Now, five years later I am happy to say that conditions at Terra Firma have vastly improved.  Ten hour work days are the norm; we have a loading dock, pallet jacks and a concrete pad that increases the efficiency and decreases lower back injury risks.Our harvesting is much more coordinated and done more effectively so that sorting is minimized and overall product quality is improved.  The farm focuses on providing an abundant diversity and quantity of different crops throughout the year to keep subscribers, restaurants, coops, and stores, as well as market-goers, happy while selectively selling some products into the wholesale market.  And the CSA is run efficiently and fairly so that it supports the farm and provides you with a weekly box of fresh goodies.

 It has been great to watch these changes occur at Terra Firma and to work with the people who have made them happen.  The folks I have had the privilege of working with over the last eighteen months helped make the farm the place it is today and deserve a lot of credit.  The work still isn’t easy and ten hours on a hundred degree day (especially in early May) can seem like an eternity.  Good farmwork will always require hard manual labor; hopefully it will one day gain the respect and the pay it deserves.  Nowhere else have I seen people work so hard for so little money, and that applies to everyone at the farm, from its owners all the way to the young Mexican men who pick your fruits and vegetables.

 When I first dreamt of farming eight years ago I did not expect it to be so hard.  Since college  I have worked at four different farms, from a one-acre intensively farmed garden to Terra Firma’s 80 acres of orchard and crops.  A common theme has been hard physical work.  Another has been the need to constantly improve the way in which the crops are produced to reduce the workload and be more efficient.  A final has been the joy of being able to use one’s body to produce something so tasty and necessary while working amidst the wonders of the insects and animals, and with the wonder of soil, water, and seed.
 Today I go forth from Terra Firma to be wed in the North Cascades of Washington, and then will likely settle somewhere new and work to create a system that provides much needed nutritious, fresh and organic food to the hungry poor in our communities through food banks, shelters, and the like.  Thank you for your support of everyone’s efforts at Terra Firma. 

WHERE IS HOME?
 As I prepare to move for the seventh time in the last five years, the question of home is a difficult one.  I hope home in the future will be defined by where I settle with my partner.  Home is also where I grew up, which in my case was Klamath Falls, Oregon, just north of the California border.  The farmers around my hometown have become the latest poster children for a agricultural system that treats too many farmers as society’s “fall guys.”  Klamath Basin farmers, after years of being wracked by international (and domestic) competition, prices below the costs of production, and an increasingly centralized food production system,  now face a severe drought year (twenty percent of the normal runoff is predicted in the watershed).  They are unable to plant anything because the Bureau of Reclamation irrigation system will not be allocated any water this year in an effort to increase water levels to protect two species of “sucker” fish as well as downstream salmon stocks.  Many of these farmers, as well as the businesses that rely on them, will go out of business.  Potato, onion, sugar and beef prices will not be affected, but hundreds of families will be.  The Endangered Species Act could be weakened as blame is misplaced on fish, fish that serve as reminders of the adverse impacts of human activities on our world. 

 Look forward to seeing many more farmers lose their livelihoods and hope in the coming years as corporate farming, suburban sprawl, and other increased demands for water for everything from golf courses to salmon reduce the water available to food production.  Too often it is the farmer who takes the blame for using too much water or destroying habitat while trying to produce food for us.  It is only in systems like a CSA that non-farmers can begin to understand their connection to what happens out in the fields.