This is pretty cool.

I love the pedal-powered farm equipment. Story in the WaPo here, website here.

(h/t TheWashCycle)

…perhaps by bringing the farm on up here?

My wife just sent me a link to this story on CNN about a village in England where they’ve started a farm co-op. It’s a small operation, enough to feed the approximately 100 families involved and have some left over to sell at a market.

I find this model compelling, because the people doing the farming aren’t full time farmers, but rather folks who all live there, and who have some time to contribute. I’m attracted to small sustainable agriculture in the near-term because of all the obvious reasons (quality of food and nutrient density, short travel distance, giving money to local growers instead of Archer Daniels Midland, etc). In the long term, I think we’re all going to have to learn to take care of ourselves again as culture, politics and life become what James Kunstler calls “profoundly local”.

But right now, this very minute, the thought of taking on several acres of growing land in an agriculture area and handling all aspects of the growing food and raising livestock from seed and piglet to table and market is daunting. The work is hard, which is fine. But Rebbie and I have spent most of our adult lives as urban animals, so there’s also the question of whether or not we could handle the geographic and cultural isolation of living where the farmland is, whether or not farming’s even something I’d be good at? Even if we found out that we’re natural born agriculturistas, the scale and the accompanying risks of taking on too much and losing it all are also really scary.

Hampshire’s Village Co-op is a whole different game. The scale isn’t so large, the work and the risk doesn’t have to be shouldered by any one family, and the location isn’t far away from the community. It is the community. In fact, if I’m understanding how their system works, farming isn’t even the primary occupation of most of these farmers, nor is profit the primary motivation. All of that suits me just fine, and seems like something a family could join and try without staking a life savings on.

And a community that grows its food together means a community that can have a potluck without a single three-bean salad showing up. Think about it. Make one huge portion of one dish with locally grown, freshly picked vegetables, enjoy bits of 20 such dishes with your neighbors. Sounds good to me!

With “Green Acres” bein’ our backyards, far-r-r-r-m livin’ can be not-so-hard. (You got that song in your head now, don’t ya? Sorry about that.)