Translator: Tanya Cushman Reviewer: Peter van de Ven
Good morning, everyone.
How's everybody doing today?
(Cheering)
Awesome.
And I have some good news for you:
When I was at the farm at 6:30 this morning
before I left to come down here,
the mountains around the valley that surround my farm
had this most exquisite, gorgeous ruby-blush to them.
Spring is coming!
We're almost there. We're almost there.
I want to thank Laura for your comments earlier.
What a journey through time you took me personally.
When we were kids growing up,
it was a special treat for us to have a TV dinner.
It was not part of our regular course of activities;
it was not the way we lived, for us being farmers.
For me, the best way I thought to talk to you about sustainability -
I really struggle with that word: what does that word really mean?
I think that's something we all struggle with
wherever that term is applied.
But for us, growing up as onion farmers, which is what we were -
I'm from the Black Dirt Region, which I'm very proud of,
which is a tiny, well, not so tiny area.
It's the second largest land mass of its size in this country
next to the Everglades in Florida.
Now, in the Everglades, they have development rights;
they're building on this land,
and soon we may be the largest land mass of its size in this country.
It exists in pockets throughout the world;
it's a glacial deposit,
and what we farm is basically the bottom of a glacial lake,
so it's a giant bowl of compost,
which means we have incredibly rich, fertile soil.
When the early settlers came in,
which of whom my great-grandfather was one of them, in the late 1800s,
they discovered that they could grow things that they knew from Poland,
and that was onions.
In the 1930s, we became known as the onion-producing capital of the world.
You have standing in front of you
the princess from the 1983 onion-harvest festival.
(Applause)
But along with that, when you are producing a crop like that,
it means that's what you're only producing.
You're only putting into your land and your soil
the inputs that that crop requires.
You're taking out of it whatever that crop requires.
The people that go with that and live that life cycle
also experience those same inputs and outputs.
And we often forget
to think about our land and our food and our people as one.
Because for me, that's where it all starts:
it starts with the land, with the soil.
I'll never forget a few years ago, and it happened at Bear Mountain,
and I was corrected:
that we should never refer to our land as dirt
because it was so much more than that.
And that's what we really should think of it;
we should think of it as soil, not dirt.
Because it is something to be respected and revered.
Now, while I was growing up on the onion farm, as we knew it,
in our heyday, at our peak, we were 75 acres of onions,
and that's pretty much all we grew.
It eventually got to a point where, because of this draining of resources
and constantly inputting the same materials over and over again,
the farm became unhappy, and the land told us.
We ended up with an infestation in our soil,
and no one could help us with answers.
There were lots of possibilities, lots of maybes, definitely no promises.
And they gave us choices.
One of the choices they gave us was to quit farming,
which, as you can tell, it's not part of our psyche,
not part of our personality.
On my dad's side,
they've traced our farming history back to the 1300s in Poland;
my family's done genealogy research.
So to quit farming is just not an option.
To fumigate the soil was one of the other options they gave us,
to the tune of six-plus figures and beyond our financial resources
and no guarantees of results
because they didn't know what they were fumigating for.
So the only other option left to us was to change,
and we've been changing and evolving ever since.
It has been one of the most incredible journeys.
And as I said to someone earlier here, we've only just begun.
And we all in this room have only just begun this amazing journey
of looking backwards and looking forwards and in the present, all at the same time,
as to where our land and our soil and our food is taking us.
Because we are on this journey together;
we're all here as stewards of this land.
Where are we going to take it?
Where do we want it to take us?
Do we want to be growing one crop?
Do we want to be putting in all those inputs?
Do we want this vast array of color and flavor and intensity and pleasure
that comes from that land?
I had a woman come to my farmers market in Union Square a few weeks ago.
She was like, "My gosh, look at this, the display ..."
I said, "For us as farmers,
we first get to enjoy that vegetable, that fruit
from the minute we see that seed in our hands,
from the minute we put that plowshare into that soil and turn it over
and you smell that damp humus,
and you just smell that earth coming up,
and you see the insects buzzing around, the birds swooping in."
For us, it begins there. And before.
It's almost primeval.
I don't know how to explain it,
the senses that you feel and what that does to you.
It's so tactile, and it does involve every aspect of you.
And for someone coming to a farmers market,
their first experience is the view,
and then it's the aromas,
and then maybe there's a sample,
and then engaging them and having a conversation about, well,
my family's been growing this seed for 20 years, 30 years, 6 years.
And in this day and age,
I could be called an outlaw because I save my own seed.
Think about that.
Because I save my own seed,
a practice my father, my grandfather, my great-grandfather and many before -
I could be an outlaw.
How could that happen in this day and age?
How could that be allowed?
How can we sit by and let things like that go on?
I can't and I won't.
I won't stop saving seed.
We're saving even more seed on our farm,
and we're up to 30% production, which is just absolutely incredible.
But we also need to bring other farmers into this mix
so that we ensure a good, healthy seed supply.
We need to ensure that farmers have outlets,
to be able to bring their produce to the consumer,
where they can engage the farmer and have a conversation
and ask the questions, find out,
Where was this grown? How was its grown?
Why? Why not this?
Why don't we have strawberries in January?
Why don't we have sweet corn in May?
Why do these things happen?
The other thing that I've learned is that as much as we all say and we all talk
that everybody wants to see strawberries in January and corn 24 hours a day,
we really don't.
We really don't.
If you step back at a farmers market, and you look at what's happening,
in July and August, those tables are heaped with sweet corn.
I did an experiment with this one year:
I deliberately planted late corn just to see what would happen.
Because I was convinced if I had corn,
I could keep bringing in money to the farm right up to Thanksgiving.
No one bought it.
No one wanted it.
So we are aware, and there is that sense of reality of what true food is about,
and that there is an essence to it, that there is a season to it,
and there is a time to it,
and that we need to appreciate that and embrace that for all that it's worth.
And as our journey and our farm has gone on -
and as I've said, we've only just begun -
one of the most amazing things for us is getting involved
in community-supported agriculture
and being so terrified of taking it on and getting involved in it
and what it all meant, taking such a huge risk,
for us as the farmer and for the consumer, putting that leap of faith in us,
because, oh my God, now these people are dependent on me, me
to give them their food for the whole year.
Can I do that?
Can I do that? Can I give them what they want?
Can I give them what they're expecting?
Can I give them what I want and what I'm expecting?
Because I only want to give you the best.
Because when you look out there at those fields, and you see that soil,
you're looking at my heart,
and you're looking at everything that my whole family represents
and my community of farmers.
And my community is not just my valley,
it's not just my town:
it's everywhere.
And that includes this room here as well.
Thank you.
(Applause)