Teach a man to farm & feed him for a lifetime

I've always wanted to help people in some unique, important fashion, but I've also always never quite known what my skills, gifts, and dreams are, or even how & with what I what to get involved.  I have not felt strongly passionate about volunteering and giving my time to something in a long while.
This feeling of wanting to do something to help others, but not feeling led in any particular direction, has been difficult and confusing for me.  But now, especially since Eric & I are now living on the other side of the country, there are new things to get involved in, a smaller, more intimate church that has already made us feel welcome and loved, and more mild weather to be outside in.
I feel now that perhaps my life is heading in a particular direction that is definitely unique. What's funny & crazy in a God-given Dream, Destiny sort of way is that Eric has an incredibly generous heart and desires to help others as well.   The picture below is of our backyard in Cincinnati, and that is a wild deer napping under our maple tree!

Back while we were still living in Cincinnati, we loved the idea of planting a garden in our .25- acre backyard, to provide ourselves with healthy organic produce.  But there were two issues that caused us to do a tiny bit of gardening, but not very much.  The 1st issue is that we knew we would not be living in that house for much longer, and we did not wish to invest money, time, and energy on this garden that we would not be around to harvest and reap the benefits of.  The 2nd issue was our finances.  We did not have money to tear up our yard, buy mulch and seeds, and keep up a healthy garden.  But we still dreamed of someday having a decent-sized farm where we could grow enough organic produce to not only provide for ourselves, but also for needy people who would not otherwise have access to such healthy foods.  And now that we're now Washington State residents and have had lots of time to think about what our dream farm will look like, we now like the idea of not only growing crops, but also having some animals like chickens, goats, and perhaps even sheep and cattle.
But it really just depends on how much acreage we can afford to buy, what the rules are in the area we will live, and what the local market is for things like that.

For example, Washington is known for its apples.  Eastern Washington looks & feels like the Midwest, with open rolling farmland as far as the eye can see.  (And my eyes DID see it when we drove across the country in our moving van!)  So we may or may not grow apples on our farm, since the market may be saturated with them.
Our farm will most likely consist of 1-5 acres, depending on what we can afford.  So yes, it will be a very small venture to say the least!
And we want to live closer to the mountains, (or even in them!) which of course means it will be more difficult to find flat farmland.  But we'll see what we can get.
That is our dream.  What is yours?


image: http://wsm.wsu.edu/discovery/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/2009Aug_farm_stats2.jpg