My name is Luciano Garofalo (I go by Looch) and the Lady of the Onions pictured below is Emily Boston. We recently moved here from Tacoma, WA, to work at Mustard Seed, learn more about food, and build community with the wonderful folks here! We had previously been working in L'Arche (www.larchethc.org), an intentional community for adults with and without developmental disabilities. I lived in and managed one of our four homes, and Emily worked on our community's organic farm. L'Arche was a beautiful model for how we as humans should love and hold each other in community, sharing our personal gifts and the fruit of our labor.

I personally haven't had a ton of experience with organic farming, so I've been reading a lot about it to supplement what we've been doing outside and in the greenhouse. I sometimes get frustrated at how little I know. But I've been slowly integrating all the bits and pieces flying through my memory concerning growing food, such as from times I helped on the farm in Tacoma or things Emily has talked about from her Permaculture Design course.

It is long overdue, this connection to the earth that I'm rekindling. To grow and prepare nutritious food is integral to our nature and our need to thrive and be happy. But our means of production in this country have become so separated and our roles so specialized that we as a community of people have become quite literally fragmented, and our nutrition even more so. We whip our planet and each other to exhaustion, extracting what we think we need, when we really could be allowing ourselves to be nourished--receiving from the earth, rather than taking, and giving back to it in return. Such is the way we as people long to be treated. I'd like to learn to maintain such a balance of trust with nature, as well as with others. It is a relationship where there is no place for greed or fear of hunger; where I am free to give and receive.