Artisanal Grains
Farmers’ Vision
Potato Research
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Page 7
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Work-Life Balance Page 13
TM
Volume 28 | Number 1
Midwest Organic & Sustainable Education Service
January | February 2020
Organic Farmers of Year dedicated to soil-building, healing with herbs By Bailey Webster
“The reason I’m alive (my mission statement) is to really connect people to nature for their health and the health of the planet,” said Jane Hawley Stevens. “The more people use plants for healing, the more they will trust nature and develop a relationship [with it]. It will make people become better stewards of the Earth.” Jane and her husband, David Stevens, are the MOSES Organic Farmers of the Year. It’s immediately apparent that they are deeply passionate about the work they do. Jane and David own Four Elements Organic Herbals, a 130-acre farm in North Freedom, Wisconsin, about an hour northwest of Madison. They have been growing organic herbs and marketing herbal products for the past 32 years. They’re committed to good stewardship of their land, quality of life for their employees, and improved health for their customers. Jane is originally from Oconto on the shore of Lake Michigan’s Green Bay. She has a bachelor’s degree in horticulture from the University of WisconsinMadison. David was born on Long Island and raised in northern Virginia, where he enjoyed working on vegetable farms in his youth. He has a bachelor’s degree in horticulture from Virginia Tech. When Jane graduated from college in 1981, she was asked to install an herb garden as her first job out of school. She found that she really enjoyed growing herbs, and that became her specialty. The couple met in Texas when they were both working for the Dallas Arboretum. They each loved
Jane Hawley Stevens and David Stevens of Four Elements Organic Herbals are the Organic Farmers of the Year. The couple have been certified organic since 1989, and grow herbs and flowers for a variety of wellness products. They’ll receive their award at the opening of the MOSES Organic Farming Conference Thursday, Feb. 27. Photo by Stephanie Shanks
cultivating plants and quickly discovered that they shared a vision of having a family farm. Living in Dallas, Jane missed the four seasons, so she decided to move back to Wisconsin. About six months later David followed her when he was accepted into graduate school at UW-Madison. Before they married, Jane purchased the farm that would become Four Elements Organic Farm. They had their first child in 1987, and Jane left her off-farm job to be home with her son, Forrest. She continued to grow and sell herbs from their farm. As a baby, Forrest would often have earaches, particularly when he was teething. Jane was looking for an alternative to the medication she was getting from the doctor, so she turned to herbs for a solution. In spite of specializing in herb cultivation, Jane had never tried an herbal remedy before. With a healthy dose of skepticism, she looked up a remedy for earaches. The herb book she used said to add some mullein flowers to olive oil, heat the oil to body temperature, and put a couple of drops in the ear canal. To her amazement, his earache healed with no further treatment. Jane was hooked! “I was so impressed that it’s become my passion and my path to learn more and more about plants and healing,” she explained. “For common ailments, you can’t beat herbs for self-care. Using herbs causes you to engage with your own health, to pay attention to Organic Farmers of Year continues on 10
Soul Fire Farm founder talks farming strategy, vision for future of food movement By Molly Rockamann
Leah Penniman presents the Friday keynote, “Uprooting Racism; Seeding Sovereignty” at this year’s MOSES Organic Farming Conference. A true farmer-hero to me and many others, Leah recently talked with me about her farm, her experiences, and some exciting changes she’s collaborating on in the organic farming movement.
PO Box 339, Spring Valley, WI 54767
You lead a very full life and seem to be constantly on the move speaking and leading workshops. When you’re home on the farm, goodness knows the work never ends. Can you tell us about “a day in the life of Leah”? There really is not a typical day for me here at Soul Fire Farm. The past couple days have included a lot of policy work which characterizes the winter. For example, I had a meeting with the commissioner for ag
for New York State, Richard Ball, to discuss the needs of black farmers, and just finished up a meeting with Susan Zimet who is the Hunger Policy Coordinator for New York State about food justice, so there’s quite a bit of that type of work. I’m getting ready to head out to Philadelphia tomorrow to keynote the Pennsylvania Women’s Agricultural Network Conference. In the summer, of course, it looks more like hands-on farming and teaching farming; in the wintertime, a lot more policy, advocacy, and coalition-building. I was struck by the story of your farm’s beginnings. You were living in a part of Albany, New York, considered to be a food desert. Your neighbors found out that you and your husband had farming experience and asked whether you’d start a farm. So you did. We know that land access is one of the greatest hurdles for young farmers. Can you tell us how you overcame this major hurdle? We were living in the South End of Albany where it was very difficult to get fresh food for our children, despite our educational privilege and our knowing of how to farm. We did want to start a farm that embodied the principles of “to free ourselves, we must feed ourselves” and to take responsibility for our community food security. Land certainly is a challenge. The way we overcame that is that we purchased land that is marginal. The USDA ranks land in terms of its suitability for farming on a scale of 1 to 13 with 1 being the best; ours is 13, being least suitable and that’s why it cost $2,000 an acre. It’s also quite far from markets. But that’s what we could afford and we were able to purchase the land with the savings from my public-school teaching job. I love the name of your farm. Can you tell us why you chose that name? The name Soul Fire Farm actually comes from a Lee “Scratch” Perry song called “Soul Fire,” and it resonated with us because we really do the work from
a place of commitment to spiritual activism, of soul force, and the fire refers to the passion we have for making positive change in the world. Can you tell us more about your farm? It’s in Grafton, New York (about 3-1/2 hours north of New York City). We have 80 acres, of which we intensively manage about 7 acres in annual and perennial crops, and the remainder is managed woodlot. The soil is Buckland gravelly clay. It is very dense and difficult to work. It does retain water and nutrients very well, so that’s a blessing. However, there are always issues with flooding and waterlogging, and heavy equipment doesn’t get along too well with the soil we have here. Leah Penniman, the author of Farming While Black, will present a keynote at the 2020 MOSES Organic Farming Conference. Photo by Capers Rumph
What crops do you grow and what animals do you raise? We have about 5 acres of silvopasture, a herd of Katahdin sheep, 50 layer chickens, about 300 broilers (Freedom Rangers), honeybees and 30 hogs. We also have a couple acres of perennial agroforest—an intercrop of crops like hazelnuts, apples, raspberries, blackberries, blueberries together with perennial herbs. And, then another acre of annual crops—vegetables like tomatoes, peppers, onions, and so forth, and two 80-foot high tunnels that also have hot-season annual crops. Conversation with Leah Penniman continues on 6