As in *Gaia* being Mother Earth and damage to her
is damage to everybody which includes *all Life*.
Citizen-farmers are preserving the land and harvesting a dream
Its 70.1 acres form a quilted, pesticide-free oasis of fruits, vegetables, flowers, herbs and animals, all in a suburban valley where it is more common to find strip-mall developments and traffic jams.
The citizen-farmers have done more than just get by, notching up devoted-customer numbers and sales last year that ranged from 400 dozen eggs to more than 4 tons of berries. As their fall season begins today with the opening of their popular corn maze -- healthy and tall this time, cut in the shape of a farmer with a horse-drawn plow -- they will have another chance to prove whether they can thrive.
FARM LLC investors had hoped to turn their first profit last year. They were stymied by the road construction and by weather that turned their corn, normally a prime family attraction and moneymaker, into a "drought maze" of withered stalks.
After five years of work, the group debated whether it was on the right track, asking, "Are we in or are we out?" said member and spokeswoman Christine Dubois, a writer in her non-farm life.
"It's the farm of the future for around here," he said. "Even though the challenge is that it's on the urban fringe, the blessing is that it's on the urban fringe.
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