I thought a lot about this question over the New Year's holiday, and don't know if I really got my answer.
Naming a business is such an important thing to do. Our original name, the Boise Book and Hobby Farm (even before that it was Doc's Book Farm), reflected my father's passions. He loved books, he loved all forms of hobbies and tinkering, and he loved the outdoors. Growing up as the youngest son on a group of seven brothers - Orthodox Jewish Immigrants in Pennsylvania living and working in a farmhouse - he learned any number of skills: cooking with his mother in his younger years, working on the farm in his teenage years, not to mention the skills he obtained through his service in World War II and his formal education. When the Book Farm was so named, it was more than just a play on words -- it really reflected his entire lived experience, I think.
My experience and education has lead me down many paths as well, and I spent many of my years with my father learning, albeit at the level a 3-9 year old would, about gardening, cooking, books and many other things. Piles of books have been around me for years, and when we donated most of them last year, I questioned whether or not books should still be part of the name. I also questioned whether it was really a farm, and if that is fait say. Is that fair to real farmers? Should I just stick with the name because it is known?
If you think of a farm in the sense of a sustainable place that has a diversity of products that help perpetuate other products and services -- like the old farm picture books we saw when we were little kids -- I think the Book Farm IS a farm, or at least on its way to becoming one. We clearly are not a farm in the modern, industrialized sense, where only one product is produced - we are not a monoculture. We aren't getting any corn subsidies. But I think in the family farm sense, we really are a kind of farm. Perhaps that is stretching it, but ...
We do everything we can to maintain the biodiversity of our acreage; we value our old buildings and do what we can to preserve rather than replace them; we use the tools and resources (like compost - TONS of compost) we have on our land as much as we can; we care about good food; we share with our neighbors; we struggle, and we persevere. Well, if I am honest the "we" has been relatively recent -- my mom has been doing this mostly herself, along with helper Harold, for many years. Managing 4 1/2 acres, dealing with irrigation issues, facility repair issues, gardening, watering, and loving the outdoors. So If my mom is not a farmer -- at least in the old time sense -- I don't know what she is!
This is perhaps a bit of a rambling blog entry. It's funny how you can reflect on something for a time and not really come up with the answer. Are we really a farm -- in my view, yes. Have I explained sufficiently why that is? Not yet -- but once I know the answer -- I will.
Comments