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At Midlife, Called to a New Field

The New York Times, 7/3/08

Abstract:

THE most important piece of farm equipment at Grazin’ Angus Acres is not the windmill that Dan Gibson, the farm’s founder, hopes will one day help him operate off the grid. Nor is it the “eggmobile,” home to more than 300 handsome, rust-colored pastured Buff Orpington hens, whose droppings enrich the grasses that the farm’s 200 head of Angus cattle graze on.

Instead, the one piece of equipment that the 450-acre farm in Ghent, N.Y., could not do without, in Mr. Gibson’s estimation, is Susan Gibson’s kitchen sink. It was at the center of family negotiations in 2002, when Mr. Gibson wanted to give up his job as senior vice president of corporate affairs at Starwood Hotels and Resorts, along with his family’s upper middle class Westchester lifestyle, to become a farmer. His wife needed some persuading.

“She was standing there with a beautiful sunset behind her,” recalled Mr. Gibson, 49. “And she said, ‘If you put my sink right here and the house I’ve always wanted around it, I’ll be fine with this.’ ”

In recent years, as the local food movement has grown and farmers’ markets have proliferated, a new breed of back-to-the-landers has emerged. Some, like their predecessors in the 1960s and ’70s, are earnest, college-educated young people, turning their backs on professional career paths in favor of a life of hardscrabble idealism. But many others, homesteaders in their 40s and 50s, have already enjoyed the perks of professional life, and may even have made a fortune, or at least a comfortable nest egg.

These new midlife farmers, galvanized by books like “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” by Michael Pollan and perhaps a bit repentant about their once lavish lifestyles, are as eager for a different way of living as their younger counterparts. But that doesn’t mean they are always as open to giving up creature comforts.

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