Boomers Take Up the Plow and Open Small Farms

[marmar]

via AlterNet:





Daily Yonder / By Laura Tillman

Boomers Take Up the Plow and Open Small Farms
Baby boomers are leaving regular jobs and opening small farms. It's not only a new way of life, some are making a little money, too.

August 6, 2010 |


A former Dallas attorney sells sprouts under the cover of a white tarp and a fraying straw hat. A former graphic designer plops candy striped beets on a Mexican tablecloth dotted with purple and gold figures, while a U.S. Customs agent gives a customer advice on cooking eggplant.

It's just another weekend at the farmers' market in Harlingen, Texas. Here, in the Rio Grande Valley, baby boomer generation professionals have traded in their desk jobs for a different kind of retirement.

From their 40s through their 60s, farmers like Kalman Morris spend most of their days working the few acres of land outside of humble homes to supplement their income with work they believe in. It’s all made possible by three new farmers' markets that have sprung up over the past two years.

Yes, these farmers can make some money. But more importantly, farmers like Morris enjoy the life they’re living more than the office jobs they’ve left behind.

The economic margins Morris lives within are narrow. He couldn't realistically afford to live this way if it weren't for the money he's banked from time spent in a more lucrative industry — graphic design.

The impact the farmers here are making on the industry may be small — cotton, sorghum and corn still dominate the area's fields — but they believe they're sowing the seeds of bigger change. ............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/food/147754/boomers_take_up_the_plow_and_open_small_farms/

[damntexdem]

1. Not this boomer.

I boom in the city.

[tridim]

2. Does anyone know if small farms are eligible for federal subsidies?

My buddy is doing this and I'm very jealous.

I know it's hard work, but dammit I love working hard. I just prefer to not get screwed as an IT monkey for doing that work.

[jpak]

3. There has been an explosion of small farms and farmers markets here in Maine

They just established one in my very small town - half a dozen farmers (some organic) sell everything I need every Saturday morning...

fresh bread
cheese
yogurt
raw milk
pork
beef
chicken
every veggie you can name and then some
herbs galore
every kind of fruit that grows in Maine
soap
flowers

and there is a fishmonger that sets up shop out of his truck at the same location every Thursday.

I can actually walk there and get everything I need for a week.

I have no need to drive to the supermarket in the summer.

It's amazing

:thumbsup:

[KoKo]

4. There is great reward ...along with periods of peril for Farmers..but It FEELS SO GOOD!

It feels so good to grow your own...to watch the seelings and see them grow. Like having many Children after your "Real Children" have grown older and don't need you anymore...but you can watch those little seedlings and nurture and care. Just like with our "Real Children" some don't grow up the way you hoped and some succumb to weeds and disease....but some DO SURVIVE...and PRODUCE.

There's much sustenance in working the LAND and Pleasure that Politics and Economics just don't give us these days. Even if we just grow some of our own for a short term...the Back to the Land does have sustaining features for our wounded souls. Just saying...as someone who grew up RURAL and left it for Urban..and while I love URBAN...it just isn't where we ALL need to be these days.

A little plot of land in Urban (even a deck garden) will grow Herbs and a few Veggies, though. SO WE ALL CAN DO IT ...and feel we are doing SOMETHING to PUSH BACK ...in these dark times where sometimes we feel so Powerless....it gets overwhelming!