If you want to learn at TOA, ask yourself:

• Do you have a passion for growing?

• Are you willing to help others?

• Are you ethical?  

• Do you eat organically?

• Are you willing to pay more for organic?

• Are you willing to keep it small to grow organically?

• Can you physically do the work required?

  • Agriculture requires hard work in heat, cold, high humidity, and harsh weather.

  • Agriculture can be physically, mentally, and spiritually challenging.

• Are you willing to pursue ongoing education for the rest of your life?

• Can you respect the rules of the land where you are privileged to grow food?

• Can you take feedback from teachers, customers, and others and keep smiling?

• Are you close to a consumer's market of people who will buy your products?

• Are you willing to create a value-added product line to support your produce sales?

• Do you have additional work opportunities?

• Can you support yourself on the money you will earn?

• Will you need additional income?

 When we are no longer able to change a situation - we are challenged to change ourselves. Viktor Frankl, concentration camp survivor

Goal Setting:

• Set your goals for life.  Set goals not just for your farm, ranch, or garden, but for your life.  Goals may change, but as the saying goes, those who fail to plan, plan to fail.  

• Farm and ranch management involves many complex, adaptive, interactive systems of soils, plants, and animals. There are no single answers to all the needs that arise. But books, magazines, conferences, seminars, and consultants can speed up the learning curve.  And as usual, don't necessarily trust everything you get from these sources.  If the author/lecturer does not study nature, don't believe a word he/she has to say. 

• Get a good mentor.

• Establish a policy of NO POISONS EVER.  This may be one of the most difficult policies (not just in farming and ranching) since this should include everything you eat, drink, and use on your body and in your life.  If it is toxic to the soil microbiome, don't have it on your property unless you can properly contain it.  

• Deal with what you are given, so you know what it is that you have. Inventory the land and all that is on it. The fewer inputs you have to make, the more you go with the nature of your piece of property, the more likely the farm or ranch will be sustainable.  

• Never harm the microbiome in the soil.  Instead, find every possible way to improve the biodiversity.  

What lies behind us and what lies before us are small matters compared to what lies within us. Henry Stanley Haskins 

A nation that destroys its soil, destroys itself.   Franklin D. Roosevelt