It might seem like a good time to be part of the small farm business: More people than ever want to eat locally produced food, even casual restaurants name-check farms on their menus, and urban farmers' markets teem with the young and beautiful. But if you are David Maren, you know the truth: Sometimes, sustainable small farms are, well, unsustainable. And it’s not just Big Agra or a broken food system to blame: Sometimes, it’s the farmers themselves.
Maren grew up in what he describes as a “hippie family” in the mountains of West Virginia. When he was 14, he had the “rather audacious goal of raising all the food for my family that year.” He admits that he “completely failed” at that, but as a young man already toying with a DIY Animal, Vegetable, Miracle experiment, he decided to go into farming. He married into a family that was operating Tendergrass Farms out of Floyd, VA, and eventually took over as manager for his father-in-law. That was when the trouble started.