Maybe It’s Time We Talked About Being Organic

September is Organic Month, and we have something of a confession to make.

For something we worked three years to earn—and have maintained for more than a decade—we can sometimes be surprisingly quiet about the fact that our farm is certified organic.

Our organic story began in August 2012, when we made the decision to begin farming according to organic standards. Three years later, after completing the required transition period, Creekside Dairy officially became certified organic in 2015.

The land itself wasn't necessarily the hardest part of that transition. Much of the way we farmed already fit quite naturally with where we were headed. Weed control in our corn was one notable challenge—and today we no longer grow or feed corn, both for that reason and as part of our commitment to grass-fed production.

The much bigger challenge was transitioning the herd. Anything we couldn't grow ourselves had to meet organic standards too, and purchasing certified organic feed and other inputs came—and still comes—at a significant premium.

So what does “certified organic” actually mean?

It isn't simply about what we don't use.

Organic farming is a whole system of farming, with an emphasis on soil health, animal welfare, prevention and working with natural systems wherever we can.

For our cows, it means access to pasture during the grazing season and certified organic feed. Animal health care emphasizes prevention first. Antibiotics can—and absolutely should—still be used when an animal needs them. On our farm that need is very rare, but animal welfare always comes first. Organic standards require a much longer withdrawal period before that cow's milk can return to the organic supply.

Out in the fields, we don't use conventional synthetic fertilizers, herbicides or pesticides. Instead, we rely on practices like crop rotation, manure and other permitted soil amendments, mechanical weed control, healthy soils and careful pasture management.

There are many more details behind the standards than we could possibly fit here. But perhaps the simplest way to describe it is this:

Organic isn't one practice. It's a farming system.

And certification means we don't get to define that system for ourselves.

And yes, organic costs more to produce.

Here's something about Creekside that can be a little confusing from the outside.

Creekside Dairy—the farm—and Creekside Cheese + Creamery are actually two separate businesses.

The farm sells its milk through the BC milk marketing system. The creamery purchases the milk back at a price determined by what that milk will be used to make, along with its organic certification.

The milk doesn't physically go anywhere—it travels a very short distance from our cows to our creamery, right here on the same farm. But on paper, the farm sells it and the creamery buys it.

And certified organic milk costs our creamery more.

We don't pass all of that additional cost along to you. Our cheeses are priced similarly to—and often below—other locally made artisan cheeses that aren't certified organic. Our certified organic beef is considerably less expensive than much of the conventional beef we see in grocery stores.

Those are deliberate choices. We want good food, produced in a way we believe in, to remain accessible. Sometimes that means accepting a smaller margin at the creamery.

But being certified organic also gives Creekside a distinct place in the market—and we're realizing we should be proud to occupy it.

Maybe we've been a little too quiet.

For years, we've tended to let other parts of Creekside make the first impression.

First and foremost, we want our cheese to taste really, really good. We want you to come to the farm, see the cows grazing, wander into our little shop, taste something delicious and experience the warmth and openness of this place.

Those things have always featured more prominently in how we've told our story than our organic certification has. And honestly, we don't think that's been wrong.

A certification can't tell you what a wedge of cheese tastes like. It can't capture the feel of a farm, the personality of a herd, or the experience of knowing exactly where your food came from.

But there's been another reason we've been quiet too.

We know that for some people, organic immediately translates to expensive. We never want someone to see that little organic logo and assume Creekside isn't for them.

Somewhere between wanting our food and farm to speak for themselves and not wanting the label to create the wrong impression, we may have become a little too quiet about something we're genuinely proud of.

Natural. Sustainable. Regenerative. Organic.

This week, a conversation with a reporter about regenerative farming got us thinking about the words we use to describe agriculture.

There are a lot of lovely ones: natural, sustainable, regenerative, soil-friendly, pasture-raised.

Many describe exactly what we want to accomplish: healthy soil, grazing cows, nutrients cycled back through the farm, biodiversity, healthy forage and land left in good condition for the next generation.

In other words, we absolutely want our farming to be regenerative.

But when organic farming is practised in its spirit—not simply to the letter of a standard—we believe many of the principles now described as “regenerative” are already there. Caring for soil, relying on biological systems, cycling nutrients, grazing livestock and thinking about the long-term health of the land aren't new ideas to organic farmers.

Words like natural, sustainable and regenerative can be useful descriptions. But they can also mean different things depending on who's using them.

Certified organic means we don't get to make up our own definition.

And perhaps that's something we've undervalued.

Transparency matters. So does certification.

We talk a lot about transparency at Creekside. You can visit the farm. You can see our cows. You can ask us what they eat, how we manage our pastures, what goes into our cheese, or why we do something the way we do.

We think that kind of openness is incredibly important.

But transparency and certification aren't quite the same thing.

Transparency says: this is what we tell you we do.
Certification says: someone else checks.

In British Columbia, “organic” is a protected term. Our practices and records are independently inspected against defined organic standards, year after year.

That little organic logo doesn't tell you everything about Creekside.

We wouldn't want it to.

But it does tell you something.

It represents a decision we made in August 2012. Three years of transition. More than a decade of certification. Annual inspections, records and accountability. Higher costs in some places. Plenty of learning along the way.

And, most importantly, a way of farming that we still believe in.

So this Organic Month, maybe it's time we got a little less shy about saying it.

We're local. We're family farmed. And we're proudly certified organic.