By Tracy Ouellette
Staff Writer
Betty Phelps Refior, of Whitewater, says she’s been an environmentalist since was a little girl when she read “A Girl of the Limberlost,” a novel written by American writer and naturalist Gene Stratton-Porter.
“My fifth-grade teacher told us about it and I read it and realized I was the same kind of person – a woodsy person,” she recalls. “Then I read ‘Freckles’ and ‘The Keeper of the Bees’ and I just knew I had to have bees when I grew up.”
When she was in graduate school, she says her landlord let her keep bees and that began a lifetime of environmental activism.
“Five years later I married a man with two farms, one of which is the one I just gave away,” she says. “I told him about my interests in bees; he didn’t know about the bees, but he said felt if he wanted Betty he had to take the bees.”
Although she stopped working with bee when it was discovered her 3-year-old son had a severe allergy to them, she continues to have an avid interest in them along with earthworms and the general stability of the environment.
“I’m interested in making soil. Our soil is becoming depleted,” she says. “I’m more interested in the ground than what’s on top of the ground. The real value is in the soil.”
Over the years she has been referred to as an ardent environmentalist, peace activist, or simply an “old hippie.” Whatever you want to call this 92-year-old “young” lady, she believes in protecting the land her family has cared for the past 126 years and is doing so by placing the stewardship of the 226-acre farm in guiding hands of Michael Fields Agricultural Institute.
“It’s a farm that’s been in the family for generations and I wanted to protect it and make it an organic farm,” she says.
Michael Fields Agricultural Institute, located in East Troy, has been devoted to organic and biodynamic agriculture by researching and educating organic farmers on how careful stewardship can sustain the land and its resources. As a public, non-profit learning center, Michael Fields, in business since 1984, seeks to revitalize farming through education, research, technical assistance and public policy.
Refior, who has attended the Institute’s Whole Farm Workshops for many years believes her Indiana farm which she refers to as “The Tilth Institute” can be used to demonstrate, not only how to care for the land, but to show conventional farmers less chemical use can be just as economically viable as using an intensive amount of inputs. The Tilth Institute will be used by Michael Fields to demonstrate how to transition a prime piece of cropland to sustainable organic production.
“I wanted to see it become an organic farm before I was gone,” Refior says. “I’m 92, I don’t have much time left. I came here for some workshops Michael Fields had and I was impressed and Dave Andrews the director, said he could have that farm a ‘showplace’ for organic farming within three years. I took him at his word and within this last month we clinched the deal and now he’s manager of that too.”
The farm located near Peru, Ind., will become a showcase, where organic management practices can be observed by local farmers both from a crops standpoint and through the sustainable management of the twenty plus acres of forest on the property.
According to Andrews, executive director for Michael Fields Agricultural Institute, “this gift represents Betty’s sincere belief that contemporary farming will ultimately undermine humanity’s ability to sustain such a large population.”
