SPRING (!?) IS IN THE AIR.
The weather, as I am sure you are aware, has been crazy lately. Spring (and SUMMER) like temperatures, trees and flowers blooming, everything growing much faster than we would perhaps like! We spent yesterday outside, setting out broccoli and cabbage transplants to make room in our crowded greenhouse. It is hard not to get ahead of ourselves when it is this warm - hard to remember that we could still have winter weather around the corner. Luckily, brassicas are pretty hardy, and just in case, we covered them up with row cover to protect them from cold and the inevitable cabbage moths.While we worked, I couldn't help but reflect on some of the words we had heard over the weekend from Wendell Berry, at the Organic Association of Kentucky conference. He had spoken about the "human" element in farming. How farming cannot become just an industry, or technology will replace farmers. If farming is first and foremost an art, then there must be humanity in it. Good farming is aesthetically pleasing and beautiful - a place where there is a balance between the product you are creating and the homeplace. As I kneeled beside my husband with my hands in the dirt, as Further played on top of the compost pile a few feet away, as we let the sun and cool air refresh our overwintered skin - I felt the truth of those words. Yes, we are creating a product. We are making money, trying to become more efficient and knowledgeable so we can do better always. But we are also building a family and a home and a life. And we are ready for another season, even if spring seems to have come a little earlier than we might have hoped!-Hannah.
A VERY SUSTAINABLE NEW YEAR.
Have you guys seen the newest post over at Sustainable Kentucky?
It is a great list of 75 ways to live more sustainably, and I think it is a blend of incredibly simple steps (like carpooling or adjusting your thermostat) along with some more intense (a composting toilet). If you've ever found yourself wondering what difference one person could make, or if you don't know where to start - this list shows you how easy it is to make small changes that will have a big impact. Visit a farm, join a CSA, watch a green documentary, learn to forage, read Wendell Berry!
And, we may be a bit biased, but we think #9 and #57 are pretty good, too.
- Hannah.
HISTORY LESSONS.
This winter I've been trying to catch up on some reading and lately the theme has seemed to lead to a simple conclusion: you aren't just what you eat, you are, unequivocally, what everyone eats.I'm currently reading Timothy Egan's "The Worst Hard Time," on The Great American Dust Bowl. This is a period of our history when the government pushed Native Americans (masters of husbandry, those guys) off their land and encouraged farmers to move West. Millions of acres were soon plowed on what was traditionally, and naturally, perennial prairie grass. Wheat was planted heavily throughout the late 1920's with the blessing of the government, a booming economy and good weather. Then, suddenly as if by punishment, the economy crumpled and the rains stopped... for nearly 10 years.
Far too many parallels can be drawn between how we were treating the land and the economy in the 20's vs. now––i.e. roaring 20's/Great Depression/Dustbowl vs. Roaring 2000's/Great Recession/Great Drought––and that might not seem so scary if I weren't a farmer now. In a situation like the Dust Bowl, it simply does not matter how one treats the land if everyone around them is plowing it up like idiots (sound familiar?). And we can now throw pesticides, herbicides and fungicides into the mix and arrive at not only the possibility of a brutal air assault, but a lasting and effective attack on our ground water, our local wildlife and our health.Last week, in fact, the New York Times had an article about that very subject, how at least one community in California could no longer drink its water for the poisons it contained from the runoff of a nearby commercial dairy (somehow tainting ground water is legal?). I know a natural farm whose spring––which they rely on entirely for their drinking water––was recently compromised when the neighbors decided to plant their wonderful pastures up the hill to corn, an act which requires loads of herbicide. Herbicide will seep into the soil, then the ground water, then build up in our bodies if we consume it. When we eat anything commercially farmed, we have to acknowledge there is a family somewhere who can't drink their own water because of it. And increasingly, a country that can't either."At present," writes Wendell Berry in a recent piece for the Atlantic, "80 percent of our farmable acreage is planted in annual crops, only 20 percent having the beneficent coverage of perennials. This, by the standard of any healthy ecosystem, is absurdly disproportionate." If we as a culture continue to depend on big agriculture for our food, all food will suffer, because all farmers will suffer. Everyone loses. We need proper husbandry and land practices, absolutely, but we farmers can only do so much. If our neighbors are still getting subsidies and the corn and soybeans are still flying off the shelves (and freezers), they will continue to plant them with gusto. And if mother nature decides she wants to cut the rain for a while (seen any terrifying droughts around lately?), then we might not see a trickle down effect, the effects might just roll over us like dirt in the Dust Bowl. All of us.- Jesse.
A TRIP TO PORT ROYAL.
Following hand-written maps is the true language of the country. At Bugtussle, where Hannah and I learned to farm, my glovebox was always stuffed full of maps the farmer had drawn for me to get to one obscure place or another. The one we followed for a couple hours yesterday led us to Port Royal (or Port William, if you know where this story's going).When you drop down into the valley, you're suddenly suffocated by a dense, verdant hillside to your left, and a dense, verdant riverbed to your right. It's breathtaking and it just makes sense that the entire landscape would change moments before you arrive at the house of famed agrarian writer and personal hero, Wendell Berry. His wife, Tanya, was outside working in her flower bed when we pulled into the drive and greeted us warmly. Once inside, she called up the stairs for Wendell.This past winter, still unsure of what our farming situation would be for the year, we decided to write Wendell. We needed some advice, some consoling, some encouragement. His writing had always been that for us. In marriage, farming, faith and responsibility, we had always found new perspectives in Wendell's essays and books, perspectives which have given an elegant voice to what we do, how we do it, and why we should. Unsure of what our future held, we decided to once again turn to Wendell and to our (still) unending surprise, he responded enthusiastically. After a few exchanges arrived the map with a note, "I'll expect you on June 10 at 3 o'clock."Whole walls of their house seem to be built with books alone, entire rooms might even be forgotten, buried in literature. When Wendell descended the stairs, a man who we owe a great deal of our lives to, and shook hands with us, the true gravity and power of writing a letter revealed itself.If you don't know who Wendell Berry is, you've probably stopped reading anyway. If you do know who he is and you're familiar with his work, you already know what he sounds like. You can hear his voice in essays and poetry: deep, thoughtful, precise, but with a subtle, elegant Kentucky accent. I'd never heard Wendell speak in public before, but as Hannah pointed out, his voice would have been all that was required to recognize him on the street––it's exactly what he sounds like in his books.At his table with his wonderful wife, we spent the next three hours talking. Sometimes it was about particular vegetables or ways to care for lamb, and sometimes it was more broad––philosophy, religion, art, wine or farming. Sometimes it was just gossip from the town. But among the subjects we included in our original letter, a subject we wished to ask them about, was sustainability. And not sustainability in the general sense, but sustainability in the personal sense, the idea that even if you are doing things ideally––zero-waste, carbon-neutral, self-sufficient––how do you keep from burning out? We'd seen a lot of farmers, and continue to meet a lot of farmers, who reach a point where they're unhappy. Hannah and I want to be sustainable not only literally, but completely, and wondered what advice they might have, and they delivered.It must surely be true what they say, that Mr. Berry is the most quotable man in America. Each sentence was powerful, and we found ourselves struggling to remember each word, each gesture, each inflection, each startling boom of his infectious laugh. It would be hard to recount their advice or everything that was said, and since it wasn't an interview, we feel it's only fair to not misquote them. What can be said of this afternoon, and of their advice, is it carried within it the same themes that can be found flowing through all of Wendell's writing: knowing your place, respecting the land, responsibility, culture, neighbors, community. We left feeling inspired, feeling challenged. We left having met our hero, and he left us feeling confident we were doing the right thing, in the right way, for the right reasons. However, before we end this post, we will leave you with one thing he said, which Hannah so brilliantly made sure to remember: "It takes a long time, and a lot of patience to know where you are. To know what you can do there. I'm still trying to figure that out."What a day.- Jesse.