Helping to keep them up on the farm

Salt shakers
March 2007

Helping to keep them up on the farm
Winter farmers markets in Chicago church halls are raising money to expand an emergency fund for farm families to Illinois - with the first funds going to a northwest Illinois family where a 7-year-old boy lost his foot in a farm equipment accident last November.

Kyle Ege is "an amazing little boy with an incredible spirit," said Tony Ends, a Wisconsin farmer who directs the Churches' Center for Land and People, and who has visited the family to deliver funds raised at Chicago farmers markets.

Kyle's father Ron farms 140 acres in Elizabeth, Illinois, and works as a carpenter (neighbors tended his cows and finished up the corn harvest when Ron accompanied Kyle to a Madison hospital); mother Sherry is a nurse who is staying home to care for Kyle.

The Harvest of Hope fund operated by Madison churches has disbursed over $727,000 to Wisconsin farmers over the last 20 years, much of it to prevent utility shutoffs, Ends said. The Churches' Center, a Wisconsin-based ecumenical group supporting rural communities throughout the region, began holding winter markets to benefit the fund in 2003; last year the markets were expanded to Iowa, and this year to Illinois.

Farmers sell their own finished products, like cheeses, meats, jams, milk soap, woolen goods, and syrups, and 10 percent of the proceeds go to the fund. The markets also help generate income for family farmers over winter months.

“We’re trying to connect urban and suburban consumers with farmers through the church," Ends said. "This helps people of faith practice stewardship of the earth through what they buy and how they eat" and helps "support economic justice, ecological practices and community.”

Three markets are scheduled for next month in Chicago. A March 4 market at Chicago Temple will also feature a midday meal of regional foods, which will raise funds to promote the winter markets in Illinois; every penny raised at the markets goes directly to the fund, Ends said.

The Harvest fund is still needed because "the farm crisis of the '80s never really ended," said Ends. With production costs rising steadily and farm prices stagnating, the average farm income is $7,000 a year, he said.

Ends and his wife and sons raise organic vegetables as well as milking goats, sheep and poultry on Scotch Hill Farm in Brodhead, Wisconsin, and deliver vegetables weekly during growing season to subscribers in Oak Park, Ravenswood, and Logan Square, as well as in Madison. His wife Dela teaches neighboring goat farmers to make hand-crafted soap from goats milk.

It's a way of life that is threatened by industrial farming using biotechnology and mass production - even as rising fuel costs and concerns about health and food safety make it increasingly relevant and attractive. "The kinds of things my family is doing - and the little scattered family farms we work with - are models for a future that will have no cheap fossil fuel," Ends said.

Churches' Center is also talking with religious groups including monastic communities with landholdings in the region about sponsoring sustainable agriculture projects. It would provide opportunities for young people who train as interns and apprentices at some 30 small farms in southern Wisconsin and northern Illinois participating in the Collaborative Regional Training Alliance for Farmer Training coordinated by Angelic Organic's CSA Learning Center.

More Info:

Tony Ends at Churches' Center for Land and People , 608-831-9319
Winter Farmers Markets sponsored by Churches' Center for Land and People to benefit the Harvest of Hope fund:

March 4, Chicago Temple, 77 W. Washington, 12:25 to 1:30 p.m. (featuring brunch)

March 10, St Benedict's Catholic Church, 2213 W. Irving Park, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.

March 24, Epiphany Episcopal Church, 201 S. Ashland, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Report courtesy of Community Media Workshop

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