Is (are?) Cool Beans organic?

I was a bit embarrassed when this question was raised by a prospective customer, because I certainly should have anticipated it.  Then I realized that working sustainably / organically has become such an ordinary way of life that I forget, sometimes, that not everyone thinks the way I do!

The short answer is yes, but the long answer is a bit more nuanced.  And if you’re considering becoming a Cool Bean,  you’ll want to read the explanation.

The word ‘organic’ was sort of hijacked a few years ago – and I’ll be the first to admit that my choice of verb indicates a bias – when government regulations went into effect regarding the use of the term.  And although intentions were perhaps the finest, the end result was that the meaning of the word ‘organic’ became less clear.  Many growers felt the new definition was too lax, and it allowed practices that they, personally, found abhorrent.  Others felt it was too strict.  And I’m being a bit cynical here, but I’ll bet hardly anyone’s actually waded through all the paperwork and can quote all of the relevant parts anyway.

But the end result is that you can find pre-packaged ‘organic’ foods in the supermarket that have been trucked a considerable distance from their point of origin….wherever that is.  You don’t know who grew or handled the food, and it might contain GMO products, and – get this – a  certain percentage of completely icky, awful pesticide residue is permitted, and a number of additives are still allowed……and so on.

The holdouts in the organic community then embraced the term ‘sustainable’,  meaning that they grew food with practices that could be sustained in perpetuity in relation to the environment, the local community, and their family.  With a sustainable mindset, food that is produced with no chemicals whatsoever but trucked 3,000 miles across the country must be weighed carefully against the locally produced apple, to use a particularly central-PA example, that must be sprayed once at the blossom stage to prevent one specific bug from destroying the fruit…..but less fossil fuel is used to get it to market, and your food dollar stays in the community.  Hmmm.  Suddenly it’s not as clear as it was.

Next, Monsanto began using the word ‘sustainable’ in their advertising.  I’m not sure how they’re defining it, but it isn’t the same definition I’m using.

Think about this for too long, and you can begin to experience total paralysis in the supermarket.  This has happened to me:  I’ll stand there weighing the cosmic options and in the back of my mind there’s a little voice saying oh for heaven’s sake, you just came in for foil paper and orange juice.  And I start feeling guilty about any of my choices, and stressed and you  know what I usually do then?

I eat Oreos and drink a diet Coke.  There it is, my shameful confession.  I think it’s a good place to start explaining, now that we’re all feeling guilty and stressed about our food choices, the philosophy that Judi and I bring to the table – literally, to our table and yours.   It begins with  the cheerful admission that we’re not perfect.  This is a journey and not a destination.  Judi bakes amazing bread with wheat she grows and grinds herself for our market……and sometimes buys store bread for her kids’ school lunches because, well, sometimes that’s the way things go.  I’m overweight and despite having seen every foodie movie out there and read every organic manifesto ever written, the siren song of McDonald’s french fries occasionally seduces me.  We are not final products but works in progress.   We’re both working with the 90-10 rule:  do things right 90% of the time, and don’t beat yourself up too badly over the other 10%.  Maybe, if we get there, we’ll raise the stakes to 92%.

In the meantime, we are each other’s support, and we hope our Cool Beans – I’ve begun to think of each of you, our prospective customers, by that name – will be part of a supportive community.  We hope to share with you the good food we grow, and tell you about the good food our friends produce.  We will show you how to prepare a vegetable you might not have used before, and we will teach you how to make jam or tomato sauce if you would like.   But if you drive up to the farm to pick up your weekly basket with a Starbucks’ cup in hand, we’re not going to judge you.   And the odds are good that your recipe for butternut casserole is better than mine, so maybe it will be yours that goes in the weekly newsletter.  We’re in this together, okay?  We can be your role models for a healthier life – if you’ll be ours too.

Now, back to organic and sustainable and all that.  They’re labels, and labels are inherently flawed.  Judi’s husband raises the soybeans which are part of the feed for their animals, and he uses one pesticide on the crop, one time in the spring.  The land on which the soybeans are grown is half a mile from one field we considered using for the CSA crops.  Technically, Judi’s farm can’t be considered organic because of that spraying, but if my neighbors used Roundup, I could still be considered organic even though their property line is only thirty feet from the edge of my vegetable garden.  (They don’t, it’s just a hypothetical situation.)

There is no substitute for knowing your farmer.  As it turns out, Judi’s brother has offered us 12 acres that are ever farther from any land that is sprayed, so we are going to be able to offer our people food that has not been grown with hormones or chemicals.  We will use cover crops and manure for fertilizer, and you can check things out whenever you want.  If you are a Cool Bean (I can see that we’re going to need to offer T-shirts) you will know where your food came from. You will know how it was grown or produced.  Cool Beans, the CSA, is safe, local, and organic.  And Cool Beans, the people, are safe, local and organic too!

katie