Safe and Locally Sound

Food safety is now an item of constant concern. With so much of our food shipped in from around the globe, pre-cut in the supermarket, and prepared in restaurants, most of us are not aware of where our food has been and who has been responsible for the handling.

When you support local agriculture, however, you can overcome these obstacles and improve your environment at the same time. If your picking your produce at Easy Pickin's you can actually speak to the person who grew it(that's me, Farmer B), and ask him just how he did it.

Local farms also work to protect your local environment. Agricultural soils and the woodlands in and around them are the most important filter of your ground water. There is no safer and more important environmental use of our lands than the mix of agriculture and open space that is found in New England.

It is true that modern farming faces environmental challenges. It is also true that these challenges increase in difficulty as farms become larger and more centralized. So by supporting our smaller local farms, you can help support safer local alternatives to our modern food supply. 

At Easy Pickin's I work hard to be sure that our produce is safe for your family as well as for mine. I practice a type of farming called "Integrated Pest Management" or "IPM". This means I spend many hours each year studying the potential pest and diseases of each crop. I also study the beneficial insects that will help me to fight the pest of each crop. Then during the growing season I'm carefully scouting, trapping, and monitoring both pests and beneficial insects in order to make carefully informed decisions on if and when pesticide will have to be applied. I also study the characteristics of each pesticide legally available for maintaining our beneficial insect populations and protecting our environment. Fortunately the last few years have seen big advances in the availability of environmentally-friendly pesticides. Many are derived from naturally-occurring substances and are very target specific. They breakdown quickly into natural components that do not harm the environment. With careful consideration we can produce clean, tasty, healthy food in an environmentally sensitive manner.