Farming in Transition
October 19th, 2009 By Twilight Greenaway
Old habits are hard to break. And, while apple farmer Stan Devoto has long been aware of the benefits of organic farming, it wasn’t until recently that the veteran farmer began to consider a change.
Stan and his wife Susan have been farming flowers, a wide range of apples, and persimmons on Devoto Gardens‘ 20 acres in Sonoma County for 33 years. “Things were working okay, so I didn’t see the need for a change,” he recalls. But that’s not how his three daughters Christina, Jolie, and Cecily saw it.
“They said, ‘Dad, you’re behind on the times, you’re a dinosaur, it’s the right thing to do,’” says Stan. The Devoto girls were concerned about the farm’s environmental impact, but also about the health of their family. “They said they didn’t want to live here if I was going to be spraying synthetic poisons around the house,” he recalls. Stan and Susan did some research into what exactly it would take to become certified, and they decided to give it a try. Read More