What’s up with tiny farming?

In my first couple of years of small-scale vegetable growing, along with lots of stuff about seed depth, soil temperature, and how far apart to space plants in a row, I also learned about Big Agriculture—industrial farming in all its rather stunning immensity. I followed the history of “life sciences” corporations like Monsanto, gained a general understanding of how genetically modified crops work, consumed more than a fair share about factory farming, agricultural pollution, land-gobbling, gas-guzzling mechanization…the list of modern wonders goes on and on. Still, all of this was book-and-TV knowledge, nothing first hand, the kind of mega-trivia that may surprise, sometimes even cause a shaking of one’s head, but doesn’t really STICK. Meanwhile, in the field, growing food not just for myself, but for OTHERS, is a real, ongoing education… So, the two worlds: Big Ag hovering all around, and me in the tiny field, and not much connecting the two on the day-to-day…

“Your actions speak so loudly, I can’t hear what you’re saying.” – version of something Ralph Waldo Emerson apparently wrote

“They’ll never do worth a damn as long as they’ve got two choices.” – From a 1973 Wendell Berry interview, attributed to a friend of his, an old farmer down the road.