This is the last share of the season. It's been, as always, mixed with successes and challenges. This was, not counting the first season which was a deeply discounted trial run, our third year. Also, from a financial standpoint, our best year. Though we are still operating at a loss, we are not losing nearly as much. This is a first generation farm and we've needed to spend a lot of capital on equipment we obviously needed and much more on equipment we didn't know we needed. The way we grow our food is also very labor intensive and requires a great deal of patience and commitment to hard work. Like Wendell Berry said, good work is not something you go out and start doing with good intentions. It takes a long time to do it. And the work reveals itself over time.
I'm learning to farm and garden not so much by what I read, but by careful observation of this place at this time. Living here in all seasons and all weather reveals, most importantly, the limits of what can be done responsibly, without harming the landscape and its plant and animal inhabitants. So it's an endless journey. Until we started the farm I thought I'd work at something until retirement. But this work is a life that I don't like even to take a vacation from, much less think of as something from which to retire. But it must be made financially sustainable.
A farmer in Nevada City named Alan Haight put it best, "I didn't start farming to become a successful businessman. I didn't even start farming to make money. I farm to grow beautiful food that nourishes my community and allows me on a daily basis to touch what is most elemental to all of us: our dependence on Nature. After farming for two seasons, I had to come to terms with the fact that if that's what I wanted, my farm had to be economically viable so that I could live the way I wanted to live: planning, record keeping, budgeting have become critical tools to fulfill my ultimate goals as a farmer." Thank you all for helping us toward this goal.