As spring rolls around with 50+ degree days and nighttime temperatures in the 'teens, I can't help but revel in the cyclical nature of farm life. From daily temperature and moisture sways to seasonal growth and passage, multi-year crop rotation schematics, generational cycles, and legacies of land and farming families, it's all a good reminder of our long-standing relationships with the land and each other.
Just as the sustainable farmer takes a comprehensive view of field productivity and aims to feed the soil, not just the plant, so does this resonate with the great resources that we have in each other. The sustainable farmer doesn't just hire bodies to pick up his harvest, but helps to cultivate knowledge, habits, a love of, and respect for the ancient art and necessity of food production.
I've been really fortunate to have apprenticed with some incredible, ingenious, inspiring and uncontrollable Farmers who sing hymns amidst the bean trellises, teach eighth-graders how to castrate and dock tails of three day old lambs, weave packbaskets out of wild-harvested willows, round down at the market register, squish-test peonies like a lover, drop a tree on wedge, and grow some of the most beautiful vegetables I've ever seen. They're pretty cool folks: Tim, Jason, Bill, Brian, Nick, and Maya, thank you. Check them out at
Dancing Moon Farm - Hood River, OR
www.dancingmoonfarm.com
Gardenripe - Silverton, OR
www.gardenripe.com
North Country School and Camp Treetops - Lake Placid, NY
http://www.nct.org/page.cfm?p=118
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