Planting the seed
Enclosing the field within bounds
sets it apart from the boundless
of which it was, and is, a part,
and places it within care...
- from Sabbaths by Wendell Berry
Sarah and I have purchased, along with some friends, a fifty acre farm near Fenelon Falls, Ontario, about an hour-and-a-half north of Toronto. This property has been operating as the Sun Run Centre for Sustainable Living, a not-for-profit organization, for fifteen years. The farm includes a one-acre certified-organic garden, fifteen acres of pasture, and the rest is cedar and mixed hardwood bush. We are forming a partnership to run the farm as an education/conference centre with a focus on sustainable living and farming strategies.
We hope to explore how our Biblical worldview informs our desire for a more sustainable (i.e. less ecologically destructive/exploitative) way of living in and with creation, and we hope to learn from others who may or may not share our worldview. We intend to develop the farm as a retreat centre where people can rest and rejuvenate, but also where they can educate themselves in a hands-on as well as in a reflective manner. Eventually we hope to develop a commercial farming operation to demonstrate that organic farming is economically as well as environmentally sustainable. We?ll need more land for that though.
The original house is a two-storey log cabin built around 1860. A two-storey passive-solar frame addition was built in 1993. The farm is not connected to the power grid, but electricity is provided by 24 photo-voltaic solar roof panels, a wind generator, a propane-fueled backup generator, and a large bank of storage batteries. Our heating is provided by two wood stoves, which also serve for cooking in the winter, backed up by a propane-fired forced-air furnace.
Other buildings on the property include a small barn and tractor shed, a wood shed/workshop, a summer house and outdoor kitchen used for training workshops, a cob cottage, and a
greenhouse.
There are a few other residents. Particularly notable are two Kerry cattle - a rare breed of Irish dairy cow - Nina?s the cow and Comet is a steer. We?re hoping Nina will calve for us this fall. We are also moving in with Pantera - a Lab-Shepherd mix, a cat, chickens and ducks, and becoming neighbours to lots of animals too numerous to mention (although the Pileated Woodpeckers and Wild Turkeys stand out in my mind).
We close on the property on February 24. I?ll be moving there right away to take over the day-to-day operation of the farm. We?ll keep our apartment in Toronto until Sarah takes maternity leave from work (our baby is due June 2!) and joins me at the end of March.
Kirstin and Rob have graciously offered to host this weblog as a way for us to reflect on this new chapter in our lives. We, along with our partners (you?ll hear more about them soon), are very excited that this opportunity has been made available to us and we already have more dreams for this venture than can probably be realized in all of our lifetimes. I doubt that anyone would take something like this on if they hadn?t been influenced by Thoreau at some point in their lives. I certainly have been, and I keep turning in my mind to this quote from The Succession of Forest Plants:
Though I do not believe that a plant will spring up where no seed has been, I have great faith in a seed... Convince me that you have a seed there, and I am prepared to expect wonders.
My hope is that we have a fantastic seed here, and we're looking forward to telling you about how it's growing, and maybe even having some of you up to the farm some time to see first-hand what we're up to. I'll end my inaugral blog (bear with me, I'm sure they'll get shorter) with a reminder from another big influence, Wendell Berry, that whatever seed we may have and however well we tend it, the end result is out of our hands.
Whatever is foreseen in joy
Must be lived out from day to day.
Vison held open in the dark
By our ten thousand days of work.
Harvest will fill the barn; for that
The hand must ache, the face must sweat.
And yet no leaf or grain is filled
By work of ours; the field is tilled
And left to grace. That we may reap,
Great work is done while we're asleep.
When we work well, a Sabbath mood
Rests on our day, and finds it good.