Welcome to the Genuine Faux Farm blog
My name is Rob Faux (pronounced "fox"). Tammy and I have been farmers/stewards on a small-scale, diversified farm in Iowa since 2004. Our farm name, the Genuine Faux Farm, acknowledges the French pronunciation of our last name while poking a little fun at ourselves. Our farm is relatively small compared to most farms in the state. At its peak, GFF delivered vegetable shares (a CSA program) to 120 subscribing families and raised broiler chickens, laying hens, ducks and turkeys. Our fifteen acre farm has produced as much as fifteen tons of food in one season on its fifteen acres of land. In 2020, we scaled our farm back, still maintaining some local, direct to consumer, sales and moved towards donating more food products to the local food pantry.
As far as writing goes, I have maintained a farm blog (Genuinely Faux on Blogger) since 2008. Initially, all of the material on that blog focused on promoting the farm and encouraging people to support small-scale, diversified agriculture and the principles of agroecology. I began adding more content with respect to pesticides after a spray incident in 2012. A plane dropped a mix of pesticides poisoning myself, our poultry, and forcing us to destroy all of the produce from the fields affected by that incident. Sadly, I became an expert (if I can use that term) on pesticide drift and misapplication, whether I wanted to be or not.
Our farm survived that pesticide misapplication as well as some less significant drift incidents and I worked full-time on the farm until 2020. At that time, I took a job with Pesticide Action Network as a Communications Manager, offering my insights and expertise as a farmer and steward along with my writing skills.
We continue to farm, adjusting our scale to fit our available time and energy for two reasons. First, I believe it is important to stay involved in farming if I wish to maintain my integrity as a writer and a voice for agroecology. If I wish to stand against systems and corporate scale farms that perpetuate full reliance on pesticides, I need to be able to hold up a feasible alternative. And second, I still love raising high quality food crops in a way that promotes a healthy farm environment by implementing intercropping, long crop rotations, cover crops, mulches and wild space.
In addition to my new duties with PAN in 2020, I undertook a personal project of writing blogs at a pace of five to six articles per week. We were entering the early stages of the Covid pandemic and people were feeling the isolation. I was looking for ways to effectively reach out and found that my writing was well-received. I expanded my topical coverage, including my connections to baseball, music and education. I embraced some of the humor I had already used in prior writing and allowed myself to take a philosophical turn every so often. I even began writing a weekly article (Postal History Sunday) that has been published each week since August of 2020.
After four years of averaging 300 posts per year, I am looking to refine my writing goals. I enjoy writing blogs that include some personal learning, as well as opportunities for the reader to learn. These articles often require more time and effort, so I am looking to produce one to two blogs per week versus the five or six I had been writing.
And that brings me to a move from Blogger to Medium and Substack.
As some who read this might know, Blogger removed the ability to send notifications to those who subscribed to the blog. While I have never been motivated by gathering a huge following, I was finding that the people who truly wanted to read my blogs were no longer finding them. This move is one way to make sure those that actually do want to read are given the opportunity to do so.
We'll see how it goes. I am actually excited to re-imagine my writing and make adjustments for new surroundings that Substack will bring.
And for those that are curious...
In a former life, I acquired multiple degrees including a PhD in Computer Science and Adult Education. I have spent time as a software engineer and as a college educator. I was even involved in developing and leading online college courses during some of the "early days" of online learning. I have been, at times a cellist and a baseball player. But, above all, I have always been a world-class introvert, a life-long learner, and an individual who probably thinks too much and too little all at the same time.
Thank you for visiting and I appreciate your willingness to consider my words and ideas.
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