Integrating Farming and Family Life
By Karen Fredrickson
Photo: Mae Denner-Kenny
Little Seed Gardens is a 100-acre crop and livestock farm in Chatham, New York, run by Claudia Kenny and Willy Denner with the help of their two children and a small crew. The farm began with the goal of “understand[ing] what it means to get our lives from this planet and how to share it with other people,” Willy Denner said. They have met this goal and now raise organic vegetables, herbs and flowers, as well as Randall cattle and Suffolk draft horses, both endangered breeds of livestock.
The couple met when they were young, and while neither of them came from a farming background, they have, as they put it, “been gardening together ever since.” It was very important to the couple to integrate farming with their family life; “We wanted to homeschool our kids and to be at home with them while they were growing up,” Denner said. “We wanted to be responsible for the impact we make by feeding ourselves, and we wanted good food. Most of all, we wanted a way we could contribute to the well-being of our community and be connected to it.”
This level of connection and sustainability was not an easy goal to reach. They began by spending years gathering the resources they would need to start a farm, using money they made from their contracting and landscaping business, as well as educating themselves by attending conferences and work- shops. Without the necessary funds to both buy land and begin farming, they compromised by renting land in Stuyvesant and began to “learn market farming by trial and error.” Community played a large factor in their learning process, as their neighbors were instrumental in helping them get through “a steep learning curve.”
Kenny and Denner began to run Holistic Management trainings through their involvement with the Regional Farm and Food Project, and through that experience they came to the realization that they wanted to farm using Holistic Management. “Holistic Management is a values-driven decision-making paradigm based on the work of Allan Savory that considers economic, social and ecological objectives simultaneously,” Denner said. It fit well with their goals and values of family, community and sustainability, and they have been using Holistic Management ever since. “It has been very important in remaining viable and helping us live the kind of life we want. Holistic Management helps manage complexity; as we have matured as farmers, we have moved toward emulating nature in our production, and nature is complex. It is helpful to have a way that you can test decisions before you make them and monitor their results after enacting them that is based on an understanding of the fundamental ecosystem processes that govern life.”
This has been rewarding for the family in many ways. They have learned about the challenges of practicing management well, which to them means “management that meets human need and simultaneously supports the community of life that we are part of and that we depend upon completely.” They acknowledge that some of their problems resulted from a lack of skill, something for which there is no shortcut but practice. “Practice is always developing and improving, and much of what works is not widely disseminated,” Denner said. “But the big problems seem to be in our most fundamental social beliefs. As we wake up to the reality of a planet where every square inch of land is claimed and where what we throw away comes right back to us, we have the opportunity to see that we are part of the community of life and that life is collaborative, not competitive. We will also be able to see more and more, as we become more connected, that we are a collaborative, social species, and to be well, we need to care for others.”
The outlook shared by the family guides their daily lives, encompassing the principles of holistic living. “The more we are able to acknowledge that need we have for others to be well, the more we will decide to support things that make us well—good food, connection to the community and family, learning, celebration, play, peace,” Denner said. “That’s what we see coming. Good management will just be part of that unfolding of human nature.”
For more information about Little Seed Gardens Farm, visit their website at www.littleseedgardens.com. █
