for their growing season and it's difficult to predict the needs of our potential customers.  Because we are a society of instant gratification, the concept of ordering our food (and putting down a deposit) months in advance is totally foreign to us.  (And I do mean "us".  It's still hard for me to get used to buying food this way.)  But it is SO VERY HELPFUL if you do your part by placing an order and committing to our products in advance. We will thank you for it!

And last, but most certainly not least:

10) Please, please, please, do not complain ...about the prices of our products and how they are so much higher than what you can get at the grocery store.  I sincerely doubt that there is anyone in local, sustainable, family-farming for the money.  Our prices are higher not because we want to gouge our customers and make it rich, but because we are offering a high quality product through back-breaking labor that we ourselves are putting into the project.  It is our own money that is used as capital, it is our own spare time we are spending after work or with toddlers in tow to feed and clean up after the animals and/or tend to the garden.  And because we do it for the sake of conviction, I promise we are keeping our prices as low as we can while sustaining and growing our farm.

Very few people these days can make a living wage by farming alone.  Most conventional farms only stay afloat by the assistance of the government, and when we buy cheaper food in the grocery store only a mere fraction of our dollar ends up in the hands of the farmer who actually grew the food.  Your hard-earned dollar handed directly to a small farmer at a farmer's market goes immediately where it belongs, and much of it goes right back into the land.  No one who provides food for others should himself starve.  It is right and good that we should thank the farmers who provide us with clean, healthy food by paying a fair price for the products we buy.

Not everyone can afford to buy directly from farmers (a problem that needs to be remedied now) and this we understand.  But be assured that we are doing our best to make our food products as affordable as possible, and if/when you make the stretch in your budget for better food from a local venue, it will not be forgotten.