Gaining Ground Quotes

“All farms require a resident dreamer, someone to thumb through seed catalogs in the cold days of late January, imagining summer fields of squash and cucumbers, tomatoes and sunflowers. Fall harvests are the reward of winter dreams. Someone must decide where the next fence should be placed, or conceive of a clever new way to organize the market stand. On a farm, there's no shortage of little dreams needing to be dreamed.”
― Forrest Pritchard, Gaining Ground: A Story Of Farmers' Markets, Local Food, And Saving The Family Farm

“Ironically, in spite of all the care and attention my grandparents devoted to their land, all the food they grew each year ultimately became anonymous, and it ended up eaten by complete strangers. Young calves were sent to feed lots in the Midwest to be fattened on grain. Apples, their skins never perfect enough to be sold as fresh fruit, were transformed into juice, or sauce, or apple pies. The corn, like most grain raised in America, was destined for animal feed. It was, perhaps, fed to the very calves that they had sold, now 1000 miles away. Once the food left the farm, the entire system was turned on its head. The freshness they had worked so hard to attain, picking the fruit at the peak of harvest was replaced with shelf life… their harvest was trucked all across America. It was processed, boxed, frozen, and then shipped again. Their food was trucked down the interstate in 18 wheelers, and hauled away by trains while they slept. Their apples might end up in the filling of a donut in Chicago, or their beef in a taco in Alabama. They had no way of ever really knowing.”
― Forrest Pritchard, Gaining Ground: A Story Of Farmers' Markets, Local Food, And Saving The Family Farm

“Where, exactly, did rainbow colored, sugar frosted, air puffed, marshmallow infused cereal come from? Was it raised by cartoon rabbits and harvested by mischievous leprechauns? These products were so distantly removed from the local farms, so thoroughly metamorphosed, that we couldn’t even be sure what the raw ingredients had been... Looking back on these farming families standing in line with their shopping carts, I wonder if the money they received for growing the right ingredients even covered the cost of their shopping bills. Could a farmer who planted fields of wheat and oats now afford a box of cereal made from his own grain?”
― Forrest Pritchard, Gaining Ground: A Story Of Farmers' Markets, Local Food, And Saving The Family Farm

“Have you ever thought about the word 'hayseed?' a writer friend asked me one day, as we walked through waist-high pastures. What an amazing metaphor. Out of the entire English language, someone chose that word as an insult, but it has poetic double meaning. What are the odds?...

What a tiny dream a hayseed is! What an outrageous assertion, that a seed could ever amount to anything more than just a single blade of grass. And yet, raveled into that tiny husk is everything our farm has ever needed, or will ever need in the future.”
― Forrest Pritchard, Gaining Ground: A Story Of Farmers' Markets, Local Food, And Saving The Family Farm

“On our farm, the food we raised reflected our true cost of production. When we set our prices, we did exactly what every other business in America did...

...why does the food in the supermarkets cost less?...

Much of this food was already discounted, I explained, paid for in advance by government subsidies. Tax dollars, the same taxes that were taken out of my friends' paychecks before they received them, were used to partially pay for this food before it ever arrived at the supermarket. This "cheap" food was expensive, too. Unbeknownst to them, (they) were simply purchasing it on an installment plan.”
― Forrest Pritchard, Gaining Ground: A Story Of Farmers' Markets, Local Food, And Saving The Family Farm

“As much as I wanted to make all of our customers happy, our farm inevitably began to sell out of certain items each week...

I had been taught that businesses should constantly grow and expand. Owners should demand annual productivity increases, and resources were to be tapped for maximum potential. Like most things in our melting-pot society, the message was a uniquely American blend -- equal parts Manifest Destiny, Yankee ingenuity, and Protestant work ethic. A dash of Horatio Alger seemed to be thrown in for good luck.
Be more! Live more!
Consume! Produce!

...What if, at the end of the day, just growing what we could grow was good enough? And what if we genuinely wanted other family farms to succeed as well? These were the ideas I valued most, and the questions I wanted to answer. Everything else began to feel like noise.”
― Forrest Pritchard, Gaining Ground: A Story Of Farmers' Markets, Local Food, And Saving The Family Farm

“Every time we eat, we participate in farming.”
― Joel Salatin, Gaining Ground: A Story Of Farmers' Markets, Local Food, And Saving The Family Farm

“What did it say about my grandparents' cattle farm, selling calves for seventy cents a pound live weight, but buying back steaks for ten dollars?”
― Forrest Pritchard, Gaining Ground: A Story Of Farmers' Markets, Local Food, And Saving The Family Farm