The New York Times recently ran a story about the growing number of young men and women who are choosing to return to the land to eke out a living, growing organic produce and livestock or making artisinal cheese:
Last week, Mr. Shute could be found here, elbow-deep in wet compost two hours north of New York City, filling greenhouse trays for onion seeds. Along with a partner, Miriam Latzer, he runs Hearty Roots, a 25-acre organic farm.
“I never thought I wanted to farm,†Mr. Shute said. “But it feels like an honest living.â€
His partner, Ms. Latzer (the two are not a couple) is 33 and a former urban planner. Her parents, a professor and a librarian, “think its crazy that I’m a farmer,†she said. “They wonder what planet I came from.â€
This one. Steeped in years of talk around college campuses and in stylish urban enclaves about the evils of factory farms (see the E. coli spinach outbreaks), the perils of relying on petroleum to deliver food over long distances (see global warming) and the beauty of greenmarkets (see the four-times-weekly locavore cornucopia in Union Square), some young urbanites are starting to put their muscles where their pro-environment, antiglobalization mouths are. They are creating small-scale farms near urban areas hungry for quality produce and willing to pay a premium.
“Young farmers are an emerging social movement,†said Severine von Tscharner Fleming, 26, who is making a documentary called “The Greenhorns†about the trend.
This is tremendously appealing to me. I even find that some of my reasons - dislike of corporate farming, desire to reduce petroleum costs/usage, desire to build local sustainability and economy rather than global - are beginning to coincide with my more liberal counterparts in this latest back-to-the-land renaissance.
Our new house has more land than the last one, and we’re about to get a garden started once we get final approval from the landlord.
It’s not a farm, but it’s a start.
Congratulations. Good luck with your garden.