The ultimate goal of farming is not the growing of crops, but the cultivation and perfection of human beings.”  – Masanobu Fukuoka, The One-Straw Revolution.

A cold front swept away the rain and clouds Wednesday afternoon, we had three dogs out in the pasture for the first time in weeks, Gus had his muzzle on, no eating out there for him. I loved this sky and took a deep breath when I saw it. Red kept order as usual.

I love living on my farm, I love the soil and the sky and the smells and the animals, I d feel it has cultivated me as a human being..

“The soil is the great connector of lives, the source and destination of all,” wrote the author and environmentalist Wendell Berry. “It is the healer and restorer and resurrector, by which disease passes into health, age into youth, death into life. Without proper care for it we can have no community, because without proper care for it we can have no life.”

Living on a farm is not like living anywhere else, and I have lived in a lot of places. A farm connects me to life, to Mother Earth, to the inner world of animals.

I did not live on a farm until I was in my late 50’s, yet I feel every day that I have never lived anywhere else.

The farm is all about life and death and reality and acceptance. It is my great wish to live on this farm and die on this farm. I hope Maria will scatter my ashes here if I do die first, and I can rejoin the soil, and become a connector of lives, the source and destination of us all.