New England Small Farm Institute, beautiful sun!

[NESFI buildings in the distance]

Yesterday we spent an amazing day in the sun, visiting several farms, one of which is the New England Small Farm Institute in Belchertown, MA, which is dedicated to supporting extant local farms and those people who are interested in starting up a farm.

Part of our ethic, which is embodied in our homeschooling, is striving for self-sufficiency and sustainability. These two terms can mean different things to everyone (gotta love that). To us this means planning and investing in a future that will nurture our children and their children. This doesn't mean building a massive trust fund, that is beyond our means. Because we are not affluent and also because the trust fund-wealth-accruing game is not ours, we have to put in sweat equity along with creative financing and much frugality.

Every day, homeschooling is absolutely about sweat equity. It is also about the life-of-the-mind, which makes the sweating noble :-).

We also are on a long term plan to implement a home-centered non-commuted oriented future for our children in the face of a very uncertain and intimidating future where peak oil has come and gone and the third stage oil wars are ravaging our economy.

We want to survive swimmingly in that time, we do not want to be swept away in the chaos that will certainly happen for many who do not have the foresight to appreciate the at-risk nature of our children's world.

This doesn't mean stock piling 30 years worth of nasty dried survival food, water in huge cisterns, amassing large caches of guns, throwing up fences or forming survival cults.

What this means is integrating non-oil based energies into our living and going off the grid. It means cultivating our land (which is UP-NORTH so that includes greenhouses as well as cold-tolerant outside gardens) and enriching it to full abundance.

It also means implementing systems for these goals that provide surplus that can be sold to a public that is/will be paying a premium for purity and green energy.

More on this later, I just wanted to share some shots from the property at the New England Small Farm Institute.


KD sitting in the sun at the door of the horse barn


Q contemplating the geese


Main NESFI building and little ones.


Chicken housing and chickens


NESFI greenhouse

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survival, self, sufficiency, self-sufficiency, Net Neutrality, organic, farm, organic farm, grid, biomass, cogeneration, permaculture, oil, peak oil, garden, off the grid, homeschool, green, electricity, energy, green energy, aquaculture, vermiculture.
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