The Bigger Picture

Our move to Taproot Farm is a realization of some personal life-long dreams.

And it is an opportunity for us to support recent trends that inspire us.

To read more about them, check our website’s Resources page.

Growing our own food and supporting local farmers is important to us. Slow Food is the name of an idea, a way of living and a way of eating. It is a global, grassroots movement that links the pleasure of food with a commitment to community and the environment. Slow food aims to be everything fast food is not!

We were shocked to learn that food now travels an average of 1,500 miles before ending up on our plates. This globalization of the food supply has serious consequences for the environment, our health, our communities and our tastebuds. Honestly, until now, we have not loved to cook. But filling a basket with a colorful, fresh-picked bounty from our garden or farmer’s market and preparing it ourselves has changed us for good. Yep, we are now proud Locavores, eating healthier and bringing more of the food dollar back to the farmers who grow it.

Getting back to the land has made us aware of the consequences of taking from but not replenishing the earth. This tract of ours was obviously over-farmed for many decades.  The topsoil is depleted and very little riparian buffer is left to prevent the rest from eroding into the stream and river. We hope to return to a more sustainable way of landscaping and farming… dedicated to conservation, biodiversity and animal welfare.

depleted topsoil

For us, sustainable farming goes hand-in-hand with sustainable building and living. It is exciting to see how many new ways there are for us to make a smaller footprint- using less fossil fuels and taking more personal responsibility for the impact we make while we are in this world. See our Green Building page and follow our Taproot Farm Journal for more about how we hope to be involved.

Along with reconnecting to nature ourselves, we support efforts to get kids back outside. Our backgrounds in teaching and Scouts have shown us how kids come alive when they “unplug” and get out in the fresh air. The Leave-No-Child-Inside movement is a creative effort to address the recent phenomenon termed “nature-deficit disorder” that happens to young people who become disconnected from their natural world. This lack of nature is linked to some of the most disturbing childhood trends, such as the rises in obesity, attention disorders, and depression. Hopefully, from Taproot Farm, we can be part of the solution, one kid at a time.

Lastly, we feel so fortunate, as “seasoned” adults (let’s just say we’re over 50),  to begin a new adventure on the river. And we’ve been curious about why, at this age, we were so eager to leave comfortable careers and try something so new- to become “gray-haired beginners”. No, we are not retired in the old sense of the word. But neither are we interested in another “job”, as job used to be defined. When we heard an author speak about her book, The Third Chapter: Passion, Risk, and Adventure in the 25 Years After 50 we had found our explanation! With so many baby boomers facing their “third chapter”, full of energy, good health, resources and a desire for purpose, there is a need for a new paradigm. Check it out! Perhaps Taproot Farm is our way of experimenting with a different way to do “old” age- with renewed vitality.

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Want to be inspired?!

We are so inspired by the movement towards a small-scale, local, land-based economy and lifestyle.  The following is a clear and thoughtful discussion of what it means to create the “Good Life” (more life) out of less fuel, less income, less land. What an inspiration!!!!  Richard Heinberg discusses these things while taking us on a tour of his 1/4 acre oasis. Well worth watching.

Enlightened Simplicity-  video  with Richard Heinberg