Growing Organic Is One Thing. Proving It Is Another.
If you have been around Blue Heron Farm for any length of time, you already know that we grow using organic, regenerative practices.
I have just never been able to wrap my head around the idea of spraying gnarly chemicals on food specifically to make other living things not want to eat it, and then turning around and eat it myself. That has always felt like the craziest concept to me. We build fertility through compost, cover crops, soil biology and organic amendments. We manage pests and disease through prevention, observation, biological systems, and materials approved for organic production. That is how I want to farm, whether or not there is a little green USDA Organic seal attached to it.
But there is an important difference between growing organically and being Certified Organic. And certification comes with a whole lot more than simply agreeing over a handshake to grow a certain way.
Starting over
This farm has actually been here before.
When this property operated as Apple Hill Ranch, the farm was Certified Organic. But organic certification belongs to the certified operation and it does not simply transfer to a new farmer when a property changes hands.
So when we took over the farm, I couldn't inherit that certification. I had to completely start over. And I knew going into it that becoming Certified Organic again was going to be a big undertaking.
I knew there would be paperwork, mountains of paperwork. I knew there would be extensive record-keeping. I knew our practices, materials and systems would need to be documented perfectly and then put to the test under review. I knew we would eventually have an inspector walking the farm and looking for any crack in our records. I knew it was going to be expensive. And this isn't a one-time mountain of paperwork you climb and then get to put behind you. Maintaining certification means doing this work, keeping these records, and opening the farm up for review year after year after year. And I decided I wanted to do it anyway.
Because if Blue Heron Farm was going to say that we grow organically, I wanted there to be something behind those words besides me telling you that we do.
That decision started the process of applying for certification through CCOF and building what is called an Organic System Plan, or OSP.
And when I say “plan,” don't picture a couple-page application.
The Organic System Plan
An Organic System Plan is essentially the operating manual for your entire farm.
There isn't one tidy universal OSP with a single page count that every farmer fills out. Instead, CCOF's grower OSP is built from a collection of forms depending on what happens on your particular farm.
I made the mistake of deciding I wanted a paper copy of all of our forms, so I printed the whole thing out. Hundreds of pages later, I was standing there holding what can only be described as a organic-certification tome. You could absolutely knock someone out with the thing.
For a diversified farm like ours, it was that means documenting our parcels and land history, every single material we use, every single seed and planting stock that goes into the ground, every soil management practice, every detail in our compost production, natural resource conservation, pest management, crop production, harvest and transportation, storage, post-harvest handling, direct marketing, labeling, sales, and our entire record keeping system.
And those forms just lead to more questions. You aren't simply saying, Trust me, we farm organically. You are describing every single detail of how you farm organically, and then providing the records that allow someone else to verify it.
And then comes the record keeping
Submitting the OSP isn't the end of the paperwork.
It is really the beginning of it.
Once certified, a farm has to maintain records detailed enough that an inspector can follow what happened on the farm and trace organic products through the system. Those records have to fully disclose the production, harvesting and handling of organic crops, be auditable, and must be kept for at least five years.
For our farm, that will mean keeping track of:
what we plant, where we plant it and when
where our seeds and transplants came from, including receipts and organic certificates
our attempts to find organic seed when an organic variety isn't commercially available
every fertilizer, soil amendment, pest-control product, seed treatment or other input we purchase
when we apply those materials, where we apply them, at what rate and how much we use
compost process and records or other fertility inputs we produce ourselves
crop rotations and soil-building practices
natural-resource and biodiversity practices
preventative pest-management practices
equipment cleaning
steps taken to prevent drift or contamination
what crops we harvest, from which field or block, on what date and in what quantity
transportation and shipping
crop storage
post-harvest handling
what we take to market
what comes home from market
what we sold at the farm stand
all of the u-pick operation production on fruit years
every CSA box, and the records behind every single crop inside of it
what we sell, how much we sell and where it went
invoices, receipts, delivery records and sales records that allow all of those numbers to be reconciled
This is what creates an audit trail. An inspector needs to be able to look at the records and essentially follow a crop through the farm, from seed, to field, to harvest, to sale.
For farms growing just a handful of crops, or perhaps selling through only one sales channel, the recordkeeping might not be too bad. But for us? This year, we grew over 40 different types of vegetables, most with multiple varieties of each crop, and sold through five different sales channels. Things get complicated in a hurry.
For example, if we say we harvested 500 pounds of carrots, we need to have the records to back that up. Where did we purchase the seeds? Where on the farm were those carrots planted? When were they harvested? How were they transported? And finally, where did all 500 pounds end up? We need sales records that account for every pound, across every sales channel.
Now multiply that by 40 different crops, multiple varieties, countless harvests, and an entire growing season, and you can start to see how quickly the paperwork becomes its own full-time job.
That is the part of organic certification that I think most customers never see.
There is farming.
And then there is documenting the farming.
So why do it?
This is the question I think is very interesting.
Because we don't need the certification to choose to farm organically. We are already committed to doing that.
Most of our customers know us personally. Many of you walk through farm, see the fields, talk to us at the farm stand, read these newsletters and ask me questions directly.
So why willingly take on all of this extra work?
For me, the answer comes down to trust and accountability.
I can tell you that we farm organically. Certification means I am willing to let someone else check. There is something powerful about that. Letting an independent certifier reviews our practices, reviews the materials we use, looks at our records and physically inspect the farm means that we aren't creating our own definition of "organic." We are agreeing to meet an established standard and document that we are meeting it.
I think that matters. It matters for the customer who has never met me. It matters when our food leaves the farm and goes to a restaurant, a store, or another buyer who cannot stand in the field and ask me how I grew it.
And as Blue Heron grows, I think that is important.
There is another reason, too.
Going through this process forces us to look closely at our systems.
When you have to explain exactly how something works, you very quickly discover the places where your system is strong, and the places where it is held together by memory, habit, and the fact that Rachel knows where that receipt is (ha. good luck).
Certification requires us to turn those habits into systems. And ultimately, I think that makes us better farmers. I’m also not promising that we will maintain this certification forever. There may come a day when the sheer amount of record keeping and administrative work becomes more of a burden to the farm than a benefit. Certification or not, the way we grow food isn’t going to change. But for this chapter of Blue Heron Farm, it is something I believe is worth pursuing, and I’m genuinely excited to see it through.
And now, a very exciting update...
After a whole mountain of paperwork, material reviews, documents and more paperwork...
Our Organic System Plan has officially been submitted, and approved!
That is a HUGE milestone for us.
It means we have made it through the application and OSP review portion of the process, and the next step is to schedule our on-farm organic inspection.
An inspector will come to Blue Heron Farm, walk the operation, review our systems and records, and verify that what we described in our Organic System Plan matches what is actually happening here on the ground.
And if we make it successfully through that next part of the process, we are getting very, very close to a day I have been looking forward to for a long time:
officially announcing that Blue Heron Farm is Certified Organic.
We aren't quite there yet.
But we are one very big step closer.
And when that day comes, I can promise you we are going to celebrate it.
Until then, we'll keep doing what we've been doing all along: growing food the way we believe it should be grown, taking care of this little patch of earth as best we know how, and day-by-day recording a truly impressive amount of paperwork to prove it.
We'll keep you posted.