Important Questions

What Do I Want to Learn About Farming?

First, soils. I want to learn how to build life-sustaining soils that nourish plants to the fullest extent possible because these healthy plants can directly feed us or feed the animals that we in turn consume. Second, I want to be able to understand the flows of energy from the sun (and the Earth) through the living systems on this planet, including soils, all the way to the dissipation of this energy as heat from all of the organisms (systems) that use the energy. It will be useful to understand the technical side of the mechanisms involved in mediating the controlled energy transfers (e.g., electron transport chains), but I do not want to get so mired in or hung up on the details that I fail to develop an overall picture of what is happening. I would like to be able to sit down someday and draw a flow diagram that shows in as much detail as is possible how energy flows through living systems on Earth, showing the relative amounts that are channeled through each component chain in the web of life. Attaining this level of understanding is probably not necessary to be a successful farmer or even a good steward of the land but would be more to satisfy my curiosity.

Why Do I Want To Learn These Things About Farming?

I began to answer this question in the paragraph above. First, it will satisfy my curiosity. I simply want to know. Connecting to something deeper and more personal, though, I find myself increasingly lacking in motivation to do all but a handful of activities. One of those activities is producing food. I simply cannot think of anything more basic or gut-level (pun intended). Food is our primary connection to the planet and the other life on it; food, with its aromas, textures, flavors, and colors, is capable of evoking a broad range of emotions. In the excited/aroused states brought on by our food experiences, we often have a heightened awareness and inquisitiveness. It has been my experience that exploring food further arouses our curiosity and gets us asking questions that can lead down many paths, encouraging us to explore unfamiliar cultures and places. For me, though, the experience begins long before the food is ready to be eaten. It all starts in the field, in the earth itself.

When I give myself over to the forces of the garden I feel at home, at ease with everything, even in the face of failure (which can be quite humbling and frustrating). I am on a mission, a constant search to find the heart or core of the process of living. As far as I can tell there are three main activities around which all of the rest of our life activities are built: food (energy) intake (water included), reproduction (sex), and satisfying our need for pleasure (this would include satisfying curiosity). The third function is very closely tied to the first two and is indeed how nature gets us to continually perform those first two functions. To put it rather bluntly, I just want to cut to the chase, get right down to it. I hate middlemen.

And, of course, as I alluded to above, there is a great deal of sensual pleasure involved in food production (or at least there should be). Producing your own food is also very empowering, even if you are not completely independent of other food producers. When you take control over your food, you take back choices that belong to you! Your health should be in your own hands, and there is no way it can be if someone else has complete control over your food choices (what is offered, how it is processed, what the ingredients are, how the ingredients are produced, etc.).