Farmer John writes . . .             

Greetings from Angelic Organics

2nd Week of Extended Season

Thinking about my upcoming presentation Awakening to the Farm as a Social Organism at Angelic Organics for the upcoming Biodynamic Conference, I’m reminded of an excerpt from an essay I presented at the Northeast Community Supported Agriculture Conference on November 7, 1997, in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. Some of you may remember reading it in a farm newsletter several years’ back.

Our Barns

Excerpt from The Barn Is There

For as long as I remember, I have loved looking at farms: how the fields were laid out; how the buildings were situated, their color, sizes, forms and states of repair; the landscaping of the farmsteads; the livestock and the pens and corrals; the condition of the crops. Each farm was a fascinating story-these physical outgrowths were where the farmer interfaced with the land. The barn is that big, I would think. It is not bigger. It could have been bigger. It could have been smaller. It is that big. The farmer made it like that. He put it there, right there. He could have put it a little to the left, or to the right, but he put it there. Then I would see another farm, and I would contemplate that farm. I would notice the relationships of the farms to one another, how they sat separate like islands, like outposts, how they each were surrounded with their own silence and their own robustness, and how this emanation of each farm’s individuality somehow made them seem more connected to other farms, not more isolated. I would gaze out over these separated farmsteads, and see their noble separateness and their sublime unity, and notice how these qualities supported one another.

I loved going to the local diners and hearing the farmers talk. Their mannerisms and bodies carried as much individuality as their farmsteads. I would sit there, watching and listening, and I would feel the elements of nature swirling about me; the winds and droughts and rains carried right into their speech and walk and faces.

Today, in my community, whereas once the farmers dominated certain diners, perhaps filling the whole counter at certain hours, now they have shrunk to a tiny minority, just two or three, hunched over coffee and sausage and talking a dying language.

pac choi

Vegetable of the Week: Choi