"My family knows where our food comes from.” says Belinda, mother, wife and co-owner of Pumpkin Seeds, a small, family owned farm in Chesterfield, Virginia. “The girls collect eggs every day, they’re excited to eat the veggies that they help seed and grow. It wasn't always this way. . .” Belinda explains, “For many years we were too busy to think about what we consumed, it was fast, and sort-of-fo
od.” Like most modern American families Belinda filled the van with big boxes of preserved, packaged and nutrient deficient staples on the way to dance, soccer, and scouts. Too busy to shop fresh, or cook fresh, just to have fresh wilt and spoil in the back of the refrigerator. At 5am the alarm sounds, just beating the crow of Fog-horn, the family rooster. Farm chores don’t wait, it’s a race against time, weather, pests, and a hungry family. The day doesn't matter as much to the farm as the season, and the weather it brings. Coffee warming, a check of the thermometer then off to the field. First, Winston, the family dog to his pen, then to release the flock of free range chickens from there protected coop. Dorkings are the breed of choice for this farm, a heritage chicken that still retains the broodiness of its ancestors. Broody hens will sit and hatch chicks, an inconvenience to commercial egg operations therefore this trait is breed out of modern production layers. Fresh water to the geese, hogs, and this seasons crops of course. Most mornings are consumed by field work, that which would be more difficult during the heat of midday. As the rest of the family emerge from the house, Belinda’s focus changes, she directs the mornings chores then flees to the kitchen to prepare the first meal of the day. Egg soufflé with fresh spinach and feta cheese, buttermilk pancakes, and apple smoked bacon. Belinda enjoys the company while preparing the table. “One day in between my children’s appointments I read an article about slow food, it really put my own life into perspective. What about a slower, more deliberate, and economical life?” She questions “We pay for the packaging of poor quality food, for convenience? Then we pay more for convenient vitamins to replace the nutrients our fast-food is lacking. Rush to activities to keep our children entertained and pay yet again for gym memberships to get the exercise we’re lacking from all the convenience. Isn't there a better way?”
Chesterfield and the surrounding counties are now booming with farmers markets and small family farms who embrace sustainable agriculture, practices forgotten since the chemical and monoculture innovations of post-World War II America. The race to the bottom with food prices, and quality, put most of the previous generation’s family farms out of business in favor of large corporate growers who depended on high yield, low margin product, trendy packaging, and an uneducated consumer, but now the “Real Food” movement is surging to the delight of many in our community. Once the kids are fed and off to school it’s back to the field. Today, Belinda focuses on the families’ ten American Guinea Hogs, another heritage breed once popular with many family farms for its gentle disposition, grazing instincts, and abilities to recycle any garden surplus. The hogs are rotated into their fall pasture of clover to fatten on acorns from the grove of hundred-year-old oak trees. The family keeps three sows and a boar for breeding and offers their offspring to other farms for breeding stock. Several of the spring pigs are kept for fall harvest, to sustain the family, friends and local customers. “The children dread the thought of slaughtering pigs they helped raise. . .” opines Belinda “it’s not a chore my husband and I enjoy either.” The animals at Pumpkin Seeds are raised, nurtured and harvested with the utmost care and while the children speak of great rescues, such as Wilbur in Charlotte’s Web, they too understand how this cycle of life supports their own family. A loud series of clucks erupts from the hen house. It’s late afternoon and Beauty, the youngest of the hens, announces her first egg. Beauty is a black Australorp, a dual purpose bird known for its ability to both consistently lay large eggs and to fill a stock pot with their delicious flesh. Australorps, Orppingtons, Plymouth Rocks, and Americanos are well integrated into the larger Dorking flock who have free reign of the gardens and pastures consuming insects, weeds and the occasional tomato, a sacrifice Belinda readily makes for the greater advantage. The contributions of each of the farm inhabitants form a symbiotic relationship which reduce the need for fertilizers and pesticides. The hens nesting boxes need repair and the geese have spoiled their pool once again, the greenhouse needs seeding of the winter crop and onions planted before the first frost, all chores left for tomorrow. Here there is a new challenge every day but the smiling faces on Belinda and her family leave an optimistic outlook. As the sun sets, the sky fades into shades of hope over the sturdy reach of the ancient oaks with their roots gripping deep into the fertile earth, preventing any further erosion.
