2007.07.12: July 12, 2007: Headlines: COS - Senegal: Agriculture: Farming: Organic Food: Albany Times Union: Sara Luhrman served with the Peace Corps helping farmers in Senegal test drought-tolerant crops. Now she and her husband grow organic foods in upstate New York

Peace Corps Online: Directory: Senegal: Peace Corps Senegal : Peace Corps Senegal: Newest Stories: 2007.07.12: July 12, 2007: Headlines: COS - Senegal: Agriculture: Farming: Organic Food: Albany Times Union: Sara Luhrman served with the Peace Corps helping farmers in Senegal test drought-tolerant crops. Now she and her husband grow organic foods in upstate New York

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Sara Luhrman served with the Peace Corps helping farmers in Senegal test drought-tolerant crops. Now she and her husband grow organic foods in upstate New York

Sara Luhrman served with the Peace Corps helping farmers in Senegal test drought-tolerant crops. Now she and her husband grow organic foods in upstate New York

Their farm, 12 acres spanning a hillside, grows produce organically for 114 families in a relationship called community supported agriculture. Customers pay for their shares of the harvest up front (about $22 a week for early subscribers), and then pick up fresh produce once a week during the growing season, which at Fox Creek runs 20 weeks. Customers get whatever the farm successfully produces, which means they assume some risk if it's a bad growing year. But the Luhrmans try to limit that risk by raising 40 different vegetables covering 100 varieties. They manage more than a half-dozen types of tomatoes and countless greens, including the lesser-known mizuna and totsoi.

Sara Luhrman served with the Peace Corps helping farmers in Senegal test drought-tolerant crops. Now she and her husband grow organic foods in upstate New York

Healthy harvest

Couple goes full time, farming organic foods for a growing community

By JENNIFER GISH, Staff writer

First published: Thursday, July 12, 2007

Caption: Raymond Luhrman cutting Musculn lettuce in one of the fields at Fox Creek Farm in Schoharie on Tuesday, June 26, 2007. Photo: Luanne M. Ferris / Times Union

The mesclun mix falls through Raymond Luhrman's hard-tanned fingers, a shower of leaves on the metal-topped table in the barn he built at his Fox Creek Farm just last winter.

He picks through the salad leaves for slivers of grass or cuttings of clover that got mixed in with the harvest and discards leaves with the slightest signs of rust, insect damage or rot.

Like any farmer, he can't control the amount of rain or how much sun soaks his Gallupville fields, but he can control the quality of the produce he sends out, and so he does.

Boxes of the mesclun are piled high in the cooler he made at one corner of the barn, stacked along with the other produce bound for his customers, families who paid for shares of his farm's produce well before the harvest season.

In several hours, his "shareholders" will come to various pickup sites, load their bags as directed in the instructions Luhrman has left for them -- one bunch spinach, one head lettuce, one bunch garlic scapes, five quarts mesclun, 3/4 -pint of peas -- and hustle home to cook the foods Luhrman, his wife, Sara, and the others at Fox Creek Farm harvested that morning.

Their farm, 12 acres spanning a hillside, grows produce organically for 114 families in a relationship called community supported agriculture. Customers pay for their shares of the harvest up front (about $22 a week for early subscribers), and then pick up fresh produce once a week during the growing season, which at Fox Creek runs 20 weeks.

Customers get whatever the farm successfully produces, which means they assume some risk if it's a bad growing year. But the Luhrmans try to limit that risk by raising 40 different vegetables covering 100 varieties. They manage more than a half-dozen types of tomatoes and countless greens, including the lesser-known mizuna and totsoi.

The shareholders sign up for the fresh, locally grown vegetables, but in the process they also get a little feel for the farmer's life, the booms and busts that come along with one of the few things humans haven't completely figured out how to control -- nature.

Going full time

This is the first year the Luhrmans, who are in their 30s, are working the farm full time. After three years of farming part time, Raymond gave up his four-day-a-week office job in Albany doing statistical research. Sure, it provided a reliable income, but he couldn't devote as much time to the farm. Too often during the growing season, his plans for evening field work would fade as a the soft patter of raindrops against his windshield when he left the office would swell to a drumroll by the time he drove into the Schoharie Valley.

Sara, a former substitute teacher, thought she wanted a career in education, until she found herself wishing she were in the fields rather than the classroom. She had grown up on a hobby farm in California and served with the Peace Corps helping farmers in Senegal test drought-tolerant crops. When she settled here, she worked on a community-supported agriculture farm and enjoyed the sense of community that came with it.

Raymond, a native of Holland who wasn't familiar with farming until he met Sara while traveling in Senegal, felt strangely at home on the land, sinking into the fields in muddy rubber clogs and not hesitating to be out in the fields at dawn, harvesting peas or garlic scapes.

Farming was the life they wanted, but they didn't want to juggle it with other careers. It was time to make a change.

Things on the farm seemed to be going in the right direction. The couple started with 10 shareholders in 2004, then 20 the next year, and 40 after that. They knew about what it cost to grow a share, and did the math. If they could get 120 subscribers and maintain a few wholesale restaurant accounts, they could survive by farming full time.

They set up informational tables anywhere that would have them, from a pancake breakfast to Albany's Honest Weight Food Co-op to the University at Albany.

"A lot of people don't know about the fact that you can find produce right around the corner or an hour from your refrigerator," Raymond says.

Even Sara began to tire of her husband's zealous sales-pitching. "Do you eat vegetables?" became his standard greeting. Even doctor's appointments became a forum for discussing the benefits of CSA membership.

Working out

Still, it worked. They were producing food for more people than ever, and for the first time, they were harvesting from land they owned. They previously rented land from a farmer Sara used to work for in the summers, and had the luxury of borrowing his tractors and equipment, which they say allowed them to experiment with CSAs without assuming a whole lot of personal risk.

This year, they bought their own farm and equipment. With help from family and friends, Raymond built a barn and cooler with timber he cut from his land. And the Luhrmans believe -- they hope -- that they can make this work without having to pick up jobs over the winter, leaving them more time to recruit shareholders, plan for the next growing season and work on their new barn.

Running a CSA is about more than growing vegetables, it's about growing relationships. They take time during the harvest season to host potlucks and farm festivals with shareholders, and produce a weekly newsletter, creating a community around food.

"We've met a lot of really nice people this way. We know who we're feeding, and it all becomes a little bit of a cliche, but it does become a community," Sara says. "It's nice to be able to open this place up. It should not be just ours."

Family

Their 15-month-old daughter, Johanna, romps over peaked rows of dirt, teetering back to her feet when she falls. She spent so much time in the fields with her parents last summer, that she wouldn't sleep unless her stroller was parked outside, catching a country breeze.

"It's amazing that they're able to do this," says Jennie Mosher, a Fox Creek shareholder since the Luhrmans' first year. "To see someone make a plan like that and let go of their safety net and follow their dream, to me that is the ultimate dream. ... I think if anybody can make a go of it, they can, because they're so focused and organized and they have so much stamina and they believe in what they're doing."

Of course, Raymond worries about things like health insurance, which his daughter has but he hasn't yet secured for Sara and himself. Panic does strike a little when a late spring snow keeps him out of the fields when he should be planting.

But those are the risks you take on the farm.

"There's just so many things in life you can't control," he says. "If you get into the view where that's OK, it's kind of nice."

He can't really explain his attraction to this kind of life. He just got out in the fields after he married Sara and felt like he belonged there.

He likes to eat good food, and he likes to grow good food.

And when it works out, it's delicious.

Jennifer Gish can be reached at 454-5089 or by e-mail at jgish@timesunion.com.

Invest in good health

For more information about becoming a shareholder at Fox Creek Farm, contact Raymond and Sara Luhrman at foxcreekfarmcsa@earthlink.net or 872-2375.

This year, Fox Creek is sharing its sustainable growing techniques internationally, by hosting Edgardo Araujo, an agronomist from Peru. Araujo is spending the growing season working on the farm as part of the Multicultural Exchange for Sustainable Agriculture program. He'll take what he's learned back to Peru to share with farmers.

Jennie's Impossible

Quiche Pie

Makes 4 servings

From Jennie Mosher, shareholder at Fox Creek Farm in Gallupville

1/2 cup chopped onion

2 to 3 minced garlic scapes or a /2 clove of minced garlic

3 eggs

1 1/2 cups milk

3/4 cup flour

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

2 tablespoons oil

1 teaspoon salt

Pepper to taste

Pinch nutmeg

1 cup or more fresh vegetables of your choosing, chopped and steamed just until tender crisp

1 cup cheese, grated

Heat oven to 400 degrees. Grease a 10-inch pie pan or 2 (8-inch) pie pans.

This recipe has some flexibility. Saute onions and garlic scapes, or steam them along with vegetables, or put in blender with the following egg mixture:

Blend eggs, milk, flour, baking powder, oil, salt, pepper and nutmeg by hand or with a blender.

Layer the vegetables in the prepared pan topped with the cheese, then the egg mixture. Cook 30 to 35 minutes, or until a knife inserted comes out clean.




Links to Related Topics (Tags):

Headlines: July, 2007; Peace Corps Senegal; Directory of Senegal RPCVs; Messages and Announcements for Senegal RPCVs; Agriculture; Farming; Organic Food





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