What’s Next? - This is part four of a four part series on reconnecting and conserving local food and local people.

We believe it is profoundly relevant in our times, both for personal health and planetary well being, that we return to a rhythm of eating with the seasons, which implies harvesting from our own homegrown sources, or purchasing food from local sustainable farms. North Americans now expect to be able to buy any type of food in every season, from any part of the world.

How much energy was spent, what sacrifice was required to deliver that fresh head of lettuce to our table in the middle of February? What good purpose does it serve if our dietary choices are only concerned with keeping our own bodies healthy even at the expense of the environment?

In an effort to help novices grasp the concept of interconnectedness, the Buddha would direct their attention to the matter of the food that they consumed. He put it in the form of a simple question and answer; “How do we know for certain that all beings are one, that all are interconnected? We may know this by contemplating the most basic fact of life---all beings must eat!” On our farm, we raise the bull-calves that are inevitably part of the yearly crop of calves born to our dairy cows. We strive to handle these steers with love and respect during their 2+ years as residents of the farm, and delight in watching them grow healthy on our rolling pastures. We are deeply saddened when it is time to end their lives, but we honor the sacrifice and are truly thankful for the gift of continued life they offer to us and the community of people who buy products from our farm. This thankfulness stems from the certain knowledge revealed to every attentive farmer that we are all bound up together in this circle of life and death and renewal.

As small independent farmers, we are not interested in waiting for government, science, or corporations to come up with solutions to all the threats to the human species and the living environment. Seeking to act as responsible “global citizens”, we’ve decided to try to take matters into our own hands, and to see if we might fashion a sustainable culture on the basis of a healthy agriculture. Our basic goal is to promote an agriculture that is both ecologically and socially sustainable.

You can change the world by changing what you eat.

For us, farming is more than a job; it is a direct form of social action, maybe the most important “grass-roots” activism possible. In our current society how and where you procure your food is both a political act and a gesture of the spirit. A large measure of hope for transforming our culture begins at the base by creating a renewed and truly healthy agriculture.

As in any practice that involves a lot of repetition, looked at from the outside, farm life may appear to be dull. Yet, it is just through this intimate daily contact with living systems, through the experiential dynamic of immersion in the cycles of the seasons, that the farmer is enlivened. Developing our own powers of observation is what this practice of farming is all about. The daily care and interaction with plants and animals takes us outside of an exclusive focus on ourselves and opens us up to a sense of connectedness with the larger patterns of life. This connectedness is the basis of all authentic spirituality. The crops and the livestock provide a continuous link to those who came before and they lend the farmer a sense of shouldering a precious gift, a weighty responsibility, to carry forward a link in this chain so that it will be unbroken for those yet to come. When we stay close to the land and the life of the senses---mind, heart and body stay awake.