The Indigo Swamp

"So, you're starting a farm?"

"Well, not exactly...it's more like a farm garden. Eventually it will be more like a forest farm."

"What?"

We've had this conversation many times through this journey in sustainable agriculture. It's hard to explain what we are when there aren't really any examples of what we're doing in our local area.

Don't get me wrong, food forests aren't a new concept: you can find them in Morocco, Thailand and elsewhere, some forests in production for over a thousand years.

Our 10 acres won't feed the world, it won't even feed all the people within a thirty mile radius of us. A systematic change must happen for humans to continue life on this planet (change doesn't happen over night) but we must work at it every day in spite of the fear and doubt that surrounds us.

Did you know that farm and ranch families comprise just 2 percent of the U.S. population? The Indigo Swamp family cares about changing that particular statistic. Remove the people from the land and you remove the connection they have to the land. Environmental destruction now teeters at the top of the list of biggest challenges we face. We believe that through education and community food projects that we can reduce the pressure on farms and allow them to focus on their local communities and reduce the need to ship food over long distances.

This change might hurt a little. It might mean not eating certain things at certain times of the year or hardly at all if they don't grow where you live. Even just reducing imported goods by 30% or more would greatly reduce the need for fossil fuels and genetic modifications to prolong the shelf life of produce. But we have to go beyond that. We have to make personal choices and we have to take responsibility: either responsibility to take action, or responsibility to admit we don't care enough to help.

It starts here. It starts there. It starts in your backyard or in your kitchen window. It starts with a seed, and it grows. Come grow with us and see where it branches out.

Maybe one day we can all enjoy each other's shade.