The (re)Commitment to Hope

Today, spring is sprung, the equinox has passed. We are in a new season, a fresh world, the same world. 

We still have a few more Winter-themed posts to get out over the next few weeks that Ellie, our Professional Writing Intern, has so intricately stitched together out of her introduction to and experiences at Franklinton Farms. Reading through such ecstatic work, I am reminded why farming is what turned us from nomads to home-builders.

There is balance in being a part of the land and there is hope in working the land. Farmers don’t farm for one season or one year. They farm with no end in sight, just the hope for good sun, good rain, and a good harvest. The CSA (community supported agriculture), first introduced to America by Booker T Whatley, brought a renewed hope to farmers for good neighbors, that the people around them would help see them through the years of feast and fallow. Community belongs on the farm where many hands make light work and many mouths taste success and forgive failures together.

Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is a success. (Henry Ford)

Sometimes it is easy in winter to have hope, it is usually the thing that sees you through the long, cold, dark and quiet. You fight for it and you focus on it.

Ellie has held us in her writing, curated hope through her words, and has shown that life doesn’t end in winter and a farm’s heart remains beating even in a season of rest.

As we enter Spring, the season where joy is birthed, I want us to hold that winter-hope close to us too. We should hold it all year long as farmers do. Our commitment to hope is our commitment to the land. We work with her, we live with her, we rest with her. We see better days ahead.

A community needs the longevity of these hopes to endure everyday challenges and change. Feel safe when there is a farmer present; they manifest dreams that will outlast entire lifetimes. Franklinton Farms looks into the future, ponders, then plants seeds.