whole farm thinking

Hello Folks! Thank you so much for reading, it really lifts my spirits, even though my spirits are pretty darn high right now due to this wonderful wonderful program. This week we started with our intensive course, Whole Farm Thinking--which is a course to get us ready for farm planning. We're learning the vocabulary, we're learning the mindset, the resources of how to create a business plan. And right now, that means asking ourselves a LOT of questions. 
One of the main questions we are asking ourselves is about quality of life. What do we want to get out of farming? What do we want to give to the community by farming? I am looking for a good family life, a good learning and teaching community of people who like to have discourse--good conversation. Henry County seems like the perfect place to start. Good people, good community, good land. Home. 
Today we had a visit with Dalton Brown, the man who The Berry Center bought our school farm from. He's 94 and bought the farm in '64, and has been farming his whole life. We had questions for him, but surprisingly, he also had questions for us! Dalton asked us why we came to the WBFP and what we want to do farmingwise. In my life, when I started reading Wendell Berry, it was like I was awakened. Wendell Berry is, in what I have seen, an awakener. He awakens within people a sense of care, a realization of the self and others. Nowadays, as we begin talking about high technology becoming self-aware, we are losing our own self-awareness, our awareness of others, and that of the earth and the Earth. I wanted to have a life of purpose. You see, when one grows up used and abused--for me, I felt like I had no purpose, no choice, no way of escape. But here, I really do have a purpose. Here, I have the ability--the opportunity to look within myself and to know what I want to get out of life, what I want to give to others. When I talked to that man at the UGA Agriculture Department after reading Home Economics, I saw the light at the end of the tunnel. I saw a pathway to freedom. When I heard about the WBFP and their mission to teach farmers to farm well and affordably, I practically jumped for joy. I remember that evening with my mother, just reading about Sterling College from the internet and thinking, 'Why haven't I heard about this before? Why isn't every college like this?' Well, the truth is, there really are a lot of people still asleep. There are so so so many people that have been awakened, young and old. Even in the time of the word "woke" sometimes the "woke" people really are still asleep to the world and to themselves and to Purpose. 
We've been talking a lot about limits lately. Working within limits and Not breaking them. I feel like a lot of people--well, no, most people see the purpose of life as breaking free from limitations. However, there is something freeing about working within human limitations; that is the caveat, human. You see, when we work outside of the human limitations, we press ourselves, we change the things that make us human, the things that make us of this Earth. To be continued...