I've written before about my fond childhood memories of Zandstra's Farm: roaming the acreage collecting vegetables for soup, building sod houses out of pallets and crates, making cups out of dried gourds, swimming in irrigation ditches and making mudslides through the onions. I couldn't help but feel a personal sense of loss in the nineties as the land along Indianapolis Boulevard in Highland, Indiana was gradually sold off until the entire area was taken over by housing and commercial developments.
Like many small family farms in the last quarter of the twentieth century, Zandstra's had to adapt to shifting trends in food and agriculture by making major changes in their operation. Today, the farm business is mostly in bedding plants, with large greenhouses less than a mile from the original farm and a location further south that still maintains about five acres in vegetables. We had the privilege of talking with Butch Zandstra, one of the brothers who currently own and operate the farm, about the history of the business and current cultural trends.
Like many Dutch immigrants around the turn of the century, Butch's grandfather quickly found factory work south of Chicago in Pullman, but as soon as he was able, he purchased a piece of land to tend. Founded in 1903, the Zandstra Brothers Farm served thousands of families with fresh produce over the years through the farm stand, u-pick and the market in Chicago. Butch noted that the family was especially attentive to growing vegetables that would appeal to local ethnic communities.
In 1978, Butch and his brother Nick bought out the farm from the rest of the family and change the name to Zandstra's Farm. Over the next couple of decades, the demands of the market shifted from fresh produce to bedding plants. Even though Butch still feels most at home among the vegetables, they followed the trend, which led to selling off the original farm. Butch isn't sentimental about the old property, but he admits that it made its way deep into his memory--where they planted certain crops and when, what weeds came up where, which fields tended to flood, all oriented to the path of the high tension wires and the sky blue Highland water tower.
The large majority of the Zandstra's Farm business is no longer in growing food for people, but the indelible mark of living from the land is on Butch's children, who are always glad to eat at home. He and his son Rob debate the nature of sustainability, often coming down on opposite sides, both theoretically and practically when it comes to the family farm. It matters, Butch says, whether your view of the world is geocentric, anthropocentric or theocentric. A theocentric view would indicate a kind of symbiotic harmony between land and people, use without abuse. What that looks like in particular is up for debate--the question of going organic, for example. Zandstra's Farm is not organic, but by understanding love of creation as a reflection of love for the Creator, the family has tried to live in harmony with the land. It's good theology and good business. Butch cites an example of how their crops are on a ten-year rotation in order to replenish the soil, whereas a fellow farmer in the area has a three-year rotation and sees the evidence in his yields. Zandstra's tomato plants have a very long season of production because of this rotation, while the other farmer needs to replant several times throughout the season in order to produce a substantial crop.
As a practitioner of agriculture, Butch doesn't come off as particularly defensive, but he does resist people's urge to blame farmers for poor eating habits that are contributing to health crises such as obesity and diabetes. The problem isn't corn syrup, he says, which is just a cheap sweetener, but it's overconsumption. We have access to more, cheap food than ever before in history, which is both positive and negative. It seems that both farmers and consumers are being adversely affected by the pressure to serve the market's insatiable craving for consumption. For example, advertisers help create a market for corn syrup to turn the wheels of consumption, consumers respond to the competition and farmers find themselves dependent on corn subsidies for growing a crop that's not even good for people to eat. There's a lot of complicity, but very few benefits. When we suggest that the ideal system might start with a collaborative, direct relationship between eaters and farmers, he is cautious but encouraging. He has seen a rising interest in locally grown food and from their five acres of vegetables, they sell produce at the Highland farmer's market.
What is the future of Zandstra's farm? Right now, the bedding plant business is thriving and they've put in new greenhouses and a paved parking lot. Butch and Nick have several years to go before retirement, but, even though several of their children have an intellectual interest in the family legacy, there is no one who is planning to take over the everyday operations of the farm.
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