The Lion Heart of Small Business

Small business owners who stay in business are lions by nature. This past week in particular I have felt very inspired by the bustling community that I'm proud to say we are tangled up in. Most times, Rich and I prefer NOT to be bound up with other entities, and rather to thrive in the freedom of our own agenda. However, holding hands with these sturdy, familiar people and their brainchildren offers us stability and good company.
Our world has operated in a rather large-scale, faceless, and disconnected way. Focusing on efficiency and cheapness, we've begun to lean on huge corporate systems...food and goods being delivered in boxes on our stoops without any real idea of its origin and with our dollars being funneled where? Not into our locale and oftentimes not to the people and places where the materials originated. And that system has been chugging, and resources have been gradually consolidating. Is this good? Bad? Otherwise?
I suppose everyone has their own opinion...but to me the proof is in the pudding. The "turkey shortage" this year is a good example of why consolidation is unreliable and could be potentially precarious. Something like the bird flu can strike...or even an insidious plant disease. This can decimate a stand of a crop or a farm full of birds. In the consolidated model, where a few large-scale turkey farms provide the vast majority of turkey eaten in our country, if the bird flu strikes a group of birds it can have devastating effects. If instead we source turkeys locally from small farms, there may be farms here and there who experience loss, but we are hedging our bets. You see, our friends Ben and Erica of Hooting Hills Farm in New Paris raise their turkeys outside on pasture...the gobblers have a chance of mingling with wild birds or geese who could transmit the virus...but they are one among many small farmers in the area who raise turkeys for the holiday. If one small farmer loses her turkeys, there are likely going to be a whole contingent in our area who won't. Not to mention! The resiliency of a small, vigorous flock raised in an environment more suitable for birds is much stronger than in an industrial setting where birds are immune-compromised from living in subpar conditions.
So while there is an early run on turkey for Thanksgiving from the supermarket (often birds brought in from these huge conventional farms for the cheapest price per pound), our friends lost 2 birds out of their 100 to predation and are running around town pasting flyers on the front of libraries, churches and post offices as they have such an abundance of healthy, growing turkeys just reaching maturity for the holiday.
To me the products speak for themselves. The flavor of the meat of a healthy bird is a testament to the way they were raised and cared for. It so outshines the taste of a sickly, bland industrial bird.
So, I guess I found a soap box to stand on ;). But to bring some holiday cheer to this little encouragement of small business versus the big dogs, I will just say that the personality, scrappiness, and synergy of the small businesses in our community is burgeoning. It's evidenced in the relationship we have with one of our restaurant partners who discovered we lost our last crop of salad. They know that salad is a staple on our menu and reached out to ask what we have in abundance which they could order to offset our loss in the field. At the start of the growing season another restaurant partner requested that we bring any cherry tomatoes we didn't sell at market throughout the year on our weekly delivery route. We try to do our part by promoting the incredible magic they make in their kitchens...food crafted by people we know and love and with such authenticity that you could only find under their rooves.
Now that we are venturing into the season of giving and gifting, I can't help myself but to express my hope that this gravitation toward supporting and shopping locally-made everything will continue in that direction. I'd take a bacon, egg and cheese biscuit from our favorite Warehouse 4 over McD's every day of the week. And for a $1 more than the fast-food version but made from scratch, I know that our friend Travis in their kitchen is that much closer to starting his bread bakery he has been dreaming up for the last few years. Money well spent :).