Nature Calls

Getting to know your local farmer is one thing. But how many people get to really know their food? Or the bees that make the honey? Or the goat whose milk makes that creamy log of chevre?

That’s part of the service provided by Rent Mother Nature, an innovative Cambridge company that puts a sexy spin on the traditional farmers’ market by selling food lovers yearly harvest leases for goats, peach trees, berry patches, even lobster traps and oyster beds. Updates and photos throughout the harvest period keep customers in the loop about what’s happening in the field. And the occasional poem –Lewis Carroll’s The Walrus and the Carpenter which begins, “O, Oysters, come and walk with us!"—helps keep customers engaged.

The man behind the marketing is self-described former hippie Richard Hill, whose goal is to keep small farmers afloat. “I knew a lot of people who had tried farming during the whole back-to-the-land movement, and failed,” Hill says. “I liked the idea of helping farmers find a new market while getting people in touch with how their food is grown. It appeals on a moral and philosophical level.”

From his chaotic Cambridge office, Hill coordinates with 20 small farms across the country—Georgia farmers for peaches, Californians for dates, berry and goat farmers in Massachusetts. (The one nonfood item offered is a sheep lease that yields a natural wool blanket.)

Delicious artisan cheese (not to mention cute photos) make the goat lease one of the company's most popular. The program has almost singlehandedly created sustainable markets for three Berkshire farmers and a local cheesemaker. "We sell their local, in-season, produce to a much bigger crowd via the Internet," says Hill. And that, of course, is what it's all about: bringing old-fashioned, homegrown goodness to a 21st-century marketplace.

>> Rent Mother Nature, 800-232-4048, rentmothernature.com.