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.

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.

The “right” time

One of the benefits of working with people who farm is showing up at the farmhouse at the “right” time.  One the “right times” was last night, when Farmer William was about to slice into a huge bacon slab while their gigantic cast iron pan was heating on the stove next to him.  I was there just to pick up my 10 year old son who had helped with evening chores, but the lure of fresh bacon was too much for me.  As we chatted about the garden and cows and milk and chickens, I invited myself to stay so I could taste some of that deliciousness in front of me. (There was a time in my life when I would have recoiled at the thought of standing in front of so much raw meat. but here I was salivating!  You see, now I knew how important and nourishing real food can and should be, and I also knew how good it can taste!)

Not only did I get a piece of warm, fresh cooked bacon in my mouth, I was sent home with a sample of it so I could share with my husband.   Which is sizzling on the stove as I write this post.   Which inspired me to share on the farm blog.  Because it would be selfish of me to keep this experience of deliciousness all to myself.   That deep smokey flavor derived from : smoking!  Imagine that?  I saw the damp hickory and apple wood smoke spiraling up and around the meat only a few days ago.  Nothing else but smoke?  No extras?  Nope!  I even get to add my own salt, good salt at that.

I saw this pig, I spoke to this pig, my son helped feed this pig.  I knew what conditions in which this animal was raised.   A few years ago, had I met the ‘now’ me, I would have thought myself on the nutty side for even valuing and expressing gratitude for such things.  But I do!  And I guess I am nutty!

The Agricultural Art of Revision

There are many things I love about being a farmer:  the sound of the cows lowing, the happy cackle of chickens, the feel of warm dirt in my hands, the smell of coriander and fennel seeds before planting, and the list goes on forever.  But probably the thing I love the most, all nostalgia put aside, is the absolute necessity of Agricultural Revision.

I read a great article this morning in the New York  Times about the effects of digital stimulation on the brain.  How the more we speed up the rate at which information becomes available the less ability we have to focus on the task at hand or the information right in front of us.  We are caught in an endless cycle of becoming smarter, quicker, wittier, and having bigger, better, faster things fill our time.  As I read it the thought struck me that what this digital overload has done for us is to undermine our understanding of and appreciation for revision.

Revision literally mean “to see again”.  If you look it up in the dictionary it seems to apply almost exclusively to writing and the process of correcting.  I revise quite a bit as I write, seldom doing rough drafts.  I write and edit as I go.   Word processing software has made it easy to do this, but as I’ve been contemplating the New York  Times article (which you can find here:  http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/16/technology/16brain.html?_r=1&th&emc=th) I’ve been wondering if perhaps this isn’t a mistake.  Is there a process in the art of revising that is worth remembering?  Is the journey that leads us to our beliefs just as important as the belief itself?  I rather think that it is.

I believe revision is an art form.  I love to look at artistic “studies” created by master artists.  The drawings that Leonardo DaVinci made in preparation to paint a masterpiece are a fascinating look into the mind of  a creator.  The care taken to ensure proper veining along an arm or a leg in a sculpture or painting by Michelangelo is profound.  Were these studies mistakes?  Was the act of studying all in error until the finished work of art could be pronounced “perfect”?  I don’t believe that they were, in fact I believe that the studies themselves are valuable creations.  They are a look inside the act of creation, not simply the result.

I love to look at art, not just in a casual glance sort of way, but really LOOK at it.  The brush strokes, the blending of the colors, the texture of the paint.  There is beauty in the whole of the work because there is beauty in all of its parts.  One of Leonardo DaVinci’s mottoes was “Saper Vedere”  which translates to “knowing how to see” or “to see is to know”.  How much do we miss when we don’t know how to see?  How much beauty passes by us every day because we don’t have eyes to see it, or ears to hear it?  The great artists of the Renaissance saw beauty in the tiniest elements of their work.  They studied, revised, looked, practiced, created, and re-created until their ability to perform was equal to their ability to see.   Hence “re-vision”  is not just seeing again it is seeing, touching, thinking, and creating again.

This intense effort to create and re-create is an undeniable part of the process of farming.  Not all who look see, and therefore not all who farm see themselves as revisionists, but they are.  As Amos Bronson Alcott put it “He who loves a garden, still his Eden keeps, Perennial pleasures plants, and wholesome harvest reaps.”  Farmers by their very act of tilling the soil to bring forth life are artists and creators, taking their plot in Eden and recreating what they will in it.  It is living art, with nothing of their work left behind but harvests stored on pantry shelves.  So many people today have never seen a “fruit room” like my husband, William, grew up with; a cool place in the basement where jars upon jars of canned peaches, beans, tomatoes, and apricots (along with a host of other crops) were kept for use in the coming year.  Just like a renaissance artist studied the musculature of the human body or the layers of petaled flowers the farmer/artists that influenced William studied the weather, the soil, the mountains where the needed water would come from, the remains of last years work, and then throughout the cooler months, when the soil rested from its labors they studied.  They drew garden plans, they plotted how to glean the best harvest from the soil, they noted down where the garden needed more work, where the manure should be placed to be most effective, where the beans were located last year so that this year they could be moved to a new place.

No, they wouldn’t have called themselves artists.  To them is was simply a way of life.  And isn’t that a testament to the goodness of living close to the land?  It wasn’t going out of their way to recycle waste to improve the earth; it wasn’t going out of their way to conserve water to ensure there would be enough for the summer crops, it wasn’t going out of their way to not waste one bit of usable food to feed themselves, their families, their friends, and several complete strangers:  it very simply was their way.  Each and every year they planned which crops to plant to improve the soil.  With each harvest they preserved the seeds from the very best fruits from the field so that they could plant again next season.  Each and every year they re-created abundance without robbing the soil of it’s life.

That is what I love best about farming.  Each year, each season, with each harvested crop we have the opportunity to look for a new vision for our farm.  We have the chance to look at what we’ve done with a critical eye and find what works, what doesn’t, and improve where we can.  There is no finished and perfect work of art at the end of farming because there is no end to farming.  A crop may be harvested, but the garden goes on.  That is Agricultural Revision:  to know how to see the world around you, your place in it, and accept your responsibility to it.

It is a beautiful place to live, here in the middle of a work of art.  I’d like to pass it on.  I’d love to see a renaissance in agriculture, a Georgic Reformation in our communities.  Perhaps I can start here with a request:  find something in the natural world to touch, see, or hear today.  Spend time studying it, open your eyes and ears to it.  See it the way an artist would see it, as if you needed to recreate it in someway.  And then, when it really feels beautiful to you, pass it on.  Every bit of beauty we see and share is like a mark on an artists canvas, each part makes up the majesty of the whole.  Together I believe we have the ability to create a lasting and moving work of art.

Family Movie Night on the Farm

We had the most amazing turn out to our showing of  ”Fresh” the movie hosted by the Friends of Family Farmers organization.  There were over 30 people here and a gaggle of children that played on the swing and with an amazing LED hula hoop that one of our farm members invented.  We watched the movie which high-lights the differences in family farming, city farming, and corporate farming in America today.  We ate delicious home grown and homemade treats during our brief intermission.  Jenny “The Seed Lady” Selberg brought micro-greens down from our greenhouses in Oregon City and we ate them with several different kinds of  cream cheese spreads.

I love micro-greens, I got addicted when we were in Paradox, CO buried under 4 feet of icy-cold snow.  William grew them in the windows and it was enough of the taste of Spring and new life to keep us going .

We had a guest farm from up in Carus,  Family 2 Family Farm, come and tell us about their farm, what led them to farming, and what it is providing for themselves, their families, and for their community.  Here’s their link, you should really check them out http://family2familyfarm.com/farm.html.  They offer a beautiful selection of greens from their garden, wonderful pasture-fed poultry, and a very holistic farm experience.  It makes you happy just to visit their farm and feel their love for the land and their families.

It was a fantastic evening…and I didn’t get one single picture.

I suppose it’s a testament to the fact that I was visiting and enjoying the evening rather than taking pictures of it, but now I’m wishing I had, especially that hula hoop!  It really was cool, the lights flashed faster when the little girls really got it spinning, and they changed colors with the speed of the rotation as well.  I don’t know how Seth did it, but I swear that guy is a genius.

We all sat in an old Army surplus type tent that Wade and Kristie Olsen (aka Apprentice Farmers, Genius Handy-Man, and the Healthy Treat Queen) and watched the movie on a homemade screen that Wade (Genius Handy-Man really doesn’t do him justice!) had created from old sheets and Two-by-Four’s.  It was a great screen and the movie looked fantastic.  Everyone asked when we were doing another movie night so we decided to make it a part of the farm’s monthly line up.  We already do our farm tours on the 2nd and 4th Saturdays of each month.  We decided we’ll do Family Movie Night on the Farm every 3rd Friday evening at 6:30 p.m.  and show a variety of agriculture related films.

Does anyone know any local film makers out there who may be interested in sharing their work?  We’d love to share some of the great things that are happening in our local agriculture community.  And so much is happening.  Have you had a chance to drive on some back roads around Portland this month?  The berry brambles are covered in Marion berries and raspberries.  The Strawberry plants are loaded with big, juicy fruits that are so full of Summer goodness they burst in your mouth at the first bite.  Our neighboring farms here in the Molalla and Mulino areas are planting corn, cabbage, and broccoli.  Everyone is so happy to see the sunshine.

We made use of the sunshine ourselves and planted the rest of the garden space that we couldn’t get into when it was so wet.  It was over  2 acres worth of crops.  My legs are really feeling the burn of what I dubbed “The squash squats”.

I’m  thinking  that form of exercise will really catch on, at least in gardening circles.

The Fine Role of Farm Wife

My husband William and I have a set of books entitled “Farm Knowledge” published by Sears and Roebuck in 1918. There are four volumes, each dealing with a different part of farm life. We’re really grateful to have them, they are quite rare these days and expensive to purchase and I’m the kind of person who would much rather own a book and be able to touch the pages than to simply read it online. I’m a very tactile reader.

The volumes make for fascinating reading. It’s interesting to me that though we are now a full decade into the 21st century, the messages from the first two decades of the 20th century are so familiar in content. How often have we heard from poets, authors, and politicians the urging to return to “simpler values, simpler times” and hearken America back to a more bucolic day of peace and plenty? I know I’ve read it, and written it many times. I think there must be some kind of human hard-wiring that makes us see a green field and breathe deeply and say “aah, how peaceful.” And yet as we peruse the pages of these antique volumes of farm methods, tips, and suggestions I keep reading the same thing. What??? An editor in 1918 was pleading with his readers to return to a more peaceful, prosperous time?

Actually, yes. The books, while presented as an encyclopedia of farm knowledge were as much a plea for what they wanted to exist in American communities as they were a repository of what did exist. They didn’t request that the farm families live like they did 100 years ago (well, let’s face it, life in 1818 was not a walk in the park, and no one would buy that bridge if they tried to sell it.) Mostly they tried to paint a picture of the American farm life that we romanticize now; hard working families, communities knit together in a common goal of success, peaceful neighborhoods, clean yards, and happy children. Each volume has suggestions of ways to improve farm income, to further education in rural settings, to inspire youth to not only work the fields but to cultivate their minds as well. It sounds like a chapter meeting for the modern FFA.

I love reading these books. I love knowing that the world wasn’t perfect and we’ve since misplaced perfection somewhere along our path to technological advancement. I love knowing that progress is an ever-changing thing; that society has the ability to choose, to grow, to discard and change whatever isn’t working. And I love that the basic elements of what makes a family and a community successful haven’t changed. In fact I can go back even further to Virgil’s “Georgic” poems and Hesiod’s “Works and Days” and find bits of wisdom that haven’t changed in the nearly three-thousand years since they were penned. Who can argue with sage advice like “Build barns; it will not be Summer forever”?

I think that my favorite part of the “Farm Knowledge” books is the section on the farm house and yard. They actually spend quite a bit of time expounding on the importance of a neat and well-kept farmhouse, where the farm wife, who keeps everything running, can work effectively and efficiently towards the goal of a happy, healthy, farm family. Now there’s a bit of romanticizing that I can get behind. There are tips on decorating, adjusting the height of the kitchen work tables so you don’t injure your back, using a vacuum, finding clever storage areas for all of the “things” you need on a farm but might not have extra room for. It’s great, it reads almost like a modern copy of Good Housekeeping or the latest Martha Stewart book.

I like knowing that I am not alone in the drama of keeping a farm-house clean. Keeping any house clean requires skills of organization and good habits, but have you ever considered what keeping a farm-house clean entails? Do you know what comes in on the bottom of a farmer’s shoes? I have an intimate knowledge of what gets tracked into the farmhouse; it’s not pretty, and it doesn’t smell good. But after reading about the struggles with dirty boots and wash day of the early 20th century farm-wife, I feel decidedly blessed to be her counterpart in the 21st century. I get to look out at my green fields and sigh over how peaceful they are, call Jezebel in from that field, milk her and send her on her way again, cluck at my sweet little biddies, gather their eggs with my daughter Marilla and head back in to the house to begin the daily house chores. Often as I am wiping off the bottoms of my own boots I pause and look around at the farm I enjoy. I can see why poets and politicians tell everyone we should get back to this, it’s hard to beat.

Happy 15th Anniversary

It’s our (William and Vernie’s) 15th Anniversary today! And we have been farming the whole time, in fact I’ll have to relate to you the story of our 1st Anniversary…

April 22, 1996
William and I were living in a tiny (and I mean REALLY TINY! It made an apartment look humongous!) rental house just up the road from the DeMille Family Farm in Allendale, MO. We were raising milk goats, chickens, turkeys, lots of veggies, and hay which we mowed, raked, and hauled loose with three HUGE draft horses named Jim, John, and Gray. We did all our farming with horses back then and we loved it. William would hitch up the team to the plow and work for as long as they all were able, then he’d bring them in, hose them down and brush them off and send them out to pasture. I love draft animals, ours had the most wonderful temperment. William could stand in the barn, call them up to him and it didn’t matter how far away they were they would come running up to him. I loved to stand next to him when he’d call, draft horses don’t just move when they come running, they move the Earth. They would get halfway up the field and we’d feel the ground start to shake underneath us. They would run right up to us, William loved them and they loved him right back, they never shied away from him or refused to come. He called and they always came. Man, I miss those horses. He plowed, disced, harrowed, planted, mowed, raked, and hauled with those big boys. They were a true team.

The beautiful thing about farming with horses is the amazing amount of organic fertilizer you get as a by-product. We shoveled more horse manure in our years on that farm than most people ever imagine seeing. Draft horses eat a lot, and therefore are top-notch manure makers. William’s family had an old John Deere pull-type manure spreader that they had been using on their farm in Hurricane, Utah for years. We would fill that thing up to the brim with the good stuff and William and the team would drive it out to the fields. Most often we would put the manure directly on the pasture or on fields that were being fallowed for future crop production. I loved to watch, it was just so funny! William would pull up so that the back of the manure spreader was at the edge of the field, shift the gear on the wagon, snap the lines for Jim and John and they’d take off at a fast trot. Wow, you should have a chance at least once in your life to see that recycled grass fly! It would shoot out in an arc twenty feet high and twenty feet out to the sides, just flipping and flying all over the place. It’s definitely something you want to watch from a distance. William told me that he and his brothers were hauling manure home from their field in Hurricane through the middle of town right after doing their early morning chores and one of them accidentally switched the spreader on. They claim they didn’t realize it was on until they got home and saw the spreader was empty. They went back down to main street and saw that it was covered with manure, right up to the front doors of several homes and businesses. I really wonder at the “accidental” part of this, three teenage boys, a wagon full of horse poo, and a dark and sleepy city street…riiight.

So there we were on April 22 1996, our first anniversary, still existing in that first blush of marital bliss. We didn’t enjoy anyone’s company as much as our own, and had everything we needed to survive wrapped up in each other. We did our chores, I made a special meal and William said “Hey, I know what we can do.” I was thinking, “Oh wow, maybe we’ll do something really out of the ordinary, like go see a movie, or go out to eat.” But no. He said “Let’s go haul manure!” I think I said something along the lines of “You’re kidding, right?” Nope, he wasn’t kidding. It’s William, he hardly ever kids. So we hauled manure until evening, holding hands while the poo flew. It was actually, though you might not believe me, fun…ahh, young love.