Vendor Profile: Winds of Change at Windermere Farm

Tucked in a valley in the shadow of Lake Windermere Dam in Raleigh, TN, Ken and Freida Lansing cultivate 5 of their 16 acres, coaxing the likes of strawberries, blueberries, bittersweet, corn, and beans from the fertile soil. For the Lansings, the time was right to ease their recreational, pick-your-own farming operation into the commercial side, thanks to the Memphis Farmers Market.

"I heard about it from my wife's niece, who is a chef," says Ken, who grew up on the original 65 acres that once belonged to his parents, who kept horses on the land. "We went down to the market one day to look at it, and we saw a nice group of people and customers. I liked the open space, the pavilion, the ability to just back your vehicle up and work from that. You just open things up, and you're ready to sell. So we came to the market to do business for the first time in August 2006."

This year, Windermere Farms will debut as the market's first certified organic grower, a distinction awarded by Quality Certification Services, a USDA National Organic Program, only after stringent requirements and documentation are met.

"They put you through it!" says Ken, laughing. "You've got to keep records and have annual reviews, so it's a lot of work! But I want to be organic, and the certification process steps up your attention to detail. You have to go through certain hoops to make that possible."

For example, before corn can be sold as organic corn, the manure used to enrich the soil has to be in the ground 90 days prior to harvesting. If corn takes 70 days to mature, that means Ken has to make sure his fertilizer is in the ground 20 days prior to planting.

"Now, if it's a crop whose fruit touches the ground, such as lettuce, it goes 120 days," he adds. "If you want to use it as a top dressing compost, the manure has to be incorporated with other organic material — leaves, grass, things like that — and kept between 130 and 160 degrees for 15 days, plus it has to be turned five times during that 15-day period."

Whew. And that's only the beginning. But to the Lansings, organic produce is the best produce to nourish your body, and the two are purists in that way. They are also realists, and after enduring a few of Memphis's summertime droughts, Ken took matters into his own hands.

He dug three ponds and put a 1,000-gallon tank on top of one of the hills. Water from one pond is pumped to the tank, and an underground drip irrigation system using T-Tape takes care of the rest.

As for the apiary side of the business, the Lansings are growing that operation, too, with the same care and attention to detail given to the rest of the farming operations.

"Everything has its special problems," says Ken. "You've got to deal with your pests, you've got to deal with your soil. And you always use the natural means available without resorting to the petrol-chemical solutions that most farmers employ."