EYE ON AGRICULTURE: FRESH FOOD FOR ALL AT STICK AND STONE FARM.

For farmers Chaw Chang and his wife and business partner, Lucy Garrison, not only does the term describe the Full Plate Farm Collective they’re a key part of, it’s also an accurate snapshot of their daily lives. With four children ranging in age from infancy to ten years old, the two are continuously working, both on the agricultural and the home front.

Stick and Stone did not start out looking the way it does today, Chang recalled. When he and Garrison purchased the land on Route 96, between Jacksonville and Ithaca, it was brushland that hadn’t been farmed in years. Today, certified organic vegetables like green beans, winter squash (including butternut, acorn, spaghetti and delicata), beets, carrots and cooking greens (such as kale and collards), along with a selection of Asian vegetables and greens, are raised on the Ulysses farm and acreage in the neighboring community of Enfield.

 “We grow a lot of things that people haven’t tried before or might not have even heard of,” Chang said. “We’re a conduit for people to feel like they have a connection with farming.”

Chang asserted that Stick and Stone, with the various ways they market their crops, is one of the most diversified farms in the area. For example, rather than operating as an individual CSA (Community Supported Agriculture), the farm is a key part of Full Plate Farm Collective, a multi-farm collaboration. This works well for the farms involved because it lets them each focus on a specific set of crops, rather than needing to grow everything themselves, and share other resources like equipment.

Additionally, having a CSA allows Chang and Garrison to acquire more capital in the beginning of the growing season. Having this cash flow has allowed them to take more risks and increase the scale of their farming.

 “I’m not sure I could, or would have, gotten a loan for that amount of money from a bank,” he elaborated.

Stick and Stone sells their produce wholesale too. Chang was one of the first farmers to reach out to local restaurants, encouraging them to include fresh, local vegetables on their menus. Since then, Stick and Stone has expanded their wholesale market to include Wegmans and GreenStar Natural Foods Market.

Their third vegetable venue is the Ithaca Farmers Market, during both summer and winter.
“The Farmer’s Market gives us another outlet for our products,” Chang said. “Having multiple outlets ensures that we will sell all the vegetables we grow.”

Because vegetables are highly perishable, they have to be sold quickly for a farmer to make money. Unfortunately, he observed, lots of vegetable farmers go out of business because they grow more than they can sell.

Keeping their main focus on the Tompkins County area was a mission-driven decision for the couple.
“We like having the CSA so we can feed the people in our community directly,” Chang noted.
Chang and Garrison also try to keep the emphasis on face-to-face, or phone, interaction with their consumers and buyers. They purposely chose not to have an individual website for the farm (though Full Plate Farm Collective has one), are minimally involved with Facebook, and don’t feel a need to increase their presence on social media.

 “Maintaining and paying for these doesn’t interest us,” Chang said. “We want to engage with the community in a real, personable way rather than a virtual one.”

In another value-driven decision, Full Plate Farm Collective has partnered with Cornell Cooperative Extension in a non-profit program called Healthy Food for All. The program enables WIC and Food Stamp-eligible households to purchase a farm share at half the regular cost and receive fresh, quality vegetables each week. HFFA participants can take advantage of free cooking classes to gain skills and learn how to prepare the variety of produce in their share.

Chang is a strong advocate for land stewardship, serving on the Tompkins County Farm Bureau and the Agriculture Committee for the Town of Ulysses. The town is updating their zoning laws and he wants to ensure that the new laws are ag-friendly and that local farmers are represented fairly.

Another issue that is on his mind is climate change, which has led to more extreme weather in recent years and has had a significant impact on farming as a whole. Climate change has already resulted in huge, unpredictable losses for farmers, he said.

 “We’ve had two 100-year floods and one of the worst droughts on record,” Chang said. “What should have happened in 500 years, has happened in three to four years.”

Rain is the biggest problem, he contended, both in terms of crops and the surrounding environment. More rain requires farmers to do more cover cropping and use more drain tiles in their fields. This converts what would have been ground water into surface water, resulting in more water in the surrounding ditches which then overflow and cause damage to the roads. Other problems include more leaching of nutrients from the soil and increased insect and disease pressures on the crops.
Many people seem to think life is easy for today’s farmers, Chang observed. However, this simply isn’t true. He and Garrison have to deal with all sorts of modern-day work problems, including taxes, regulations and workers’ compensation. A farmer needs to be well-versed in all aspects of business, technology, science and human resource management, along with having a complex understanding of plants and animals.

 “We’re not specialized like other professions,” he said. “We need a broad knowledge base. Most people don’t have this complexity of knowledge.”

Chang has clearly put a lot of thought into why farming is such a good fit for him personally.
“I’m production, rather than service-oriented,” he said. “I’m independent. I like to feel like I’m being productive every minute I’m working.” BY SUE HENNINGER