By Joanna Sommer
Local farmer shares his roots.
Pedro Aponte’s hands are worn and weathered. Healed calluses are etched into the tough skin of his palms and knuckles. The quacks of the ducks and the chatter of the hens grow louder as the wind ruffles the leaves of the trees that line the outside of Saint Isidore’s Homestead & Permaculture.
Dirt is crammed under his short fingernails, but Aponte doesn’t care. He digs into the dark, rich soil and picks up a handful, cupping it in his hands and bringing it just below his nose — the smell of life, he calls it.
“Smell it. Or eat it, if you want,” he says.
He’ll dig his hands in the soil and smell it at least three times as he walks about the farm.
“I have a fixation with dirt,” Aponte said. “There’s so much good in it, provided that you use it … the way you’re supposed to.”
He stands in front of a spinach crop, his hands dusted in dirt from working in the fields. He’s dressed in a thick green jacket and black work boots coated in a layer of dirt and mud from the day’s work he’s conducted thus far.
Saint Isidore regenerative farm and how the farm works
Aponte is the owner of Saint Isidore, a regenerative farm committed to producing “high-quality food for our family and our local community using sustainable practices and ethical principles of care for the common good in line with Catholic Social Teaching,” per Saint Isidore’s website.
Regenerative farming is a practice that attempts to reverse climate change “by rebuilding soil organic matter and restoring degraded soil biodiversity – resulting in both carbon drawdown and improving the water cycle,” according to Regeneration International.
As Aponte talks about the crops he’s standing next to, his daughter, curious, approaches his side. While she’s quiet, she’s observant — she walks in small circles around where he’s standing, but she never strays too far. She walks next to him as Aponte walks through a dirt-and-grass path lined with farm animals — goats, chickens and turkeys — contained in an electric barbed wire fence.
Some of the most efficient ways to implement regenerative practices, he says, is through animals. The farm raises various animals, such as chickens, turkeys and pigs, and they help improve the state of the soil — chickens are raised for meat, he says, that’s processed right on the farm for sale.
Although the animals are raised on the farm, Aponte said the animals are given “the best possible life” while living on the farm — he plays a huge role, he says, and the process is done quickly so that they don’t notice it’s happening.
“When we harvest those animals we do it humanely,” Aponte said. “Animals get old, just like we all do, and they start to suffer same things that we do, arthritis and all that.”
Aponte digs into the soil again as he walks around the farm, but this time, he’s standing near an empty pig pen. The pigs won’t arrive until the summer, he says, but there’s something about this soil that he just loves. As he digs, he sees a familiar and expected creature lurking under the dark dirt surface — a worm. Aponte can “spot them a mile away.”
Animals on the farm defecate, Aponte explains as he crouches to run his hands through the soil again. In the fall, he said, the leaves will fall onto the ground, and after this happens, the worms and microorganisms come and “break it all down.”
He gestures toward the mountains.
“That’s why they thrive because no one’s fertilizing those things. Right? And yet, everything is healthy.”
It all comes down to a cycle, Aponte explains, the same cycle Saint Isidore attempts to mimic: the cycle of nature — not forcing nature to do things, he said, but mimicking nature itself — or, essentially, “the whole point of permaculture.”
Inside one of Saint Isidore’s high tunnels — a tall, white, tarplike structure that’s one of several on the property — Aponte can extend the growing season by using the natural heat underneath the tunnels. He compares it to a stationary car sitting in the sun. By bringing in heat when it’s cold, Aponte said, Saint Isidore can stay on schedule and have crops prepared in time for when it sells them.
On top of being able to extend the growing season to start earlier and end later, another advantage of the high tunnels is that it allows the farm to control “the elements.” Aponte explains that tomatoes are disease-prone — light rain means wet leaves, which creates an environment suitable for pathogens to thrive, but growing crops in these structures can help avoid those situations.
In one of the heated tunnels, Aponte grows lettuce and green onions. He bends down and plucks a small, purple lettuce leaf from a small blooming plant. He hands it out to be tasted — the leaves have a subtle flavor that bursts with juice, dancing on one’s tongue and cheeks.
Starting in April, Aponte said Saint Isidore will feed about 150 families a week. One of the ways Saint Isidore sells is through a local farmer’s market. It’s been attending the farmer’s market in Greene County for nearly six years, Aponte said, and that overall, “it’s been growing strongly for us.”
Along with this, Saint Isidore is involved in a community-supported agriculture (CSA) program, where people can buy a share of its farm products, and for 18 weeks in the summer, every week, clients receive a box of fresh products, Aponte said. They’ve had 75 shares that’ve gone into Harrisonburg and Rockingham County.
“It’s a win-win because you assure your food for the summer, and the same time, you’re helping farmers,” Aponte said.
Dane Ludwig, a senior English major at JMU, works part time at the farm. During school, he only works on Fridays, helping to prepare for Saturday’s trip to the farmers market, which he says is always “the hottest stand under the pavilion.”
He gets to the farm around 8:30 a.m. each Friday, he said, and Aponte assigns him a task. Usually that’s preparing plant beds, pulling weeds or washing produce.
During the summer, Ludwig will probably pick up more hours, but he loves working at Saint Isidore. In the warmer months, he goes barefoot on the farm — there’s something about it that he says is “true to being an Earthling.”
“[You] get very immersed in nature, get your hands covered in dirt,” Ludwig said. “It feels very human, you know?”
Ludwig said the crew sometimes snacks on the vegetables as they harvest them. He found it difficult to choose his favorite, waffling between carrots and spinach and berries — he eventually landed on carrots.
Aponte taught him about weeds and other things that can also be eaten straight from the ground. It’s “opened up the world” for him, Ludwig said.
“Seeing … stuff that’s on the ground and thinking of it as, like, a delectable treat,” he said, “it’s really awesome.”
Aponte’s oldest daughter, Amanda Aponte, hasn’t felt the same way. Although she’s lived in Harrisonburg for most of her life, her father didn’t start the farm until she was in sixth grade, so she didn’t grow up at Saint Isidore. Because of that, she said, she’s “not much of a nature girl.”
She said she likes most of the food her family grows, even if it is “random vegetables” such as like kohlrabi that she’d never heard of before her father started growing them.
Amanda is a junior vocal music education major at JMU, and while she technically lives at Saint Isidore, she often spends the night at her friend’s house closer to the city. Next year, she’s moving closer to campus.
“A lot of my friends think it’s really funny that I live on a farm, knowing me, and I don’t seem like a farm girl at all,” Amanda said, laughing. “I give my friends eggs sometimes. They love that.”
Teacher/Farmer double life
On Fridays, Pedro is usually up around 5 a.m. — Fridays are one of his busiest days, he said, because the produce for Saturday’s farmers market must be harvested.
When he wakes up, the first thing he does is care for the animals: the goats, the pigs, the chickens. He’s gotten the routine down to half an hour. Then, he walks the fields to see what’s ready to harvest.
Around 7:30 a.m., Saint Isidore’s crew arrives. Their first task is to harvest the lettuce, because if they wait until the heat of the day, it doesn’t do as well.
By lunch time, most of the vegetables have been harvested and washed in preparation for the next day’s market. After lunch, the crew gets to work on whatever needs to get done — sometimes it’s tending to the fields or planting new crops.
Pedro tries to cut off his work day at 5 or 6 p.m., at least on Fridays, to eat dinner with his family. On other days he may work later or after dinner, but he has to be up at 4:30 a.m. on Saturdays to load, transport and set up everything he needs for the farmers market at 8 a.m.
Besides caring for the animals, Pedro doesn’t work on Sundays — “that’s a sacred day,” he said.
But keeping Saint Isidore up and running isn’t Pedro’s only job. He’s also an associate professor in the School of Music. Tuesdays and Thursdays are his “heavy days at JMU,” he said, so he tries to get most of the farm work done on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.
One of his favorite things, he said, is the drive home from JMU on Tuesdays and Thursdays. If there’s “too much” happening at work, he likes to come home, look at the plants and take his mind off his troubles.
“It helps me keep my cool,” he said.
Although he’s busy, Pedro likes that not every day is the same.
“I don’t have a social life, but I don’t resent it” he said. “There’s not a dull day here, which is why I like it so much.”
The pandemic’s impact on the farm
Pedro said that during the pandemic, his business is one of the few industries that benefited — with the food shortages, he said, more people were turning to local farms when they were facing empty shelves in supermarkets.
In mid-March 2020, Pedro was told that their reliable farmers market might not happen. With uncertainty over what would happen, Pedro said Saint Isidore decided to open up the CSA program and gain roughly 25 more shares.
In April 2020, the farmer’s market was back on. Pedro said this forced Saint Isidore to expand.
“It’s unfortunate that it took COVID for small farms to benefit from,” he said, “but if anything, the lesson is we have to be prepared for contingencies.”
Amanda agreed, saying the pandemic is “when our whole shebang blew up.”
Their mission/spiritual practices
Pedro said he started the farm when, years ago, his family was having health issues. When they switched their diet, he said, it “dramatically improved” their health. He wanted to grow his own food to keep that health, but he also wanted to share it with others.
“Is this a business?” he said. “Well, it is, but…”
He trails off and explains that Catholic social teaching means caring for one’s neighbors. He sells produce at the farmers market, but he knows that not everyone can afford to pay the listed price. That’s why he operates the farm under a “pay-what-you-can” model and often ends up giving food away.
“That’s bad business practices, but you know what? There’s a part of us that thinks that, well, [our] gut thinks that it’s right, and if that is the case we’ll do that because it’s the right thing to do and then something will come and make up for that,” Pedro said.
He said he’s grateful for his job at JMU, which enables him to keep the farm running in alignment with his faith. He also said he pays his crew fair wages, even if it means the farm doesn’t make a profit.
The Apontes’ youngest child has Down Syndrome, Pedro said, and doing tasks around the farm like picking up the chickens helps his son be involved in the world around him. Inspired by his son, Pedro said he hopes to build Saint Isidore into a sort of school for people with special needs.
For Pedro, Saint Isidore isn’t about the money. Maybe it’s a “bad business practice,” he says, but he believes there’s value in not being able to afford that new air-conditioned tractor — he can still get things done with what he has.
“[It’s] helping ourselves, helping others, not necessarily with a profit vision, although we understand this has to be sustainable,” Pedro said. “What I’m not doing this is for to become a rich person. No, that’s not on the radar.”
Ludwig said he shares Saint Isidore’s Catholic mission — he first met Aponte in a Catholic ministry. As he started working on the farm, Ludwig explained, Aponte told him he liked to listen to podcasts and pray while he worked.
“I always remember that,” Ludwig said, “thinking about using farm work as a means of contemplation and prayer … It can be … a very spiritual experience, even just picking weeds.”