Hi Everyone,
Here's the update I mentioned in our recent note about Summer Registration. In this update we will cover the following:
1.
Introduction of this year's "new" farm crew
As the farm moves forward in transition to becoming Biodynamic (see #4 below) we have made some changes in the folks who will be with us this year helping to both do the farming and helping in the transition. We will miss Jacob, who has been with us for five years. As he enters his third year at Evergreen, we decided together that it would be best for him seek a different kind of summer employment this year. That is sad for us, but it is a joy for us to still be a part of the life of this remarkable young man, and we're confident at some point Jacob will be back on the farm.
At the end of last season we also said our sad (and very emotional) "adios amigo" to Francisco. After three years we had grown close. Francisco, who loved everything about Carnation and Jubilee except the cold falls, the cold winters, and the cold springs, is working this year in a (warm) vineyard in California. I wish we could say we learned more Spanish than we did during Francisco's stay here, or that he learned more English than he did. But we found a way to communicate through our work together that established a strong bond between us. We miss him already.
This year we've looked both within and without for help. From the ranks of our many capable work share members come Randy James and Vicki Griffins (and their young son Silas), who have given up their former employments and home in Seattle to come join us working and living on the farm. Although they don't have a background in farming, they bring a wealth of practical skills, an unwavering commitment to eating organically and living sustainably, and a great deal of enthusiasm. As work share members last year we could hardly keep them away from the farm. The only solution was to hire them! Randy will be working full time, and Vicki half-time. Wendy and I are very pleased to have them on the team this year.
The other full-time farm worker brings a great deal of agricultural experience to the farm. I had contacted Harald Hoven, the long-time director of agricultural studies at the Rudolf Steiner College in Sacramento California seeking someone with experience in Biodynamic practices. His immediate and unqualified recommendation was a young man who spent two years under his tutelage, and another year managing a BD CSA in California. After many discussions throughout the winter and a visit from California, we have extended an invitation to Eric Slama, his wife Vanessa, and their "as-adorable-a-baby as we've ever seen" Evan to join us this year at Jubilee. Vanessa, too, is a graduate of the Steiner College. She is a certified Waldorf teacher who, for the present, is much occupied with being a new mother. And oh, by the way, they accepted the invitation.
Eric is the first person who has ever come to our farm as a "seasoned" farmer. Wendy and I are so pleased to have him and Vanessa with us. Between Randy, Vicki, Eric and the two of us (and, of course seven-year-old Silas and six-month old Evan!) we look optimistically toward our transition into BD farming, and, of course, to the end result of producing more nutritious, life-sustaining food for our CSA community.
2.
New "Canning Share" available this Summer
Over the last several years we've become more interested in food preservation, as have many of you. We've had numerous canning demonstrations on the porch, and after enjoying those canned vegetables again throughout this winter, and in some friendly discussion after dinner one night in which said canned vegetables were happily consumed, it occurred to us that we ought to have some way that our members, too, can begin to enjoy canned goods through the winter. I know some of you have canned some things, but until now we just haven't quite had the mechanism whereby you could get the volume of produce you would need to can. We struggled a bit about how to make the veggies and fruit available to members for canning. It's not quite fair to the farm for us just to offer to add the extra veggies for canning on to your existing share. After all, for twenty-three dollars a week, we are probably already giving too much!
So, what we've decided to do is to add a "canning share" option for those of you who want to commit yourselves to putting up summer goodness for winter enjoyment. The way it will work is this. We'll put an application for the 2007 Canning Share on the web page (hopeful that Joe and Ellen, our ever-patient web-page-masters, can take this on too!). You will fill out the on-line application, or download a copy of it and mail it to us. The cost is $100 for the share. As a Canning Share member you will be given enough "raw materials" to can six quarts of five different fruits and/or vegetables (i.e. beans, pickles, carrots, peppers, tomato sauce, salsa, beets, pumpkin butter or puree', or jam)—30 quarts in all.
Canning members will supply their own jars (and pectin if you wish to use that for jams). We will supply the ingredients, the recipes, a canning workshop, and the encouragement! We also will buy and have here at the barn canning jars, lids, and everything you will need. We'll buy these in bulk, and sell them to you at our cost. We want to make this "one stop," so you don't have to run around trying to gather everything you need. We will even have the canning pots available if you need them. So if you're an old hand at canning, or if you've never done it but really want to give it a try, sign up for the canning share and get ready for the fun and satisfaction of eating your own canned goods this winter. We've made the entry price pretty low, but you can certainly sign up for multiple shares.
3.
Early Spring Session: why join a six week Session?
Eating quality, organic produce is a year-round proposition. So is farming. I used to think of both as "seasonal" ventures, but I've come to see that to think this way is wrong, both for our health and for the health of the farm (to which, for those of who are members of Jubilee, our health is related).
We all do pretty well on our vegetables during our main, growing season, getting a good supply and variety of fresh, well-grown vegetables (and some fruits too). The off-season presents a bit of a challenge. One of the things about getting a weekly box of organic produce is that it commits one to eating well. In that respect, joining our off-season Sessions is good for you. It may not be as good as those bounteous boxes you get in the summer, filled with items all grown right here at Jubilee Farm. But for the off-season, it is the best we can do.
Doing the off-season Sessions is also good for the farm. Believe me, we aren't getting rich doing these off-season boxes. But like you, we eat better for it. And in return for our work, we make enough doing this to (more or less) carry the farm through the off-season. The boxes provide us a chance to market our eggs, potatoes, onions, and, during those years we don't have a massive flood like we had this year, chard, kale, greens, brassicas, and other things. That is a great help to us financially. A lot of people have asked what they can do to help us as we are still digging out from the damage of the flood. The biggest way you can help right now is to support us through these off-season sessions. It's good for us, and it's good for you too.
You can sign up on-line (www.jubileefarm.org) or register by giving a call at 425-222-4558. You need to contact us by noon Monday (March 19th) to get a box delivered Wednesday.
4.
Our transition to Biodynamic farming (Part II)
In the last update I shared what I think to be an easily accessible, though somewhat superficial, reason behind our move to make the transition into biodynamic farming (BD). That was simply that in my estimation the "organic" movement has been politicized to the point that being organic doesn't mean much any more. This reason is, perhaps, a legitimate reason to not identify ourselves as "organic" any longer. But what makes us so interested in BD? Clearly the appeal of BD is not simply that the alternative is not acceptable. At the heart of BD farming are practices and an ontological commitment that make it very appealing to us. In this update I'll share a little about the "practices," and save the biggie (the ontology) for a subsequent update.
Those of you who have been in our CSA for a while have read my agonizing out loud (probably more than anyone wanted to hear) in these pages or heard it from me in person, about what it really means to be sustainable. Many people think that organic farming is the same as sustainable. I'm not sure that was true even before the federal standards were adopted in 2002; but it is certainly not true now. On our own farm I have constantly wondered just how sustainable our practices are. But in my first reading of the Agricultural Lectures of Rudolf Steiner I encountered a clear and univocal statement of what it means to be sustainable. This is simply that the goal of every farm must be to supply all of its own needs—not "some," or "most," but all. One might say that to be sustainable a farm needs to engage in a set of practices that will successfully wean it from every kind of outside subsidy.
One such subsidy is fertilizer. Bringing in fertilizer from off the farm would certainly constitute a kind of farm "subsidy" (by the way, please don't confuse my use of the word subsidy with the subsidies currently paid corporate "farmers" to either not grow crops at all, or to try to make profitable crops we shouldn't be growing more of!). So, starting with the assumption that sustainability means not bringing in outside subsidies, and recognizing that soil needs fertilizer, it follows that the farm must provide its own fertilizer. Taking fertilizer from someone else's farm or some other site is not, in Steiner's sense, sustainable. So the individual farm must engage in practices that will provide its own fertility. That means the farm will need a source of manure. And that means the farm must have animals. Chickens, pigs, and goats are all good, but the cow (and other ruminants) is considered by Steiner to be God's gift of fertility to the earth. So a sustainable farm needs to have ruminants, cows being the ruminant of choice. Practices must also be established and annually maintained to convert the manure into humus. Humus is the miraculous substance in the soil that holds nutrients and water for natural plant nutrition. The creation of humus is accomplished by very careful manure management and composting.
Beyond fertility, there are other ways that modern farms are tempted to compromise their sustainability. A sustainable farm should produce its own feed for its animals. It should raise its own compost materials. It should collect and use its own seeds. It should feed the farmers who are stewards of the land, provide for their material needs, and allow some leisure time (at least in the off-season!). And it should be managed in a way that rotates the burden of crop production from field to field, allowing for seasons of rest.
These are lofty goals. But we have come to believe these are the requirements of sustainability. And these are the practices of BD farming. How could we not be drawn to them? I'd like to point out how contrary they are to the standard goals of agriculture (and industry in general) in modernity. Many times in newsletters from the past I've been drawn to think aloud about Adam Smith and the consuming principle of "efficiency" that so many of us live under. It now is becoming clear why that topic was so fascinating to me. I believe that the concept of efficiency, as defined in our modern economist's sacred canon (The Wealth of Nations), is the path to short-term wealth, but long-term lack of sustainability. There is something very right about the desire to be efficient: no one wants to waist time, energy and resources. But efficiency must be (and one way or another always is) grounded in a system of values. It needs parameters, boundaries within which to be utilized as an operational method. These boundaries are established by human beings and/or nature, and are created either explicitly or implicitly.
In our modern world efficiency is often (usually) assessed in proximate terms as productivity, and in ultimate terms as profitability. But within a different set of values, sustainability can define the meaning of efficiency. In such a case what a person does might seem very inefficient when viewed merely from the values of maximizing profit. But I think we've all seen what happens to humanity when the ultimate value becomes maximized profit: we end up with pollution, food that is lacking in nutrition, global climate change, and possibly (were we to continue on that path) the destruction of the conditions necessary for human or even plant life on our planet.
So the issue isn't so much will we be efficient, or will we be sustainable. The question is, what values will establish the boundaries within which we will seek to be efficient? We have found that the value of agricultural sustainability, as first defined by Steiner and as embodied in the current practices of BD, are the values within which we believe we should seek efficiency on our farm. This is the second of the three reasons we have chosen to transition into BD agriculture this year. The third reason is related to this one, and while my head, heart, and fingers want to go on, I think I should stop here lest I try your patience (or maybe I should say "the patience of the one person still reading) beyond what is reasonable. I'll pick up at this point in the next update.
5.
Your chance to help with Spring Composting
If you read the previous section on BD, you'll understand why composting is so crucial to the BD farm. One of our members suggested that we open our compost day to our CSA community so that anyone who is interested in seeing how we make compost on the scale we need to do it can see the process and help out if they want to. So that's what we're doing.
It's always hard to plan farm events in the spring because of weather, and this one needs to be done on a fairly dry day. But we're going to go ahead and name a date. We plan on turning the cows out to pasture on April 1st. (That, by the way, is another event worth witnessing sometime!) The date we will set for making compost is about two weeks later. That would be the second Saturday April 14th. We'll get started about 9:00 and will be at it until at least five (with a little break for lunch). Please feel free to stop by and observe, or get involved—there will be plenty for extra hands to do!
6.
Spread the news
The most (and only) effective advertising we've ever had has been our members. We're hoping this year you will continue to let your friends and neighbors know about our CSA program. We've taken steps this season to plan for a larger but less crowded CSA. That may sound contradictory, but by adding another day of pick-up (Wednesday), and by limiting the number of people who will pick up on any given day to one hundred (last year we had one hundred and twenty members pick up on Tuesday, which was, at times, a bit crowded), we believe we are finding our way to a number of members that works well for the farm and the membership.
We've also ordered more seeds this year than ever, and we've bumped the numbers of our first rotations of crops, planning for new members. Another thing that may be different this year is that for the first time we did not sign on to do either of the farmer's markets that we have done in the past. We're a little nervous about that, but we would really like to not be driving to Seattle twice a week to do markets. If we meet our membership goal we are going to stay home, and keep all our energy here.
So we're hopeful that the Summer Session memberships will keep coming in. We're ready for it. There are lots of advantages to having your friends and neighbors join. We have many "groups" of members who come now, and enjoy sharing a day on the farm with people they know. We also notice that some groups car pool or even pick up for each other if one member can't make it out that week. We're happy to see this and are willing to accommodate it in any way we can. Be sure, too, to have the friends you tell about us to put your name on their application (or let us know you brought them), as we have a small but tangible way of saying "thanks" for spreading the word.
7.
Wannabe farmer's seminar
This Saturday, March 17th, Jubilee Farm will be the site of a seminar for "want-to-be farmers." For any of you who have had a dream of having a farm of your own, this is your chance to take the first step.
We don't really have anything to do with it, except that we have offered our barn for the seminar to my life-long friend, Paul Campbell. Some of you have heard me talk about Paul. He is one of the few people I know who I think genuinely has a green thumb. He was born and raised on a farm in Idaho, and in one way or another has always had a hand in agriculture. Some of you know Paul as the owner (along with his wife Kathy) of "Paul's Cottage Garden." Although both Paul and Kathy have been teachers in the North Shore School District for thirty years, they have also sold flowers and had a small CSA on their acre-and-a-half "farmlet" in Woodinville. They have a wealth of experience in how to balance a life with one hand in the soil, and the other in the professional world.
Paul and Kathy have become interested in taking their life-time of farming experience and combining it with an interest in real estate to become a buyer's real estate agents (with Dream Drafter's Reality in Everett). Their vision is to provide a service for people who have dreamed of owning a farm (very large, very small, or something in between) but just don't know where to start—what kind of land is available, what kind of land is good for farming, what kind of farming options are possible, and, in general, how to transform a dream about farming into a reality.
The Seminar this Saturday starts at 2:00 PM, here at the farm. Paul will cover a variety of topics relevant to those who have dreamed about owning a farm. Of course Paul (and Dream Drafters Reality, who is facilitating the Seminar) would be happy to help you find a farm to purchase. But I've known Paul and Kathy all my life, and I know that they could never bear the faintest resemblance to the imagined, stereo-typical real estate agent. This seminar is really about giving information about farming to people who have an interest. If someone has a further interest, they can go on. But this seminar isn't about selling. So if you have an interest, come on out this Saturday. Paul will be holding these seminars, by the way, the second Saturday of each month at 2:00 here at the farm.
8.
Animal Update
The animals on the farm are also looking forward to the long fall/winter being over! We brought the cows into the barn on November 5th, just ahead of what we hope was "the flood to end all floods." Two days later we had to get them up onto the critter pad. We did that as a precaution, but as it turned out, they all would have drowned had we left them in the loafing shed. It wasn't easy leading them up to the critter pad. They didn't exactly trot on up of their own accord! We discovered we have (well, "had," the problem has now been remedied) a little design problem on the critter pad. When it actually came to getting them from the loafing shed to the top of the pad we had to drive them through water to get there.
Believe me, cows don't like to leave a spot that is dry and go through water to get to another spot that is dry; they'd just as soon stay in the first dry spot. Somehow they seem to lack the imagination to conceive that in a few hours where they are now may be under water! Well, it was just me and Wendy, and the two of us had quite a time reasoning with the cows. (You can read Thus Spake Zarathustra for Nietzsche's somewhat comical rendering of "reasoning with cows.") Four or five of them headed toward the river instead of up the pad, and it must have taken an hour or more to get them back. They are so stubborn and, (I hope Steiner BD farmers will forgive me) sometimes so stupid! Of course, it was raining cats and dogs, and it was extremely slippery. I remember at one point Wendy was trying to outrun one of the heifers to cut her off as she was heading toward the creek. Wendy is a lot more agile than I am, but in an instant, as she made a dive to close their path to danger, her feet went flying out from under her and she sprawled, back side, into the mud. If it had been me, I'd probably still be there! At first, of course, I was afraid she was hurt. But when I saw she wasn't (she really is pretty tough), with her lying on her back in the muck, the rain pouring down, darkness coming on, the river rising fast, and the heifer running off to God knows where, what could we do? We started laughing, and couldn't stop. Thankfully the heifer stopped before she hit the creek. Cows don't seem to remember where the deep water is once everything's covered with water, so it was just luck that she stopped. But to be honest, at that point we almost didn't care. We were just laughing so hard as we tested that fine line between tragedy and comedy. We finally got Wendy back on her feet, and much later, with renewed patience, coerced the heifer up on the critter pad to safety. I think at that point she felt sorry for us; at least she was tired of her game, and wanted get back with the group.
After the flood we got the cows back into the loafing shed, where they have spent the ensuing winter. Right now they are getting a bit antsy, but they still have about three more weeks before they get out on pasture. They seem to know it is coming. You all probably know that what they are providing the farm right now is very important. Each cow "produces" about 50 pounds of manure each day. It's funny that when I raised cows before I was forever wondering how to get rid of all that "stuff." Now we value it a great deal, and go to lengths to preserve it. By adding a large amount of carbatious material (i.e. the straw we bail after we combine the grain crops in the summer), the nitrogenous manure is stabilized. We each do our part. We add layer after layer of straw and old hay; the cows add layer after layer of, well, their unique contribution. By now, almost the end of the winter, the mat they stand on is about three feet deep in most places. That means that each square yard of area in the part of the loafing shed where they stay equals one cubic yard of manure. On the 14th of April, we will transfer all that manure to the area where we will make our compost piles. I hope a lot of you will join us on that day. Making compost is a lot of fun and quite an event to be a part of.
Our chickens (and us) were finally the full beneficiaries of all the work (and expense!) it took to build the egg mobile. Obviously, the egg mobile is a great home for the chickens all the time. This winter, we built a set of "outriggers" that hang off the structure so we can suspend a fence that travels with the egg mobile when we move it from place to place. It really works well. But the "full benefit" of the egg mobile was only realized when the big flood came. First of all, in a flood that big there would have been nothing we could have done to save the chickens in the spot they used to occupy. Secondly, even trying to save them there would have been a huge (and ultimately fruitless) task. But with the egg mobile, we just locked them into their house on the night of November 5th, when we recognized that the flood was turning out to be huge, and then dragged them in their house to the top of the critter pad. They were safe as could be. When I think of what we had to go through before the egg mobile to try to save the chickens from flood waters, this was a breeze!
The chickens are now happily out in the pasture. Their fence is small, but it is very easily moved. When they've eaten all the grass within their fenced area, we just close their door after they go to roost for the night. Then in the morning we lift the fence up onto the outriggers, (which takes less than sixty seconds), pull the egg mobile ahead one length, and lower the fence back down. We then open the door, and the chickens come running down to a fresh, lush carpet of new green grass. The spot on the ground that they leave behind looks a little sad at first, but it's well fertilized, and bounces back pretty quickly! So far (knock on wood) the coyotes haven't figured out that they could probably lift the fence with their noses if they tried. When we had snow we could see their tracks circling the parameter of the egg mobile's self-contained fence, but they have never gotten in. So far it seems to be working!
9.
Farm Chatter
Spring is such an exciting time on the farm; even a wet, mucky spring like this one. (OK, I know it's not officially Spring yet, but...).The November flood left us a lot of Spring work to do. The germination room in the barn took almost four feet of water, and the seedling greenhouse (behind the goat/chicken house) took a real beating. But we have both those facilities back up and in working order now. In fact, the greenhouse is almost half-full already with seedlings. The tomatoes are still in the warm germination room. It will probably be another week or so before they get their first true leaves and can be transplanted.
We haven't gotten as much done in the fields as we would have liked. But we have gotten a lot more done than we would have if it had not been for new piece of equipment we purchased last year. It is probably hard to remember now what a nice, dry October we had last year. But it was very nice all month, without rain (or much rain anyway) each weekend. That resulted in a lot of visitors to the farm for pumpkins. And the mineralization that helped our vegetables and squashes so much last year also helped the pumpkin crop—so we had something for those visitors to buy; it was our best October. With the money we made, we did what most farmers do—we bought more equipment!
What we bought is a spader. Some of you will remember that we had a spader a long time ago. But we quit using it because we widened our bed size and it wasn't quite wide enough. A neighbor happily bought it, and I've been wanting another ever since. But they are awfully expensive, (almost ten thousand dollars) so I just kept putting if off. Well October got us close enough that we went for it. It was also becoming a priority because it is the "tool of choice" for most BD farmers.
So, what's a spader? (I'm pretending you asked.) It's an implement that attaches to the back of the tractor that does the same work that a rototiller does, but without all the damage that rototillers do. My love/hate relationship with tillers (I've often expressed my feelings about them in newsletters) has for some time been evolving more toward the second half of that continuum. The plain truth is that tillers are just terrible for the life of the soil. They turn the soil into a fluffy puree, devoid of that course, crumbly structure that provides the physical requirements for microbial life and earthworms. There are a lot of farmers who use tillers extensively for bed preparation and almost exclusively for weed control. I've watched their soil over the years, and it always comes to the same thing. The soil becomes so fine it looks and feels like flour. It is barren of bacteria (the good and necessary kind), fungi, or worm life. It is easily eroded, and worse of all, it requires ever-increasing artificial fertilizers.
So, enter the spader. It also works the soil, but it doesn't "spin" the soil. It has six shovels which rotate on a finely cast crankshaft. With each rotation each shovel lifts the soil. Then, before the shovel makes its rotation, the soil falls back into the same place it came from, but at about a fifteen to twenty degree angle to what it was. In doing this some of the surface weeds are mixed with the soil, but certainly not all. But all are dislodged at the roots. The soil is aerated, but not spun. It is "shifted," but not inverted. The weeds are discouraged, but not really "out of sight, out of mind." Most importantly, the structure of the soil remains intact, and earthworms aren't shredded into little pieces like they are with a tiller. Because of the gentile action of the spader, it just can't get plugged up like tillers often do. And because it is so easy on the soil, it can be used when the soil is wetter. So there are a lot of advantages to using a spader over a tiller.
What are the disadvantages? It's expensive. Additionally, one of the reasons it is so gentile and soil-preserving is that you have to go slower than molasses with it through the soil. A tiller can be used at very high speeds—up to seven miles an hour. You really cover some ground at that speed. The spader waddles along at three-quarters of one mile per hour. It takes the patience of Job to endure it! That, along with the expense, is the only legitimate complaint about spaders. But there is another reason farmers don't like them. With a tiller you can speed down a row, look back, and because of the pulverizing action of the blades, all you will see is soil. The spader, insofar as it does not invert the soil, leaves green matter on top. When you get done, it doesn't look perfect. And, some of those weeds will re-root. That means you have to do it a second time (yes, the second time through it is still at the same, snail's pace!).
But there are also additional advantages. To get the soil ready for the tiller, it must first exercise "primary tillage" (you have to plow), and then "secondary tillage" (you have to disk). So the spader eliminates the steps of plowing and tilling. And that is a major savings of time—almost enough to make up for all that plodding. I wish that the spader could just totally eliminate all plowing and disking, but on ground that has not been worked in previous years, the plow and disk is still necessary. But once the soil has been worked up the spader can take over.
So there you have it. It is, of course, a classic instance of a superior outcome that costs more, and takes much longer to achieve compared to doing the same thing more quickly, with less cost, but settling for something that merely "looks ok." It's the difference between being and seeming to be that Plato suggested is the endemic weakness of the human condition. But the difference in quality, and in the case of food the difference in nutrition, is worth the extra effort. We always try, as your "surrogate gardeners," to be vigilant to this distinction. We've come a long way since those early days, as those of you who have been with us since the beginning (Lorna, Lynn, and Cynthia come immediately to mind, as they attended, I believe, our first informational meeting in 1995), but we still have a long way to go.
10.
Work Shares
We've gotten quite a bit of response to our last note about Work Share opportunities for this upcoming season. If any others are interested, just drop us a note (jubileefarm@hotmail.com) and we'll be happy to send some information which will help you decide if this would work for you.
11.
A Word of Thanks
It occurs to me (Erick) that I don't often acknowledge or thank those who help with the updates we send out. Wendy has excellent "editorial eyes." She reads, edits and is a constant interlocutor during the writing of each update before it ever gets sent to our web masters, Joe and Ellen. When Joe and Ellen get it, they too edit for grammar and readability. I once had an English teacher that I team-teach with at BCC tell me I was a far more stringent grammarian than he is. Well, Joe puts us both to shame!
I would also like to say that although Joe and Ellen receive a very modest compensation for all the work they do (Joe built the site, maintains and updates the site, oversees the entire process for on-line applications and all the PayPal details, has to answer all the questions and almost literally hold the hand of one self-identified technophobe—me—and the list goes on and on, and continues year-after-year) what they receive is embarrassingly incommensurate with what they give. (And don't you dare edit this out, Joe!) There are others that also give in this way to the farm, and all I can say is how deeply appreciative I am. Without these efforts Wendy and I wouldn't be able to focus on the farming aspects of the farm the way we are able to.
Erick, Wendy and the Crew
[Note from Joe: I'm touched and a little bit embarrassed at Erick's kind words. He and Wendy work so hard on our wonderful and truly organic farm, and lots of others do as well. I'm posting this newsletter from Hana, Maui (some of you know...). On a tour Tuesday, Ellen and I visited an organic farm near Kipahulu (where aviator Charles Lindbergh is buried) and I thought of our Jubilee Farm and the tireless efforts of Erick and Wendy.]