Rural Banter

Author: ERICA GOODMAN

The cow barns are much quieter at Paul Seiler's farm these days.

The Swiss native started his American dairy-farming career in Woodstock, Vt., before relocating to Addison County. When Paul started up his own farm, he milked conventionally - meaning he ran his 40-50-cow dairy in the traditional manner that 98 percent of U.S. farmers work. However, as the price paid to farmers for milk dropped, the customary methods were no longer cutting it and Paul decided to try his luck in organic farming. The shift to anti-chemical food has become quite the craze. According to the Organic Farming Research Foundation, the field has clocked in an annual increase of at least 20 percent over the past decade, making it the fastest growing sector of agriculture in the United States.

But the shift to organic farming is no easy task. An "organic system plan" must first be designed and implemented. This strategy should describe the practices used to produce crops and livestock products without the use of synthetic pesticides, fertilizers or animal "steroids," if you will. Buffer zones between adjacent fields must be established to prevent inadvertent contamination. Once the plan has been put into place, a three-year wait is required to obtain government certification - a much-coveted status among organic farmers, as an official "Organic" label ensures higher prices for goods produced.

About five years ago, Paul Seiler made the switch to organic. Surely he experienced the ebb and flow of any fresh venture. It takes time to master a new way of farming, but sometimes, in the end, the risks outweigh the rewards. Weather in Vermont, not surprisingly, is very unpredictable. In any given year, crops may be parched from a drought or left unharvested in swampy fields.

After 15 or so years of farming, Paul decided it was too much for him to do alone anymore. It is hard to find a job outside the field once a farmer decides to hang up his straw hat. Paul had offers to be Herd Manager at other farms in the area. Instead, he decided this fall to relocate his family to sunny Florida and has since found luck with work there. Still, life is different away from pastoral Vermont, in a place where metal detectors line the doorways of the children's school and your connection to the land has been taken from beneath your feet.

On a grassy knoll, a quarter of a mile west of the Middlebury College campus, the Slow the Plow organic garden is having a go at organic growing. You have certainly tasted these students' success in many a meal at the dining hall. But on a hill in Cornwall, things look different. A neighbor takes care of a few yearlings that wander through the seemingly empty barns. The pipes and water bowls that once served the Seiler herd have since been drained and put away, and left to dust and rust.