WILLITS>>Ridgewood Ranch held the 6th annual North Coast Farmers Convergence on Tuesday, bringing together farmers, food producers, and supporters to advise and help each other. The two-day conference provides the Northern California farming community the chance to network and support each other with workshops, speeches, business consulting and classes.
The food workshops gave farmers the chance to learn about the importance of mushrooms, how to build seed growing boxes to protect food, and ranching with wildlife.
The equipment-based workshops focused on how to increase profits and efficiencies of farming, the possibility of a community kitchen, and how to start a Community Sustained Agriculture, or CSA.
Gloria and Steven Decatur of Live Power Community Farm delivered the keynote speech about their experiences farming in Covelo. The Decaturs started their farm in 1973, and run it on solar electricity and horses.
The 50-acre farm is home to cows, horses, sheep and hens, with a small portion devoted to a vegetable garden.
The Decaturs spent their early farming days dealing with a lot of failures and figuring out what did and didn’t work. They started a Community Sustained Agriculture program in 1988, which connects the producer and consumers by allowing the consumer to subscribe to the harvest of a farm or group of farms.
Since then, they have devoted their farming towards being respectful of the land, increasing productivity and environmental health. Their vegetable garden currently provides for around 100 households and at one point helped 200 households.
They also use their farm as an opportunity to inspire future generations. Since 1984, the farm has provided school children from all over Northern California and the Bay Area the chance to spend a few days on the farm. Students can come and learn how to shear sheep, milk cows and plant crops.
As the Decaturs begin looking at retirement, they hope that their farming methods will inspire their former apprentices and people they know throughout the United States to view food sovereignty as a right for farmers and communities.
Large corporate farms nowadays play a significant role in farm production, and many small local farmers face economic challenges that make it difficult to earn a living. However, the Decaturs hope that their experiences inspire the new generation of local farmers to revolutionize their land and provide Mendocino County and Bay Area residents the healthy food they deserve.
“If you want to be an activist, start with your food system; it’s fundamental to all of our lives,” Steven Decatur said.
