A couple years ago, my wife and I raised bronze turkeys. We were beginners, with no experience and no tutorials on how to raise turkeys, only chickens. The combination of our ignorance and some half-assed, rigged-up living quarters proved to be a deadly one for a number of the poults. (See The Hard Way) We learned that turkeys are tender, perhaps more tender than chicks. They really must have no drafts. And they grow even faster, and thus out-grow any rigged-up living situation rather rapidly. But in the end, most of the turkeys made it to young adulthood. And I fell deeply, madly, irrevocably in love. I learned that “poo pee pee pee peep!” could mean a number of things, based on the intonation. I could be in the garden by the hoophouse, up the hill quite a ways from the young turkeys, and hear a call, and know instantly if I needed to respond or not. One version meant “Danger!,” one meant “I’m hungry!,” another quieter, yet equally insistent one meant “the waterer stopped working and I'm thirsty!” and then there was one that said “I can’t see my friends! Where is everyone?” There was a different kind of sound the day that one drowned in the sheep’s water trough-- a mistaken pairing of species that I will never, ever repeat.
As they got older, the peeps turned into barks, burbles and chirps-- they sounded more like seals than any bird. They were so fast, so inquisitive. Gangly, silly, affectionate dinosaurs, they would follow me, chase me over the field. I always had to sneak down toward them, and then, when they saw me, race to get to the food bin before them. If I didn’t, they would leap on it, herd around it, clown around and make things difficult (including always pecking at the buttons on whatever shirt or coat I was wearing).
I like chickens quite a bit. When well-kept and clean, I think chickens are beautiful and interesting, a little silly, and sometimes surprisingly fast and smart, and can be affectionate. But I loved turkeys-- the way the corn stubble and pea vines shook as they gleaned the fields, their conversational barks and burbles, their unfathomable black eyes peering at me from cocked heads on their unsightly dinosaur necks. What is this deep love for something so completely alien, so utterly non-mammalian? And these weren’t even heirloom breed turkeys. Sure, they weren’t the white giants reputed to have had all the brains bred out of them along with their ability to procreate naturally. These were just bronze turkeys that could get pretty huge but otherwise looked remarkably like their wild cousins. No one is watching their genetics; Slow Food is not touting their wonderful characteristics; normal people wouldn’t write a paean for these turkeys. Still, it’s been two years since that one-and-only experience raising them, and I can’t wait to have them in my life again.
Monday, November 21, 2011
Morning Chores
Last night, I watched a “Nature” on PBS about a man who had spent a year rearing a brood of wild turkeys. During that year he never saw another human being, and he spent every waking hours with the birds. His reflections on what he learned about life and the world from his time with those wild turkeys brought me back to a space in my mind that exists on the best of mornings, but still far too infrequently.
I love chores. I love raising chickens and turkeys. I love having the responsibility of caring for animals. There is nothing to compare to the sweet calm of an early morning, when you’re the only human about the place, and the early-morning light is slanting in, all white-gold, the wild birds are starting to chatter, and you feel as if the whole of the universe was laid out before you, awaiting. Waiting for what? That’s never known. The day to happen, I suppose. Another turn on the old wheel. But there you are, with critters to care for, and so, at the base of it, a reason for being. I like those calm, day-to-day reasons for being. I am alive because of this gentle responsibility I have toward another animal, a group of critters. There is something of the sacred in that moment of extreme day-to-day Ordinary. At that moment, I feel like I am breathing clearer, that the light illuminates me, that I am closer to what I estimate god to be. I am not caught up in future-tenses, I am not yet fully engaged with the day, and thus I am not thinking about all those other things that need doing. It is the kind of routine that does not feel wearing. And it is that moment, that one brief moment of some days that I have experienced in the past that keeps me going, always feeling the love of the sacred.
I love chores. I love raising chickens and turkeys. I love having the responsibility of caring for animals. There is nothing to compare to the sweet calm of an early morning, when you’re the only human about the place, and the early-morning light is slanting in, all white-gold, the wild birds are starting to chatter, and you feel as if the whole of the universe was laid out before you, awaiting. Waiting for what? That’s never known. The day to happen, I suppose. Another turn on the old wheel. But there you are, with critters to care for, and so, at the base of it, a reason for being. I like those calm, day-to-day reasons for being. I am alive because of this gentle responsibility I have toward another animal, a group of critters. There is something of the sacred in that moment of extreme day-to-day Ordinary. At that moment, I feel like I am breathing clearer, that the light illuminates me, that I am closer to what I estimate god to be. I am not caught up in future-tenses, I am not yet fully engaged with the day, and thus I am not thinking about all those other things that need doing. It is the kind of routine that does not feel wearing. And it is that moment, that one brief moment of some days that I have experienced in the past that keeps me going, always feeling the love of the sacred.
Sunday, November 20, 2011
Jefferson, Human Nature, Education & Citizenship
(I am posting this now with the knowledge that is not actually a completed piece. It could stand the backing of a few academic references. At the moment, unfortunately, I do not have access to a good library.)
Others have written about Thomas Jefferson and the Jeffersonian impulse before (link 1, link 2). I would like to go in a slightly different direction with Jefferson. There are plenty of moments in history and plenty of political movements that have or could claim something Jeffersonian in nature at their core. What I want to talk about, though, is more of a view of human nature (and not Jefferson’s human nature, his hypocrisy), and a reflection upon education and citizenship.
Thomas Jefferson believed in the rights of the individual, and in a democracy that was truly democratic in nature-- one in which even the most common man had input. As I see this, it is a kind of optimism rather than the perhaps more common wariness of human nature. I’m not sure how Jefferson would have felt about the public school system as administered by the federal government-- in fact, I’m sure if I were to open that can of worms, I’d never hear the end of the differing opinions. I do, however, believe that Jefferson was a supporter of broad education. If the masses are educated, then the masses can make educated decisions about their own governance-- which is, in fact, the point of democracy. Historically (and, sadly, at present), the view on the other hand seems to have been much more cynical-- a distrust of human nature, and something perhaps classist as well: Can the poor or the common man actually be trained to think critically, or will they just behave in mob-like fashion?
I happen to believe in a broad, or shall I say, liberal, education. Lest I get someone’s knickers in a bunch, I’ll remind everyone that when we speak of a “liberal” education we don’t mean a politically skewed one (or we shouldn’t), we mean an education that exposes the student to a broad range of subjects-- it has a (liberal) dash of this, and a (liberal) dash of that. A liberal education shapes a young person into a good, thinking citizen who is ready to be engaged in their own governance. You must practice critical thinking if you are ever going to be able to have real-life discussions where all parties listen and take something away from the discussion.
Historically, the Jeffersonian impulse toward both individualism and the (yeoman farmer, renaissance man) broadly educated citizenry disappeared and resurfaced from time to time. During the transcendentalist movement of the mid- to late-eighteen hundreds, the ideals of both liberal education and individualism resurfaced quite passionately. Today, I see the ideal of individualism coming back, but not paired with the ideal of the critically-thinking, broadly educated common man. We seem to favor individualism of the selfish and greedy varieties, at the expense of society as a whole, and at the expense of our ethical health. Simultaneously, we seem to be in a process of devaluing both the liberal education and the thinking citizenry capable of self-governance. This, too, is dangerous for our democracy. If the citizenry are prepared only to consume the information a small number of people see fit to feed them, and if the citizenry then base their opinions only on that limited information-- on what little information they have consumed-- then the citizenry will, in fact, not be engaged in any real self-governance, but will, instead, be allowing themselves to be lead. There are plenty of examples from history of what happens to countries when the citizenry become complacent in their own governance. It is not good for the citizens, and nor is it good, in the long-term, for the country-- in a vacuum, someone will always step in to direct, and usually, that person, or those people, are those with the strongest self-interest, and the lowest adherence to ethical standards and human rights.
We are not only in a process of devaluing a liberal (broad) education and the critical thinking that goes along with it; we are also in the process of devaluing the generalist. The generalists have always been the critical thinkers and inventors, the curious and demanding. That is not to say that you cannot be curious and be a specialist, but as a specialist your curiosity will necessarily run within the vein of your area of specialization. We need specialists, they are the heart surgeons and engineers of this world. But we also do truly need the generalists. Generalists are the “renaissance men“, they are the thinkers, with wide ranges of interest, and liberal educations. They are capable of both creativity and critical thinking. They are like the Jeffersons of today. Jefferson was a farmer, an inventor, a thinking man, and a politician. Historically, generalists were the best politicians. Today, being a politician is a job in and of itself, complete with a more than adequate pension for life, and a bunch of other benefits. This is not how Jefferson and his ilk envisioned our government. Our government was originally supposed to made up of part-time legislators, farmers capable of critical thinking and decision-making based in a broad education and an engagement in their own governance.
The devaluation of the generalist is, to me, just as concerning as, and directly connected to, the devaluation of the liberal education, and for the same reasons. The more people thinking, the more ideas being shared, the more educated the citizenry becomes, the more engaged in their lives both at the small and the large level, the stronger a country will be. In my estimation, no degree of war-like behavior, no amount of military preparedness, no quantity of capital and/or amount of industry at home can make a country strong if the people living within that country are not engaged in the act of being citizens, and if there is little or no thinking-man’s conversation taking place. Every day that we let the discourse run to misinformation and inflamed emotion is another day spent weakening this country.
I do not believe that it is impossible to educate the masses enough for them to make informed decisions. I believe that the Jeffersonian optimism that the individual common man was capable of becoming a good citizen is not only true, but right. At this moment in time (and for quite some time, actually), to neither of our political parties can we ascribe a Jeffersonian bent. But, I do wonder if those of us who, regardless of political party, value critical-thinking and a liberal education, and who see the shades of grey, rather than the world in black-and-white, are perhaps not as much of a minority as it sometimes seems. And if we are not a vanishing breed, and there is still room for reasonable, informed discourse, then maybe Jefferson’s citizenry is not dead, and there is still hope for this country to pull itself together and move on.
Others have written about Thomas Jefferson and the Jeffersonian impulse before (link 1, link 2). I would like to go in a slightly different direction with Jefferson. There are plenty of moments in history and plenty of political movements that have or could claim something Jeffersonian in nature at their core. What I want to talk about, though, is more of a view of human nature (and not Jefferson’s human nature, his hypocrisy), and a reflection upon education and citizenship.
Thomas Jefferson believed in the rights of the individual, and in a democracy that was truly democratic in nature-- one in which even the most common man had input. As I see this, it is a kind of optimism rather than the perhaps more common wariness of human nature. I’m not sure how Jefferson would have felt about the public school system as administered by the federal government-- in fact, I’m sure if I were to open that can of worms, I’d never hear the end of the differing opinions. I do, however, believe that Jefferson was a supporter of broad education. If the masses are educated, then the masses can make educated decisions about their own governance-- which is, in fact, the point of democracy. Historically (and, sadly, at present), the view on the other hand seems to have been much more cynical-- a distrust of human nature, and something perhaps classist as well: Can the poor or the common man actually be trained to think critically, or will they just behave in mob-like fashion?
I happen to believe in a broad, or shall I say, liberal, education. Lest I get someone’s knickers in a bunch, I’ll remind everyone that when we speak of a “liberal” education we don’t mean a politically skewed one (or we shouldn’t), we mean an education that exposes the student to a broad range of subjects-- it has a (liberal) dash of this, and a (liberal) dash of that. A liberal education shapes a young person into a good, thinking citizen who is ready to be engaged in their own governance. You must practice critical thinking if you are ever going to be able to have real-life discussions where all parties listen and take something away from the discussion.
Historically, the Jeffersonian impulse toward both individualism and the (yeoman farmer, renaissance man) broadly educated citizenry disappeared and resurfaced from time to time. During the transcendentalist movement of the mid- to late-eighteen hundreds, the ideals of both liberal education and individualism resurfaced quite passionately. Today, I see the ideal of individualism coming back, but not paired with the ideal of the critically-thinking, broadly educated common man. We seem to favor individualism of the selfish and greedy varieties, at the expense of society as a whole, and at the expense of our ethical health. Simultaneously, we seem to be in a process of devaluing both the liberal education and the thinking citizenry capable of self-governance. This, too, is dangerous for our democracy. If the citizenry are prepared only to consume the information a small number of people see fit to feed them, and if the citizenry then base their opinions only on that limited information-- on what little information they have consumed-- then the citizenry will, in fact, not be engaged in any real self-governance, but will, instead, be allowing themselves to be lead. There are plenty of examples from history of what happens to countries when the citizenry become complacent in their own governance. It is not good for the citizens, and nor is it good, in the long-term, for the country-- in a vacuum, someone will always step in to direct, and usually, that person, or those people, are those with the strongest self-interest, and the lowest adherence to ethical standards and human rights.
We are not only in a process of devaluing a liberal (broad) education and the critical thinking that goes along with it; we are also in the process of devaluing the generalist. The generalists have always been the critical thinkers and inventors, the curious and demanding. That is not to say that you cannot be curious and be a specialist, but as a specialist your curiosity will necessarily run within the vein of your area of specialization. We need specialists, they are the heart surgeons and engineers of this world. But we also do truly need the generalists. Generalists are the “renaissance men“, they are the thinkers, with wide ranges of interest, and liberal educations. They are capable of both creativity and critical thinking. They are like the Jeffersons of today. Jefferson was a farmer, an inventor, a thinking man, and a politician. Historically, generalists were the best politicians. Today, being a politician is a job in and of itself, complete with a more than adequate pension for life, and a bunch of other benefits. This is not how Jefferson and his ilk envisioned our government. Our government was originally supposed to made up of part-time legislators, farmers capable of critical thinking and decision-making based in a broad education and an engagement in their own governance.
The devaluation of the generalist is, to me, just as concerning as, and directly connected to, the devaluation of the liberal education, and for the same reasons. The more people thinking, the more ideas being shared, the more educated the citizenry becomes, the more engaged in their lives both at the small and the large level, the stronger a country will be. In my estimation, no degree of war-like behavior, no amount of military preparedness, no quantity of capital and/or amount of industry at home can make a country strong if the people living within that country are not engaged in the act of being citizens, and if there is little or no thinking-man’s conversation taking place. Every day that we let the discourse run to misinformation and inflamed emotion is another day spent weakening this country.
I do not believe that it is impossible to educate the masses enough for them to make informed decisions. I believe that the Jeffersonian optimism that the individual common man was capable of becoming a good citizen is not only true, but right. At this moment in time (and for quite some time, actually), to neither of our political parties can we ascribe a Jeffersonian bent. But, I do wonder if those of us who, regardless of political party, value critical-thinking and a liberal education, and who see the shades of grey, rather than the world in black-and-white, are perhaps not as much of a minority as it sometimes seems. And if we are not a vanishing breed, and there is still room for reasonable, informed discourse, then maybe Jefferson’s citizenry is not dead, and there is still hope for this country to pull itself together and move on.
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
The Hard Way
This is embarrassing. A couple years ago, when my wife and I, not yet married at the time, lived in Randolph, we bought a pair of piglets to raise for meat. We got them all the way home in a dog crate in the back of our car, only to have one of them break the crate and escape into the woods while we were getting the other one situated into their new “home.” Long story made short, the second pig ended up escaping a few days later, and despite all our creative efforts, we never caught those pigs. We felt irresponsible, unworthy of being entrusted with the lives of other animals. We were also out a fair chunk of change. We decided never to bother with pigs again, and to let someone else handle the smart, fast, slippery buggers. Fast forward to a week or so ago. We had a pair of sheep delivered to us on the hoof, to be slaughtered. They got placed into their temporary home, and promptly ran straight at and through/over the electric net fencing, and into the woods. Is this sounding familiar? We did everything in our power to catch them, and they alluded us, at which point we did everything in our power to find them. Despite help from many of our neighbors, including most of Fat Toad Farm, the sheep escaped, not to be found. We felt horrible and irresponsible, and again, we were out a couple hundred bucks. In the end, another one of our neighbors spotted our sheep (“on the lam,” as it were!), and the sheep were shot and field-dressed for us by more wonderfully helpful people. In the sheep adventure, at least, all came right in the end.
The point of relating all this is to open up the topic of learning via the Hard Way. After the recent sheep fiasco, I came to the conclusion that what we need-- really for a variety of reasons-- is a barn with a few stalls. If you backed a vehicle with livestock up into a barn, and then closed the barn doors, and put the livestock into the stall, they’d never have the chance to truly escape, because even if they got out of hand, they would still be in the barn, rather than running through the woods.
I’m sure that everyone learns quite a bit the Hard Way, but I feel like we’ve done more than most, though maybe not more than most beginning farmers. As far as I can tell, the crux of it all primarily is not lack of experience, but rather lack of infrastructure. Sure, lack of experience doesn’t help. But if we had a barn in either of the two aforementioned situations, we would have put the animals into the barn. It would be the obvious thing to do. But we had no barn, so we had to rig up a solution in both cases, and in both cases, the “solution” to no infrastructure ended up being more of a problem than a solution.
Over the past few years, we definitely have gone about things the Hard Way, and had quite a few negative learning experience-- learning what not to do. If we keep it up, I think that by the time we do get our farm, we’ll be very clear on quite a few of the things not to do, and on some of the ways it’s better to do things. Here are some of the lessons I’ve learned thus far:
Don’t start a diversified farm primarily producing vegetables if a)your land is crummy soil on the side of a hill b)you don’t have irrigation c) it’s not set up to be at all mechanized but there is only one person working the farm full-time.
Fence correctly, with good-quality fencing the first time, it’s worth it.
Anything you build should be built with an eye toward your future goals and its future uses. Meaning, if you have six chickens that need a coop, but you’re going to expand your chickens in the future, do as much planning and building according to that goal as you can.
No matter what you do, do not let the weeds get too far ahead of you. It is an extremely inefficient use of time and resources to have to hunt for the harvestable produce in amongst the weeds, and the quality of your produce will also be all the poorer.
Make sure you have access to water near your field.
Manage your pasture well, or no amount of fencing will keep your livestock from getting to where the grass literally is greener.
Think about how much money what you’re handling can sell for, and handle it accordingly. The less something is worth, the more the process for dealing with it needs to be streamlined-- for your financial health and your sanity.
Morale is higher when everybody stops and has a hearty lunch together.
Have a nice, solid barn, it may be one of the most important things to have.
Know when a crop is a lost cause and is not worth the time and money to harvest.
Make sure you really know as much as you can about someone before you get into a business partnership with them, and make sure you have agreements in writing.
We may be doing a lot the Hard Way, but I do feel that I’ve learned from much of it, and because of it will probably be a better farmer in the future. I don’t think that, had I gotten a degree in agriculture rather than anthropology, my experiences would have been much different. It takes money to have infrastructure, and what kind of degree I received in college won’t change that. But I do hope we’re done having animals escape into the woods, regardless of whether they get found in the end or not. That particular Hard Way I would be happy not to repeat again.
The point of relating all this is to open up the topic of learning via the Hard Way. After the recent sheep fiasco, I came to the conclusion that what we need-- really for a variety of reasons-- is a barn with a few stalls. If you backed a vehicle with livestock up into a barn, and then closed the barn doors, and put the livestock into the stall, they’d never have the chance to truly escape, because even if they got out of hand, they would still be in the barn, rather than running through the woods.
I’m sure that everyone learns quite a bit the Hard Way, but I feel like we’ve done more than most, though maybe not more than most beginning farmers. As far as I can tell, the crux of it all primarily is not lack of experience, but rather lack of infrastructure. Sure, lack of experience doesn’t help. But if we had a barn in either of the two aforementioned situations, we would have put the animals into the barn. It would be the obvious thing to do. But we had no barn, so we had to rig up a solution in both cases, and in both cases, the “solution” to no infrastructure ended up being more of a problem than a solution.
Over the past few years, we definitely have gone about things the Hard Way, and had quite a few negative learning experience-- learning what not to do. If we keep it up, I think that by the time we do get our farm, we’ll be very clear on quite a few of the things not to do, and on some of the ways it’s better to do things. Here are some of the lessons I’ve learned thus far:
Don’t start a diversified farm primarily producing vegetables if a)your land is crummy soil on the side of a hill b)you don’t have irrigation c) it’s not set up to be at all mechanized but there is only one person working the farm full-time.
Fence correctly, with good-quality fencing the first time, it’s worth it.
Anything you build should be built with an eye toward your future goals and its future uses. Meaning, if you have six chickens that need a coop, but you’re going to expand your chickens in the future, do as much planning and building according to that goal as you can.
No matter what you do, do not let the weeds get too far ahead of you. It is an extremely inefficient use of time and resources to have to hunt for the harvestable produce in amongst the weeds, and the quality of your produce will also be all the poorer.
Make sure you have access to water near your field.
Manage your pasture well, or no amount of fencing will keep your livestock from getting to where the grass literally is greener.
Think about how much money what you’re handling can sell for, and handle it accordingly. The less something is worth, the more the process for dealing with it needs to be streamlined-- for your financial health and your sanity.
Morale is higher when everybody stops and has a hearty lunch together.
Have a nice, solid barn, it may be one of the most important things to have.
Know when a crop is a lost cause and is not worth the time and money to harvest.
Make sure you really know as much as you can about someone before you get into a business partnership with them, and make sure you have agreements in writing.
We may be doing a lot the Hard Way, but I do feel that I’ve learned from much of it, and because of it will probably be a better farmer in the future. I don’t think that, had I gotten a degree in agriculture rather than anthropology, my experiences would have been much different. It takes money to have infrastructure, and what kind of degree I received in college won’t change that. But I do hope we’re done having animals escape into the woods, regardless of whether they get found in the end or not. That particular Hard Way I would be happy not to repeat again.
Monday, November 14, 2011
Loneliness and Community
A farmer and poet who lives nearby, Stuart Osha, wrote in an essay about a sort of existential loneliness that you feel when you are not doing the work that feeds your soul. When I read his words (which I’ll post up here another time when can get my hands on a copy of his book), I came to really understand, and a great calmness swept over me. At the time it was still late summer, and I was doing all the pickling and preserving for Green Mountain Girls Farm, and in that moment, I discovered that I was truly content in what I was doing. I want to be careful with semantics here-- When I say content, I mean a true, deep, rich kind of contentment. The real thing, not what we might say when we really mean that we’re not happy, but this will do for now. No, I was the content that is better than happy, because happy is a high, but content is solid, and can be long-term. I had found something that I could do, working eleven hour days five or six days a week, mostly by myself, and not grow tired of it (unfortunately it is seasonal work). I thrived. And at that time, my existential loneliness disappeared, and I really understood how Stuart must feel about his cows.
Another concept Stuart’s writings caused me to start thinking more about (something I'd thought about before) is the different spaces of belonging, community, ownership, identity. Stuart writes about the feelings elicited by having to change out of farm clothes to go into town, because town is not the small farm community that it once way, and if you walk into the grocery store smelling of cows, you’ll be an outcast. But in sloughing off the trappings of farm life when going into town, you’re leaving a part of yourself-- a very integral part-- behind. And so you find you can feel you don’t belong even in your own community.
But what is community? Is it a group of people with a shared experience, a group of people with a shared location, or something of both? In college, I looked with some measure of desperation for community. I did end up finding it, but not where some people expected me to. Despite preconceptions that someone might have because I am queer, I never found a sense of belonging within the queer community at my university. They did not understand farms, the natural cycles of life to death (for life) that go with food. They did not have what Aldo Leopold dubbed the "land ethic." We did share a strong sense of human rights and a fire for justice, but few of them understood my strong sense of place. I felt that many of them, in their necessarily self-centered phase of freedom to discover their sexuality, demanded understanding and acceptance from the world, but were not always prepared to give it in return. I don't mean to be harsh, and I do think I’ve made it more than plain that the queer community was not my community. (In fact, I don’t believe that queerness alone is a good flag around which to build community-- I’ve never understood how who people fell in love with was possibly the most defining aspect of their personhood. But that’s a conversation for another time.) I could not count as my community a group of people who, as a whole, did not understand or value much of what I valued-- community as shared experience of queerness did not work for me. Instead, I found, community in shared core values with a group of young women who ate local foods not as a fad but as an act of belief. They understood farms and hard, dirty work. They cared about the planet and about human rights.
In most Vermont communities that I have experienced, I have found that who I am in the world-- my compassion, land ethic, skills-- matters more than anything else. That, in fact, my queerness has no bearing upon who I really am, and my being accepted. Yes, there are people who are uncomfortable on the subject of queerness, but, for the most part, if you’re a good neighbor, it will always have more weight than anything else. Because of this, I feel the beginnings of a community, a sense of belonging, in the town my wife and I moved to last month. I believe that community isn’t just about location, nor is it just about shared experience. Here, you can have people with differing political beliefs, church-goers or not, straight or queer, and still share the sense of belonging to and caring for the land, and thus, share a community.
And that, perhaps, is where the existential loneliness of not doing what your soul needs, and the normal loneliness of not feeling closeness with other people can come together for me, and be cured.
Another concept Stuart’s writings caused me to start thinking more about (something I'd thought about before) is the different spaces of belonging, community, ownership, identity. Stuart writes about the feelings elicited by having to change out of farm clothes to go into town, because town is not the small farm community that it once way, and if you walk into the grocery store smelling of cows, you’ll be an outcast. But in sloughing off the trappings of farm life when going into town, you’re leaving a part of yourself-- a very integral part-- behind. And so you find you can feel you don’t belong even in your own community.
But what is community? Is it a group of people with a shared experience, a group of people with a shared location, or something of both? In college, I looked with some measure of desperation for community. I did end up finding it, but not where some people expected me to. Despite preconceptions that someone might have because I am queer, I never found a sense of belonging within the queer community at my university. They did not understand farms, the natural cycles of life to death (for life) that go with food. They did not have what Aldo Leopold dubbed the "land ethic." We did share a strong sense of human rights and a fire for justice, but few of them understood my strong sense of place. I felt that many of them, in their necessarily self-centered phase of freedom to discover their sexuality, demanded understanding and acceptance from the world, but were not always prepared to give it in return. I don't mean to be harsh, and I do think I’ve made it more than plain that the queer community was not my community. (In fact, I don’t believe that queerness alone is a good flag around which to build community-- I’ve never understood how who people fell in love with was possibly the most defining aspect of their personhood. But that’s a conversation for another time.) I could not count as my community a group of people who, as a whole, did not understand or value much of what I valued-- community as shared experience of queerness did not work for me. Instead, I found, community in shared core values with a group of young women who ate local foods not as a fad but as an act of belief. They understood farms and hard, dirty work. They cared about the planet and about human rights.
In most Vermont communities that I have experienced, I have found that who I am in the world-- my compassion, land ethic, skills-- matters more than anything else. That, in fact, my queerness has no bearing upon who I really am, and my being accepted. Yes, there are people who are uncomfortable on the subject of queerness, but, for the most part, if you’re a good neighbor, it will always have more weight than anything else. Because of this, I feel the beginnings of a community, a sense of belonging, in the town my wife and I moved to last month. I believe that community isn’t just about location, nor is it just about shared experience. Here, you can have people with differing political beliefs, church-goers or not, straight or queer, and still share the sense of belonging to and caring for the land, and thus, share a community.
And that, perhaps, is where the existential loneliness of not doing what your soul needs, and the normal loneliness of not feeling closeness with other people can come together for me, and be cured.
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
Access and Desire
I have seen quite a few articles of late lamenting how young people aren’t getting in to agriculture; a correspondingly smaller number of articles talking about the growing number of young people in agriculture (particularly in my state of Vermont), and yet even fewer articles talking about the difficulties young people face in starting agricultural enterprises. In my own informal research, I have found a number of opportunities for funding, grants, networking, mentoring, etc. exist in Vermont if you already have a farm or farm business. I am a young person, one of those many young people in this state who actually do aspire to be farmers. My wife and I currently garden on a homestead level, and raise chickens and ducks for meat. We have the beginnings of a pickling and preserving business, with (if I can say this) really good products. But let’s not mince words. We’re poor. We scrape by, piecing together paychecks, luck, generosity, and (ironically) food stamps. We are both hard workers and fast learners. We both have liberal arts educations. But those high-paying job offers all the adults in our lives in high school told us college would bring-- they’re not materializing, and I can think of a number of reasons why. Neither of us went to college for agriculture or any physical/technical skill. We both could have pursued graduate schooling which may have led to careers (and certainly to more debt), but we found it wasn’t in our hearts to do so. I chose to stay here, and my wife chose to come here-- Vermont. Promised Land of “unspoiled,” idyllic, cultured ruralness (a crazy mix of zillionth-generation blue-collar workers and farmers, rich out-of-staters in search of that “simplicity“, middle-class suburbanites running away from New Jersey and Connecticut, various ages of hippy-types, and quite the grab bag of others). I love my beautiful, independently minded state. Love it, love it, love it. If you ask me, “Who are you?” it’s always the first thing I say, “I’m a Vermon’er.” But jobs, financial opportunity? The cost of living is high, especially near Chittenden County, where I grew up. In Vermont, or at least the areas of Vermont vaguely close to Chittenden County, you practically have to have a BA and three years experience in order to get a job as a barista at a coffee shop. People with liberal arts educations-- no Masters or PhD, and no technical skills training-- we’re a dime a dozen. And that’s why Vermont hemorrhages young people. They go to Boston and New York and DC for jobs in their fields, or they go away to grad school so they can come home in ten years qualified enough to get the jobs that require two to five years of experience in a related field. Meanwhile, housing and land prices basically never go down, because we continue to sell plots based on the views that everyone loves rather than on the potential uses of the land or on any commitment to availability. (And if you can price your acreage at $1 million, and actually get close to that from some rich flatlander who wants to retire to all this idyllic beauty, then why wouldn’t you?) The point is, those people that choose to stay here, we have chosen the uphill battle, and trying to get into agriculture is even more of an uphill battle. From what I know of the local foods movement, I suspect that Vermont is one of the best places in the country to be right now if you are looking to start in agriculture. There are more support structures in place (governmental, non-profit, and social) than in many other places. The working of many of our regulations and laws allows for or directly supports a lot of small agricultural business endeavors and some of the local foods renaissance. But, in my own informal research, I have found that most the opportunities for funding, grants, networking, mentoring, etc. exist if you already have a farm or farm business, not if you are looking to start. Don’t get me wrong, that isn’t said to put down the efforts that are being made to help starting farmers. But the way I see it, the real hurdle for starting farmers isn’t desire, it’s access. All the networking in the world, all the help writing a business plan that the SBA can provide, all the channeled planning on paper that groups like WAgN and Holistic Management Inc. can be of little use if you don’t have start-up capital. Money. And most the grants out there are (understandably) for fledgling business that are, however, already in existence. So it’s a Catch-22. You could get a grant, if you could start your farm business, but you can’t start your farm business until you have the money. Even if I’m wrong, and there are grant opportunities that I am unaware of, grants available to truly starting farmers, there would have to be quite a few grants to help out all the young people with both the desire to start a farming venture and head on their shoulders to do so. The money help that starting farmers need is not minor. A couple hundred bucks might buy a new charger for some electric fence, but it won’t finance the purchase of a few sheep to start a breeding stock, it won’t buy you the time and materials to build a barn, it won’t buy you a decent tractor, and it certainly won’t get you any closer to a reasonable land lease or ownership.
The options, as they have presented themselves to me thus far, are as follows:
Rent an apartment or house with land— This is not necessarily a bad Idea, but in my experience, this only works if you want to garden, not farm, and if you don’t want to grow a business. A handful or backyard chickens and your own tomato patch isn’t going to be a problem with many rural landlords, it’s when you want to get bigger that you start to butt heads--understandably so; it’s not your land.
Get into a partnership with a landowner who wants their land farmed for them or Lease— This is also not a bad idea, but this set up is completely reliant on all parties having the same vision and being able to effectively communicate and get along. Alternatively, it could work if the landowner didn’t have any interest in how the land was being farmed, so long as the land was open and not being laid to waste. One of the questions that goes with this scenario, though, is, “Where will you live?” If the landowners are also your landlords for your housing, things can get even messier. If you’re not living on-site, how long is your commute? How do you make sure pests and predators don’t wreak havoc while you’re not there?
Join or form a community housing situation or commune—Communes and their permutations seem to have a history of falling apart due to personality clashes, money problems, and other social issues. That’s not to say that “community living” doesn’t seem to work for some people, just that it has its own set of difficulties.
Live the city life in Burlington and start a micro-farm in the Intervale— This is a great idea and a wonderful opportunity not widely available. The Intervale allows many starting farmers to get their feet under them and learn from people with more years of experience. It is, however, not ideal if you want to have animals and keep an eye on them, or don’t really want to live in Burlington because, well, you want to live on a farm. The high cost of living in the Greater Burlington area also needs to be considered.
Buy land with or without a house— There is plenty of land available. There are parcels of different sizes in every town-- with and without houses, on good, fair, or poor soils, wooded, open, scrubby, hilly, low and wet, with stunning views or surrounded by trees. But if you have to put down a down payment of easily more than $15,000, where is that money coming from? And then what will your mortgage be, plus all the other costs of owning a home? There will be monthly costs that at the beginning will certainly not be coming out of your farm business income. At least one person will have to have an off-farm job. That brings us back to the conversation about the availability of paying work for someone with just a BA in this state. And then, say you have both people with part- or full-time, off-farm jobs, how much farming will get done? How can you effectively grow a business?
The next time I see an article about how young people don’t want to farm, or about how few young people are getting in to farming, I think, rather than just getting angry, I’ll send the author what I’ve written here. The problem is not desire, the problem is access. I believe that this is not an insurmountable hurdle. We in Vermont have overcome all manner of obstacles in building our local food movement, and we continue to do so with both vision and practicality. What needs to happen is a meeting of the minds on this subject. Let us find a way to create a fund, or form an organization that places the people with desire and little access in a conversation with people who have access, or funds, or some connecting vision. Then we will be moving forward into an even stronger future for our state, and, by example, for the country.
The options, as they have presented themselves to me thus far, are as follows:
Rent an apartment or house with land— This is not necessarily a bad Idea, but in my experience, this only works if you want to garden, not farm, and if you don’t want to grow a business. A handful or backyard chickens and your own tomato patch isn’t going to be a problem with many rural landlords, it’s when you want to get bigger that you start to butt heads--understandably so; it’s not your land.
Get into a partnership with a landowner who wants their land farmed for them or Lease— This is also not a bad idea, but this set up is completely reliant on all parties having the same vision and being able to effectively communicate and get along. Alternatively, it could work if the landowner didn’t have any interest in how the land was being farmed, so long as the land was open and not being laid to waste. One of the questions that goes with this scenario, though, is, “Where will you live?” If the landowners are also your landlords for your housing, things can get even messier. If you’re not living on-site, how long is your commute? How do you make sure pests and predators don’t wreak havoc while you’re not there?
Join or form a community housing situation or commune—Communes and their permutations seem to have a history of falling apart due to personality clashes, money problems, and other social issues. That’s not to say that “community living” doesn’t seem to work for some people, just that it has its own set of difficulties.
Live the city life in Burlington and start a micro-farm in the Intervale— This is a great idea and a wonderful opportunity not widely available. The Intervale allows many starting farmers to get their feet under them and learn from people with more years of experience. It is, however, not ideal if you want to have animals and keep an eye on them, or don’t really want to live in Burlington because, well, you want to live on a farm. The high cost of living in the Greater Burlington area also needs to be considered.
Buy land with or without a house— There is plenty of land available. There are parcels of different sizes in every town-- with and without houses, on good, fair, or poor soils, wooded, open, scrubby, hilly, low and wet, with stunning views or surrounded by trees. But if you have to put down a down payment of easily more than $15,000, where is that money coming from? And then what will your mortgage be, plus all the other costs of owning a home? There will be monthly costs that at the beginning will certainly not be coming out of your farm business income. At least one person will have to have an off-farm job. That brings us back to the conversation about the availability of paying work for someone with just a BA in this state. And then, say you have both people with part- or full-time, off-farm jobs, how much farming will get done? How can you effectively grow a business?
The next time I see an article about how young people don’t want to farm, or about how few young people are getting in to farming, I think, rather than just getting angry, I’ll send the author what I’ve written here. The problem is not desire, the problem is access. I believe that this is not an insurmountable hurdle. We in Vermont have overcome all manner of obstacles in building our local food movement, and we continue to do so with both vision and practicality. What needs to happen is a meeting of the minds on this subject. Let us find a way to create a fund, or form an organization that places the people with desire and little access in a conversation with people who have access, or funds, or some connecting vision. Then we will be moving forward into an even stronger future for our state, and, by example, for the country.
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