Dear Friends of PTB Farm,

In January of 2014, Worth and I moved back into his childhood home and we began to plan and dream for our farming future together. We had fallen in love and planned to get married, and we both knew we wanted to be professional farmers. We already had some experience working on our own, chipping away at the skill sets and experiences needed to be the kind of farmers we each individually wanted to become. And by the time we met, we had both managed our own farming enterprises, though never as a full-time gig.
 

And so, in the winter of 2014 we began our own farm business together. As we began writing our personal and business goals down, we knew it would take us some time before we would know real success. But with our modest goals of growing healthy delicious food for the surrounding community with love and radical ecological standards, we knew we wanted to make a living growing food. We used our savings to live on and plowed every last cent back into the farm for the first year. By the second year, our savings had run dry and the farm could begin to pay us a tiny stipend, just enough to cover health insurance, student loan payments, and groceries. And by the third year we were able to hire someone part time and increase our pay a little bit. Now in our fourth year of doing business, we have realized one of our most fulfilling goals, indeed one of our main goals when we set out: to be active members in our community. Every week, we hear about your kids, your jobs, and your new loves. We see you between chemo treatments, and after you've lost a family member. We have seen your babies become walking, talking toddlers and gotten to see your engagement rings. When we started this farm, we did not anticipate how nourishing these relationships would be—we didn't expect to meet your grandkids, or be given books of poetry or bottles of wine or seeds with your stories. The connecting force of food is strong, and we are so proud to be part of the real and reciprocal relationships that connect and nourish our communities.

By its nature, farming is both isolated and isolating. Farming is isolated because we are necessarily located out in the rural part of an already rural county.  We have only a few neighbors with whom to converse, and those local souls we do see are usually busy with their own farm endeavors, so a visit will be squeezed in late on a Sunday afternoon before chores, if there is a visit at all. Farming is isolating because the job demands long hours caring for plants and animals, which makes trips into town for community events difficult, if not downright impossible. We cannot easily leave the farm without first thinking of all the animals who need to be fed, plants to be watered, piglets and lambs to be birthed, and all manner of mishaps which will only happen once the tires have finally left the farm. Farming is also isolating because most of those working hours are spent alone, careening from one project to another, readjusting priorities as the dynamic forces with which we work change according to the sun, rain, stars, and whatever else suits them.
 

But farming with a fulfilling and nourishing community means that this isolation is more abstract. And in a world that is increasingly more disconnected, and often feels more scary by the day, nourishing our communities is the most important thing we do. Scrolling through my newsfeeds everyday, I can't help but feel helpless in the face of so much disaster and violence. My heart hurts for the people, animals, and landscapes suffering the world over, and it's often hard to process one tragedy before news of the next is blaring across the radio and into my social media feeds. I try to stay up-to-date and informed, but some days it just feels like too much; like the world is too big and too small all at the same time. And so in this moment of constant news of disaster and violence, I want to extend a heartfelt thank you. Thank you to this wonderful community who have opened your hearts to us for the last four years. Our community of the Piedmont Triad is a place rich with history, both of social justice and injustice, environmental triumphs and disasters, and agricultural wealth and poverty. We are like anywhere: complicated, battling demons, and working towards a better future. We stand on the shoulders of all those who came before us, from the farmer-instigators who have made our markets the place they are now, to the farmers who endured even more dirty looks than we do (believe me, we do) for growing food crops in a commodity town, or for growing organically, or for any number of other reasons.

The love doesn't stop at our market family though, and we are so honored to be part of a growing group of chefs and farmers and activists who are working to re-connect and rebuild the community food system in the Piedmont Triad. This spring we were approached by two local chefs. They have gotten to know us, and understand how few resources we have as beginning farmers. They asked if a fundraiser could help us build a missing piece of infrastructure. We enthusiastically said yes, but it took awhile to sink in. In the four years since we started (and the many years we have worked in agriculture before that), no one has ever come to us to ask us what they could do to help. We have applied for grants (which we didn't get) thought about loans (but the interest was too high) and lived on poverty wages to get our farm under way. We are by no means special, so many of the beginning farmers we know have lived in similar ways - living in tents or campers, farming on rented land, taking out loans to bring in the harvest, or putting irrigation equipment on a credit card -- this is what many young and beginning farmers do in order to grow food in a broken food system. But once again, we have been blown away by the generosity and love in our community. We are so honored and proud to work with folks with such integrity and care to build the kind of community which works for all of us. Chefs John Bobby and Harrison Little of Nobles Grill and Five Loaves in Winston, with help from the Carolina Farm Trust, are holding a fundraising farm dinner for us this Sunday October 22, 3:30-7:30. They will be cooking with ingredients from the farm -- pork, lamb, veggies and herbs all fresh from the farm.
 

We hope that, in some small way, our farm dinner this Sunday will help create the nourishment we all crave in the world today. We look forward to sitting down to break bread and celebrate the fall harvest together as a community.

If you haven’t gotten your tickets yet, we hope you will join us for this truly special evening on the farm. Tickets are available at http://carolinafarmtrust.org/ptbfarm/ Folks will have a chance to tour the farm and learn a bit more about what ecological farming means to us, and how we fit into the local food system. And all the proceeds from the evening will go towards improving our on-farm, post-harvest infrastructure -- meaning our refrigeration and freezer capacity for holding meats and veggies after harvest. We hope you will join us if you can!

With love from your farmers,
Hillary Worth and Danielle
along with
Bea Cassius and Tazi the dogs