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This is a hard blog to write.

I will soon be leaving Beardsley Community Farm.

The Knox County Healthy Department has been awarded a large grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation for the Healthy Kids Healthy Communities program.

HKHC is a four year program hoping to find innovative solutions to battle childhood obesity in over 40 cities in America. The Knoxville HKHC program will focus on three communities in its first year: Lonsdale, Inskip and Mascot. My responsibilities as program manager will include grassroots organizing, needs assessment in the communities and meetings with policy makers in order to bring about real change for the betterment of Knoxville’s children.

Though I am very excited about being given this opportunity, it makes me sad to leave my work here at Beardsley.

We’ve come a long way in the last two and a half years, thanks entirely to people like you: our volunteers, supporters, friends and family.

The Short List: What We’ve Done Together

• Created a 7,000+ gallon water catchment and storage program

• Planted over 40 fruit trees in the heart of the city

• Revitalized Beardsley’s entrance with new steps and a straw-bale gateway

• Hatched ducklings

• Expanded the chicken coop

• Built a chicken tractor

• Created an aquaponics system

• Planted a small muscadine vineyard

• Put in bramble beds, raspberry and blackberry

• Created a beautiful butterfly garden with over 80 natives

• Started the Youth Leadership Program, employing and mentoring 30+ Knoxville youth

• Planted an herbal tea bed

• Expanded our community gardens

• Expanded our donations to include 2 more food banks

• Created a beautiful website

• Worked with 1,000s of volunteers

• Educated 100s of children about gardening and urban agriculture

• Started 4 new school garden programs

• Built an herb spiral

• Installed edible landscaping at the L. T. Ross building

• Expanded our composting system, including vermiculture

• Started 3^rd Saturday Work Days

• Created a Beginner Gardener’s Guide

• Made a beautiful brochure, in English and Spanish

The list goes on and on.

These are your accomplishments, Knoxville. I’m so proud to have played a small part.

There’s more work to be done, always.

Beardsley won’t be left adrift, not by a long shot.

We have an absolutely INSPIRING AmeriCorps crew this year. They’ve, in their (much too short) time here, transformed Beardsley and brought new energy and insight to the ways in which we operate and serve the community. And then there is Khann Chov. She has been a constant source of encouragement and has taught me about leadership, compassion and humility. I am indebted to her, to all of my AmeriCorps team members and to each person who has given selflessly of themselves to Beardsley and its mission.

I love this job and I love this work. I will do my best to work for the things that create real good: food, soil, wild spaces, toil, craft, local economies, smallness and our children.

I will miss all of you but I’ll be right around the corner.

Start small.

Embrace your mistakes.

Remember… It takes a little longer than you think.

Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front by Wendell Berry

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.

So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.

Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millenium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.

Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion – put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?

Go with your love to the fields.
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn’t go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.