By Kate Hill

Staff Writer

Blue Mint Farm in Pratts Hollow has partnered with CazCares Food Pantry to present a “Buy One/Give One” initiative to benefit the clients at CazCares.

For every chicken ordered from the farm, one chicken will be donated to CazCares — a non-profit organization that provides food, clothing, educational and literacy programming, and referral services to low-income families in Cazenovia and surrounding areas of Madison County.

Michael and Amanda Phillips purchased the 4.5 acre Blue Mint Farm in 2015.

According to Amanda, the couple’s commitment to “quality over quantity” led them to focus on producing “pasture-raised, air-chilled, expensive-to-produce, non-commodity farm products.”

The farmers believe that good nutrition is a right, not a privilege.

Blue Mint Farm works to provide nutritious, farm-raised food not only to those with the means to support small family farms, but also to families in need.

The Phillipses view the BOGO program as a small step toward addressing food insecurity in vulnerable populations.

“Mike and I come from different worlds,” said Amanda. “His family could afford whatever food they chose to eat, and my family relied on food pantries a lot. Though my family avoided the direst days of hunger, we were limited in our choices to eat healthily . . . Today, Mike and I both feel that healthy and quality food shouldn’t be limited by a family’s means . . . Why should some people be able to afford nutritious food and some not? It’s food — not designer clothing.”

After first partnering with the food pantries that served Amanda in her youth, the Phillipses began expanding their BOGO program to include organizations throughout Central New York.

The farm’s main logistical partner is the Food Bank of CNY, which stores and helps to distribute the donated chickens to food pantries with on-site equipment to safely store the meat.

The farmers aim to donate 2,500 chickens over the summer.

“We have been developing different techniques for raising chickens over the last 4 years,” said Amanda. “It’s an animal that we can reliably and repeatedly raise in a healthy and ethical manner.”

Amanda also explained that chickens have a desirable growth rate — a chicken can be raised in about 10 weeks, while cows can take anywhere from 10-24 months and pigs take about 5 months to mature.

Over the next five years, Amanda and Mike hope to improve both the community and the soil through the use of organic farming practices and permaculture — an integrative and sustainable system design that builds up healthy soil over generations.

Blue Mint Farm chickens are raised in mobile pens that are relocated once or twice a day. As they move across the pasture, the chickens distribute self-made fertilizer that helps to improve the land. According to Amanda, the system is building up the pasture to eventually support grazing cows.

“We’re raising meat, feeding the hungry and debugging and weeding CNY pasture, all without the need for costly farm equipment or synthetic fertilizers,” said Amanda.

In the future, the Phillipses hope to add milk, beef, pork, and eggs to their BOGO farm model.

Chickens can be pre-ordered through the farm’s website, bluemintfarm.com, on the BOGO page. Once there, select CazCares as the donation recipient.

Each three to six pound whole chicken is $28. Pick-up starts after July 30.