We’re often asked about Brookford Farm moving, and a recent post explains their dilemma in searching for farmable land—help out by taking a brief, one question survey (link provided at the end of their post): “Brookford Farm may need to move to land which is not certified organic. Would you continue to do business with us during the years we were transitional-organic and working toward organic certification?”
Transitioning…
You may know that the lease for Brookford Farm’s land is up in April 2012, and that the farm is looking for a new place to call home. As you can probably imagine, the process of transitioning a farm with all its animals, tractors, people, seeds, and equipment is enormous. But a large part of what we’re doing right now is searching for land to farm. Through this, it’s become clear that farmland of any size is a rarity in our state. Not to put too fine a point on it, the total percentage of active farmland in New Hampshire today is about 2 percent.*
Two percent. And when you consider that only a small percent of that two percent is being organically farmed, you get a fraction of a percentage. We believe in organic farming, and will never change our practices. But we are faced now with a dilemma. Given that no large parcel of organic land is available to us in New Hampshire, we feel we have two options: should we leave the state, or should we get land which is not yet certified organic and rehabilitate it? Read more…