Moving to Santa Cruz, 4-10 good buddies

Breaker! Breaker! What's your 20? Over!

Well, after a few wonderful months back in Virginia, 20+ acres of vineyard pruning, mandolin playing, rigorously training and studying in preparation for farm season, 2 New Jersey trips, 1 trip to Capital Hill, numerous meetings, discussions, outreach, and many memorable moments gained with my very lovely one.

Its time to go.

UC Santa Cruz Farm School is over a year and half in the making, and will last six months. Tomorrow I'm once again on the move. After the program Cathy and I are working on a deal to erect a Veterans Village in Sauk Centre Minnesota.

I will manage vegetable farming, field crops, and animals. Cat will manage green houses, flower production, and specialty crops. In essence we want to create a community enriched by agriculture, where food is grown from door step to field, and our community as well as neighbors will have a sustainable local food source.

Pruning for these last few months has given me ample time to digest the last two years of my life. "my omnivores odyssey" if you will.

Niger was the height of thirty years of life coming full circle. Since childhood my dream was to move into the African Bush and simply live. I can't explain it but this goal has always given me purpose in how I strangely move through life.

Niger was the culmination of this life achievement, but also the starting place for the next journey of my life. To become the farmer my villages taught me to be.

To become a farmer, and working with veterans is a merging of two parts of my adult life. The military and the Peace Corps. Each experiences drastically altered my perceptions of the world and impacted my life profoundly.

Leaving for this new journey I am once again nearly penniless and moving to a new place with literally nearly everything I own packable enough to ride on an airplane.

Being without money seldom worries me, I learned over the last two years that there are worst positions to be in, being without resourcefulness is one of them.

During the financial meltdown many kinds of folk from all types of classes are having to relearn how to live again. I think a possible solution to this equation is getting back to the roots (literally) and grow food.

The business of food and the structure of community has largely been eroded from our lifestyles. Food is more that sustenance, it is about people, building community, relationships, and learning how to care for our world.

Though I have lost nothing in the crises, my life has had everything to gain. Traveling has given me ample opportunity to observe, and learn how to create, not destroy.

Ultimately the greatest contrast between my Army and Peace Corps experiences.
I am exactly at the place and time I should be in.

As you can see over the last few months the blog has been neglected and my writing has waned for a short spell. Preparations for farm school also met ducking out of the world for a while to gather my thoughts and digest my experiences.

But this new journey now means recommitting to the little people…..

Y'all, my readers. I'll do my best to keep up on the goings on's

Thanks you all for the support, taking the time to read my blog, and most importantly many of our friendships.

Love Wastefully, 4-10! Over and Out!!

Josh the Farmer