Heart and soil: 4 farmers reinventing local food

In moving away from the farm we've not only lost a bond with the land, but we also risk losing an understanding of nature's frailty, and an appreciation of what goes into creating the food we consume. We even, as rancher Erin Butters knows, neglect the vital roots of wellbeing that can flourish in an "intense connection to the land."

And that's not to undersell the impacts on our physical health. Health scares linked to industrial-scale food production and concerns about pesticides and other contaminants have sparked a widespread rethinking about how we cultivate the things we eat. 

Butters, as well as Wendy Banks, Kim Stansfield and Krista Harrington, have all made food production their livelihood, and each, in her own way, is trying to rekindle a connection with the land and help rebuild a safe, sustainable food industry. 

Not all farm families have left the land for greener pastures (or city lights). Some have managed to hold on to homesteads for generations, in spite of more profitable alternatives. Erin Butters, for example, is a fifth-generation cattle rancher, the fourth to work on her family's 1,000-acre ranch in the Alberta foothills, just outside Banff National Park. Her mother, grandmother and great-grandmother also worked the ranch.

"We think of it as our legacy: if we can keep healthy land, air and water here, it just seems more important than more lucrative careers," says Butters. "The payoff comes in intangibles."

The one thing they can always count on is that every spring their 250 mother cows will give birth to 250 calves that they will then raise hormone- and antibiotic-free. The animals graze on native grassland on rotated pastures, before they're sold in late fall. Though that's all they grow.