You know the Earthbound Farm label if you’ve lingered around the grocery store in the organic produce sections. Their green lettering is perched above a bright yellow sunflower that is bound halfway into an earthen red wave, tattooed with the word “ORGANIC”. And the label is usually paired with a gentle royal purple—especially if the package contains their signature “Mixed Baby Greens”, the green stuff that started it all.

This is the farm that introduced organics to a wider market. In the late 80’s, Earthbound placed bagged organic salad mixes into grocery stores that wanted these new, popular lettuces but didn’t know the first thing about organics. Today, Earthbound’s full line of pre-packaged organic items are opening the doors to organics for grocery stores all over the country.

The facts:
Today, Earthbound Farm is the largest grower and shipper of organic produce in the world, offering more than 100 different varieties of organic salads, fruits, and vegetables. Earthbound Farm produce is available in 74% of all supermarkets and can be found in every major city in the United States.    

Needless to say, the reach of Earthbound Farm is vast. They’ve shown how organics can serve a large audience. But with such a pervading presence in the market, their label can loose its earthen origins. With 30,000 acres producing 30 million servings of salad each week, the farm can seem far away, unapproachable. Even when it’s not.

A Different Kind of Farm Stand
So how does Earthbound bring the farm and its people back to its packaged label? Co-founders Drew and Myra Goodman have been striving for this throughout the farm’s growth. From their humble beginning in 1984, packaging lettuce in their living room, their mission to bring the benefits of organics to as many people as possible has strived to remain down-to-earth.

With their mission in hand, Earthbound created a cookbook, Myra Goodman’s Food to Live By. In it, she tells a candid story of their origins, of organics, and the endeavors of their farm today. And then she showcases 250 mouthwatering recipes with full-page pictures, some of them treasured recipes she created on her own and others featured at the farm’s certified organic restaurant, Organic Kitchen.

Myra has transformed her cookbook into an exchange about the little things anyone would discover if they had a chance to visit the Earthbound farm and speak with the farmers. She connects her recipes with “Farm Fresh” ingredient facts and pictures; a recipe calling for artichokes is placed on a page with artichoke hints and a picture of artichokes as they would grow on the farm. 

In conversational language that encompasses the entire cookbook, Myra also outlines the foundations of organic farming methods. So thumbing through the recipes, a cook is not only given connections between ingredients and how they are grown, but is also given the opportunity to see how organic farming involves compost, cover crops, natural fertilizers, crop rotation, insects, plant disease, and weed control. Designed to educate both new-to-organics consumers and those unfamiliar with Earthbound Farm, Myra’s book of recipes only features ingredients that can be sourced organically.

Myra Goes to Chicago
To promote her cookbook, Myra stopped into Chicago and paid Goodness Greeness a visit this last week. With Chicagourmets!, Candid Wines, and Bistro Campagne, we made a day of it. We started with a tour and book signing at our warehouse and then migrated to Michael Altenberg’s restaurant, where he prepared a four-course dinner featuring Myra’s recipes, paired with wines made from sustainably-grown grapes.

Somewhere in the mix, I asked Myra what her intentions were in creating an Earthbound Cookbook. With candor, she answered, “We wanted to share. We wanted to have a more intimate relationship with our consumers. Because when we started our farm, everybody who bought our stuff drove down to our farm and we knew them all by name. Now we’re such a big company and we know all these people are buying our produce every week—so we wanted to share our story and why we’re so passionate about organics, why it’s healthier for people and the environment. Share with them the details. We always have to tell our story in such a short and concise manner, on the back of the package, or on little fliers. So we wanted to be able to relate, to talk about organic farming so they can have that information for whenever they want to know more details about it. And then we wanted to share our favorite recipes.”

These recipes are good, too. Myra said her fourteen year-old son uses them to cook for the family. Michael Altenberg agrees to this characteristic of the recipes. He told us he found them approachable and, “Besides writing a good cookbook, Myra and Earthbound have taken it to the next level and made the organic connection. And they keep doing that by making organic food available to more and more people.”

Plenty’s in a Name
The cookbook’s introduction tells the story of how the name Earthbound came to be. Myra and Drew were carrying their raspberry sign out to post next to the driveway of their 2 ½ acre farm when she suggested they use a name, “What about Earth Born Farm?” Drew mistook her to say Earthbound and, as she writes, “That was it. Earthbound Farm. The name said it all: We are all bound to the earth and interconnected, sharing responsibility for the stewardship of its finite resources.”

Earthbound Farm has taken responsibility that has brought them enormous growth. But no matter how far or wide their label travels, the farm connected to it remains approachable. It welcomes as many as it can to the nourishing possibilities of the earth that binds us all, in a down-to-earth way.

Mercedee Renz, Goodness Greeness

For more on Myra Goodman and her cookbook, visit Earthbound Farm’s Q&A with Myra Goodman.