Caroline Smialek dreams of cheese.
That is, she dreams of one day running her own dairy farm where she and her husband would make and sell cheese.
So last year, Smialek signed up for Farm Beginnings, a new business course in sustainable farming. Every other week for six months she and 14 students gathered at Hawthorne Valley Farm in Ghent, New York to piece together their business plans.
“It was a little overwhelming at times and frightening because you actually have to take these lofty dreams and put them on paper,” said Smialek, 47. “It made me realize that my husband and I were going to need a little more time to get there, but this was a great step to help push us in that direction.”
Sustainable agriculture, which is defined as farming that can be maintained without harming the environment, is a growing business with a wave of people itching to start their own small family farms. The trend didn’t come out of nowhere – local food has gained much popularity and recognition over the years as consumers become more discerning about the quality of their food and where it comes from. The market research firm, Packaged Facts, estimates that the demand for local food will increase to $7 billion in 2011, up from around $4 billion in 2002.
Farm Beginnings is all about business, but Hawthorne Valley Farm offers an array of learning opportunities. It has been an educational farm since its inception in 1972, with apprenticeships from the very start. Today, neighbors still refer to it as “the farm school.”
Hawthorne Valley Farm has also been a mainstay at the Union Square Greenmarket for the past 30 years. It remains one of the only all-inclusive purveyors that process and sell locally milled bread, dairy, meat and produce. In short, Hawthorne Valley Farm knows farming. Which is why beginning farmers come from all over the country to learn on its 400-acre site.
Many start as apprentices, of which the farm accepts six at a time, to build farming skills. The year-long training involves nine-hour workdays on the farm, milking, herding and gardening. Farm Beginnings is what comes after that.
“We don’t force it on our apprentices but we make it available,” said Rachel Schneider, who heads up the Farm Beginnings program. “The way I see it is it’s the next step; they go hand in hand. You can’t farm without either one, you need both.”
Schneider. 59, said she wants to start a pre-Farm Beginnings three-day workshop where beginners could find out what it means to be a farmer and whether they’re cut out for it.
A start-up farm takes more than hard work alone. It takes a lot of capital. Schneider said a six-acre farm, which can farm vegetables intensively, would cost $90,000 to $120,000 just for the land. Then the farmer would need to build buildings, develop the farm and purchase equipment. One tractor would already cost $20,000.
The Farm Beginnings curriculum is supposed to break these daunting operations into smaller digestible bites. In addition to the finance and marketing classes, the students also have mentoring sessions with established local farmers who explain their own business operations in depth.
“I think the first year went pretty well but I think that I might end up doing a Farm Beginnings part one and two so we don’t overwhelm people in the beginning,” Schneider said. “There’s two phases you go through in planning an enterprise and I might be working on that curriculum so that we can get students like Caroline to an even more advanced place.
The Farm Beginnings program is the only one of its kind in the Northeast, but is part of an initiative under the same name that began in Minnesota in 1997 and has since spread to six other regions in the Midwest. Across the board, the program has over 500 graduates, and says that 60 percent of them are farming today.
Schneider said she hopes Hawthorne Valley Farm will continue to produce 15 new farmers every year to supply the demand for local food. She said she envisions the area developing a Hudson Valley foodshed, which is a local system of sustainable food, from production to consumption. The community could track food from the land it grows on, through the route it travels, at the market it’s sold at, to the table it’s served on.
A Hudson Valley foodshed will mean more farmers, more processors, more distributors and of course, more consumers clamoring for more local food. And yes, that includes cheese.
“There is a lot of room for more farmers and we have the largest city in the world that needs food,” Schneider said optimistically. “We have quite a market down there in New York City.”