Organic farmer Stephen Cleghorn reports
Sunday, October 10, 2010
On our 50-acre certified organic farm, located in a small unincorporated area of Henderson Township in Jefferson County, an area that has been called Paradise for more than a century, there is a high point to which we take the dogs. There we like just to be quiet before the beauty we see all around us. Rolling fields of crops, alternating green and brown. Our neighbor's cows, gorgeous Jerseys with their big soulful eyes, framed against their emerald pasture. Our own dairy goats lazing away a summer's afternoon on the pasture down below us.
And sometimes we go up there at night to admire God's creation as it envelops us. From that hilltop it is easy to recall the words of the poet-farmer Wendell Berry:
I am wholly willing to be here
between the bright silent thousands of stars
and the life of the grass pouring out of the ground.
The hill has grown to me like a foot.
Until I lift the earth I cannot move.
Five years ago we had a dream that we could take these 50 acres and make them our small gift to our neighbors and our world by producing healthy organic vegetables and fresh goat milk products. We wanted to do so in a manner that in a small way helps to heal our environment, our atmospheric commons that has become stressed by an over-reliance on fossil fuel energy. We joined a growing movement in agriculture to be small and local on purpose, for our health, for that of our neighbors and even for our planet.
And sometimes we go up there at night to admire God's creation as it envelops us. From that hilltop it is easy to recall the words of the poet-farmer Wendell Berry:
I am wholly willing to be here
between the bright silent thousands of stars
and the life of the grass pouring out of the ground.
The hill has grown to me like a foot.
Until I lift the earth I cannot move.
Five years ago we had a dream that we could take these 50 acres and make them our small gift to our neighbors and our world by producing healthy organic vegetables and fresh goat milk products. We wanted to do so in a manner that in a small way helps to heal our environment, our atmospheric commons that has become stressed by an over-reliance on fossil fuel energy. We joined a growing movement in agriculture to be small and local on purpose, for our health, for that of our neighbors and even for our planet.
