30 Day Writing Challenge: Day Six

Accidental Farmers

I find all people fascinating really.  If I channeled the time I spend each day examining people and trying to understand how and why they do the things they do, I could probably hold down a part time job.  However, this is only a 30 Day Writing Challenge so I have to limit myself.  For a number of years now, I have been fascinated by Josh Kilmer-Purcell and Dr. Brent Ridge, the Fabulous Beekman Boys.  I first learned about the Beekman Boys in 2009 when I watched their show on Planet Green.  The premise of the reality show was that Dr. Brent Ridge and his writer husband Josh Kilmer-Purcell, both New York City residents, bought a farm in Sharon Springs, New York.  While Brent stayed on the farm trying to make it financially successful, Josh commuted from the city for weekends.  They are a charming couple of gentleman farmers whose early struggles with farm life and trying to hold together a long distance relationship provided good entertainment.  Eventually, their efforts made the farm self-sustaining, probably through Josh's experience with public relations and Brent's brilliant ideas for producing and marketing goods manufactured with goods from their farm at Beekman 1802.  It didn't hurt that they won The Amazing Race...and that they have a good relationship with Martha Stewart.

I WAS easily drawn in by their reality TV show, The Fabulous Beekman Boys, but what really caught my interest was the idea of contemporary, small town farming.  Having read Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Mineral, I was already interested in the idea of living more closely to the land.  I read Josh and Brent's books and watched all the episodes of The Fabulous Beekman Boys and then set out to read everything I could find about small time farmers.  I devoured books about urban farming:  Farm City, by Novella Carpenter, who went so far as to raise pigs in downtown Oakland; My Empire of Dirt, by Manny Howard, who attempted to raise chickens and meat rabbits in his backyard in Flatbush; and The Accidental Farmers, by Tim Young. 

Although I am far from owning a farm or living off the land, I am proud that these investigations have led me to be more thoughtful about the food I feed my family.  I've certainly written a lot in this blog about our CSA adventures, my attempts to reduce the processed food my family eats, my dedication to reducing the amount of meat we consume, and my passion for investing my money whenever possible in local farms.  Recently, I enjoyed a heartfelt conversation with "my" farmer, a mile down the road from my house, about her mixed feelings about her new baby piglets.  Although they were cute as a button, she was torn because she knew that they would soon be orphans.  We talked about the ethical burden of choosing to eat meat, but how important it is to know that it has been raised kindly and gently and lived a nice life.  We were both close to tears about the piglets, but we're not ready to stop eating bacon.  I stop in at Sport Hill Farm at least once a week to buy as much of my produce as I can before I hit Stop and Shop; almost everything Patti sells is grown on her farm.  She sells some products that are grown elsewhere, but she only sells products from farmers whose practices she knows she can stand behind.  This food consciousness makes me feel secure about what I am feeding my family and myself.  I love investing my money in a small, local farm rather than factory agriculture.

It seems silly to attribute this journey to a reality TV show, but Josh and Brent's engaging and humorous portrayal of farm life helped me recognize that there are other ways to live, that a simpler life, closer to the land, is a possibility for any of us.  I haven't followed their post-Amazing Race adventures as closely, but from time to time I enjoy seeing what's new in the lives of the gentlemen farmers of Sharon Springs.