future past

Zach Walland stands beside one of his vegetable row fields at his Dharma Ridge Farm just off Beaver Valley Road near Chimacum, Washington, already living the life that many of us will need to learn for survival, comfort, and fulfillment in the days to come.

Zach and his wife Haley Olson along with their three kids and a varying number of hired helpers run this successful 10-acre operation. Central Market in Poulsbo, among other retailers, stocks Dharma Ridge produce.

Haley Olson grew up in Chimacum as a farm girl, and met Zach Walland in 1997. He came from Upstate New York where he made a life working on small organic farms starting as a teen-ager. There he learned how to do everything that wants doing on a farm including putting up buildings and making his own processing equipment. Besides the family's house, Walland erected barns and all of Dharma Ridge's outbuildings, and improvised most of his own equipment such as strainers, washers, and sprayers out of salvage.

Looking at the lives of people like this makes me realize I was born 30 years too soon. Also, too, I think I shoud reread the essay by Ralph Waldo Emerson called "Self Reliance;. And ain't it kind of funny? The future is now the also past, and "History ain't what it used to be," to quote the inimitable Yogi Berra.

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