The Featherstone Farm Mission, Then and Now

From Day 1 (ca April 1, 1996) Featherstone Farm has been a mission driven business.  Being certified organic- not just according to the letter of the law, read narrowly, but deeply in the spirit of the movement- was and is a core value for all of us here.

But the Featherstone Farm vision goes far beyond organic practice, as important as that is. Almost 20 years in, I finally got around to drafting a formal Mission Statement for the farm business (in 2015). It reads:

Featherstone Farm Mission Statement
Featherstone Farm is committed to produce and distribute high quality, certified organic fresh vegetables, in a way that reflects values of personal, financial and environmental sustainability.

Enhanced Mission Statement
Featherstone Farm is dedicated to building soil, protecting resources, creating renewable energy and to enhancing the rural environment in which it operates.

Featherstone Farm operates a mid-sized, significantly mechanized, certified organic farm, which balances big picture goals of ecological and human health with day-to-day realities of economics (both the need to be profitable as a foundation of sustainability, and the need to be efficient to make quality food affordable and accessible to large numbers of people).

Featherstone Farm is committed to being a fair, transparent and accountable agricultural employer, and to making farmwork a safe, respected and personally sustainable profession. 

Featherstone Farm is dedicated to placing good regional food at the center of a vital rural-urban community of people.

I can’t tell you how essential these guiding principles remain today, for all of us at Featherstone Farm.  I consider them a big part of what distinguishes us from other producers near and far; we are an open book here, and we like to think that any community member who opens and reads a bit of that book, will find ideas and actions that resonate with their values as well. Integrity. Transparency.  Respect for all people. Reverence for the natural world.

Over the next several weeks I will be shining a spotlight on various aspects of this Mission in Blog posts here.  Some of the writing will be about nuts and bolts issues we encounter day-to-day.  Other posts will tell stories- hopefully some of them entertaining!- about how we have implemented this vision in our work year-to-year. 

I hope you will find this series engaging and informative, as you develop your own vision about why it is important (even critical, I will argue!) to support an independent, home grown, values- driven small business like Featherstone Farm.

For your interest and support I am Gratefully Yours- 
Jack