CONCLUSION

As individuals who chose a very specific and intentional lifestyle, most of the farmers I profiled shared a similar love for nature and spending time outdoors, commitment to sustainable practices, and gratitude for Vermont’s unique food culture. Many of my interviewees also admitted that they entered into farming with a somewhat naïve understanding of what it entailed. Over the course of their careers, they discovered that farm work was much more difficult, exhausting, and often downright disappointing than they expected.

When I began this project, I harbored my own dreams of settling down on a quaint country farm where nature would always be near, golden and glistening like the perfect fall day, and life would be simple and good. I therefore found this de-romanticizing trend particularly compelling. It is wonderful that despite the multitude of toils farming entails, its triumphs--raising children in a rural setting, being one’s own boss, providing healthy food for others--make it an undeniably fulfilling practice for so many Vermonters. In pursuing a farming lifestyle, the romance of the landscape may be sacrificed but a richer, more honest relationship with nature is made possible.

In addition to deepening my understanding of the complexity of farming, this project has also expanded and nuanced my definition of sustainable food. Until now, I was a grocery shopper prone to picking any produce with an organic label over its neighbor with a local, non-organic label. In talking to farmers across Addison County, however, I have discovered that a label only tells a fraction of the story and in fact, non-organic, small-scale producers can be just as honest or even better stewards than organic producers.

Greg and Hannah of Blue Ledge Farm, for example, use antibiotics when absolutely necessary but otherwise raise their goats organically, even though they cannot claim organic status. The same is true for Bay Hammond and her sheep. The James and Rooney families of Monument Farms may not produce organic milk, but are committed to treading lightly on the surrounding landscape through other methods, methods I only discovered in talking to Millicent myself. Thus, all of my interviewees have taught me that sustainable food is a broad, dynamic concept and, like food culture itself, is ever-evolving.

Ultimately, there is something about shaking hands with farmers and listening to their stories that makes sharing any meal even more meaningful. I consider myself lucky to have been given this glimpse into the beautiful, complicated world beyond my dinner plate. As Wendell Berry writes,

A significant part of the pleasure of eating is in one’s accurate consciousness of the lives and the world from which food comes…In this pleasure we experience and celebrate our dependence and our gratitude, for we are living from mystery, from creatures we did not make and powers we cannot comprehend. (Berry, 234)

At the end of the day, no matter where it is grown or how or by whom, whether it be that perfectly ripe tomato resting in the garden or a morning egg still warm from the henhouse or a wild blueberry growing on the roadside…fresh food is a blessing and a miracle.