J.I. Rodale

Rodale stumbled upon Sir Howard’s book in 1941.  By 1942, Rodale had Organic Gardening and Farming up and running.  The new magazine held some appeal to a nation of backyard growers deeply involved in home-based wartime food production; they worked daily in their Victory Gardens.  But foreign-born gardeners, used to older ways, were the magazine’s main subscribers. Today, Organic Gardening has both print and on-line versions.

Rodale explains his motivation for launching the magazine in a interview with Eleanor Perenyi. 

“It hit me like a ton of bricks,” Rodale says. “For the first time, I realized that food affects health, and that chemical fertilizers are dangerous to people, animals, and the soil.  I felt I had to share this experience with the rest of the country.  It wouldn’t be fair to know this and say nothing about it.”

Rodale moved his business operation from New York City to Emmaus, Pennsylvania, where he purchased a derelict 300-acres farm and turned it into a farming research center.  Perenyi visited the site in the 1960s and describes her experience in Green Thoughts.

“I look back on my visit to his farm as one of the more inspiring events of my life.  The cattle were sleek; the chicken in their chicken houses organically fed and living over specially designated pits for compost.  The houses were free of the usual chicken-house stink, and the bird we roasted for supper was the nearest thing to a poulet de Bresse I’ve eaten in this country; the breakfast egg was of a quality I had forgotten.”