I did not know what to expect before our visit to Aasgard Farms, but it ended up being one of my favorite parts of the entire trip. The kindness and hospitality of the two owners blew me away. The farm clearly took a huge amount of work for them to maintain, but they still graciously gave us a long and elaborate tour of the entire facility, complete with caramel. The only thing that could have made the trip better was some cheese samples, but at least the fact that they didn't have any meant that their business was going well! The beauty of the farm and seemingly smooth process of making the goat cheese gave me the impression that it was an incredibly successful endeavor. However, we talked in class today about how the family was just getting close to making the farm self sustaining, so they have actually been losing money in previous years of running the company!
It made me sad to realize that a farm like that required such a huge economic investment. When they said that their business is limited by supply rather than demand, I assumed that they were making money off of the farm. Their dedication to organic and sustainable farming was made even more apparent. The two of them clearly started the farm because they loved it, regardless of the difficulties presented by the geography of the Adirondacks and the labor intensive nature of running a dairy. It also is a little sad that it requires so much wealth to make such a seemingly healthy model of food production run smoothly.
I wrote my blog post about what a comfort it was to see an efficient, yet sustainable farm like Asgaard. We had talked in class about only small, failing farms and large, unsustainable, factory farms. Asgaard seemed to find a nice balance between the two. However, even though I knew how much wealth it took to start the farm, I was failing to see that this wealth was continuing to sustain their otherwise failing (in terms of being profitable) business. At some point in the near future, hopefully, David and Rhonda will find the farm to be profitable, but it saddens me to realize that anyone without the funds to support themselves and a budding farm for several years without additional income would not be able to start a farm like Asgaard, let alone be so continually conscious of their sustainability.
ReplyDeleteI had no idea that the farm wasn't making a profit! That is really such a bummer, especially because this kind of small, locally sourced farm is something that I admire so so much. I've learned a lot in the past about large-scale farming practices that create more problems (like e. coli outbreaks, over-medicated cows, horrific animal husbandry practices, and the like) than they solve and it was incredibly refreshing for me to visit a place with such admirable farming methods. I loved seeing the Temple Grandin-inspired cow-hugging machine and the ways that each part of the farm supported the others.
ReplyDeleteI agree that it is sad that it takes so much wealth to be able to start up a farm like this. For me, Asgaard really symbolizes the ideal organic/local farm -- the owners have contact and familiarity with all the working cogs of their estate, they know how many animals they have and what those animals need to stay healthy. Like you said, they are clearly passionate about the process of farming, and their investment (in terms of money and time) is clearly pretty significant. It is very frustrating that a business such as this one is barely self-sustaining, when this business model seems most ideal in terms of "coexistence" with the environment. I hope that these two continue to have growing success, and that ultimately the price they've paid to start up the farm will pay off in a big way, and hopefully other people will follow their excellent example.
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