ELLENVILLE – If you were thinking about starting your own company, the odds are that making baby food wouldn't be tops on your list of ideas. And it certainly wasn't tops on Ron and Arnie Koss's list of ideas, as the twin brothers knocked around at a number of different jobs before deciding to start Earth's Best Baby Food, a Vermont-based company that became the first nationally distributed organic foods company in the country.

Now, after twenty-five years of providing healthy foods to America's infants, the two are sharing the tale of how the company began. To that end, they have published a book entitled, The Earth's Best Story: A Bittersweet Tale of Twin Brothers Who Sparked an Organic Revolution. The pair were in Ellenville last week to help promote the book, and to let people know that practically anything is possible if you persevere and commit yourself to a good idea.

"We didn't have a lifelong dream of starting a baby food company," Arnie Koss said during a talk last Thursday at the Ellenville Public Library and Museum. "Our dream was to somehow protect the Earth and to stop pesticides from poisoning farm workers and the groundwater."

Arnie says that their inspiration for all of this originally came from Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, the seminal 1962 exposé regarding the toxic effects of pesticides. He says that, in reading the book, the duo became passionate when it came to how they felt about the environment, but that they didn't know how best to put this passion to work.

"It led us to a discussion: What can we do? Where is our power?" Arnie says. "It was the beginning of a conversation that went on for many years."

These discussions focused on various concepts, ultimately returning to the idea of starting a company that would make the world a better place.

"Ron and I would talk periodically and say 'Gee, can you believe it? Someone has got to do something about this agricultural spraying,'" Arnie says.

It was Ron who came up with the stroke of genius, that the two should start a company that would provide pesticide-free food to infants.

"One day Ron said 'I think it should be baby food,'" Arnie says. "If there's any place in a parent's life where they're going to be more focused, more concerned, it's around what they're going to feed their baby."

Even after Ron's idea about baby food, the two still managed to go a few years before they began to implement their vision. They worked at a number of different, and in some cases unusual, jobs. These occupations included broom making, household butler, and sprout growing, the brothers the whole time figuring that someone else would beat them to the punch on the organic baby food concept.

But a virtual bolt of lightning hit one day. Arnie says, in fact, that he was in the middle of making a broom one afternoon when his "Forrest Gump" moment came.

"Like that scene in Forrest Gump, when he says, 'I think I've run enough,' that's the way felt when I was making that broom," Arnie says.

Shortly after that Arnie drove up to Ron's place in Burlington, Vermont, and told him about his epiphany.

"I said 'Ron, I'm going to start the baby food company,'" Arnie says. "That was the beginning of taking a giant step into an unknown reality."

He says that, despite the lack of any real business training, a long list of misgivings, and the fact that they didn't have significant resources of their own, the two managed to raise close to one million dollars, which was enough to get the company off the ground. Ultimately, Ron says in looking back on the early days of the operation, they somehow made it work.

"The biggest surprise was that we managed to pull it off," Arnie says.

The brothers also reflected on their days growing up in Ellenville, how their experiences here helped to shape their success in later life.

"Ellenville was a great place to grow up in the '50s and the '60s," Ron says. "We were part of the Ellenville High School class of '69."

The Ellenville community, according to Ron, was always supportive and the school prepared them well for their later endeavors.

"It was just a beautiful place to grow up," Ron says.

Arnie says that, when he looks back on those years, he remembers how vibrant the community was. He feels strongly that this vibrancy is returning.

"In looking around the village last week, I noticed that there's a lot of great energy in Ellenville today," Arnie says. "It was great to be back home."

For more information on Earth's Best, including how to find the company's products locally, please visit www.earthsbest.com.