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This is Part Two of our series where we are giving thanks for starting a garden two years ago. Throughout the month of November with the help of my husband, Adam, we will be telling the story of “How we got here,” “Where we are,” and “Where we are going” from each of our perspectives.

Today Adam explains where we are:

Well, it’s a crazy weekend in the Trost house.

Saturday we hosted a co-ed baby shower for four of my fraternity pledge brothers and their wives. We have reached that point in our lives that the wedding season is shorter and the kids are showing up in droves.

We had nearly 30 people in our house on Saturday which made for a very loud and fun baby shower. We ate, drank, laughed, told stories and genuinely had a fantastic time catching up with great friends.
Now it’s off to the Sunday night Colts game in Indianapolis. I think I will need a weekend to recover from my weekend.

Purdue Alpha Gamma Rho all grown up.

I started thinking about all the great celebrations we take part in and what is so common with each. Almost every event Claire and I host I feel like it all revolves around the food. Now any great host knows that the meal doesn’t mean anything unless the guests you are sharing it with are 5 star.

I had one great friend turn to me and say “You always know you’re going to have a great meal when you come to the Trost’s.”

That made me feel great.

I enjoy cooking great food as much as others enjoy eating it. One thing I enjoy even more is growing great food.

I love to serve people spectacular meals made with the food I have grown and taken care of. There is a feeling completely different than anything I have ever felt when I can transform a garden treasure into a meal that someone genuinely enjoys. It is my passion.

This brings us to “Where We Are.”

We are just on the edge of discovery and refinement.

Claire and I have progressed through growing our food rather quickly. Our first year was trial. (And we tried a lot of things.) Gardening, having egg layers, raising 50 meat chickens, trying to figure out composting, and many others.

Our second year has become more of a discovery and refinement season. We still have the egg layers (a big topic of conversation at the baby shower), we raised meat birds again this year to fill our freezer, our garden went from 8 garden beds to 24, and our compost actually looks like compost.

Currently I am trying to figure out how to grow the most possible food in the smallest possible area. We are discovering how different crops planted in very specific areas and timing can produce massive amount of food.

For example, when tomato plants are young, plant radishes in between the plants. By the time the tomato plants get large enough to shade out the ground the radishes are harvested and you just produced 20 more pounds of food in the same bed. We also use plants that grow tall, like peas and cucumbers on trellis to shade our lettuce. This allows us to grow lettuce all through the summer without bolting. We are also planting cover crops like buckwheat in the bed when another crop will not be planted there for at least two weeks. This keeps the soil active, shaded to reduce weed pressure, and adds organic material to the soil.

Spinach shaded by growing beans.

One of the best tools I have discovered is not a special shovel or some magic garden tiller. It has been Mother Earth News Garden Planner. It is an online garden planner that keeps track of what you plant in each bed every year. This is key to having healthy soil, reduce insects and disease problems and grow plants more efficiently. Every time you plant a bed the garden planner will keep track of it and let you know that in 2013 tomatoes were in bed 4. It will then light up in red, letting you know not to plant them there again. Aside from YouTube, it is the tool I rely on most.

Now that winter seems to have shown up early, and our garden is all but dead (carrots, beets and kale are holding strong), I am in the reflection phase of our season. We had an incredibly successful year growing food, produced much more than we could eat and were able to share that with others.

I just took my pastured grown chickens to the butcher and my first thought was “I have a really big yard, I wonder how many pastured chickens I could grow on my lawn.” Now that I have used that grass to grow food, it seems worthless to fertilize, water and mow it constantly.

You should see how green my grass is where the chickens had been for only a day. Each day I moved the chickens to a new spot and now have 50 days of area fertilized. What if everyone did this? We are worried about growing enough food to feed the world when we don’t fully utilize what is right under our nose.

I am currently reading two books on starting a successful farming enterprise and the other on raising salad bar beef and am incredibly inspired.

The field around our house has been farmed for so long that nearly all of the quality top soil has washed into the creek. It is a gently rolling field that channels all of the water to one corner. Every year we have a big rain and it floods, washing through a culvert under the road through another field and into the creek. Each time, the water carries more soil with it. So much so that every few years the farmers have to fix the culvert, repair the washouts and watch the ditches get deeper and deeper.

Are we really fixing the problem?

What if we turned the field into, pasture, wood lines, natural habitat and ponds? Pastures could raise beef, pork, poultry, and sheep. The grass would hold the soil in place and help retain the water. Most of the corn grown in the field is being used to feed those animals anyway. Wood lines and natural habitat will attract birds who will spread the manure while searching for bugs. Ponds will retain the water and be used for livestock, especially in drought years.

So that’s where we are.

We don’t have it all figured out but, we have been very successful on our small scale. So much so that we want to continue to grow and produce food for others. You’ll have to stop in next Sunday to discover “Where we are going.”

Talking about raising chickens with a future farmer.

A couple weeks ago, my good friend Katie treated Adam and I to the opening night showing of Farmland. Katie grew up on a farm and, quite honestly, she was one of my first tastes to the amazing community that farmers hold each other in.

The movie was at a chic theater in Indianapolis (… A theater where you could order a glass of wine for the movie. If more theaters did this I might consider going to the movies more often than the time that has passed between now… and when the last Harry Potter movie came out.)

And as the credits started rolling, Adam turned to me with the biggest smile on his face.

He was still beaming as we walked out of the theater and asking, “So, what did you think?” over and over.

Honestly, I thought it was very good, but that seemed so generic to say at that moment.

I needed more time to process it all.

There was so much information. Emotion. Stories. Passion.

Lots and lots of thoughts were running through my head.

For me, it wasn’t like watching your childhood heroes like it was for Adam.

From my stand point, it was like watching a captivating, information packed segment on Dateline or the Today show. Except it was eighty minutes long.

I reversed and asked him what he thought.

“I think everyone needs to see it” he responded without hesitation.

I couldn’t help but agree. The thought had crossed my mind.

In this day and age where everyone is so quick to judge farmers based on what they see in paranoid food blogs and Food, Inc., Farmland is a strong rebuttal. (I am not sure if it was designed that way, but I also couldn’t help but find it ironic that Farmland’s final shots were set to an upbeat version of “This Land is Your Land.” Food, Inc. ended with a somber “This Land is Your Land.”)

I’ll admit. Food, Inc. got to even me. As I started this blog, I knew I had to watch it.

So, I picked it up at the library last spring and after viewing it I decided that if I am in control of the meat I eat, I wanted to know where it came from.

At home this wasn’t hard. I bought meat at the farmers market or from people we know. But, out and about? That was hard.

So, my post Food, Inc. resolution lasted about three weeks.

Farmland addresses those horrible images that Food, Inc. shares that got me to reconsider my burgers and steaks.

The images of a cow being rolled over by a fork lift. Or the guy kicking a pig with all his might.

All the farmers featured in the video agreed that those images make them mad. Sick. Angry.

One mentioned on how their animals are their livelihood. They can’t make a profit with a poor product. In turn, they love the animals they tend to.

Another said, “All kinds of industry have their bad apples and they ruin it for everyone”

It’s true.

Bad press and bad stereotypes are found in any and every industry.

Teachers? Lazy. Over paid baby sitters. And, how about the ones sleeping with their students?

Nurses? Drugging their elderly or mentally disabled patients so that they don’t have to deal with them.

Sales people? They are greasy, aggressive and will do anything just to make a buck.

Doctors? Often running drug rings out of their practice and buddying up to the pharma reps just for the all-inclusive vacation.

Politicians? Do I really even need to go there?

The thing is, food is personal.

Food is the one thing that everyone uses everyday. (Multiple times a day!)

And thanks to the propaganda images and news articles from a few “bad apples” in the agriculture industry, people are quick to judge farmers.

Now more than ever, people feel like they need a connection to their food. They feel that they deserve to know how the food was produced. They want to see the face behind their meal.

So… go get it.

Make connections with local growers. Ask questions of the people who actually do the work.

Take all internet boards and propaganda with a grain of salt, and take it upon yourself to get the whole story before forming opinions or assuming everything you hear is a fact.

In fact, watch Farmland.

I have asked so many questions and read so many books and articles over the last two to three years about our food system, to the point that I think I could hold pretty good ground in intelligent conversations about farming, local food, organics, scare tactics, etc. But, I still learned so much from Farmland.

For example: No added hormone’s in chicken.

Sounds good, right? Most consumers would rather buy the chicken labeled no hormones added versus the one that didn’t have this label.

Guess what?

Some marketer thought it sounded good too.

No farmer is adding hormones to chickens. One company just made it big and bold on their label so everyone thought that this chicken was better for them than the other.

I am pretty sure I have even boasted in this blog about how our backyard chickens don’t have any added hormones. Which, yes, is true. But, in that regard, it puts them on the same level as any other chicken out there.

The information provided in Farmland is eye opening and presented at a level that is simple to understand. And, that may be because the six farmers are showcased in the documentary are in their 20’s and 30’s. It felt like I was watching and learning from people who could easily be Adam and my friends.

Each of these farmers come from very different kinds of farming, such as big organics in California, ranching in Texas, commodity crops in the Midwest, and organic CSA’s in New England. But, they did a great job speaking about the realities that the entire industry shares like the weather, the current age demographic in agriculture, the stereotypes they face each day, the up and coming technology propelling the industry to be able to serve the demand, and their unfaltering passion to continue to grow our nation’s food.

If you grew up around farming and love agriculture, go see Farmland.

If you have never met a farmer and want to know more about agriculture, go see Farmland.

If you swear by organic food, go see Farmland.

If you don’t think GMO’s are a big deal, go see Farmland.

If you saw Food, Inc., go see Farmland.

If you buy food, go see Farmland.

Everyone should see it.

Use it as a tool to help you form your own opinions, but keep learning.

The film is in select theaters across the nation and will be available for digital download late this summer.

“Where We Are” by Adam

“Farmland” on the Big Screen