We Are What We Eat: How food, farms and community can save the planet

A talk by Mark and Kristin Kimball, owners of Essex Farm

With an introduction by Anna Houston

On August 6, 2022 at 4:30 pm, The New Marlborough Meeting House is pleased to host Mark and Kristin Kimball, owners and operators of Essex Farm since 2003. “These are two of the most interesting farmers America has to offer–hopeful, engaged, funny, hard-working, and armed with a new model for feeding people that will make you stop and think!”— Bill McKibben.

Essex Farms pioneered the free-choice, full-diet CSA (Community Service Agriculture) model, which the Kimballs see as an investment in sustainable farming as well as a means of getting quality produce. Their farm serves its produce year-round through a weekly distribution network that can be picked up or delivered through the Adirondack and Capital regions and even to New York City. All food is grown from the ground up: grass-feed beef, pastured pork, chicken, eggs, fifty different kinds of vegetables, milk, grains and flour, fruit, herbs, maple syrup and soap. Animals are fed certified organic food; no conventional pesticides, herbicides or fertilizers are used. The Kimballs employ solar- and horse-powered equipment whenever practical; they keep packaging at a minimum, and what plastic is used is BPA-free.

The Kimballs’ aim is not just to sell healthy and affordable food; it is to ensure that Essex Farms remains a working farm, ecologically and financially viable for years to come. “We envision the Champlain Valley as the birthplace of a new generation of sustainable agriculture,” they say. “We foresee a future where farms power themselves, their communities and the world.” A farm and those who get their food from it become a community, a mutually beneficial system that can make big changes in the world.

The Kimballs will discuss their farm, food and diet, the rising awareness of the benefits of organic food and sustainable farming, new systems of distribution, and what they have in store for the future. In their eighteen years operating the farm, the Kimballs have trained and mentored hundreds of beginning farmers, who have gone on to start dozens of new farms.

On August 6 they will be introduced by local farmer Anna Houston, who runs the Farm New Marlborough and has this to say about the Kimballs: “The Essex Farm model is slightly radical, totally inspiring, and incredibly hard. What they offer is more than food, it is an exercise in how one thinks about how we value food and how we eat.”

For more details and to purchase tickets visit the New Marlborough Meeting House website.

If you would like to interview any of the participants contact Nick During at nduring@gmail.com or at (347) 570 3121