Call it instinct, or lucky guess, but I am glad this work has taught me after all these years to listen to the voice.  Listening does not mean agreeing or committing to action.  It just means acknowledging a point of view, a wisdom beyond the black and white- beyond the material manifestation.  My wisdom told me to get our seeds ordered.

Farming will eat you alive if you don’t find a way to make peace with loss.  How you do this is up to you. There is no paint by numbers template, no tried and true method, no universal path to acceptance. There are only the facts and what you choose to do with them. 

The animals that reside at the farm first and foremost are not required to create maximum financial value, but rather to create maximum system integrity, a heightened stability, expanded functional diversity and ultimately resilience.  (Real and true value!) Healthy soils can store more water, survive hotter, dryer temperatures, and provide greater nutrient density in the forages animals consume.

Farming is choice after choice - every seed, every plant, every furrow, every vine, every word, every connection- culminating in all this glorious nourishment, moving from my hands to yours, my heart to yours, year after year.

Real food, from seed to plate, is nothing short of a miracle.  Every leaf, every bulb, every bud.  When you fill your plate this week, we trust you’ll take time to say a word of grace to the mighty little seeds that continue to steward hope and possibility in your life.

I see this farm- this place of arcs meeting, of living systems constantly on the cusp of transformation, of people and ideas and passions and care connecting- as a community ecotone.