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Organic Certification Visiting Day

Each year the inspector for our organic certification visits the farm; each inspector is rather unique as to how long they stay and how much they look at. Some have been at the farm for eight or more hours others only for two hours.
The inspectors look at everything, ask a lot of questions and sometimes even look at all our financial records to be sure we are .
This year our inspector was David Demler, he was quite a character and since he knows and has inspected many farms in the area it made the day rather pleasant. He was somewhat of a comedian which was a breath of fresh air since in the past some had dry serious personalities. All the inspectors all trained and they inspect farms for many different certifying agencies, they make no judgments and just report their findings to the certifying agency. The actual application for organic certification is about 15-20 pages, not including the attachments they require. One of the big things they push is record keeping, so each day Dale has to write everything down each day.
Becoming Certified Organic can be a grueling process also keeping up with the changes is also grueling. The certifying agency is usually only a call away, so if we have any questions they are always willing to help us.

Until Next Time
Marian Listwak