Open Farm Day is Saturday April 6th ––
We would be so happy if our CSA members were able to come and visit us on April 6th for a day to walk around the farm, visit our newborn lambs, picnic on the grass and taste the delicious pizza that we bake in our wood-fired pizza oven. The farm is open for visitors from 10:30 to 3:30. Please leave your dogs (except for service dogs of course) at home. The farm owners are looking forward to meeting you!
We Are All Connected
Social media, international trade and global travel make the world interconnected and interdependent. Perhaps nothing brings that home more starkly than global climate chaos and environmental breakdown which will affect all of us as well as future generations living on this planet. There’s a science behind the idea of six degrees of separation which says that there are only six social connections between one of us and the people in Mozambique who are right now living through the catastrophe of Cyclone Idai. The lives we lead and resource consumption levels in the U.S. are lavish compared to those in Mozambique, and perhaps that inequality is the reason for the culpability that some of us feel in terms of climate change when storms wreak havoc in places with limited infrastructure to cope.
On the other hand, infrastructure sometimes means nothing to Mother Nature, and it is as if she is teaching us that lesson in the Missouri River basin where the flooding and losses are huge and growing. Back to the Basics may be the take home… Dairy owners in California are already feeling the shortage of grain shipments usually arriving from Nebraska where thousands of tons of soybean and corn silage have been lost. I make note of the shortage of grain in California only to bring home once more the point that we are all connected. The suffering in the Midwest, many miles from California, is going to impact all of us.
While not all symptoms of a changing climate are as severe as those seen this month, the record does show that we will face increased droughts, wetter conditions, inconsistent growing seasons and hotter wildfires. The record-setting floods that have occurred in recent weeks in the Midwest and in southeast Africa drive home the need for mitigation and adaptation strategies that will help all of us respond to a changing climate. Those strategies will include agriculture because farmers can play a big role in sequestering carbon and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. But farmers will also need to start thinking more about coping mechanisms and farming practices that create more resilient farms. California is showing leadership in these areas, implementing innovative strategies to address climate change. Some of those strategies may be expensive in the short term, but business as usual is not acceptable. Our hearts go out to the people trying to cope with the floods. We can only hope and pray that respite and rebuilding come soon.
—Judith Redmond
