Away in a Basement

Good Afternoon!

I’m always impressed with the story of humble beginnings as I celebrate Christmas. As a farmer with an old barn and feed troughs, and as a woman who experienced natural childbirth three times, I imagine what it would be like to have a baby out in my barn and place him in a feed bunker.

Wholesome Harvest has humble beginnings as well, and businesspeople have sometimes considered those beginnings with derision. "Wholesome Harvest is just an inconsequential little enterprise located in the basement of a farmhouse in Colo, Iowa." Their idea is that if you are
located in a humble place—not only in Colo Iowa, a rural town of 700, but also below ground on a gravel road— well, that proves you ain’t much.

Every work day, four of us gather together in a couple rooms of my farmhouse to work for Wholesome Harvest. I can’t think of a better place to have our "world headquarters" than in an old farmhouse in Iowa, can you? While it would be nice to have a few more colleagues, I embrace our humble beginnings here, because to effect change, it takes gumption, not glitz.

We are earnestly trying to start a grassroots effort to bring about higher standards in organic meat, more traceability in the meat system in general, and domestic fair trade standards for American family farmers. Not a very big agenda for four or so people, eh?

We wrote our mission statement to help people "eat well. . . save the earth. . .and the small farms on it." We are here five years later, still working towards these ends, and I would like feedback from you.

With the start of a New Year, please tell me how you believe I can best serve you here in 2007. You can write back to me here. I hope we can build community and momentum, as we are all interested in safe and healthy food.

Your Friend,
Wende Elliott