After spending the greater part of forty odd years wishing I lived on a farm, I found myself creating one for the past seven.
When asked, a Navajo friend had told me, “Buy the land, it will teach you.” I recognized the concept of buying land was alien and perhaps archaic to her, but the concept of stewardship was not.
I bought the land and so it began.
It has not been without difficulty…a 500-year flood followed by a 1000-year flood (where do we get these names?) teaches you a lot about where to plant. It has been with great discovery…the sheep and goats have taught me about the plants on the land, from comfrey to soothe and walnut to de-worm, to the bark of an apple branch to reduce bloats.
The land has taught me to share. It has taught me the intrinsic truths that we are tied to her and to each other in a sweet symbiotic way that deserves honor and respect.
And as the land has taught me, so have her people. Each person has come bringing a new gift, a new way, a new understanding.
Farming isn’t a solo sport.
So it is from these very basic and undeniable facts that Farms Link People was born.
We don’t need government to help one another.
We simply need to recognize the facts.
We need to eat, the land gives, and it takes an effort. The nature of the effort is peaceful and satisfying and a lot more productive when done with others. It is not a science to be crafted and controlled. It is wild and thoughtful. It is fun.
The sustainable and organic movements are not new. The passion to return to the land that I witness from the very young to the very old is not new. The fact that the land can sustain us when we work with her and stop the “fat –taking” is not new…
Let us begin; let us remember that which is not new. Let us help one another and the earth in the most basic of ways.
Have some land? Need a hand? Have an old grandmother’s cabin waiting for the fireplace to light again? Tired of throwing your money in the gamble pit called the “market”?
Buy the land, it will teach you.