Aspirations for the farm

One of my most influential readings on farming was Masanobo Fukuoka's 'The Natural Practice of Farming'. Put simply, Fukuoka advocates 'do nothing farming'. Everything is as it should be. The less effort we expend, the greater the relative reward.

Another major farming influence has been permaculture - the idea of creating self-maintaining agricultural systems - highly designed systems where most of the work is done by the system itself.

They may seem some distance apart, one laissez faire, the other interventionist. However, they do share one key feature - the creation and/or maintenance of self-sustaining ecological systems that provide for human needs.

So, with these (and a lot of other things) in mind, here is an aspiration I have been kicking around for a few years (slightly reworded):

My aspiration is a large-scale garden, where nature dominates– a garden that nourishes the bodies, intellects and souls of my family and my community – a garden where we live healthy lives among the healthy plants and animals that we tend.

In more scientific terms - I aspire to create and maintain efficient, sustainable and stable ecological systems that support our family and community and provide for our fundamental human needs.

By stable I mean resistant and resilient to perturbation and capable of self generated adaption to changes in environment. By efficient I mean a high energy&materials output:input ratio. By fundamental human needs I mean my desire for subsistence, protection, affection, understanding, participation, leisure, creation, identity and freedom (or any subset of those). 

Our community includes our immediate community but also the community of people who are concerned about or interested in the things that we aspire to.

My aspiration includes a permaculture landscape, the capacity to harvest and conserve, a practical design studio and workshop that supports our activities, an open and meaningful interaction with our community and all of this informed by a living philosophical and spiritual discussion.

This is not an outcome-oriented goal. I have no timeframe, and recognize the scope of the aspiration. I see this as the work of lifetimes, but no less worthwhile for all that.

And now, because of my new faith, it is to be a farm where I do not farm animals for slaughter, indeed do not treat animals in a way that causes suffering.

The question is not only how to act now to realise this aspiration - but how to do it without attachment.