About the Farm
LotFotL rhymes with hot bottle, and is an acronym for “Living off the Fat of the Land!”
LotFotL, born in 2007, was founded with the guiding idea of “building community through food.” In this day and age, it is hard to bring people together, in meaningful ways, towards the goal of expressing and celebrating a shared vision with common goals and experiences. But, we all have to eat. LotFotL strives to connect eaters with the types of foods that fit their values, while also helping to connect eaters with other like-minded folks who value food that is produced in soulful and intentional ways. LotFotL provides eaters a connection to a beautiful piece of land in Walworth County. LotFotL makes visible and real that which is usually hidden in the story of the food you eat. We bring to light the usually hidden toils, challenges, and struggles that accompany the production of every watermelon in the grocery store. We also share the very same joys and triumphs of a pig finding a wallow on a hot day. We hope this provides for you the same enthusiasm and excitement that we get to experience when the peas flower, the cockerels begin to crow, and when the cover crop seed is a lime green blanket of newness on a rolling hillside.
We require the food that we provide for you to come from production practices that honor the Earth, the animal, the plant, the eater, the worker, and all their natural inclinations. Our vegetables, corn, and soy are fertilized with hummus-building manures and composts, thus feeding not only the crop, but the soil from which it grows. Our animals are provided as much space, food, shelter, and water as they demonstrate to desire, on diverse pastures. The comfort, safety, and vitality of the animals we raise, is of primary importance to us, 24/7.
LotFotL’s vegetable production practices aim to maximize nutrients and flavor instead of quantity and uniformity. A plant that is pampered produces low nutrient, watery flavored edible portions. A plant that is suffering produces nothing worth eating. LotFotL’s vegetable production strives to meet a middle ground. We grow strong plants and then push them to become even stronger. Instead of stale, sanitary, mono-crops, LotFotL encourages green fields, where a diversity of plants maintains a diversity of microbiological relationships in the soil. The result is excellent tasting, nutrient dense food on your plate, and vigorous, vibrant soils, ready to grow your next plate’s worth of delicious food. This approach is artisanal by design.
Workers at LotFotL have a voice that is heard and appreciated. The folks who put in the many hours required to make the magic of a growing season possible not only help to steer the direction of the farm, they are the farm. As a group, we weave our way through the season of dreams, and hopes, and negotiate with great humility whatever the weather decides to do with these ambitions, with unbridled grace (well, most of the time anyway). The feeling one gets from work done well, against many odds, towards the goal of providing sustenance to the community of eaters who provide us the means to live in this fashion, is ultimately indescribable.
“Eating is an agricultural act,” according to Wendell Berry. He is right of course. The food that you buy votes in the affirmative for the production practices that rendered that food purchasable. It Is hard to imagine all the winding roads the average head of cabbage must traverse in order to get into your kitchen. Were the hands that harvested it happy to be there? Was the cabbage one in a field full of millions, on top of dead, heartless soil? What of the chickens and pigs?
LotFotL makes buying local, sustainably produced (usually certified organic), nutritious, and delicious food, easy. In building community through food, we are taking a responsibility to meet your needs to the best of our abilities. We are here for you and because of you. The food we provide is procured through an alliance with the Earth, the animal, the plant, the eater, and the worker, not in opposition or antagonism to them. And, when our food hits your plate, you can taste that difference in every bite. May your food align with your values, eater agriculturalists, one bite at a time!