Farming has its unknowns. Weather, markets, labor, equipment, crop varieties – the list is a long one. Each new day brings its own drama. Will the seeds germinate? Will the cherry pickers arrive? Will the old tractor make it through another year? Men and women of the soil have lived with these questions for generations.

But in prosperous valleys like our own, there is a new question to live with: land values and succession. Namely, how can a farm continue for another generation if the revenues won’t cover the land payments?

This wasn’t an issue for my great-grandfather in 1927 when he bought the family’s first ten acres just outside of Chelan. Nor for Grandpa Toad when he returned from the second World War and purchased the farm from his dad. And even my own dad was able to buy a small share of The Sunshine Farm in 1969 and with the revenues from fruit production eventually buy out other partners and become its owner.

This model won’t work for me and Rachel. Land values have shot through the roof and the profitability of farming our steep valley hillsides has diminished. Even the best farmer in the world couldn’t produce the sustained income stream required to pay for this land.

My dad’s conventional economic advice has been to move on, to find another less expensive piece of land to carry on the farming tradition. I’ve resisted this suggestion even as I have struggled to discern an alternative path. From the start, there has been discussion of development. But in what form and where? And might it be possible to integrate residential and commercial uses with farming activities? These have been the big unknowns of my agrarian career.

In grappling with these questions, we’ve learned a ton about land-use planning, zoning, re-zoning, urban growth boundaries, growth management, planned development districts, and the ease at which a consultant’s bill can rise through the tens of thousands of dollars! We’ve teamed up with our neighbors on the south shore to plan together and help spread out some of the cost, but it still has been some expensive schooling.

The process is far from over, but it looks like my reluctance to give up on farming here at Sunshine is being validated. It turns out that the type of farming we have been moving towards these past five years – diversified and organic – has quite an appeal in certain sectors of the real estate market. Last week, the New York Times ran an article entitled, “Organic Farms as Subdivision Amenities,” which outlined several developments that have integrated farming and development And so we continue on. The old adage “Success is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration” provides good council. The unknowns of land value, development, and succession swirl about. Our job is to get up every day, put on our boots, and head out the door. We plant carrots, thin apples, harvest cherries and tomatoes, clean the market, care for the wine, and try to find a little rest in between. Everything else will have to take care of itself.

This relinquishment of control caused me some degree of distress in my earlier years. But increasingly I find that relaxing into life’s unknowns brings with it a good bit of peace. Some might call it a dereliction of planning. I call it trusting in tomorrow. There is plenty on today’s plate to keep things interesting.