U.S. $26.
00
continued from front flap
more complex than the average city-to-farm
account, The New Farm is a memoir of a fam-
ily addressing sustainability in all its facets,
as they go beyond the orthodox practices of
farmers’ markets and community-supported
agriculture to supply top restaurants and sup-
port local food banks. Told with humor and
heart, The New Farm is a joy, a passionate
book by an important new voice.
“An inspiring, galloping story of a farm that works—for everyone.”
“A terrific book. This city-slickers-struggle-to-become-farmers tale
brent Preston worked as a human rights
“Preston uses brilliant storytelling and brutal honesty to describe
investigator, aid worker, election observer,
and journalist on four continents before find-
ing his true calling as a farmer. with his wife,
he runs The new farm outside Creemore,
ontario.
“Both a book about the food system and a tell-all of his journey. . . .
Cover PhotograPh by JaCk anderson/ getty Images
author Photo by Jason van bruggen
Cover desIgn by John gall
Printed in the United States
Untitled-4 1
Preston
a d va n C e P r a I s e f o r
—mark bittman, author of how to Cook everything
turns out to be so much more. Brent Preston recognizes that ‘food
is everything’ and offers proof that individuals working small plots
of land can transform that very food, which we rely on for our
health and happiness. The New Farm is a compelling memoir, told
in a fresh, original voice, about what matters most in life.”
—michael ruhlman
what it takes to create both a viable organic farm and a more mean-
ingful life for himself and his family. The New Farm is the kind of
book that will inspire people to make positive change.”
—arianna huffington
The ups, and mostly downs, he describes might have been a trial
but they do make for a good read.”
—the globe and mail
U.S. $26.00
ISBN 978-1-4197-3108-2
An unflinching, chArming, And
insPiring memoir from
A leAding orgAnic fArmer
AfTer yeArS of working at the ends of
the earth in human rights and development,
Brent Preston and his wife, gillian, were die-
hard city dwellers. But then their second child
arrived and Brent and gillian decided to leave
their noisy city for good. in 2003 they bought
a hundred acres of land and a run-down old
farmhouse and set out to build a real farm,
one that would sustain their family, nourish
their community, heal their environment, and
turn a profit.
The New Farm is Brent Preston’s unabashedly
honest memoir of a decade of grinding toil
and perseverance. He recounts their first ten
years on The new farm, facing harder chal-
lenges every season and making plenty of mis-
takes along the way—battling groundhogs,
chasing escaped piglets, and dealing with the
consequences of a changing climate. with
no experience, no machinery, and not much
money, the physical toil and financial stress of
the early years broke down their bodies and
almost ruined their marriage. They wrestled
with how to develop their small farm into a
stable business, and more than once, they
considered giving up on the farm entirely.
But as Brent and gillian learned how to grow
food and succeed at the business of farming,
they found that a small organic farm could be
an engine for change, and a path to a more
just and sustainable food system. richer and
continued on back flap
1/4/18 10:03 AM
 THE NEW FARM

THE SK E PTI CIS M A ND OC CA S IONA L HOS T ILIT Y we felt from

our immediate neighbours was more than offset by the love we
received in the farmers’ market. Jamie and Mark had retired from
the market that summer, so in Season Two, Gillian and I were on
our own. The pre-market lineups that had started in Season One
continued, but because we were growing far more produce than
in our first year, we didn’t sell out so early, and the lines continued
all morning. On long weekends we were thronged, with people
four or five deep at our table from 8:30 until noon. Gillian and I
would be frantic the whole time, bagging salad, making change
and talking to our many regular customers as we ran around the
stand. It was exhausting, but also tons of fun. Every week we had
six days of drudgery and pain on the farm and one morning of
unadulterated appreciation at the market. It was pretty much the
only thing that kept us going.
But we also saw things in the market that reminded us how
fucked up our relationship to food and farming sometimes is.
Most of them were little things, comments or attitudes that were
probably amplified by our fragile physical and emotional state,
things that probably wouldn’t have bothered me if I wasn’t com-
pletely exhausted and overworked. The first was the demograph-
ics of our market customers. They were just about all rich. Quite
a few of our friends bought from us—the young families who
lived in Dunedin and Creemore—but most of our customers
were weekenders or retirees who seemed to have a great deal of
dough. People often showed up at our stand wearing swag from
one of the private ski resorts or golf courses in the area, and it
wasn’t uncommon to serve a customer in riding boots and a hack-
ing jacket, ready for a day of riding to the hounds. They were
extremely nice people, but it grated on me that just about all of
our food was going to the wealthy.

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 A WORLD OF PAIN

It was also clear that some of our customers didn’t want to

know too much about how their food was produced. “Is your
stuff organic?” people would often ask. “Yes!” I would reply, then
launch into a description of how we grew our carrots, excited
to have the opportunity to make the farmer–eater connection I
thought everyone wanted. But their eyes would glaze over and
they would become visibly uncomfortable. Most people wanted to
know that we were organic, but that was it. They wanted to check
a box, feel good about their purchasing decision and move on.
Partway through the season a new vendor started selling in the
market. He put a huge banner on the side of his van that simply
read “organic,” then started unloading boxes of produce that were
clearly labelled as conventional. Most of our regular customers
commented that the new guy was obviously lying about the status
of his vegetables, but others were oblivious and seemed to pre-
fer to stay that way. They asked no questions; if they were being
duped, they didn’t want to know about it.
People also got upset when their farmer stereotypes were
disrupted. My BlackBerry was a particular problem. People
would often say things like “I’ve never heard of a farmer with
a BlackBerry before!” They always sounded more than a little
disappointed. It may be hard to believe now, but in 2008 a Black-
Berry was a pretty serious status symbol. I felt the need to explain
that I had bought it to manage our planting schedule, but that
wasn’t often seen as a reasonable justification. The simple truth
was that many market customers thought not only that farmers
are backward and uneducated but that they should be backward
and uneducated. A farmer with a smartphone was obviously an
imposter, or putting on airs. The irony of this attitude was that we
were probably the most unsophisticated farmers in the county. I
knew Mennonite farmers who had better phones than I did. Bill

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 THE NEW FARM

Watt got up every morning and checked the commodities futures

coming out of Chicago, ready to forward-sell his soybean crop
up to two years in advance if the price was right, to buyers as far
away as Japan. Half the land around Creemore was farmed by
self-driving GPS-guided tractors that cost half a million dollars
apiece. But many market customers clung to their stereotype of
the hayseed farmer. They wanted to buy from someone simpler,
dumber and poorer than they were.
But the most irritating market conf lict was about price. We
always displayed our prices on a chalkboard, but the vast majority
of our customers never looked at it. They didn’t care how much
anything cost; they would pay whatever total we gave them with-
out thinking about it. That was good, because I was painfully
aware of the enormous amount of money we were losing, and
of the terrifying amount of work that had gone into growing our
market produce. People who complained that our stuff was over-
priced were extremely rare, and I tended to meet their complaints
with hostility.
The price conflict that stands out most in my mind involved
Mrs. Black and some spring onions. Mrs. Black was very elderly
and very proper. She and her husband had retired to Creemore, and
she was a regular in the market. I would see her every Saturday,
dressed in Mad River Golf Club gear from head to toe. I was never
sure if she had just played, was about to play or simply wanted
everyone to know she was a member of the swankiest golf club in
the area. The first time Mrs. Black bought from us, she picked up
a bunch of spring onions, looked at our chalkboard price list and
asked in a disapproving tone, “Why are these two dollars? Food-
land is selling spring onions for seventy-nine cents.” Foodland is
the grocery store in Creemore, immediately beside the market.
I felt my face getting red. Spring onions are a particularly fid-
dly crop. They germinate and grow slowly and put up thin, wispy

120
 A WORLD OF PAIN

leaves that do nothing to shade out competition, so they require

a lot of weeding. We had priced ours at two dollars because we
didn’t think people would be willing to pay any more, but I was
sure we were losing money at that price. Now Mrs. Black, a walk-
ing advertisement for a golf club that had a forty-thousand-dollar
initiation fee, was complaining about being gouged. I took a deep
breath and tried to explain.
“Our spring onions are much bigger and fresher than the ones
they sell in Foodland. They aren’t wilted, so you can use the whole
thing, even the green part. Ours were grown organically, by hand.
The ones in Foodland were drenched in chemical fertilizers and
pesticides the whole time they were growing.” Mrs. Black seemed
willing to hear me out. “But most of all, they taste a lot better,”
I said. “I don’t want you to pay me for these. I want you to buy a
bunch of spring onions in Foodland and take them home, so you
can compare. If you think ours are worth two dollars, come back
and pay us next week.”
The following Saturday, Mrs. Black walked up to our stand and
handed me a two-dollar coin, without saying a word. She became
a loyal customer and never again complained about the price of
anything.

we spent almost every

W H E N W E S TA R T E D S E A S O N T W O ,
waking hour pondering a simple question: How would we ever
grow enough food to make a living? All of our doubts and stress
revolved around production; in order to make money, we had to
grow more. So we worked in the garden until we broke ourselves.
The relentless hours of gruelling labour, the constant financial
stress and the omnipresent worry that everything we were doing
was doomed to fail left me feeling shattered. The work and stress
began to literally devour me; I’m six foot three and have always

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been skinny, but I lost weight rapidly, despite eating four or five
meals a day. I bottomed out at 160 pounds by the middle of
the season.
But as our skill increased and our efforts in the garden began
to pay off, we were confronted with a new and even more difficult
question: How would we ever sell everything we could grow?
In Season Two we came to the most important and transfor-
mational realization of our new career. Farming is made up of
two separate but equally important tasks: growing and selling
food. We were putting what we thought was a superhuman effort
into growing beautiful food, but beautiful vegetables sitting in a
farmer’s field aren’t worth squat. If our business was to survive,
we needed to put just as much effort into selling that food. If you
grow food, you’re a gardener. You have to grow and sell food if you
want to be a farmer. And we wanted to be farmers.
Our sales in the market more than doubled that year, but we
had increased our overall production by a factor of five. All that
extra produce had to be sold, or whatever effort we put forward in
the garden would be meaningless.

122