Farming Alone

Things have gotten a bit more difficult at the farm now that Terra is back in school. I've still been making regular trips up to Greenfield to maintain the plants and start packing equipment away for the winter, but the pace of my work is quite different now. I've noticed that it's easier to focus on one specific task for a certain length of time, but when I reach the end of that task it's harder to start another. I am more tired at the end of the day, and I feel as though I've accomplished less overall even if I can pick off specific chores.

Because of my experience this summer, I have become convinced that farming at a scale that produces goods needs to be collaborative in order to be truly successful. I'm sure there are cases where one single farmer has managed to produce an abundance of goods and taken them to market, just as there are cases where an individual has made a successful film or staged a play entirely alone. But these are exceptions to a widely established model: in farming, just as in performing arts, the end result is almost always an expression of the creativity, dedication and effort of multiple individuals.

So though I am farming by myself, I would not go so far as to say that I am farming alone. Our garden, which is still producing an abundance of vegetables, has come to this point as much though Terra's dedication as my own, and I should also credit Terra's family, my family, and all the others who have supported our grand experiment this summer. On long afternoons of solitary tomato and bean picking, it is the thoughts of what we set out to accomplish at the beginning of this year, and all the people who got us there, that keep me from feeling lonely.

-Dan