One particular article today caught my eye: Aaron Putze’s entreaty for the urban world to view farmers in tones other than sepia.  “While most people think nothing of using modern technology (cell phones, laptop computers, high speed wireless Internet and fancy SUVs, just to name a few), it’s still fashionable to expect that farmers will produce food like they did during the 1950s and 60s.  That’s an unfair and unrealistic expectation.”

Well said, Putze.  It is simple and romantic to think of farming as simple and romantic, but as those who know know, it ain’t either.  It may pain the more prosaic of us to envision Putze’s modern farmer receiving market quotes via her cell phone and monitoring price reports posted on the Internet, but as Putze points out, modernizing farms responsibly doesn’t make a farm any less of a farm.  “Quite the contrary,” he writes.  “Modernizing and remaining profitable helps ensure that families will remain involved in the business of farming.  And that’s a good thing.” 

One of my favorite farmer-writers, Andy Griffin, has just posted a long but stunningly well-written post on mesclun’s rise to infamy and his relationship to it, first as a small hippie farmer, then as a big farm manager, and, having rescinded that, back to small (yuppie?) farmer once again.  “The charm of the tat-soi was a deep green, spatulate leaf that contrasted nicely with the lighter green of the lettuce.  Because we were farmers producing for consumers, not peasants plucking greens from our gardens for subsistence, visual effects that would increase the eye appeal for consumers inevitably took precedence over any notions of a balance of flavors.”  Probably the best piece he’s written in months. 

Finally, two more innovative farm-related projects worth a click:

1.)    FarmLink, which connects young wannabe farmers with old tired ones, and

2.)    the New Farmer Development Program, which helps immigrants living in New York City with the skills and desire to farm set up small farm enterprises in the tri-state region. 

It’s really inspiring to see all this stuff!