About Green Fence Farm 

          I have a hard time putting a date on the birth of Green Fence Farm.  We bought the 16 plus acre hill on which the farm sits in March of 2004 and received our first shipment of five Icelandic sheep November of that year (they arrived in the back of a minivan).  The barn was finished sometime that winter and we got water and electricity in the spring of 2005.  The cabin (oops, “farm storage building” for any building inspectors reading this) isn’t done yet.

          Maybe the best date to mark is when Scotty’s wife Theresa painted the front fence green and, for weeks, people stopped to marvel.  Though the paint was readily available at Lowes, apparently no one had ever used it to paint a fence before and we were an instant tourist attraction and local landmark.  Green Fence Farm was born.

          But if that’s the birth, conception was much earlier and a bit foggy.  The seed of the idea could have been planted with Nick when, as a young father working ungodly hours at the Pentagon, he furiously farmed a remote plot in Southern Maryland.  With me, it was probably in my Gram’s Michigan back yard where beans climbed crazily up what I now realize must have been support poles for a long gone patio canopy and cucumbers snaked through her flower garden. 

          Or it could have happened when, in around 1990, Jeff and I, in partnership with my mom and dad, bought the 75 acres near Green Fence Farm that has served as our base camp for farm operations.  Or maybe in 2002 when Nick burned out on fighting the bureaucracy of the U.S. intelligence community and quit to raise his kids and start a business, any business, in which he didn’t have to work inside or have a boss.

          For me, I started on this road on September 11, 2001.  And yes, I realize exactly how clichéd that is.  The road less taken was clogged as I-95 at rush hour after 9-11, and I was right in the center lane, flashing my lights and reexamining my priorities. 

          Like so many other people, 9-11 made me want to nurture and cherish what I too often took for granted – my family, our beautiful region, the small miracles that make the life possible.  In a world that seemed suddenly uncertain and even hostile, I wanted to reconnect with the basics – food, clothing, and shelter.  I wanted to build a business myself.  I wanted to stop analyzing and start creating.  And I wanted to get out of the air conditioning.  Farming was a logical next step.

          Unfortunately, the ideological traffic jam is moving slowly, and I sit writing this under florescent lights.  Nick now splits his time between the farm and Washington DC.  Between working full time and child raising, I remotely second guess all his decisions and get out to the farm as much as possible.  In a few years, I hope to cut back my hours in the Senate and spend more time on the marketing end of the business.  In a few years after that, when Vivian goes off to college, I want to farm full time.

          A year and a half after we bought Green Fence Farm, we’ve accomplished quite a bit.  We have 18 beautiful Icelandic sheep, our latest addition the ram Zeus from Fresli Farms.  These sheep are the superstore of farm animals – they provide wool, delicious meat, milk, sheep skin rugs and more amusement than most network television.  Nick has added to that 20 cashmere goats (the cashmere was my idea, the goats, his) for meat sale to the ethnic market and wool sales to the snooty.  We had about ½ acre in vegetables this summer, mostly beans and tomatoes, with asparagus and blueberries in our future.  We hope to double the garden by next year and will be selling our produce at the Alexandria Farmers market on Tuesday mornings.

          Besides the barn and the half finished house, Nick has pounded in miles of fencing and we’ve grown 2 acres of pasture with 2 to 3 more seeded.  A space has been cleared for the hoop house that will eventually be the winter retreat of the chickens, the permanent home of the angora bunnies now residing in our Alexandria house basement, and the nursery for early spring plants.  We have a trout pond, a commercial flower garden, a pig pen, and our own beef cow in our dreams.

          And we have goals – some concrete, some philosophical.

• We want to live lightly on the land, using recycled water and rotational, multi-species grazing to accomplish what commercial fertilizers and pesticides would otherwise.
• We want to grow our own food, and what we can’t grow, buy locally, and what we can’t buy locally, buy carefully.  Our plan is to support ourselves and our neighbors – not Exxon, the chicken death camps that make up the poultry industry, factory agriculture in general, and any corporation or government that is sacrificing its people or its land at the alter of our country’s voracious appetite for what we want, when we want it, and cheap.  In other words, we want to stop working in politics and start living it.
• We want to be tired at the end of the day, and not from aggravation, too much diet coke, or staring at a computer screen.
• We want to learn to make root beer.
• We want to regain respect for the work of farming and appreciation for food in season grown on land we know – and we want to share that with others.
• We want to demonstrate farming by these principles is not just enjoyable but profitable – that there is a place, among the Gaps, Walmarts, and megamalls, for products unique to our farm.
• We want a breeding pig who won’t grow to over 800 pounds and try to kill us.

          I am sure that list will have additions.  And I’m equally sure that most of the goals are achievable, except maybe the last.  Please explore the website and watch our progress – even participate if we ever manage to produce enough to sell.  We are going to need all the friends we can get.

Kate Sparks-Auclair

September 2005