The Soil Touch

In Joel Salatin’s Your Successful Farm Business, he asks what makes a farm a farm. Bucolic scenes, livestock, produce, ponds, there are many images that come to mind when imagining a farmscape. After iterating through answers he’s heard over the years he stops at the punchline: the farmer.

A farm is land that is tended to, cared for, “caressed” by the farmer, to bring forth a bounty. The action of its steward makes it different from any other piece of dirt.

As we’ve been planning our farm move this has been on my mind a lot lately. There are advantages to different locations. Size, access to water, utilities, roads, proximity to the city, and so on.

What is going to provide nourishment to people is our experience, knowledge, and hard work, applied to the land, supported by our community. It feels we’ve acquired a sort of Midas Touch, to turn land into food.