WHEN LOVE❤️ IS MET WITH MEANNESS🤬

A letter from our hearts, by the Camire Family

Shalom, FaRmily.

This is a hard one to write, but since we are and always have been about a lot more than just the vegetables, I decided it was worth the time and if you love us, or appreciate what we do in any way, please take the time to read it.

Big breathe💨....Here it goes:

I've started this open-letter and deleted it more than once, because I never want to write from a place of anger. But I do want to write from a place of honesty, because honesty is what this community was built on. So here it is.

Twelve years ago, I walked away from a high-paying engineering career. Havah and I, and the kiddos, left the city, the comfort, the security, the paycheck — all of it — and we came to this windswept patch of prairie in Peyton to do one thing: to love. That's not a slogan. It's literally our name. Ahavah — אַהֲבָה — means love in Hebrew, and the deeper meaning of that word is to give of oneself. Not to receive. Not to be repaid. To give. That is what we signed up for, and that is what we have done with everything we have, every single day, for TWELVE. LONG. HARD. YEARS.

We have poured our lives into this land and this community. Some may not see it. Many haven't been with us long enough to know...but we have. It's the honest truth. People say that often...but gosh darnit I mean it with every cell of my body.

Our children were raised here - some born here, literally. We have rebuilt after a bomb cyclone that tore apart every structure on this farm. We have replanted after hail the size of tennis balls decimated entire seasons of work. We have dug our animals out of snowdrifts with our bare hands. We have farmed through drought, through loss, through exhaustion, through years when the math didn't work and we did it anyway. We have never — not once, in twelve years — turned a single person away from food. If you were hungry and couldn't pay, you received, and so so many can attest to this over the years. That has been our promise since day one, and by G-d's grace we have kept it. We have striven to "DO-THE-RIGHT-THING" - as one of our family's main slogans, repeated over and over and over again. Do we always get it right? NO! BUT THAT'S OUR heart-felt intention and we will die on that hill!

We don't do this for money. Anyone who has ever seen a small farm's books knows there is no money. We do this because we believe food is holy, community is holy, and serving people is the most important work a human being can do.

And yet...

There is a pattern that has repeated itself over the years, and it breaks our hearts every single time:

Someone comes to us sweet as honey. Warm, friendly, complimentary. And then the moment they don't get their way — the moment we say "no" to something that goes against our terms, our policies, or simply what is fair to the other hundreds of families we serve — the sweetness vanishes. And what replaces it is meanness. Real meanness. Bullying. Nasty messages. Falsehoods spread to anyone who will listen. Character assassination against a family that has done nothing but give.

Let me be clear about something: we are not perfect. We make mistakes, and when we do, we own them and we make them right. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about what happens when we do the right thing — when we hold a boundary that exists to protect the whole community — and someone decides that because they didn't get what they felt they deserved, they are entitled to tear us down.

People sometimes tell us, "Don't take it personally. It's just business."

Just business? Of course it's personal. This is not a corporation. There is no customer service department, no shareholders, no buffer between you and us. When you write something cruel, it lands in the inbox of a mother who has been up since before dawn trying to hold down a family of 7 children, to answer your complaints. It lands on a father who gave up his career and has sacrificed through cancer and trial after trial to feed your family. It lands on children who have grown up handing you your share with a smile every week. This farm is our family, our sacrifice, our lifeblood. How could it possibly not be personal?

So yes — we lose sleep. We cry. We carry it in our bodies.

There are nights Havah and I lie awake asking each other how a person can receive so much love and return so much venom. We ask ourselves, why do we still do it? When will enough be enough? How many times do we have to be dragged through the mud, taken advantage of and told that our sacrifice is not good enough?

And I'll tell you what we've come to believe: when someone bullies the very people who have served them, the real damage isn't to us. It's to their own soul.

The Torah teaches that words have the power of life and death. Every cruel word a person speaks doesn't just wound the one who hears it — it diminishes the one who speaks it.

Watching that happen to someone is genuinely hard. We don't hate these people. We grieve for them.

But here is what I need you — our true FaRmily, the hundreds of you who have loved us and stood with us through every storm, literal and otherwise — to know:

We will not become bitter. Bitterness is a poison you drink hoping someone else gets sick. We refuse it.

We will not stop giving. The pay-as-you-can table stays. The open door stays. The free food for anyone who is hungry stays. One cruel person will never be allowed to close a door that G-d told us to keep open!

...And...most importantly...WE WILL KEEP OUR BOUNDARIES. Because boundaries are not the opposite of love — they are part of it. Saying "no" to unfairness is how we say "yes" to everyone else. Our terms and conditions exist so that hundreds of families are treated equally, and we will not apologize for protecting that.

To the ones who have been kind — and that is the overwhelming, beautiful majority of you — thank you. Your hugs at pickup, your notes, your patience, your grace when things go wrong: you have no idea how many hard days those things have carried us through. You are why we're still here after twelve years.❤️

And to anyone reading this who is nursing a grievance because you didn't get your way: our door is still open. Come talk to us like a human being. We will listen. We always have. But we will not be bullied, and we will not let cruelty rewrite the story of what this family has given.

We came here to be a blessing. We're not done yet. We ask that those who love us, and love what we do continue to stand by our side - because honestly, you don't see it, but what we do is harder than just the hot days, the storms, the financial burden...it's the emotional toll that lands in our hearts that we have to carry day-to-day.

Please be kind. Be kind always, even when you don't want to be. WE ARE HUMAN TOO.

Shalom & with love❤️,

Yosef and The Camire Family