Farm Events and the Full-Diet Plan

(written by Quincy)

We had a great group out for our latest event on the Farm.  We invited folks out to learn more about the Full-Diet option we are offering to our farm members.  Every chair was filled!  William and Vernie explained the mission of C’est Naturelle Farms and the concepts of truly eating “like a farmer”.   The group was given a tour of the farm, and then a gorgeous luncheon complete with delicious, farm fresh foods.  The event ended with a tutorial on how to fill out the order form and a Q & A on the Full-Diet plan.  It was a joy to see families out, despite the rain and mud, to come together to learn more and participate on the farm. I have to say, we are so blessed to be a part of C’est Naturelle.  The Full-Diet plan is  revolutionary and so many are catching the vision!

If you didn’t get a chance to come to the event, or want to come out again, C’est Naturelle is hosting TWO events in April.

April 14th and April 28th, 11am-1pm. Both events will include farm tours, fresh farm food samples, and Q & A on the Full-Diet plan. Bring your chairs, boots, and rain coats!

Take care and see ya there!!

You are Invited…

The Price of Local Food

There’s a common misconception among people today that eating local, sustainably grown foods is more expensive than purchasing from a large, nationally recognized grocery store chain…

…But have you priced it recently?

We have.

William and I went on a date last week  to a couple of local grocery outlets.  This is a rare occurrence (both the date and William going to a grocery store) and is definitely worthy of mentioning here on the blog…take a look at my earliest posts for a sample of the kind of dates we go on.

We went to New Season’s on Thursday and Safeway on Friday evening.  (Two dates in one week…hot dog!)

We took a copy of our 2012-2013 Personal Family Food Planner with us.

We compared our prices with the prices at both places, just to see how we stacked up.

We were blown away…with excitement!

Take a look at the prices below and then go do your own comparison shopping.  We are half the price of many of the other locally grown, organic items and the same price and sometimes less than the conventionally grown products.

When we assigned prices to our products last fall we based them on three things:

1. Our production cost
2. The value of our labor
3. The needs of our farm members.

We knew that every item had to “pay for itself” on the farm, we knew we needed to make enough on our profits to be able to afford to farm (this is our livelihood, not our hobby), and we knew we needed to keep it affordable for the families that participate in our farm membership.

We don’t want local food to be available only as an elitist or “once in awhile” treat and we were determined to price our food at the lowest amount we could to serve our farm members and still make enough of a profit to keep farming.

And we’ve done it!  Compare for yourself and see the…

price,

quality,

and

service

advantage of buying direct from the farm.

Fresh food has the best quality and you can’t get food any fresher than this unless you grow it in your own garden.

And who can beat free front door delivery service with C’est Naturelle Farms Full-Diet Membership plan?

Plus, as low as these prices are, if you choose the Full-Diet Membership they are actually even lower than that.

How can we afford to do it?  By knowing in advance what our farm members want and need we are able to save time, resources, and effort so that we grow more food more efficiently and we can then pass the savings on to you.

C’est Naturelle Farms Price Comparison Chart

Prices on March 1, 2012	C’est Naturelle Farms Oregon City, OR	Safeway Oregon City, OR	New Seasons Market Happy Valley, OR
Growing Methods:	All-Natural, pesticide free	Conventional	Mostly Organic
Arugula	$1.50/8 oz	$2.49/0.66 oz	2.49/bunch
Beets	$1.50/2 lbs	$1.49/lb (sale)	2.49/bunch (2 lb)
Beet greens	$2.50/8 oz	n/a	n/a
Broccoli head	$2.50/head	$1.89/lb	2.99/lb (2 lb)
Broccoli leaves	$2.50/ lbs	n/a	n/a
Cabbage	$2.50/ head	$0.99/lb	1.69/lb (2.5 lb)
Carrots	$1.50/bunch	$0.99/lb	2.50/bunch
Cilantro	$1.00/4 oz	$0.69/bunch	1.50/bunch
Collards	$2.50/2 lbs bunch	$1.79/bunch	2.50/bunch (2 lb)
cucumber slicer	$1.75/2 cukes	$0.99/each	1.50/each
Cucumber  pickling	$2.50/ 20 cukes	n/a	n/a
Fennel	$1.50/bulb	$3.99/lb	$4.99/lb (1.5 lbs)
Garlic	$1.50/2 bulbs	$1.00/3 bulbs	5.99/lb (4 bulbs/lb)
Green beans You pick	$1.00/lbs	n/a	n/a
Green beans we pick	$4.00/lbs	$6.99/2 lb bag	$1.99/lb
Kale	$2.50/bunch	$2.49/bunch	2.49/bunch (8 oz)
Kohlrabi bulb	$1.50/2 bulbs	n/a	3.00/each
Kohlrabi leaves	$2.50/bunch	n/a	n/a
Mustard leaves	$2.50/8 oz	$2.49/bunch	2.49/bunch (1 lb)
Onion green	$0.95/bunch	$0.79/bunch	1.00/bunch
Onions bulb	$1.50/2 bulbs	0.49/lb sale	1.29/lb (1 bulb/lb)
Parsley	$2.50/bunch	$0.99/bunch	1.50/bunch
Peppers hot	$1.50/6 peppers	$1.49/lb	4.99/lb
Peppers sweet	$1.50/ 2 peppers	1.50/each	3.99/lb
Potatoes	$3.50/5 lbs	0.46/lb/sale	1.29/lb
Pumpkins  large	$6.00/each	n/a	n/a
Pumpkins small	$3.00/each	n/a	n/a
Radishes	$1.50/bunch	$0.79/bunch	1.49/bunch
Radish Greens	$1.50/8 oz	n/a	n/a
Rutabagas	$1.50/3 roots	n/a	2.49/lb
Sorrel, french	$1.75/8 oz	n/a	n/a
Sorrel, sheep	$2.00/8 oz	n/a	n/a
Spinach	$1.75/8 oz	1.99/ 6 oz bag	4.99/lbs
Squash Summer	$2.00/ 5 squash	$1.99/lb	2.99/lbs (2-3/lb)
Squash Winter  medium(butternut)	$2.50/each	$0.99/lb	1.79/lbs (2-3 lb/fruit)
Squash Winter small (acorn)	$1.50/each	n/a	1.79/lbs (1-2lb/fruit)
Swiss chard	$2.50/bunch	$2.49/bunch	2.49/bunch
Tomatoes  slicers	$2.50/3 lbs	$4.99/lb	2.99/lbs
Tomatoes for canning (You Pick)	$0.80/ lbs	n/a	n/a
Tomatoes  cherry	$1.50/lbs	$3.99/ 10 oz	2.99/lbs
Turnips	$1.50/3 roots	n/a	1.99/lbs
		n/a	n/a
Eggs   (100% pastured)	$5.00/dozen	N/A	$6.99/dozen
Milk   (raw, pastured, grain-free)	$5.00/ half gallon	n/a	n/a
Butter	$12.00/lbs	n/a	n/a
cheese  Mozzarella	$6.00/lbs	n/a	n/a
Cream	$8.00/quart	n/a	n/a
cream cheese	$6.00/lbs	n/a	n/a
sour cream	$8.00/quart	n/a	n/a
yogurt	$8.00/quart	n/a	n/a
Italian bread	$5.00/loaf	$1.99	$2.99
Dinner rolls	$5.00/6 rolls
Granola Caribbean	$6.50/lbs	n/a	$5.49/ assorted
Granola peanut butter	$6.50/lbs	n/a	$5.49/ assorted
Granola blue berry banana nut	$6.50/lbs	n/a	$5.49/ assorted
Granola vanilla cranberry pecan	$6.50/lbs	n/a	$5.49/ assorted variety
Granola cinnamon apple walnut	$6.50/lbs	n/a	$5.49/ assorted variety
Granola very berry cherry	$6.50/lbs	n/a	$5.49/ assorted variety
Granola apricot almond	$6.50/lbs	n/a	$5.49/ assorted
Granola plain	$6.50/lbs	n/a	$5.49/ assorted
Granola red white blue	$6.50/lbs	n/a	$5.49/ assorted
Cookies Chocolate chip	$6.00/dozen	n/a	$2.49/per cookie
White chocolate chip cookies	$6.00/dozen	n/a	$2.49/per cookie
Michaela’s Ultimate Oatmeal Cookies	$6.00/dozen	n/a	$2.49/per cookie
Cranberry, Walnut and white chip oatmeal cookies	$6.00/dozen	n/a	$2.49/per cookie
Herbs
Thyme	$1.50/4 oz	$2.49/ 0.66 oz	1.19/oz
Sage	$1.50/4 oz	$2.49/0.66 oz	1.19/oz
Onion chives	$1.50/4 oz	$2.49/0.66 oz	1.19/oz
Oregano	$1.50/4 oz	$2.49/0.66 oz	1.19/oz
Mint	$1.50/4 oz	$2.49/0.66 oz	1.19/oz
Dill	$1.50/4 oz	$2.49/0.66 oz	1.19/oz
Basil	$1.50/4 oz	$3.99/ 4 oz	2.99/bag
Stevia	$1.50/4 oz	n/a	n/a
Sprouts/micro greens
Pea shoots	$2.50/8 oz	n/a	4.99/pot
alfalfa sprouts	$2.50/8 oz	$1.59/ 4 oz	$2.99/bag
wheat grass	$2.50/pot	$1.99/ pot	2.50/pot
Buckwheat sprouts	$2.50/8 oz	$1.59/ 4 oz (clover)	4.99/pot (mixed sprouts)
Meat…  price per lbs includes processing and wrapping fees  (price may vary slightly according to processing fees at time of butchering)
Pork whole hog (150 lbs)	$6.00/lbs	$1.69-$10.99/lb	$5.99-$14.99/lb
Pork half (75 lbs)	$6.00/lbs
Pork quarter (37.5)	$6.00/lbs
Lamb Whole  (75 lbs)	$6.00/lbs	na	$7.99/lb
Lamb Half (37.5 lbs)	$6.00/lbs		$7.99/lb
Beef whole (400 lbs)	$6.00/lbs	$4.99-$7.99/lb	$6.99-$10.99/lb
Beef half  (200 lbs)	$6.00/lbs
Beef quarter (100 lbs)	$6.00/lbs
Chicken broiler -3 lbs	$3.95/lbs	$1.49/lb	$2.99/lb
Chicken broiler- 4 lbs	$3.50/lbs
Chicken broiler- 5 lbs	$3.35/lbs
Chicken Feet (For Soup Stock)	$2	n/a	n/a

How to Occupy Our Food Supply…or in Other Words…How to be a Farmer

I am a farmer.

I am a farmer’s daughter.

I am a farmer’s wife.

I am a farm family’s mother.

I am a friend to many farmers.

I eat, sleep, breathe, and dream farming.

All day long, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.

It is what I do.

It is what I love.

It is what I will be doing until the day I die.  And I hope, like William’s Great-Grandpa and my own Great-Grandma that I will be able to work hard until my body just wears out and they lay me in the ground that I have labored on.

I farm because I love the lifestyle, I love the animals, I love the land, I love the sounds, smells, sight, and feel of the farm.

And I love the food.

There is no way to describe the absolute sweetness of freshly picked fruits and vegetables.  The flavor is beyond good.  You consume the living food and suddenly you feel more alive, it’s as if you were eating health and well-being.   Anything canned, boxed, bagged, or processed tastes like perfume to me these days.  It smells good, but tastes like a chemical when it touches my tongue.

Yesterday a blog post from “Almost All the Truth”, which is written by one of our farm members, caught my eye and sent me scouring the internet for more information.    She mentioned the “Occupy Our Food Supply” events that are going to be taking place on February 27^th.

It was the first I’d heard of it.  Here’s a link to the group that started it http://ran.org/occupy-our-food-supply

I’ll let you do your own research on it and make your own decisions.  As for myself, I think that they are working for something good.  I have no great affection for, and more than a little disgust for the new worldwide “superpowers” like Monsanto, Cargill, and ADM that claim to “feed the world” but leave a wake of human and environmental destruction behind them.  But in my reading I’ve come across some thoughts from the “Occupy” side that make me worried, make me leery of stepping into this movement full force politically, and has me checking my gear to make sure we’re not just tilting at windmills like Don Quixote.

One of the things I read, from another group that is supporting “Occupy Our Food Supply” was that they believe that “food is an inalienable right”.

As a farmer, one that is well acquainted with growing what I eat and eating what I grow, I cannot in good conscience concur with the statement that food is an inalienable right.  As a farmer I know that statement to be false because as far as the land and the resources are concerned…you have no rights, you have no promises, you have no guarantees.   To paraphrase a popular sentiment of my youth “Nature’s ornery and she only tolerates us.”

If that’s the truth that I’ve come to realize over the last 20 years of being intimately involved in working with the land, why oh why do so many people believe otherwise?  Why do we think food is a right rather than a privilege?

Well…here’s my 2 cents.

The reason we think that food is an “inalienable” right is because Cargill, Monsanto, and Archer Daniels Midland have made our food so easy to get.  It’s easy to get corn/wheat/rice/sugar/etc., because they’ve made genetically altered seeds that aren’t anything like nature made.  They don’t die when you spray them with chemicals, when bugs bite them the bugs die, they don’t rot, mold, or go bad.  That makes it easy to get a harvest.

Does anyone really understand anymore how difficult it is to raise ALL of your food supply?  We don’t use those “miracle” seeds that can’t be destroyed here on our farm.  We use the old-fashioned varieties that need to be tended and cared for by hand and it takes an amazing amount of time.  We spend a lot of time looking for and fighting bugs, weeds, molds, slugs, mice, gophers, and blight.  We work hard at it because it’s not just the way we make our living…it’s our food supply.

I watched, listened to, and read the news when all of the Occupy Portland events were going on and I heard the comments one of the “occupier’s” made.  I’ll have to paraphrase here because I’ve forgotten now which radio program I heard it on, but the gist of his statement was “We should have more comforts of life, we should have more food.  The earth is our mother, she provides us with food, we should be able to eat for free.”

And… that’s where the Occupy Wall Street movement totally lost me.

The earth provides our food?  For free?  Really?  And I thought, rather sarcastically (which I abhor so I apologize) “Yeah?  And when was the last time you grazed for your breakfast?”  If you’re religious then you’ll remember the last time food sprang forth freely without sweat and blood occurred some time ago.  Like before Adam and Eve went out for Friday date night.

There is nothing remotely “free” about raising food.  The Big-Ag, GMO, super-ultra-mega-subsidized crops come nearer to “free” than anything that we’ve ever raised in our garden.  They are bug-free, disease-free, and weed-free, which makes it easy to raise it with very little labor cost and a great deal of government paychecks which equals a nice profit margin.

But if you are committed to truly responsible farm husbandry practices you come to realize, after years of labor, that nothing is free.

And why isn’t it?  Because you have added human life value to it.  You have worked for it, with it, and on it.  You have spent your time, tears, and blood to make it beautiful and productive…how could that have no value associated with it?  We love and value what we labor for.

The things that we get for nothing are worth nothing.

Why?  Simply because they haven’t changed us or shaped us.  We haven’t sacrificed for them, cared enough for them to work with them, or to express gratitude through our labors.

We value all life here on the farm.  We treasure it and work for it.  The farm is absolutely pure joy for us.  All the labor, loveliness, work, stress, discouragement and bounty of it are joy, but let me tell you: joy has a price that it demands for its services and it’s called work.

Hard work.

It is a testament to the success of “Modern” agribusiness that we have the luxury of debating whether or not food in an inalienable right.  Why?  Because there aren’t many people in this country who have experienced true starvation.  And thank God for it.  If we were experiencing true hunger we wouldn’t be arguing over “how” the food was raised, or the kind of seeds it was raised from, we’d just be glad to have something to put in our belly.  It is also a testament against large agribusiness that we have to resort to crusade tactics to effect change because they have been so irresponsible in their pursuit of global trade domination that they have shown no consideration for the health, well-being, or happiness of the people and land they work with.

Please do not misunderstand me or my intentions here, I know that there are thousands upon thousands of families and individuals in America today that are homeless, hungry, poverty stricken, and hurting.  I know that there are children that go to bed hungry at night; it makes me sad, it spurs me on to work harder, and I do everything I can in my small part of the world to help alleviate that suffering.  I myself have been in the difficult position of having to choose a healthy salad for two meals, or hot dogs for the whole week.  I’ve been stuck in Green River, Wyoming with $2.00 to my name and uncertain of what I would eat the next day.  But even with those experiences I, just like most American’s, have never experienced true hunger.  Hunger that persists day after day, year after year, so that it stunts the body, robs the mind, and weakens the soul.

My brother, a family doctor back in Minnesota, goes on medical missions to South America about twice a year.  After the last one to Guatemala he came to visit my husband and me here in Oregon and when he saw what we are doing with C’est Naturelle Farms he said “Man, I hope you can take this to those people someday.  It would really help them.  They are so busy just surviving from day to day that they are too tired at the end of that day to contemplate how to make it any better.  Some people in our rescue group went down about 20 years ago and helped them build a fence and a roof over their community water supply.  Something really simple, right?  Well, the fence kept the animals out of it, so the animal waste wasn’t going into the water that they used for drinking, they built a small wash area where families could wash their laundry so poopy diapers and filth from their clothes weren’t going in the water, and now, 2 decades later, the life expectancy in that village alone has increased by 10 years.  Just from one roof, over one water supply.  Think what you could do if you took your method of small-scale but full-production farming to them.  Just the simple act of creating separate pastures to rotate the animals into would break the parasite cycle that makes so many people sick.”

What he described to us was “survival” which is not a picture of success, prosperity, or liberty.  Survival says “how will I feed my children today?” and can’t see anything past that.  Prosperity says “How will I make the world a better place today?” and has the time to contemplate and act.

It is an amazing position of power to be in.  As participants in the greatest experiment in liberty, prosperity, and happiness ever embarked on (I like to call it “America”) we have had that position of power handed to us by previous generations and I think that the invitation to do something good with it is a noble one.

So what will we do with it?

I believe, as I ponder this “Occupy Our Food Supply” idea, that if we are careful of our direction, resolved in our commitment, and dedicated to our decisions then we really can make a difference.

What I hope is that it becomes so much more than just another gripe-fest.  I don’t want to see it turn into another “My life is pitiful!  It’s has to be somebody’s fault, somebody save me!” romance novel dialogue on one of the most serious problems facing the world today: politically driven famine.

There is enough food produced in the world today to feed everyone on this earth, and feed them well.  It isn’t drought, crop failure, or flooding that is causing the suffering of millions of people; most of them children.  It is the politics of greed, power, and control.

What I really hope is that we choose to “Be” somebody who takes a stand and makes a difference instead of “Blaming” somebody for what we don’t like.   Because I don’t personally believe that big government can save us anymore than big-agriculture can.  The problem with anything that “BIG” is that it has no mind of its own and no heart to feel.  How can anything good come from something that is brainless and heartless?

I’m grateful that Brenna wrote her Almost All the Truth blog yesterday and again this morning to bring attention to one of the largest problems we face.  I love that she is so committed to sharing the information she has discovered about keeping our world healthy, beautiful, and vibrant for the sake of our children.  I love knowing that Brenna isn’t a finger-pointer, a complainer, or a whiner.  She’s one of the “doer’s” who not only sees a problem and points it out, but commits herself on a personal level to live her life based on principles, not just persuasion.  I really admire that.  She has offered some great suggestions for what you can do today to make a difference.   Check out her website here: www.almostallthetruth.com

Here is my hope for the “Occupy Our Food Supply” movement.

• That people will commit to buy from a farmer for more than one day.  I hope that they will commit to it every day.  If you plan to eat it, plan to know who grew it.
• That our society will see work as a privilege, not drudgery or a punishment. The ability to labor is a gift…we need to start unwrapping and using it.
• That everyone who believes that good food is important will “occupy” their own space and plant a garden.  Whether it’s in one little terra cotta pot in the kitchen window, a plot in a local empty lot, or in your own or a friends backyard, plant some seeds, get your hands dirty, and add some human life value to your land.  You’ll reap a harvest greater than good food.  The ancient Greeks believed that the real harvest of the soil is the human soul.
• That everyone who is opposed to the strong-arm, bullying tactics practiced by some of the Big-Ag corporations will stop buying their products.  Just stop.  If we refuse to buy it, maybe they’ll stop trying to shove it down our throats.

One day of Occupying Our Food Supply is a great start, but it won’t change our current system.  If we don’t want our efforts to be wasted we have to commit to a principle, and to a way of purchasing and eating that is less convenient but better for our environment and our society.

Find a farmer, buy his food.

Plant a garden, tend it, and eat your food.

Join a community garden, work together with your friends, and eat your food together.

Have fun, eat well, and increase your life value.

Occupy your own life, take control of your choices, and reach out to help others.

That’s the farm fresh recipe for occupying your space here on Mother Earth.

And if you’d like, come to the farm today, February 27, 2012, and Occupy Your Food Supply at C’est Naturelle Farms.  Monday is our busiest day of the week; it’s when we get everything organized for the work we plan to accomplish in the next 6 days.  But we’ll take the time to walk you around the farm, you can see where we grow your food, where your animals are raised, how they are cared for and how you can support local, environmentally responsible farming.  We’ll show you how we intend to labor to support you and your family in your goal of having the freshest food you can eat brought right to your door.  We’ll make the time to show you because we believe in your worth, we believe it’s our job to support you in accomplishing whatever great thing it’s your goal to do.

“You” are why we farm to feed 100 families.

Farm Subsidies, Obesity, and a Zephyr Wind

In Mid-October we were interviewed by the CBS Early Show to give our perspective on US agricultural farm subsidies and the impact on not only American eaters, but on American farmers.

William and I have had first hand experience with farm subsidies and the culture of dependence that they breed.  We were young farmers in 1996 when we went for the first (and last) time to our local USDA office and asked for a small grant to get us started on our family farm.  We needed less than $10,000 to start a business that had the potential to grow into a profitable living for our family.  But they wouldn’t even consider funding someone who wanted to raise tomatoes and get out of debt in 5 years.  They tried to steer us instead to $250,000 dollars in farm debt to produce soybeans and corn, heavy pesticide and herbicide use, and the promise of finally paying it all off when we eventually “bought the farm” with our deaths sometime in our 80′s.  Is that what they marketed in words?  No, but it’s what we saw time and time again in the lives of the Mid-Western farmers that followed that system. We just couldn’t see ourselves jumping on the sinking ship of government supported farming when our hearts told us that success was in private ownership and small business.

We’ve been following that path now for over 15 years and I’m grateful for every mile of it.

Do farm subsidies really promote obesity? Yes…and no. At the end of the day I believe that every person is responsible for what they eat. No one, not farmers, politicians, large corporations, or anyone else is force feeding the American eater a diet of Twinkies, HoHo’s, and Oreo’s. We choose what goes in our grocery carts, our mouths, and in our children’s mouths and are ultimately responsible for that choice. BUT, the American farm subsidy program encourages the continued production of unnaturally low priced foods that are filled with highly processed, “food like substances” (go read Michael Pollan’s books…great!!!) derived from corn and soy crops.

Take a Twinkie for example. Have you ever made a Twinkie? I HAVE made the homemade equivalent of a golden creme cake and it’s a lot of work. It requires a lot of ingredients, a lot of time, and a lot of baker involvement to produce the final treat. The only way that a snack cake with that many ingredients and steps in it’s production can be sold for such an inexpensive price is if the ingredients it is made from are sold incredibly cheap. It leaves me wondering how a Twinkie can be cheaper than an apple when it takes so much more work to get the Twinkie. I’m inclined to agree with Joel Salatin’s statement in the title of his new book “Folks, This Ain’t Normal” (go read Joel Salatin’s books…they are also seriously great!!!)

On a lighter note our son Ezekiel came in this morning declaring “There’s a Zephyr wind blowing this morning! Come feel how warm it is.” He was right. There was a delicious, nearly tropical breeze blowing across the farm this morning and it felt like a touch of Spring even in the deep of December. It makes me want to go dig in the dirt and get muddy. That’s really saying something because I usually feel that I’m fighting dirt like the Romans fought the invading Huns. I think I’ll put down my weapons of war, the broom, mop, and vacuum and instead seek an audience with my beloved enemy. Maybe we’ll have a picnic lunch by the lake, or just a stroll down the farm road, anything that takes me outside, under the sky, and near the soil. It’s a good day to be a farmer.

Tilling Fields of Stone

One of my earliest memories as a child is of working in the field behind our house at Hillcrest Orchards.

We were moving stones.

Each year when my father would work the ground for the garden more stones would appear, almost as if they floated upwards through the earth just to get to the sunshine at the top.  My tiny hands could only carry the smallest rocks, but I carried what I could.  We made a tower of them at the side of the field and I recall thinking that they looked like potatoes.

Years later I once again moved stones with my husband William.  He hitched our draft horses, Jim and John the huge Belgian geldings, to our “rock boat” which was a piece of steel bent up on all sides, supported by rebar, and used to “float” the heavy rocks out of the field.  He had used it a lot growing up in the red rock country of Hurricane, UT.  His family’s farm fields were filled with stones, but they were determined to grow in them every year.  We used the rock boat on our family farm in Missouri to remove stones from the area where we planted 1,000 fruit trees.

My children have had the pleasure of moving stones from the fields we’ve worked, building their own potato looking stacks, spiriting them away to serve as foundations for play forts or Anasazi cliff dwelling replicas.

Moving stones is as much a part of farming as planting seeds or hoeing weeds.   We are accustomed to hard work, well acquainted with the weight and weariness of it, and have felt the absolute pleasure of falling into bed at night exhausted but satisfied with a good day’s effort.

But recently I’ve run up against hard places where I’ve never been before and I’ve labored in fields that baffle, confuse, and sometimes pain me.  I try to make sense of the rocks in my chosen professional “field” and I confess that I cannot make sense of them at all.

Two of our fellow farmers and friends were recently raided on their farm in Overton, Nevada.  Their “crime”?  They were planning to serve fresh food from their garden, free range beef and lamb, prepared by a certified chef in a certified kitchen to their friends and farm members.

Does it confuse you too?  I’m baffled.

In fact I’m beyond baffled, I’m appalled.   I confess that in the past when I’ve seen some of the “food raid” videos I have thought to myself “they must have done something they shouldn’t have, they must have crossed a line somewhere.  A government agency wouldn’t do that…would they?”  But I happen to personally know Monte and Laura Bledsoe, the Nevada farmers who were raided, and what I know of them speaks so loudly of integrity, commitment, and dedication to principles of kindness and service that I can’t believe that they didn’t do everything in their power to comply with any regulations given to them by the health department.  I’ve been to Quail Hollow Farm multiple times, and the Bledsoe’s were just here at our farm in Oregon City two weeks ago.   I’ve seen the amount of effort they put into serving the people in their community, the efforts that they go to bring not only food, but comfort and compassion to their farm members.  I’ve watched Laura travel to Africa to bring the hope of education and freedom to countries that are looking for both.  I’ve heard her, a quietly diligent woman, stand and teach youth and adults alike to work hard, study harder, and to stand up for what they believe in.

Here’s Monte…he really looks like a nefarious character doesn’t he?

And here’s Laura with the Las Vegas chapter president of Slow Foods.  Yup…really suspicious.

Then I watched the videos of the raid, the responses of the Quail Hollow farm members and I ask myself:  if this is what food safety means where have our American freedoms gone?  You can watch the video yourself and read Laura’s words in this article: http://shanonbrooks.com/2011/10/people-live-dirt-roads-monte-laura-bledsoe-quail-hollow-farm-csa/

When friends are not allowed to eat a meal together to celebrate the bounty of the year, when a government official tells a state certified farmer that her food is only fit for a landfill, not even good enough for pigs, when people who have hired a farmer to raise their produce for them are not permitted to eat that food, when that same official tells a concerned citizen “that’s all the information you need to know” …I would say that it is well past time to speak up and say something.

This past year I testified in Salem before a committee that was considering the Oregon Agricultural Reclamation Act sponsored by Friends of Family Farmers.  I asked them to defend my right to produce the food that consumers want.  I was one among a good crowd of farmers asking for the same right, and lobbyists for big ag who were opposed to it.  Several of our farm members made it down to that meeting to show their support, not as farmers but as EATERS, for the freedom to obtain more easily the food they wish to consume.

But it’s not enough.  We MUST keep talking.  We must be diligent in defending our right to consume healthy food…because as this video demonstrates there are people in positions of power who do not believe you have that right.  And we need more voices.

What can you do to make a difference?  Let me give you a couple of suggestions:

1. Join and support Friends of Family Farmers.  I have been working with them for a while now and I am nothing but impressed with their commitment to preserving your food freedom and the right to farm.  They need more committed members to keep their vision going.  Visit their website at http://www.friendsoffamilyfarmers.org
2. Join and support The Farm to Consumer Legal Defense Fund.  I am currently a member and have found their advice to be a great help.  By helping them defend farmers on a national level you are defending the right to eat the food of your choice. You can see the mission and work of the fund at http://www.ftcldf.org
3. Last but not least…whenever possible buy your food directly from a farmer.  We are so blessed in this area to be surrounded by farms that are willing to sell direct to consumers.  Find them, buy your food from them, and let your purchasing habits send a loud and clear message that you want to be free to eat good food.  You have no idea how powerful your choice to buy farm fresh and local is to food freedom.  It’s what keeps the farmers growing, it’s what keeps the food available for next year, it’s what help drives the desire to farm sustainably, using natural methods that protect the soil, the water, and the animals and plants that take their living from them.

If we work together we can maintain our right to eat healthy food, raised in a way that builds healthy families and healthy communities.  Is it something you believe in?  Is it something you can defend?  One of my favorite quotes is from the pilot and author of “The Little Prince” Antoine de Saint-Exupery:

“Only he can understand what a farm is, what a country is, who shall have sacrificed part of himself to his farm or country, fought to save it, struggled to make it beautiful. Only then will the love of farm or country fill his heart.”

I learned while I was a young girl picking rocks out of a field on my parents farm what sacrifice for the farm meant.  I learned at their side as we traveled the country on back roads and scenic byways, visiting memorials and historic markers along the way about the lives of men and women who sacrificed to give me this land that I farm.  I have felt an obligation to them and to myself to preserve and defend what they lived and died for.  William and I have spent our married life defending it together.  We have labored with the land even when it hasn’t been popular, when our neighbors have accused us of being crazy, evil, or stupid for trying to raise our crops in a regenerative way.  We recently had a neighbor tell us in a very confrontational tone that we were doomed to fail, he didn’t want cows and chickens near his property and that we were fooling ourselves if we thought we’d grow anything but rocks in our fields because this land won’t produce anything else.

It may very well be that we harvest a few rocks from our farm…but then we’ve done it before and we are willing to do it again.  Because those who come after us will have fewer rocks to contend with if we care for our fields well today.  And in the meantime our fields of stone are yielding some pretty delicious “weeds” like these…

And these…

And these…

Thank you so much for supporting C’est Naturelle Farms.  Thank you for speaking up for food freedom with your grocery money.  We know that with the difficult economic times we are in every dollar counts and we don’t take them for granted.  Your commitment gives us the ability to keep going and we don’t take the sacrifice you make lightly.

Together we can till fields of stone and build the foundation of a healthy, free society.  It’s a battle, but if Napoleon was right and “an army travels on its stomach” then at least we’ll go to war well fed.

New Inhabitants in the C’est Naturelle Farms “Forest of Night”

One of our farm animals made a recent addition to the farm in my children’s favorite place on the farm, “The Forest of Night”. It has been a great forest for the kids to play in. The have fought battles, raised dragons, circumnavigated the globe, scaled mountains, and been on deadly polar expeditions all without ever leaving those trees. And now it has been transformed into a natural nursery. Enjoy!

In Memory…9/11/2001

I know that I am just one of many who will be posting their thoughts and feelings on this day of remembrance of the events that occurred on September 11, 2001.  I have read blogs and articles, seen photos and read captions, and each one has brought some new understanding and perspective to my life.  I hope that my words of remembrance can do the same.  This is one of the stories from my book “Walking My Father’s Fields: Love Letters from a Daughter of the Land” which will be available later this year.  I realized as I read this again today that so much in my personal world has changed and yet so much of what is most important is still the same and will never change.  For that I am profoundly grateful.

The Love of Family

It would seem that the title of this love letter is self-explanatory and universal.  It’s generally expected that most people love their families, either the one they come from or the one they create or are welcomed or adopted into.  It’s a fundamental, foundational belief across generations, cultures, languages, religions, political parties, and creeds…love your family.  I think I’ve been very obvious throughout this work so far about how I feel towards my own family and the intensity of the love I have for them.

The idea of familial affection speaks to the best that is within us because (let’s be perfectly honest) sometimes it is a struggle to love your closest relatives.  It’s nearly impossible to live near and have a relationship with your parents and siblings, in-laws and cousins, grandmas and grandpas without friction developing from time to time.  Tempers can flare over something as inconsequential as dirty socks or as seemingly insurmountable as adultery.  Those who love one another deeply can jump to choose sides, misconstrue motivations, misinterpret words, judge harshly, or withhold affection, support, and any outward sign of kindness in an attempt to remain uninvolved in personal differences of opinion and perceived slights.

It can be a rough road to travel at times, especially since we all drag along our collective baggage with us.  And sometimes when one member of the family finally lets go of his own baggage, there are others who, not as ready to let it go, feel compelled to go through that dirty laundry and stuff it in with their own bags and bring it along on family vacations, to reunions, and on cross-country road trips.

As family members we can support one another better, defend longer, wound deeper, and disappoint more than anyone else on Earth.  No one else’s studied disregard or casual indifference can hurt so deeply, and no other gentle hug and whispered, “Good job!” means so much.  We are often privy to the best and worst in each other and are by turns both less and more forgiving than the rest of the world as well.

We may love or loathe one another; we may distrust or admire or envy or pity one another because so many emotions are tied up with family relationships, but at the core of it is one basic idea; we belong to one another.  “Warts and all,” as my mother says.

This belonging requires a conscious effort on the part of all family members to look well beyond their own comfort, their own well-being, and their own satisfaction to seek out the needs of each other and help to fill them.  I don’t know how old I was when this notion really took a hold of me, but I’m guessing it was sometime around the summer I turned eight.  Up until then I had derived great pleasure in being the evil tormentor of two of my older brothers, Aaron and Jared.

We would sit in the back seat of our old green Cadillac as it cruised down the narrow two lane highways, Aaron and Jared by the windows, me in the middle, and I would worm my hand down by their legs and pinch them.  There was a reason for pinching their legs and not their arms; Mom and Dad couldn’t see me do it.  My brothers, not being as sly and devious as I was, would respond with a good honest punch on my arm, which mom and dad could see.  I would proceed to bawl and carry on with a wonderful dramatic flair after which mom and dad would launch into the “Don’t hit your sister” talk.  I’d smirk or stick out my tongue at my brothers, and they’d frown and silently threaten to pulverize me later.  I never felt sorry about this until my eighth summer when I did it for the last time to Jared.  I pinched, he punched, mom and dad lectured, and Jared gave me such a look of utter distaste for my behavior that I actually felt bad.  I was shocked.  The punch was nothing, that was just a couple of kids playing around, but that look?  It really knocked me for a loop and my mind started working.

It made him feel bad when I teased him?  He felt bad when we played nice one minute and I was mean the next?  It was hard to shed my little narcissistic cocoon; it was painful to find myself experiencing emotions outside of myself.  It would be nice to say that I never went back to teasing my brothers, but remember I was eight and it was a relatively habitual behavior.  But I gradually learned not to as I began to understand remorse and empathy the older I got.  Although I should clarify that I only felt guilty for pinching Jared, Aaron liked to flip my ears and I figured he deserved it.  Actually he still flips my ears by way of greeting, but since we live about 2,500 miles apart it has now become more nostalgic than annoying.

I understood sympathy as it related to my own pain.  I didn’t want to make Jared feel bad because then I’d feel bad.  It was still a kind of self-serving niceness, an avoidance of pain rather than a conscious seeking to do good in spite of it.  I spent the better part of my teenage years trying to understand that principle better, the wanting to perform good works out of a sincere desire.  Sometimes I got it right, more often than not I didn’t.  The blessing of a family is that you get the opportunity to keep trying.  Each new day you have the opportunity to try again to serve with love, to develop compassion, and to better understand mercy.

Becoming a mother in 1998 intensified my feeling of selfless love.  The first time I held my eldest son in my arms I began to realign my thinking, the way all mothers must, into recognizing that he wasn’t “me” anymore.  Not my body, as he had been, not just an extension of myself as I thought of him at first.  He was Ezekiel; he was unique, himself, totally new and undiscovered.  I couldn’t wait to hear his thoughts and know his feelings; and I was certain as I held onto him that I would do anything I could to protect him.  It was a strange and terrifying emotion to love that deeply and recognize in the same instant that it was my job to raise him in such a way as to ensure that he could survive without me.

When I found myself pregnant with my second child I was worried.  I honestly couldn’t comprehend loving another child as much as I loved Ezekiel; he was just such a wonderful little boy.  How could anyone else come close to touching that depth of love I felt for him?  I didn’t think my heart had room for any more love and I worried about whether I could be a good mother to both of them.

But then Ephraim was born and it was as if my heart had grown inside me just as surely as he had.  When I held his tiny little body to my breast, stroked his cheek as soft as a butterfly’s wing, and felt his little fingers hold tightly to mine, I could feel it swelling into new life, beating stronger than it had before.  I hadn’t realized until then that there was more love to be had, that it is not a finite commodity.  With the birth of Ephraim I found more love for Ezekiel and William as well, more love and gratitude for my parents and grandparents, more appreciation for my brothers and sisters, and a greater tenderness towards other children that were not mine.

Zeke was three and Eph was one in the late summer of 2001, and life was exciting.  William had worked for Doc Windom for over five years as a veterinary assistant.  He loved the work, loved working alongside Doc, who was a wealth of knowledge when it came to animals and the progress of agriculture in the Midwest over the past 40 years.  William learned so much more than husbandry on those trips with Doc.  He learned the impact of subsidies on farm families, the real cost of CRP and he saw firsthand the gradual dismantling of the greatness that was mid-America.  A desire was born in William as he and Doc drove those once thriving back roads, a desire to teach people what farming used to be about, that it was more than profit and loss statements, more than insurance claims and government handouts.  He wanted to show people that it has the capacity to be the foundation, the role it has always played, in a civilization.  He read, studied, and listened, and the more he learned, the more determined he was to be a voice for what farming could be, what we’ve always felt it should be.

He decided that summer to attend Northwest Missouri State University.  It was only 50 miles away; he would learn everything he could in their agricultural education department and then he would teach.  Little did we know then that it was not the answer he was looking for, that the education system was not geared to support and sustain independent land-owners or teach them relevant information.  We hadn’t heard of Joel Salatin then.  We didn’t know anything about groups like Local Harvest.  We didn’t know any of this yet and so we made plans to attend.  We looked for housing in Maryville, and William still worked with Doc, treasuring the last few months he had to learn from him.

It was a beautiful Indian summer day in northwest Missouri that September when I drove William into town to Doc and his wife Joan’s office.  Doc did the vet work, and Joan took care of the books and customers.  I drove over to my Mom’s house with Ezekiel and Ephraim to visit.  We sat at her kitchen table while the early morning sun filtered in through white Battenberg lace curtains and cobalt blue glass figurines and talked about my sister-in-law Joy’s harvest party coming up in October.  The boys were playing with building blocks in Grandma’s play room; it was a simple, pleasant morning.

Then Aaron called.  He knew Mom and Dad didn’t have cable or satellite TV, so he said, “Mom, you need to turn on your radio.  A plane just flew into the World Trade Center.”  She handed me the phone and raced over to her kitchen counter to flip on the old radio.  Every network was talking about it.

I asked Aaron to repeat again what was happening and he said, “They don’t know who it was but someone flew a plane into the World Trade Center in New York.”  My mind couldn’t wrap around it.  I think I asked, “On purpose?  It wasn’t just some horrible, freak accident?”

“No,” he scoffed grimly, “It wasn’t an accident.”

“How did they get an empty plane into New York airspace, right into the city like that?” I asked.

“It wasn’t empty.  They hijacked it.”

I think I handed the phone back to mom then.  Not empty?  I shuddered.  How many people? I wondered.  How many survivors?  We didn’t know about the second plane yet, we didn’t know about the collapse of the towers.  All I could think of was the plane.

William finished work early that day; I told him what I knew while I drove him up to his parents’ farm, eight miles from our little house in Denver, Missouri.  We watched videos on the TV of New York City.  We saw the planes hit the towers again and again and again and again.  Each time it was like a new wound.  We saw the towers collapse and the gray dust and rubble cloud cover the city streets.  As videos from amateur photographers emerged, we watched the same horror with new eyes.

William drove himself to work the next day while I sat, safe and warm on my couch, watching the war zone that New York had become.  I watched as images of the Pentagon emerged, as a field in Pennsylvania appeared with a giant black scar on the farm fields marking where flight 93 had crashed.

And again all I could think of were the planes.

I imagined myself on those planes.  The networks showed pictures of the passengers and I wondered what would I have done if I had been one of them?  If my child was sitting beside me and I knew we were flying to our death, what would I say?  How would I comfort my child?

And suddenly, as I sat there contemplating the unimaginable and the terribly real, I was seized by an emotion I had never really felt before…hate.  I had never known before that moment what it was to really hate another human being.

I hated, with an almost perfect passion, the men who had calmly looked into the eyes of their fellow passengers and then willingly murdered them.  The hate was so huge it burgeoned up inside me like a bomb.  It made my skin sensitive to touch, my ears attuned to more sound, and my heart cold.  It wasn’t enough that their bodies were disintegrated in the fire and buried beneath thousands of pounds of concrete and rebar.  I wanted them to suffer more than death; I wanted them to know a greater torment.  Hell was not even enough for me.  I wanted them to be cast down past even the burn of the fires of brimstone to where they could rot in the cold and empty silence of nothingness, where they could exist in nothing but the horror of their own barbarism, cruelty, and damnation.

For hours and hours I could feel nothing but that all consuming hatred.  I fed my children, I changed diapers, I started dinner, but I couldn’t move my heart past the cold of my emotions.  Finally I sat, with my children spread at my feet, watching it again and again and again.  I don’t think I realized I was weeping until Ezekiel put his little hands on my face and said, “Mommy, why are you crying?”  I told him, as simply as I could that some very bad men had flown some planes into the buildings and that I was crying because so many people had died.

“Why did they do it Mommy?” he asked.

I had no answer for him and none for myself so I just pulled him to me and hugged him until he squirmed away to go play with his blocks again.  His tender, baby boy hug calmed the hate inside, but I could still feel it threatening to overcome me.  It drove me to my knees, and I pleaded with God to take it away, to remove the hate from my heart.

I believe in God.  I believe in His active participation in my life.  There have been too many miracles and moments of transcendent beauty and strength in my life to deny Him.  This was one of them.

As I knelt there on the floor of my living room, my two sons playing beside me, pleading with the God of the universe to take the hate from my heart, I felt something shift inside my soul.  I have discovered over a lifetime of praying, seeking, listening, and receiving answers that God doesn’t just take things away.  He replaces with something else.  He doesn’t exist in or create vacuums and voids in our lives.  He replaces, fills, compensates, and redeems.

I didn’t know it but that is what I was pleading for: redemption.  And it came, as surely as sunrise and seasons, and was as painful as birth.  Because in removing the hate from my heart, He replaced it with something else.  Something I had felt twice before, only now it was deeper, richer, and more encompassing than I thought possible.  It was painful to grow and to accept what He wanted to give me—to accept a parent’s love.

At once, unbidden and clear the images of those planes filled my mind only now they were sharper and a terrible love filled me with joy and an aching sorrow.  In the clarity of that moment a thought, both beautiful and agonizing entered my heart.  It spoke to my mind words that changed me forever.  “All of the people on that plane were my children.  All are my sons and daughters.  All have need of my love and mercy.  Forgive, for your sake.  How much more need of forgiveness have my children who wound their brothers and sisters willingly?  Whom would you have me deny?”

All I could think in response was “None.” Somewhere in the Middle East there was another mother kneeling in prayer, seeking comfort in her loss; in England, New York, Japan, Australia, California, Mexico, Brazil, Kenya, China, and all over the world mothers were seeking comfort and peace in a world overrun with enough hate to fill an ocean.  I couldn’t bear to add one more drop.  There were already enough hearts given over to the cold nothingness of hate, revenge, and terror.  I didn’t need to be another one.

Love, compassion, sorrow, and forgiveness swamped me.  I trembled with the intensity and pulled myself up to the couch where I wept out my broken and newly bandaged heart.  Ephraim crawled over and I picked him up to rock and feed him.  Ezekiel climbed next to me and patted me on the shoulder.

I wept and wondered at the easy love between my sons, two brothers who had been friends all their short lives.  From his first view of him in the hospital bassinet Ezekiel had cried out “It’s Ephy!” as if he had just been waiting for his best friend to arrive.  I thought of the troubled relationships of adult siblings, marred by anxiety, loneliness, resentment, and envy.  I thought of parents who, no matter how old or young, worried over their children and choices they knew would lead to unhappiness and heartbreak, knowing every child must make their own decisions regardless.

My definition of family changed that day, and I was no longer just the youngest of twelve, or the last of the big parade.  I was a daughter of the divine, a sister to the noble, a mother of heroes.  I was also the daughter of transgression, the sister of fear, the mother of want and need.  I was no more and no less than one part of a tremendous whole, and I had a role to play on this stage of my existence.

I had to choose.

In the end that was the answer to my prayer.  God forced nothing upon me, because he never does.  He simply allowed me to see the two paths before me and let me choose.  Anger, hate, and a frozen heart or love, forgiveness, and a broken heart.  There was no easy choice, there never is, but there was for me a correct one.  I chose to love my family.

All of them.

Not just the ones that think like me, or look like me, or believe all the same things.  I had been well taught after all, by my own parents that we are a family because we choose to be.

Everyday we live we are given the opportunity again to love our brothers and our sisters, to look past perceived differences to what makes us the same in our hearts.  We all hope for a better world for our children, we all search for love and comfort, we all strive to find meaning in our day to day labors.  Each new day we are again shown our two paths—love and life or hate and death.  We walk in the paths our parents have shown us.  We forge new ones that lead us to greater understanding and peace.  We seek to know our legacy and either live up to or overcome it.  We do the work required to ensure that our name is synonymous with generosity of spirit.  We choose our place; and when we have chosen, we reach out to our neighbors, to those we come in contact with to build our family, our community, our world.

There is a need in the world for family.  There is enough and to spare of violence, bitterness, and condemnation.  It can be hard to stand in an angry mob and be a voice of courtesy, charity, and conviction.  Hard because it is difficult for some to understand that peace is not passivity and that humility is not weakness.   It is hard for some to understand that standing up for your personal truth does not equal a lack of consideration for theirs.  It takes many voices to make a choir, each member singing their own part.  An orchestra is richer for its diversity of sound—the melody, harmony, major, and minor notes all blending into a magnificent work of art.

The God that filled my heart with mercy on a beautiful late summer day in the middle of America made a world full of differences—mountains  and valleys, deserts and seas, farmlands and forests.  Opposites and opposition exist in the world, and all we can do is choose for ourselves.

I look at my brothers and my sisters, some that share no common blood with me, and I see only hearts that love as I love and hands that labor to do good.  The differences are lost in the depth of feeling we share with one another.  We draw no lines in the sand that separate us.  We have our differences and disputes but we draw a circle of love that welcomes everyone in to the warmth of family.

I look around me at the people I do not know, at the family I haven’t met yet, and I feel the yearning to draw them in, to know them better, to welcome them home to my heart so they will know they are loved, they will know that they belong.  Because in the end we all belong to one another.  Warts and all.

Just Keep Growing

As many of our farm members know, William and I were away from the farm last week.  We finally sold our house down in the four corners region of Utah and went down to empty out our storage shed at the house.  It coincided nicely with a sisters wedding which we were able to attend and allowed us the opportunity to visit family and friends.  William and I also celebrated our 16th wedding anniversary and after having just attended a beautiful wedding the week before I was struck by just how much I love my farmer.  I would have told you 16 years ago that there was no possible way that I could love my husband any more than I did then…who knew that my heart could grow so much?

I didn’t know 16 years ago that we would have so many ups and downs, so many heartaches and so many blessings.  It’s nice to have a day or two of clarity, to see just how far we’ve come, to see just how much we mean to each other, and to be reminded that all of our blessings have been richer because we’ve been able to hold on to each other and our belief in better days as we’ve waded through the rough times.

Our anniversary was on April 22nd, and on Saturday morning as I was heading to the market to get some spinach for my green smoothie my phone beeped to let me know I had a message.  We were staying with my brother-in-law and his family who live in a beautiful rural town that is unfortunately a black hole for cell phones so I pulled over to the shoulder of their little country road to listen to my messages while I had service.  There were a few messages from family for my anniversary, and one from my mom asking me to call her back right away.  I could tell by the tone of her voice that something was wrong so I tried to call her back right then but her phone was busy.  I listened to my messages again and heard the message I had missed the first time and it nearly stopped my heart.

One of my cousins had committed suicide two days earlier.

Mom had been trying to reach me but hadn’t been able to with our spotty cell service.  I couldn’t believe it.  ”Why?”  Was the foremost question in my mind.  Why quit now?  Why when things were going so well for him?  We still don’t know.  He left notes but the police won’t let the family see them yet, they wouldn’t even let his wife view his body without paying $400 first.  They told his wife and parents that it will be at least 3 weeks before they will release anything to them.

I sat in the front seat of my car, crying as William held me, and couldn’t imagine the despair that must have driven him to that extremity.  And I couldn’t bear thinking of the pain my aunt and uncle were going through.  They were unable to physically have children of their own and had adopted a son and daughter and had loved them as much as any parent could love a child.

He’d been one of my heroes when I was a little girl.  I remember visiting them once when I was about 9 years old.  I had hit that unfortunate, gangly and goofy stage of youth where your teeth are too big, your arms too long, and no matter how hard you try you’re tripping over everything in sight with feet that suddenly can’t seem to figure out where they’re going.

I was avoiding injury and potential damage to the house by sitting alone out on the back patio and breathing in the smell of flower blooms and freshly mowed grass.  All of a sudden my handsome, teenage cousin came out with two glasses of lemonade one for me and one for himself.  Randy sat visiting with me, asking me about what I was currently interested in, about my friends, just about me.  It was a sweet moment for a young girl and I loved him for it.  I loved him for caring enough about me to take the time to visit with me and make me feel interesting when I was convinced that I was a hopeless geek.  I never forgot it, and even though life kept us busy and out of touch except for an occasional remark on facebook, I still loved my cousin.

As we drove home from our trip and I crossed mountains, deserts, rivers, and valleys all in the space of hours the trials, joys, sorrows, and regrets of years ran through my mind.  As I easily passed over rivers that had claimed the lives of early Oregon pioneers I measured my ease against their toil, my commitment to principles against their absolute determination to keep going to the end of the trail.  I thought of our garden waiting for us at home on Kirk Rd. and of the high desert garden I had just seen at my father-in-law’s house.  Those beautiful tender blooms hang on year after year in some of the most adverse conditions.   I drove past an apple orchard in full-bloom clinging to a tiny, steep-sloped hillside in the Columbia River Gorge and marveled at its persistence.

When we arrived home William opened up his sprouting chest and found to his amazement that his tomato seedlings, which he had given up for dead, were still alive and groping for the light.  In his absence, with no water, no light, and no hope of surviving without either of those things they still kept growing.  Their stems were a little leggy and they were drooping but a little bit of water and an afternoon in the sunshine refreshed them and they are now growing happily in the greenhouse, stronger than some of their other siblings who had no stress to overcome.

And then it struck me, as I watched William tending to those little seedlings, that humans are the only creatures on the earth who willingly give up the chance to live.  After years of tending crops, raising animals, and watching the cycle of life and death inherent to farming I have never seen a tomato plant die because it just stopped wanting to live.  Even with disease, mildew, pest damage, and broken stems and branches they still keep fighting onward and upward.  We’ve had animals that have suffered from injury and disease that have fought against their own damaged bodies to try to stand, to move, to just keep going for one more day.  We’ve done all in our power to help them and sometimes are rewarded with a miracle of healing and sometimes with the eventual death of a well-loved farm friend.  But no matter the outcome we are able to walk away knowing that we did everything that could have been done to save their life…because every life is precious.

It broke my heart, to think that maybe there was something I could have done or said to help my cousin, but now I have no way of knowing, and no way to fix it.  I can’t tell him now how precious his life was to me and I wish he had known.  How often do we consider our lives unimportant to others?  How often do we believe the lie that our life doesn’t make a difference to anyone else?  Far too often I’m afraid, but unlike the animals we work with and the plants we tend, the people we come in contact with have the power to choose  despair or hope.

Many of our farm members have shared their personal stories with us, their journeys that have led them in search of the healthiest food they can find in order to save their health, the discouragement they have felt from time to time when they felt they had no control over something as seemingly insignificant as what they could eat.  Many of them have been at that decision point that asks “Can I keep going?”

You can.  You can keep going and more importantly you can keep growing.  This is my message from the farm today…please, please, please just keep growing.  Don’t give up when you think you can’t keep going one more step.  There are people you can’t remember, people you may not even know, who need you.  Your life matters.  Not one plant on our farm goes to waste, not one.  All of the systems of our farm are interrelated and intertwined and a loss in one represents a loss in all of the others.  So it is with our community of friends, and in the larger family of man.

Your life is precious and you are the only one who can live it.

So take heart, and take the next step.

Just Keep Growing.

Books, Bradbury, and Knowing Beans

My mom called me this morning at around 6 am.  She lives in rural Missouri and tries to wait until a “decent” hour before she calls in the morning.  I am usually awake, but not always out of bed when she rings.  We’ve kept in touch this way for years.  She calls to tell me about all kinds of things: the worshipers at church, births and deaths of anyone I might know, marriages, the latest recipe she found, the last book she’s been reading.

This morning she called me about an article she read in her little hometown paper, Bethany’s Republican Clipper.  The author was lamenting what he had discovered at a university bookstore during a recent trip to the Mizzou campus in Columbia.  “Where are the books?” he asked.  In their place he had found cosmetics, movies, toys, candy, and gift cards.  He pondered what was becoming of our society when we have become so dependent on digital knowledge.  He argued for the continuing necessity of physical books, those glorious works of art upon whose pages is recorded the best and worst of human thought.

It’s a good question…where are the books?

I see many of them on thrift store shelves.  I come home with a stack of them almost every week from Goodwill.  Their prices range from $0.10 to $2.00 each.  I don’t often check books out from the Library.  I’m incredibly grateful for the library, my children adore it, but I never remember to bring the books back on time.  I’m forever paying late fees and I’ve found it’s just cheaper to buy my own copy.  Besides that I’m a compulsive re-reader.  I seldom read a book just once…unless it was drivel the first time around, in which case I don’t waste my time.  I love words, the sound of them as they move through my mind, the texture of them on my tongue when I say them aloud.  I love the combination of words that lead to meaning, to thought, and to action.  There are passages in the books I’ve read that have the flow and cadence of poetry.  I like to reread it just for the depth of feeling and soul resonating power they engender.

I have often set down a book that has just filled my heart and mind up and been appalled to see the $0.25 price tag.  How could those thoughts be worth only twenty-five cents?  Grateful as I am that I could afford to purchase it, I am still appalled.  It comes too close for comfort to Guy Montag’s initial belief that books had no value in Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451.  And just how close to the hedonistic society described by Bradbury have we become when a box of Trojans has replaced a copy of Tolstoy on the shelf?

The act of bookmaking used to be an art form.  The illuminated manuscripts of the middle ages, the beloved and well-tended scrolls of the ancients, even the carved clay tablets of the early Mesopotamians were all created, cared for, and preserved because they were beautiful both in being and in content.  They were valued not only for the words on their pages, but for the time it took to create them, the joy that went into every stroke of the pen or brush.

It reminds me of farming.  “Vernie,” you say “Everything reminds you of farming.”  It’s true.  I’m a farmer…what else can I say?

We’ve had the most fascinating experiences over the last 10 months as we have been busily building a successful farm here in the Willamette Valley.  We have done our best to marry the joy of our ancestors farming methods with the modern technology of marketing.  We’ve tried to make it easier for our customers to order our farm goods while maintaining our commitment to raise our produce naturally.

What does that have to do with books or more specifically the value of books?  Just about everything.

We have become accustomed to the digital information age.  With our Kindle’s, Nook’s, and iPad’s we have access to 1000’s of books right at our fingertips.  Not only that, but we can search our books by keyword and idea, thereby chunking our texts into little tidbits, tiny bite size pieces that don’t take too long to consume.  We see this paradigm shift in our farming business as well.  We’ve made it so easy to order products on line that sometimes potential customers are unaware that we actually do raise the food they are purchasing; an effort which takes time.  I recently had several customers experience some difficulty with ordering a product in our web store.  I received multiple emails informing me that the system was not working because they couldn’t order what they wanted.  I had to explain, in a couple of instances several times, that it wasn’t the system…there simply weren’t any more (eggs, milk, kale, etc.).  “What?” is the response I heard “But I want to order some.”  It’s a producer’s nightmare, people want your product but you don’t have enough.  All I could do was explain that the chickens, cows, and garden can only produce so much.  We don’t force feed them, or put them in cages to make them lay, or sprinkle the ground with chemical fertilizers that would make them bigger.  We grow in harmony with the seasons and with the needs of the animals.

And it takes time.

Time.  That is the crux of the common dilemma between books, farming, raising children, cooking a healthy meal, or creating a work of art.

We can gain enough information in 15 minutes of skimming a book on the hand-held gadgetry of our choice to hold our own in a college class or coffee shop discussion.  We can walk or drive to the closest restaurant and have a fully cooked, ready-to-go meal in the same amount of time.  We can get on YouTube and pick up child rearing helps in little 3 minute bites.  We can bring home a well-balanced, supposedly nutritious pre-made meal that can be served up piping hot in less than 20 minutes.  We can take a mediocre digital snap-shot, run it through Photoshop to make it brighter, clearer, more colorful and voila! we have an instant work of art.

We can do all these things that save us time… but has it really saved us?  What have we done with all this extra time we are saving?  Is this kind of internet style book, food, and art surfing enough to change our heart, nourish our bodies or to move us to action?  When I have to explain that it takes time for the chickens to lay eggs, much the same as Aesop’s fable “The Goose that Laid the Golden Eggs”, I’m inclined to think that something is grievously wrong.  I often get off the phone or finish answering an email and I think “Don’t they know that it takes time to raise and grow good food?”  Many of our farm members do, I hear quite often from our amazing customers how glad they are that we persist in a farming method that costs more, pays less, but provides a superior crop.  They value the work that we do because they recognize the time it takes to do it.

Value is in direct relationship to effort.  We value what we work for, what we expend our resources for, what we sacrifice for.  We value what we take time to pursue.  That which comes too easily I’m afraid we discard just as quickly.

Farms, families, literature and art are not created overnight.  They take effort, commitment, and an intense dedication to whichever principles drive the creators.  Like Thoreau we must be “determined to know beans.”  To know the value of a book we must read it, hold it, ponder it, and discuss it.  To know the value of a work of art (be it painted, sung, played, or acted) we must spend time in observance, contemplation, and discovery of it.  To “know beans” we must plow the field, plant the seed, pull the weeds, and labor against mice (woodchucks for Thoreau), grasshoppers, and mold.

We must put the time in to reading, listening, seeing, and doing.  So that the next time someone asks the question “Where are the books?” we will be able to say with a surety, not unlike Bradbury’s Granger, that the books are in us.

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