Local farms grow organically

Ryan Lukasik opened the carton of eggs. Inside was a brilliant display of browns: golden, light, dark, beige, some speckled and some with dirt. He handed the vendor $4.25, smiled and made his way to the next stand.

Lukasik, an IU alumnus, and dozens of others shop at the Bloomington Farmer’s Market on Saturday mornings, knowing they might spend more than they would at a grocery store.

The high prices are a result of doing things the old-fashioned — whether it’s spending a night in the barn tracking down the fox that’s been eating the chickens, or picking hundreds of chili peppers by hand.

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Local organic farmer Jacob Phillips runs his family farm eight miles south of Bloomington. Barely more than two years old, Liberty Pastures is a work in progress, and Phillips is still learning what farming techniques are best.

The one trait that has stayed consistent is the determination to raise animals the most natural way possible.

“Who’s bleeding?” Phillips asked looking at  blood that  trailed outside the hen house.
He walked through the grass with his blue jeans stuffed into his black, tall rubber boots and the sleeves of his blue plaid button-down rolled up just past his wrists. He knelt down next to one of the giant white turkeys, and with one quick swipe from his hands the turkey was hanging upside down by the legs.

“Sometimes the chickens will peck at a wound,” Phillips said as he examined the bloody wound on the turkey’s backside. He placed the turkey back on the ground and explained that once chickens smell blood, they will keep pecking at the injured bird.

On Liberty Pastures, the animals are grass fed and raised on pasture, which they are allowed to graze in rotation every three to five days.

The animals, which include various breeds of chicken, turkey and goat, are free from “unnecessary stress, small cages, genetically modified feed, hormones, antibiotics, animal by-products, chemical fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides,” Phillips said.

What you won’t find, however, is a United States Department of Agriculture organic certification.

“We don’t want to be certified,” Phillips said. “It’s just another government system with loopholes.”

Instead, there’s a promise, which is on the Liberty Pastures website at LibertyPastures.org:

“When you choose to eat meat, eggs and dairy products from animals raised on pasture, you are improving the welfare of the animals, helping to put an end to environmental degradation, helping sustain your local economy and helping your family by giving them the healthiest food possible.”

The animals at Liberty Pastures are very low maintenance, eating only vegetation from the pasture. Although the chickens, turkeys and roosters are provided with inexpensive, locally bought feed, Phillips said the sandy brown food pellets that sit in a red bin close to the hen house make up about 25 percent of their diet. The rest comes from insects, small mammals and vegetation they find on pasture.

With such low production cost, why are the prices almost double the conventional product prices found at the local grocery store?

“Organic farming is a losing business,” Phillips said.

He stood with his hands tucked into his jean pockets and looked at his livestock, which was half the size it was only months before. He recalled the nights he slept in the barn with his gun, awaiting the hungry fox that kept stealing his chickens. Not being able to catch the culprit or its competition, an owl and a hawk, Phillips hand built a hen house.

Equipped with sizeable doors, thick rubber wheels for easy mobility and a remote-control roof that allows Phillips to control sunlight access, it isn’t an ordinary hen house. The chickens, with various feathers of black, white, brown, gray and copper, waddled close to the hen house, safe from any lingering predators.

“At $4.50 a dozen, I know that our eggs are the most expensive at the market,” Phillips said. “But I also know that we care for our animals the best way.”

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Susan Welsand is another local Bloomington farmer who specializes in chili peppers. Not only is Welsand farming organically, her work also protects the environment and preserves biodiversity.

Welsand smiled from behind a row of drying red chili peppersand. She is known as “The Chile Woman.” Not because of her pants patterned with chili peppers, chili pepper necklace or even the chili pepper clip in her hair. She is known as “The Chile Woman” because she is single-handedly growing 1,400 of the 3,000 varieties of chili peppers.

“At first, I didn’t know what to price my peppers because no one was doing what I was doing,” Welsand said. “I don’t do bulk. Instead, I price them individually, by size, because I want people to be able to try one of each. ... I sell for the variety.”

Although Welsand’s chili peppers are available at the Bloomington Farmer’s Market and Trader’s Point, about 90 percent of Welsand’s profit comes from shipping chili plants around the country.

Welsand’s chili pepper farm is completely organic, but like Liberty Pastures, you will not see a USDA organic certification hanging on any of the walls.

“The certification is aimed at corporate farming,” Welsand said as she spread her hands wide apart to show the thickness of the USDA organic certification application. “There is about a half of a page about greenhouses. It’s just not applicable to small-scale farming.”

A tornado ripped through the area last spring, carving a hole in her backyard skyline, damaging her greenhouse and scattering debris throughout her property. Although her production was about one-third of what it was last year, Welsand is proud of the outcome this season.

“There were pieces of fiber, glass and ash that fell into my chili garden,” Welsand said. “When you’re a big corporate farm, you don’t have to worry about contamination like that. But when you’re an organic farmer, that’s what affects you the most.”

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While he roamed the Bloomington Farmer’s Market, Lukasik said he would eat solely organic products if he could afford them.

“Four dollars is a lot for eggs, and I can’t do it all the time, but when I do, I know I’m eating healthy and that I’m supporting good people,” he said.