What we're up against

We're pretty much starting from nothing out here.  Most of the time it doesn't feel this way because we're surrounded by tons of stuff - old farm machinery and hoards of my grandfather's tools.  We also of course, have the several years of agricultural practice we earned while working at the organic farm at Rutgers.  A somewhat strong knowledge base in farming and old equipment doesn't start a business though, and it certainly doesn't keep the groundhogs away.  

We have many people rooting for us, even the ones who think organic farming is just a punch line.  Conventional farmers up here have already asked us if we want help spraying our crops and others have told us that they give us a year.  I'm learning that a glimpse into the typical American farmer's mindset is at once practical and depressing.  Yet I still think they are hoping we succeed.  It's not us against them - it's us against the almost microscopic flea beetle.

We are growing in pasture land that has had perennial grasses growing on it for decades.  We don't just have the standard pests found everywhere in fields growing vegetables, we have pests that live in grasslands.  We have ants ! ?  And they are eating our cabbage ? !  We have tilled into a nest of miner bees and there now are thousands swarming around us when we're in the root crop field.  Some of the main weeds we've been conquering are orchard grass and timothy, also known as hay.  We have fat groundhogs, poison ivy hiding around every corner, and hungry deer.  We've got asparagus beetles, cabbage moths, and flea beetles, to name a few.  And then there's the heavy rains, which cause so much erosion that we must rebuild and replant row after row.  Nature is definitely to be respected, but where is that warm fuzzy feeling organic farming promises when it gently claims to be about working with nature, not against it?