Meet a Farmer!

           Nestled in the valley through which Lewis Creek and highway 116 run from the foothills of the Green Mountains, Lewis Creek Farm looks as much a part of the landscape as the mixed forests and weathered rocks that surround it and the tiny, close-knit town of Starksboro, about 21 miles south of Burlington.  Purchased in 1981 by Hank Bissell, a New York City native and graduate of the Putney School, at the time this 145-acre property consisted of wooded swamp and floodplain adjacent to rich upland forests.  

Hank sneaks a delicious strawberry behind the barn(1).

Hank believes that this particular geology is responsible for the success of Lewis Creek Farm (recently incorporated into an LLC) in providing a variety of fresh vegetables and rather large chicken eggs to residents of the Champlain Valley.  Although the farm is not strictly organic, it is certainly a shining example of sustainable agriculture and ecologically-grown food, because as a good farmer, Hank cares deeply about the quality of the food and the health of the land, and uses sustainable farming techniques such as cover crop rotation, integrated pest management, green manure fertilization, and minimal tilling.  So even without organic certification, Hank says that "Lewis Creek Farm markets to people with a conscience, but perhaps not enough money to buy fully organic."

Most of those customers live in the Burlington and Middlebury areas, purchasing food from the farm in one (or more) of three ways.   A vast majority of the farm's business comes from wholesale to local restaurants and stores, such as American Flatbread, Fire and Ice, and City Market, distributed through Black River Produce (check out Lewis Creek Farm's member info on the Vermont Fresh Network website).

Some customers pick up food directly at the farm stand through Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), a system in which consumers support the farm directly in exchange for a portion of the produce grown throughout the season.  Originally, CSA shares were earned by working on the farm, as is still done on Aresthusa Farm at the Intervale, but these days, all of LCF's 60 summer and 40 winter CSA customers simply pay a flat rate at the beginning of the year.  This accounts for about 10% of the farm's income and about 5% of its food volume, and for consumers it's 10-15% cheaper to buy a CSA share than retail.  Moreover, some of Hank's customers believe that having a CSA share forces them to eat healthier instead of buying on impulse.  Hank thinks that for others, it's simply a matter of convenience.  Having a CSA share means that "you get what's available, and for some that's easier than deciding what to buy when you go grocery shopping."

But for many, a CSA represents something much deeper.  At this point, Hank's wife Margot chimed in, saying, "I had a community garden plot at the Intervale when I lived and worked in Burlington, but I was so tired after working in the garden that I ended up eating out more.  How ironic!"  In other words, CSA allows people to connect with the place their food comes from while still having time for everything else in the day.  Even though the Lewis Creek Farm CSA program is only five or six years old, it is really the continuation of a much older local connection.  For a long time, Rockville Market Farm supplied all the CSA customers in the Starksboro area, but when it closed down, its consumers felt that they had lost a connection to the local landscape, giving Hank an opportunity to fill the gap.

The crew harvesting carrots missed by the machinery(2).

This also shows how small farmers find their niche in a big, competitive local food market like Vermont's.  For instance, Hank doesn't grow mesculin greens because Digger's Mirth at the Intervale already has the Burlington mesculin market cornered.  Instead, Lewis Creek Farm features lots of root crops like carrots and potatoes, which allows Hank to sell food straight through the winter.  In fact, Hank was one of the co-founders of the Burlington Winter Farmer's Market, which was really a spontaneous, grass-roots development spurred by the city's demand for local food year-round.  In essence, Hank said, "I'm going to be there selling my vegetables, come join me if you like," and like a seed that colonizes new land, the market has blossomed into a bi-weekly gathering of about 30 local food and craft vendors (there's a neat time-lapse video of the market set-up on its website).

 Another aspect of Hank's leadership in the local community is his role as treasurer of the Starksboro Water Co-op, an alternative to both private and public utility models.  Although Starksboro's residents have always owned the town's water system, it was formerly operated by a private company controlled by the Vermont Public Service Board, which had "too many hoops to jump through" due to obscure and specific regulations designed for larger towns.  Now, the system is operated by a co-op into which residents pay as they would for utilities in a city like Burlington, but delivery is no longer controlled by the PSB, making life a lot simpler, if not for Hank, at least for his neighbors.

Of course, being a farmer isn't easy.  Hank rarely gets vacations during the growing season, and some days in early spring, he gets up at three in the morning to check the wood stove in the greenhouse so his seedlings don't freeze.  And there are always unpredictables, such as losing most of a potato field to flooding from hurricane Irene over the summer.  With that kind of pressure and commitment, I have to wonder why it is people freely choose a career in farming.

For Hank, a large part of it was an emotional connection to a farm in Vermont that he and his sister visited frequently in the summer when he was about 6 years old.  Hank remembers being asked to help out a bit and enjoying the feeling of being a part of things, and was well-liked on the farm because he got things done and "didn't ask so damn many questions."  Hank thinks that part of the reason he started farming was that he got good recognition for his manual labor skills, giving him confidence to take on bigger challenges.  And it's not just the manual labor, says Hank, "but looking at the big picture.  I've got so many ideas about how to run things, and I've just gotta do them."  Though he admits he sometimes has trouble with all the details, he has a certain subtlety and finesse in his work, and he's a natural salesman.  His advertising sound byte of "Kohlrabi: the Delicious Vegetable" has convinced scores of customers to bite into a vegetable they'd never heard of before (for the curious, it's a cabbage cultivar that looks like a pale green beet, and is crispy with a hint of radish or turnip).

I think this is the true measure of Hank's success--not simply that he sells lots of produce, but that he has a dedicated base of customers eager to support the farm, whether because they want to reduce their ecological footprint, or eat high-quality food, or support local business and agriculture.  Who can say whether small, privately-run farms are the best model of local agriculture, but I can tell you this: I'll be enjoying a full year of veggies through a CSA share from Lewis Creek Farm. 

Photo Credits

(1) Margot Schips.  <http://users.gmavt.net/lcfarm/hankstraw4.jpg>.

(2) Margot Schips.  <https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-snc7/302995_281945321819554_125338594146895_1330464_275650_n.jpg>.