So, we have some friends here in Clarkson who’ve decided to begin to take baby steps with us towards a dream.
The dream is simple, the work is hard and hot. Every garden is. But the thing is, with many willing hands…dreams start to come alive. So it has been for us — some seedlings turned vegetables on a quarter acre piece of land. There’s a family here in Clarkson a few miles from FH headquarters, that was born and raised for 3 generations on the same land. And through relationships and mutual interest, they were eager to offer the land they know so well to hopefully help make a little dream come true.
So, we dug up that dirt and planted some tomatoes and okra and herbs…and by we I mean, the people who send you all these emails. Zac, David, Connor, Jasmine, Alison, Mama Fay…and the rest of the gang. We’ve all dug our hands into the ground we’ve been given, and done our part to make something come of it. That’s what it’s all about, right? Using what you have to do what you can to step towards what you hope for.
A garden is a thing that calls us to put our ears to the ground and our hands in the dirt. Making a garden for us means that we not only want to learn how to sell the food you eat, we want to learn how to grow it, too. We want to learn the hard work it takes to make the baskets we love so much. We want to know the honest labor required of us, and the genuine love and care for the land beneath us. When we say to you…“taste and see”….we want to stand behind our words, with dirt on our hands and the taste of the earth in our mouths…and know that what we offer truly is good.
This growin’ road we hope to walk is, for now, a wide open space. This garden and land has the potential to play host to moments that go well beyond the reach of a few vegetables. This summer, it’s meant managing some wild and crazy grass, learning a bit about covercropping…and jumping in the pond for a quick swim afterward. For the future, there’s talk of education classes, and mentorship programs, of mushrooms logs and blueberry patches. How cool and crazy that this little dream could grow to be our favorite fishing spot, a sweet space to gather around a picnic table as friends, offer unending opportunities to invest in innovative projects like high tunnel hoop houses…and all this taking place on over 10 acres of farmable land. There’s talk around here that this place could be a home for many of our long-felt aspirations to use the land to heal our world…and even ourselves.
We’re not growing much, but you might just see an FH cucumber or pepper freebie its way into your baskets this summer. And we hope you too are finding ways to dig deeper into the gift of hard work and new dreams.
Let us be certain…there is surely more to come…