Closing the Food Circle

Cabbage Hill Farm in Mount Kisco, New York is proud of its pigs. “Our large black pigs are a very rare breed, and we had to go through a lot of hurdles to get them,” says farm manager Kevin Ferry. “The pigs came from England and had piglets in quarantine!”

The farm is a nonprofit that raises endangered breeds and practices sustainable agriculture with the goal of bringing consumers and farmers together to form a closed circle. Other favorites at Cabbage Hill Farm include Northern Devon cows, vegetables such as juicy Valencia and Sungold cherry tomatoes; and specialty high-end greens, including sprouts of amaranth, intensely flavored purple basil, and tender mesclun salad greens.

“But when I think of a closed circle, our aquaponics program is the best example, and it's what we’re really excited about here,” says Ferry. To him, a closed food circle means that you’re “trying to have as many relationships as possible between inputs and outputs, handing resources back and forth.” The farm only services an area within 10 to 15 miles of its fenceline. “We bring fresh meat and vegetables to a local restaurant. Then we’ll take waste vegetable oil from it and burn it for heat. We take its food scraps and add them to our compost, mixing them with our manure and wood chips, and then put it back into the soil. The idea is to keep all our resources circulating,” Ferry explains.

Circulating is what the Cabbage Hill Farm’s 12-year-old aquaponics program is all about. It's basically a system by which water that has been dirtied by fish is filtered and then is spread on plants that further filter it naturally, providing nutritional value to lettuces and herbs. “There are 25,000 gallons in the system, about 80 gallons moving through in a minute. Essentially, it means we’re composting in ‘real time’ instead of something taking a year to break down,” Ferry explains. The system supports tilapia, striped bass, and rainbow trout and is the most productive area of the farm.

“People are also interested now in the biosecurity that this kind of farm provides,” Ferry says. “You’re eating foods from your own little community instead of being exposed to a food that was shipped from halfway around the world. We’ve read that eating from your own environment boosts immune function, and people seem to suffer less from allergens.”

For more information about how Cabbage Hill Farm is “closing the food circle,” visit its Web site at www.cabbagehillfarm.org.

— Michele Deppe