Farming full time since 2008, and part time for many years before that, Tom and his wife, Theresa Ryan, have seen their share of transitions, from farmland transitions and suburban encroachment to changes in the local food and CSA marketplaces. Tom shares the story of how they’ve responded to these changes, and how rolling with the punches led him to think hard about how to right-size his farm and about his approach to his farm production systems.
Along the way, Tom digs in to how he got his first lessons in organic farming from PBS, the parallels between farming and teaching, and some thoughts about evaluating success on the farm.
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Quotes from the Show
So I had the time to kind of hone my skills without any real pressure other than just saying, "Well I don't have as many tomatoes to take to market today as I had last week.”
I'm just going to stick to what I can do, and leave it at that. And if it's not a million thousand dollars a month coming in the door, so be it. Whatever.
When you have the room to spread out, you can cultivate faster, you can plant faster, you can harvest quicker.