Old 99 Farm, week of Dec 12 2021

I will get this prompt sent off to you early this week.

Please consider responding to our member/customer survey that I sent out over the weekend. We have 11 responses so far from people subscribed here. We’re asking for feedback on how we’re doing and how to improve.

Our offerings for this week Click here

Right now we have celery, mixed greens (aka mesclun), spinach, chard, collards and a selection of fresh herbs. Root vegetables include carrots, garlic, leeks, fennel, potatoes, turnip, rutabaga, squash varieties, and beets. Of course the freezers are full of beef, pork and chicken, and the hens lay eggs every day.

I’m trying out a new mission paragraph for what we do. What do you think of it?

Old 99 is a permaculture demonstration site and farm, growing livestock, fruit and four season vegetables, located 5 minutes west of the Dundas city lights. We see ourselves as preparing for the climate emergency by growing local food and garden-farmers, teaching about food security, living a 1.5 degree lifestyle, soil fertility and ecosystem resilience.

Quotes to ponder

“If hope becomes something you express through illusion it’s not hope it’s fantasy. Those who speak truth are marginalised and ignored. dismissed as pessimists in a culture that prides itself on a child like optimism at the
expense of reality. We have a mania for hope which our corporate masters lavishly provide across the political and cultural spectrum to keep us passive”. (Chris Hedges)

“The richest 1% of the world’s people (those earning more than $172,000 a year) produce 15% of the world’s carbon emissions: twice the combined impact of the poorest 50%. On average, they emit over 70 tonnes of carbon dioxide per person every year, 30 times more than we can each afford to release if we’re not to exceed 1.5C of global heating.” (‘Wealth Curse’ George Monbiot)

“Large-scale problems do not require large scale solutions, they require small-scale solutions within large scale frameworks.”(David Fleming, Lean Logic and How to Survive the Future)

And again, that’s another way of looking at what resilience is, It’s a way of linking together a diversity of small-scale solutions, like what this community needs to do or wants to do, or is equipped to do, is going to be totally different from what some other community wants to do. And that’s appropriate, we need a diversity of small-scale solutions, but we also need networks and frameworks that tie them together into a kind of empowered wave of change, if they’re to address large scale solutions. I’ve been involved with Transition towns, Ecological Farmers, National Farmers Union, Extinction Rebellion. All of these in different ways are about creating frameworks, that allow a diversity of small solutions to come together to address a large problem.

Healthy Eating
Ian and Cami