Where we are.

The summer crew has left and returned to school. It is just Ben and me now. Harvesting zucchini and tomatoes and peppers takes much longer than it did when there were seven of us. The sun is lower in the sky and not as powerful. It seems like 6:00 p.m. when it is actually 3:00 p.m. The leaves on the trees have begun their color show, slowly changing into what looks like a bunch of fruity pebbles. The nights are cold. We are prepared for the looming frost. We must save the vegetables. The apples on the trees are ripe for picking. Fall is near...maybe already here, but I want to hang on to summer as long as I possibly can.

Seasons create transitions. Sometimes too quickly. We had a good thing going. But all good things must come to an end. And so we have been thrust into options of what to do next...the jury is still out. In the processing, we have looked back over the past year to see where we have come. One year ago we just received word that we got accepted to the Farm Beginnings program. We were each secure in our own jobs, not wanting to be there forever, but secure nonetheless. We did not have a formatted farm plan or a community of farming friends. We were lacking experience growing vegetables and building soil and putting up high tunnels and irrigating fields and starting seeds in the greenhouse and really all parts of organic vegetable farming.

Here we are. Successfully "graduated" from Farm Beginnings. We have a farm plan in hand...ever changing...but the foundation has been laid. We are just over five months into a seven month internship...in just over thirty days we will be done with our first growing season experience. We have learned so much about growing vegetables and the food system and working with the weather and identifying weeds and taking care of pests without chemicals and moving irrigation piping and greenhouse management and maintaining quality family time and the list goes on and on and on. We are so much further along in our farming journey than we were one year ago. Much more prepared for our own farm...not yet, but closer. We praise God for what He is doing in us and with us. We thank Him for the experiences we have had.

Sitting in a circle of fellow farming friends, we heard the following words:

A Farmer's Creed

I believe a man's greatest possession is his dignity and that no calling bestows this more abundantly than farming.

I believe hard work and honest sweat are the building blocks of a person's character.

I believe that farming, despite its hardships and disappointments, is the most honest and honorable way a man can spend his days on this earth.
I believe farming nurtures the close family ties that make life rich in ways money can't buy.

I believe my children are learning values that will last a lifetime and can be learned in no other way.

I believe farming provides education for life and that no other occupation teaches so much about birth, growth, and maturity in such a variety of ways.

I believe many of the best things in life are indeed free: the splendor of a sunrise, the rapture of wide open spaces, and the exhilarating sight of your land greening each spring.

I believe that true happiness comes from watching your crops ripen in the field, your children grow tall in the sun, your whole family feels the pride that springs from their shared experience.

I believe that by my toil I am giving more to the world than I am taking from it; and honor that does not come to all men.

I believe when a man grows old and sums up his days, he should be able to stand tall and feel pride in the life he's lived.

I believe in farming because it makes all this possible.

-Mr. Frank I. Mann