FREDERICKSBURG -- Choosing to buy and eat organic products has become increasingly popular for the past several years, and local farmers have caught on to the trend.
One of the area leaders in organic farming, Green Field Farms Cooperative -- has been working to provide the highest quality certified organic products since 2003, according to one of the founders of the cooperative and president of the 20 member board, Ervin Weaver.
The idea to create an Amish cooperative of farms came from the need to sustain and preserve the Amish way of life and the land, Weaver said.
"We wanted to get together and protect our Amish culture and the Amish farms and so we decided to form our own co-op, which turned out to be Green Field Farms."
This year farms in the cooperative will farm about 50 acres of land for produce and will include 42 dairy farms.
Green Field Farms has about 100 members, Weaver said, and they all produce certified organic products.
Changing from a conventional farming to an organic farming was a pretty simple task for The Weaver Family Farm, Weaver said, because they had already been using a limited amount of herbicides and pesticides.
In the 1960s, Weaver said his father ran an almost organic farming operation "although we wouldn't have known it back then."
Weaver bought his own farm, The Weaver Family Farm, at an auction in 1986. Almost from the beginning he had been using at least some organic practices.
Since 2005, The Weaver Family Farm has been a certified organic dairy farm, and it is almost entirely self-sustaining. Weaver grows hay, corn and oats to feed the cows, which are also on a rotating grazing schedule.
I had been rotational grazing since 1988 so that was not new for me," Weaver said. "It makes the cows happier and healthier and my vet bill is not even a third of what it had been when I was conventionally farming. So this is better for the animals and the soils."
It is better for the soils because the manure -- which is animal feces and urine combined with a source of carbon, like straw or wood chips -- acts as a natural fertilizer for the land. Using manure as fertilizer is also cost effective, as it is a by-product of the animals on the land.
As an organic farmer, Weaver has had the ability to provide for his family as well as provide for his children's growing families.
All of Weaver's laborers are immediate family members.
Since becoming a certified organic farm, Weaver said believes it costs less to produce 100 gallons of milk, which is one of the reasons why Weaver said he could never see himself going back to conventional farming practices.
"Seeing the good health of the animals and the health of the whole environment of the farm -- even the soil quality -- I don't think I would go back to conventional," he said. "Even if the organic milk price went down to the same as conventional, I still would not buy the herbicides and pesticides. Everyone here feels better because we don't have to put that stuff in the animals and on the soil."
Green Field Farms is very strict about their guidelines and authenticity, Weaver said.
Every item that comes from the cooperative is stamped with a certification seal that guarantees the products were produced by a plain community -- Amish or conservative Mennonite -- farm and upholds their standards for quality.
"People want to know what they eat and where it comes from," Weaver said.
There are also many different areas Green Field Farms is looking to get into in the future in addition to dairy, chicken, fruits, vegetables and eggs, he said.
"There are a lot of dreams," Weaver said.