Marcelle and Brendan prepare weekly CSA boxes for Wednesday distribution in Thunder Bay. Price is how we measure efficiency but freshness and proximity is how we value local food.
 

You could almost start this guest newsletter column of mine, “it was a dark and stormy growing season” and not be far off the mark. A quirky weather pattern and insect challenges have this year one my hosts Brendan and Marcelle won’t soon forget.
 
My name is Lowell Carlson. My wife and I own a farm in eastern Iowa and I spent 36 years editing newspapers and writing about agriculture. This is my second year to visit Sleepy G to write about agriculture up here in Northern Ontario for a series we call “Farming on the Edge.”
 
I come from a state that has 25 percent of the United State’s Class 1 farmland and I am amazed at what farmers like Brendan and Marcelle have accomplished in your climate and on these soils since they began their farming career in 2009 on this farm. Area local food farmers work in one of agriculture’s most challenging locations to deliver fresh produce at prices households can afford.

Without a doubt, if our local food movement in Iowa had the producers and consumers I saw at the Farmers Market last Saturday in Thunder Bay it would be hailed as a near miracle.
 

Growing season weather conditions have made producing virtually every crop a major challenge this year.

 
Because you value fresh, locally produced food you’ve increased food security for this community, given diversified farming a reason to expand locally, and all by buying fresh food. The saying about eating the tomatoes to have good tomatoes is true.
 
The reason I come to the Thunder Bay area to write about local food is the very remoteness of this unique urban concentration. You, better than most, understand the logistics of sourcing food, the long distances involved in supplying life’s essentials.
 
Yet, at the noon meal here at Sleepy G on Monday every food item on the menu had been grown on the farm, minus the salad dressing. It was fresh, tasted wonderful and it was grown in a climate and location we Iowans can only shake our head and wonder how they do it.
 
This is preaching to the choir I know but shadowing this farm couple and their capable harvest crew during my stay at Sleepy G boils down to one thing, passion.
 
Nothing on a farm works very long without it. Weather extremes, insects, repairs, the bills, your farmers at Sleepy G are passionate about food and they want others to experience what freshness tastes like compared to produce that started its journey thousands of miles away.
 
Your loyalty to these farmers, especially this trying growing season, is one of the bright spots in an otherwise challenging year.
 
Because of your commitment to fresh food, locally grown, you are a vital part of the expansion of food resources, not commodity crops as we are in Iowa where corn and soybeans dominate the entire farm economy.
 
In some ways my wife and I live in a food desert. Farming commodity crops is actually industrial agriculture and as a result there is little interest in producing local food.
 
You have my admiration for what you’ve achieved by supporting local food agriculture to the extent you have. It gives me hope we can emulate your remarkable achievement up here back in my community. 

Lowell Carlson writes for weekly newspapers in eastern Iowa and for the Eastern Iowa Farmer. You can direct comments to him at outhere@netins.net.