Viewing post #958831 by hampartsum

Hi Rita, than you for your thumbs up!.We first started as a self-reliant gardener in a small piece of land. A small farm slightly larger than 6 acres, but big enough to bewilder anyone trying to cultivate beyond what one can manage individually. Also because of its location near a fairly sized town ( now close to 140,000 inh.), but with all city services ( electricity, natural gas, Internet, phone, garbage collector), the plot became potentially very appropriate for retail vegetable gardening (which is developing) or nursery gardening ( which I'm planning to add). When one tries to upscale from personal gardening to one step ahead,i.e say provision of fresh organic vegetables for say 100 families , it implies organizing the shared workload with others.Searching for efficiency ( planning, organizing schedules and procedures etc)becomes crucial, however commited one may be in keeping things small, and thus under control. When I was a visiting graduate student 4 decades ago in SUNY Stony Brook, NYS, I picked some charcteristics of the American way of doing things: being very practical and sharing it with others while stimulating to find ways that could improve performance. Now its my time to share back with what we discovered in a life time search of how to go back to the land., without loosing the advantages of a more developed urban life. Thanks to technology and Internet this is now possible for millions anywhere in the planet. Yesterday, I watched with some nostalgia while the Pope Francis passed along familiar N.Y. city streets and places, with whom I share so many values and origins. I still belong to that group of people that believe that we can individually contribute for a better world, badly in need of dialogue.