Back when I was coaching baseball, basketball, and softball, if anyone told me that my calling was actually to be a farmer, I would have scoffed.  Sports are about strategy and building the character and skills needed to win the game and win at life.  Even a decade ago, when colon cancer temporarily sidelined me from coaching and teaching junior high math, I would have never seen this coming.  Though, with given a second chance at life, I wanted to invest it in something that truly mattered

 

About the time I was enduring radiation, chemo, and surgery, our youngest daughter, Claire, fell in love with livestock, which turns out were a violation of our suburban neighborhood covenants.  I had already been experimenting with some smaller-scale garden and landscape work but wanted to grow good, clean food as organically as possible.  Moving to a few acres seemed like a modest accommodation of both our daughter’s passion and mine. 

 

A friend shared a book by Wendell Berry - a 7th generation Kentucky farmer, poet, and author - who transformed my thinking about everything farm-related.  Berry’s encouragement to think and act locally, embrace limits, and nurture (rather than exploit) both propelled my commitment and pushed me to establish guiding principles for what is now Remedy Farm.

 

I don’t miss coaching sports.  Working with nature to grow food while raising animals on pasture is peaceful and life-giving.  I’m grateful for cancer that brought me to this point, and I hope to help others to find this same joy.