We made a decision before we started farming to never seek organic certification. Now some may read that and read nothing more, however we would encourage you to read the length of this post, do your own research, talk to the farmer that grows your food and visit their farm. Transparency is important to make sure you are getting what you are paying for. Food is the fuel for your body and soul; it keeps you alive and well. You wouldn’t want to put dirty/toxic oil in your gas tank and expect the car to run would you?

We think that a government owning and controlling a word farmers have used to market their products for forever like “organic” is just downright odd and weird. We use the words “Organically Grown” in our marketing because that is the closest we are allowed to get to organic without getting fined by the government. Organic farming and gardening many years ago, before being watered down, used to mean you were getting the best quality produce. Because the word “organic” has now been watered down behind regulation to become almost meaningless, we chose to use the phase “Organically Grown” to describe our practices and their similarity to the old organic farming that uses minimal soil disruption and only what nature provides.

Our practices don’t follow those of other certified organic farms. Organic certification allows use of “approved” pesticides, insecticides and a bunch of other really shady stuff that chemical companies have successfully lobbied to be included in the “allowed” chemicals for organic farmers. Isn’t the objective of organic vegetables to be as close to natural as you can get? You see, the organic standards needed to become certified are just that, standards. What motivation does a farm have to do more if all they have to do is meet a minimum standard to get the labeling? If there is no incentive to do better, why would they expend the extra energy (and cost) to do more?

Organic certification requires paperwork, fees and sales fees (you probably didn’t know that). On top of the 1,000s just to get the certification and keep it annually, the organic program gets a percentage of everything you sell as well. The process of certification is flawed and there are plenty of loopholes in the paperwork that allow corners to be cut and things to slide through, whether unintentional or intentional. Most of the time no one actually ever visits the farm annually, paperwork gets submitted and approved remotely. A customer at the grocery store is then putting the trust in those independent certifiers that the producers are being checked and regulated, but they are frequently being let down.

We don’t want to be certified by the government, we want to be certified by YOU. We believe that you as the customer make the ultimate decision and that is why our farm is open to showing you the full process and everything we do, transparently. We believe that seeing our process in front of you is worth way more than all the fancy words we could come up with. We don’t follow certified organic standards. We are farming beyond “just” organic standards to the standards we all want in our food. And well to be honest, we (Mike and Kristina) have some crazy high food snob level standards!

Here are a few articles to get you started,

https://www.mountainmausremedies.com/blog/organically-grown-vs-certified-organic/ and https://farmtoblog.wordpress.com/2014/11/09/certified-organic-vs-organically-grow

There are organic certified farms that are doing better then just the minimum, however we feel the organic program is not an accurate description of the extent of care we take in farming. We encourage customers to ask questions and do your own research on how your food is grown. To strive to attain the best that is available to them, whether it is from an organic section at a local grocery store, a local farm or a farm like ours. Buying organic does ensure there are better minimum standards that are being met for produce. We do buy organic when we are purchasing anything we don’t grow ourselves. Ultimately, the result of the times we live in do require the government to address food to be grown to a minimum standard, we just wish it was better.