Finding
harmony...
One of the main goals of Spruce Nubble
Farm is to live in harmony with nature. Finding this balance,
without simply pretending that its the stone age again, is
our mission. To this end, we do not use systems or products
which degrade the natural environment. We seek to enhance
and steward the land which supports us.
Technological homesteaders...
If we're not going to pretend that its
the stone age, then we must acknowledge that its
a new millennium. Many traditional farming methods use what
we think of as "inappropriate technology". In an
effort to make our lives easier, we
as a culture have prioritized making food less expensive
over the health of the planet. We are focused on using "appropriate
technology" -
human ingenuity applied to making the planet healthier AND
making our lives easier. We have learned that you can always
apply brute force or fossil fuels to a situation, but its
much nicer to use that big brain that God gave us to work
smarter, not harder.
Don't let perfect ruin good...
What we talk about above is what we are
striving for. We are far from
self sufficient - we
still drive a vehicle that burns diesel, we still suck
down kilowatt hour after kilowatt hour of electricity,
and we even use plastic wrap in the kitchen. We're doing
the best we can to take steps in the right direction. A great
example of this is our garden. We discovered recently that
if we use black plastic mulch in our garden, we triple our
yields. On the surface, black plastic sounds pretty evil
- but in reality, every extra pound of food we can raise
here and eat here, is one less pound of food grown with chemical
fertilizers and trucked thousands of miles from
places like California and South America. Is using plastic
in the garden perfect? Of course not, but its carbon footprint
is much, much less than the carbon
footprint of the alternatives.
Uh... What's a Nubble?
 nub'ble n. (nuhb-uhl)
1. a small lump or piece.
2. a small knob or protuberance.
So basically our farm is built on a little
knob sticking out of a hill, where there happen to be a lot
of spruce trees growing. |
