Profit: It's as American as apple pie. Corporations, companies, commercial farms and small businesses make a profit or go out of business. Swim or die, as the sharks say.

Yet big sections of our economy are excluded from making profits: Your local police department, for example, or the highway department, or the local schools, or the courts -- for very obvious reasons (to us, but not necessarily to others in Mexico, Zimbabwe, Nigeria, etc., where a little extra monetary "persuasion" gets you the services you require).

So also in our food economy, profit is a big deal. At the national level, profit drives food processors to create a vast array of foods, including industrially produced beef, pork and chicken, that are not good for us and have created both the wealthiest and unhealthiest society in the world (us). "Processed" foods are not really food at all. As Michael Pollan says in "In Defense of Food:" "Eat real food. Mostly plants."

At the level that we work, Long Meadow Farm and our community supported agriculture program, or CSA, we distinguish in a somewhat haphazard way between "making a living" and "making a profit."

Making a living to us means paying the bills, eating well, staying healthy and bringing people into the joy of growing, preparing and eating good food.

We grow and market food based on what we ourselves like to eat and our understanding of what people are willing to buy, which we value at very close to the supermarket price. The caveat is this: You can't get food this healthy and good-tasting in the supermarket. So far, we have found a very enthusiastic group of people who will buy our food.

Unlike many young people who are getting into farming, our start came at the other end of the actuarial calendar: Michele was in her 40s and I was approaching my 60s when we started our CSA five years ago.

We had the land we wanted (bought with the proceeds of previous property investments) and we began investing in the structures and systems (greenhouse, permanent fencing, sheep shed expansion, apprentice housing, commercial kitchen equipment) that we think will bring the farm to full production.

We still have a way to go: greenhouse addition to the main house, a new well and plumbing for the apprentice house and better irrigation to the entire garden.

After two lives of day jobs primarily in non-profit organizations, we were ready to take up farming as a way of living. Profit to us is and has always been what's left over after you balance your income and expense. Not haphazard -- we do budgets every year and have stayed close to them.

We also budget capital expenses annually (between $8,000 and $12,000 a year) rather than borrowing for them.

So now that we have weaned ourselves from our salaried jobs, we are confident that we can devote ourselves completely to making good food, building the soil, using the land sustainably, enlisting the help of -- and providing education to -- young people (mostly apprentices in the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association apprentice program) wanting to get into farming.

It also meant no investment in heavy duty equipment -- tractors, etc. -- and a farm design based on human labor. For anyone getting into farming, equipment is a huge capital drain and we either hire out some of it (haying or tilling) or do the rest ourselves with scythes, wheel-hoes, shovels, pickaxes, hay forks, etc. It is our fitness program.

Our risks are mostly weather-related. We know that we can irrigate in drought (low-tech drip irrigation), or rely on raised beds to keep our crops out of the mud. Frost can come as early as the end of August and as late as early June.

If we were farming strictly for profit, we would have to go to primarily high-return items like cut flowers, garlic, strawberries, organic meat and eggs. We do grow these things, but in small amounts.

For-profit small farmers would eschew the potatoes, squashes, beans, tomatoes, broccoli, cabbages and brussels sprouts that make up 90 percent of our garden.

Our markets are local and dispersed at the same time: we have CSA members from Waterville to Litchfield and supply food to more than 70 families for almost half the year. We also sell at farmers' markets in Winthrop, Gardiner and Augusta.

We love what we do. Each day is different, as is each season and each gardening year. We aim to provide good, healthy food for people willing to enjoy it. And, as I have said before, you can't beat the commute.

Denis Thoet, with his partner Michele Roy, owns and manages Longmeadow Farm in West Gardiner, www.longmeadowfarmmaine.com.