Dining

Food Ethics | Drained Bones and Invisible Red Lines

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In 2014, in what can only be described as some kind of mid-life crisis, I decided to turn our sprawling backyard in Northeast Ithaca into a small suburban farm. The disquiets and ponderings that activated this decision were these: an increasing awareness of the global environmental ramifications of industrial agriculture, the alienation we feel from the sources of our own food, the carbon miles embedded in each bite we take, the unfathomable suffering of the people who work to bring us our cheap food and the desire to have better control over the quality of the food I eat with my family. I was also interested in the slow carving up of productive farmland into small plots, and felt this “third space” of wasted land in the suburbs could be both scalable and transformative in the quest for a better, more immediate food system. At the deepest level, I wanted to understand the implications of my own manual labor and the labor of food production, the true costs of which have become largely a hidden externality in our lumbering, wasteful food production system. This was not some back to the land movement on my part, but rather a decision borne out of my moral discomfort with the food system in which I live, the social justice violence it entails, and how this system alienates us from our own hands and bodies and those of the people who do the manual labor of growing and harvesting and transporting crops.

business

When the City that Never Sleeps Takes a Rest: What Does That Mean for Local Farmers?

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As empty restaurant tables continue to collect dust in New York City, 60 miles east in Brookhaven, Long Island, Early Girl Farm is bursting with life. Tomato, eggplant and pepper seedlings are beginning to extend their leafy limbs out into the world as employees carefully prepare the soil, adjusting its mineral levels and incorporating nutrient-rich compost to create optimal growing conditions for this summer’s crops. Patty Gentry, a former restaurant owner and chef turned professional farmer, owns and operates the small but mighty farm, which provides seasonal, organic produce to restaurants in the New York City Metro Area. 2020 marks Patty’s tenth year as a professional farmer. She is an expert in her field, who understands the science of organic farming down to the microscopic levels of soil composition.