Our Mission:
To offer our customers an option to buy affordable food, grown organically within an ecological system, that's fair and healthy for the customer, environment, farm staff, and farmers.
These are the actions we take to meet our mission:
Fair and healthy for the Consumer:
-Price solely based on cost-of-production, not based on value-pricing.
-Aim for a 50% profit margin, so that in theory when you pay $3.50 for a bunch of kale, $1.75 goes to cover the cost of turning a seed on our farm into a clean bunch of kale in your hands while $1.75 goes into reinvestments for the farm and/or Brian and Liz’s salaries. In reality, life happens to farm businesses too, and our average net profit margin at the end of the year is closer to 35%.
-Only use organic pesticides that are safe for consumers and are not systemic (absorbed inside the vegetable for greater efficacy like many conventional pesticides) so that they are easily washed off with water during our wash process.
-Only deliver super fresh and super quality vegetables - if we're not certain it's super, we donate to our local Mentone and Ft Payne foodbanks.
Fair and healthy for the Environment:
-Cover crop intensively to sequester carbon, nitrogen and provide habitat.
-Grow 40% or more of our nitrogen fertilizer needs on the farm using cover crops
-Do not use any fertilizers that are by-products of conventional commodity or conventional animal farms. Example: soymeal, bloodmeal, feathermeal
-Use only recyclable paper/cardboard or certified compostable bioplastics for packaging
-Donate 1% of gross sales to environmental non-profits as a 1% for the Planet business member
Fair and healthy for the Farm Staff:
-Average position pay in 2023 was $18/hour
-Free CSA share
-Free not-quite-super produce that’s otherwise donated to foodbanks
-Ability to buy additional produce at cost-of-production price (50% off)
-New in 2024: International Visa employees start at $15/hour plus free housing
Fair and healthy for the Farmers:
-After 10 years as farm owners, we pay ourselves around $21/hr. This is a great improvement over our beginning years when it was $2-$3/hr.
-We eat a lot, like a lot, of organic produce from the farm for free
-We get to live and work in an environment free of any worrisome chemical exposure and outdoors as a part of an ecosystem all to the meaningful beat of seasonal rhythm.