The Good Earth Farm

Image Gallery

If the good earth farm came about through searching for a way of life. I was not content with what I had come to realize through my own ego-pursuits and certainly there was little glory to be found in the method and achievements of my society.

Maybe I was tired ~ tired of toiling and killing and of trying to live up to the expectations of others when, hell, I couldn't even live up to my own.

So I asked around a lot, but it always come back the same,"This

is a cruel world, boy, you've got to get out there and struggle and fight hard. "Well, I had got out there and struggled and fought hard, but it always came both pretty much the same ~ more struggling and more fighting.

But then I came upon a verse in the Bible, somewhere in Matthew, Jesus said: "Consider the lillies of the valley, how they grow; they toil not..."

Everything's been fine since. The earth is good, and we have a lot of fun."

by Gene Le Roy

From an article by ANN NUGENT
Originally published in NORTHWEST PASSAGE, Box 705, So Bellingham Station, Bellingham, Washington 90225/fortnightly/$6.00 a year.

Gene and Charlotte LeRoy have found a haven on Guemes Island in Washington state's Puget Sound. The dirt road leading into their property from the highway tunnels through woods and the first sign of their homestead is the four-acre orchard. Over to the left stretches three acres of pasture . . . the LeRoy's 75-year-old, two-story wood house is visable beyond that . . . and four sloping acres where the vegetables grow lie still further on. Woods completely surround the clearing.

The LeRoys own 16 acres and make their living farming organically. They sell vegetables to friends on the island, in the nearby mainland town of Anacortes and to the Kagetsu Restaurant in Seattle's University district. Their produce is good: demand exceeded supply last year and the LeRoys are increasing their cultivation this season.

To Gene and Charlotte, farming organically is a way of life and they've chosen to use their resources and ingenuity in a bold attempt to reclaim land that agronomists have labeled unsuitable for farming.

"Those governmental officials are always on a negative trip," Gene told us. "They're always good at telling you what NOT to do. They claimed that my soil is a glaciated type and, therefore, is too rocky and barren—compared to fertile river beds—to farm. That's a lot of bull."