Is farming a vocation? A calling? An occupation? A l ifestyle? Maybe all of these things? What draws people to farming? Is it the comforting assurance at the start of a day that you have more work ahead of you than you can manage? Or is it the delicious anticipation that something will happen today that you had not expected? Today, we head to Birch Bark Farm in pastoral Pasadena, which is a dandy backdrop to play around with some of these questions, and to chat about transitioning a backyard garden into a career. Richard Butt shows us around his farm – we’re on a tour of fields, a forest glade, a caterpillar tunnel, a packing station, greenhouses – some completed, some under construction. And all of this in the brisk air of an autumn afternoon in the Humber Valley.
By the way, it was a farmer who chose the name Pasadena for that community – naming it after a well-known California city. Maybe it was in hopes that the agriculture would be equally prosperous in those two regions. The thing is, in the other Pasadena, they get over 4,200 hours of sunshine per year. In the NL Pasadena, the sun shines about 1,800 hours. But don’t focus on that difference. Rather, focus on the amazing things one can grow with just 1800 hours of sunlight!
