Local Food Movement Attracts New Breed of Midlife Farmers - NYTimes.com

Hmmmm....

In recent years, as the local food movement has grown and farmers’ markets have proliferated, a new breed of back-to-the-landers has emerged. Some, like their predecessors in the 1960s and ’70s, are earnest, college-educated young people, turning their backs on professional career paths in favor of a life of hardscrabble idealism. But many others, homesteaders in their 40s and 50s, have already enjoyed the perks of professional life, and may even have made a fortune, or at least a comfortable nest egg. [...]

(Even affluent urbanites who may not be ready for such a radical lifestyle change are finding themselves drawn to the idea of organic farming. At an organic farming association fund-raiser in April at Guastavino’s restaurant on East 59th Street, some 300 attendees — most of them looking very much like classic Upper East Side ladies who lunch, to whom “buying local” may have previously meant shopping at Bergdorf’s — sat in rapt attention as a panel of farmers and environmentalists described the perils of synthetic pesticides and fertilizers.)

It seems to be the change in home life, as much as in career, that appeals to the post-professional farmers.

Although Mr. Gibson estimates that he spends 12 hours a day raising his grass-fed Angus and persuading the public to pay premium prices for it, he says he has more time than he ever did in his former life to focus on what matters." (Local Food Movement Attracts New Breed of Midlife Farmers)

It's a welcome shift in priorities, I guess; but it smacks of the cultish, too.