Our next @realfarmercare recipient - Jordan and Jackson Rolett of Stone House Market Farm @stonehousemarketfarm in Scottsville, KY.
Jordan writes, “Stone House Market Farm grows vegetables year-round for 50+ families on a 1/2 acre in rural southern Kentucky. While we’re grateful for our diversity of eaters, the core of our farm has been built around our own experience: small families with limited time/budgets who choose to spend their hard-earned dollars on healthful food. We began farming as a means of doing meaningful work, reconnecting with the community where we grew up, and staying close to our family, though often times there’s more work to be done and little time to spend with each other. We, as farmers, may insist the world slow down, but it can be hard to admit that what we need is not a few extra work hours in the day, but a day off the farm to just be with one another. This @realfarmercare donation is more than just taking our family down to Nashville for an entire day off guilt-free. To us, it’s a recognition that farmers should not only be concerned with parity of income, but parity of quality of life, as well. The small-farm movement over the past decade has done a tremendous amount of work providing information on how we may become more economically and ecologically sound as farmers, but @farmerclara is asking, “are you alright?” or “what do you need in this moment?” Something we are, as farmers, reluctant to admit. Our emotional well-being is just as important as the ecologic and economic well-being of our farms, more so when our children are involved. Maybe what we really need is not another tool, webinar, or course, but an opportunity to slow down and reconnect with the very reason many of us began farming in the first place, our families. Take care of yourself as you would your fellow farmer.” Photo credit @abbythepotter