It is definitely starting to feel more like Fall and our fields are thriving in the cooling temperatures. It is a welcome change for our team that have spent the last months enduring the high heat and we are excited for the change. It has been a great start to this Fall harvest season and we have enjoyed seeing familiar faces and meeting many new members. During CSA distribution, we also like to answer any questions you may have. The most common question we receive from many of you and others outside of our program is about our production model and how the food harvested from our farm is grown. In case you were not aware, we wanted to let you know that we are proud to be a Certified Naturally Grown (CNG) farm. CNG is a private, non-profit that offers a certification program to small-scale farms. To quickly summarize, a farm that has been audited and certified as Certified Naturally Grown is a farm that does not use any synthetic herbicides, pesticides, fertilizers, or genetically modified organisms.
The Certified Naturally Grown website further explains,
"Certified Naturally Grown provides a much-needed complement to the National Organic program. While the NOP is an important program that primarily serves medium and large-scale agricultural operations, CNG is tailored for direct-market farmers producing food for their local communities. These farmers often find the NOP’s heavier paperwork requirements are not a good fit for their small-scale operations. CNG enables them to get credit for their practices while offering accountability to their customers."
The small team at Seminary Hill Farm practices sustainable agriculture that goes beyond organic. We chose to be certified through the CNG program because it allowed us to focus less on paperwork and more on building sustainable ecological systems that provide for the community all year long. We are proud to be part of this growing program and continue to strive to offer our members complete transparency.
If you have any questions regarding our farming practices our our certification with the CNG, please let us know! We are happy to answer any questions.
Thanks!
The Team at Seminary Hill Farm
