Joël and I attended a workshop last Saturday on “Record Keeping for Organic Certfication”. Are we going over to the dark side?

It does mark a change in attitude for sure. Over the past months, with the development (I should say start) of the long-awaited farm plan, we have begun to see how all of the bits and pieces of various projects and interests can fit into a whole. More than a big vegetable garden and a few animals: a farm.

We have always been ambitious with the farm project — as anyone must be in trying to find a way to eke out a living at small-scale farming — but even the concept of sustainability has evolved for us. It’s not going to be enough to reduce our “foodprint”: we are going to try to eliminate it altogether.

So here is our mission, I’m throwing it out there, and it’s terrifying in scope: “to produce fresh food for our member families, with net zero energy consumption, throughout the year”. Okay so the wording is lame, but that’s the idea.

As much as we have shunned organic certification in the past as unnecessary, it seems from our current perspective that it may be only the beginning: with organic certification we will be practicing for the next step, an energy audit. Time to sharpen those pencils!