by Paula Manalo
In agreeing upon the goodness of an action in pursuit of this shared value — autonomy, differently formulated — our many contrary conceptions about the world fell to the side. After a few more minutes of talking about gardening, I invited her back to her old seat and she accepted. Democracy in America was saved and I won a medal.
The meeting didn’t amount to much. Congressman McClintock began the evening by taking a voice vote. The chorus in favor of the healthcare bill was loud and accented by clapping. That opposed was thunderous. Some heartfelt and thoughtful stories were shared, but generally, the various news-machine talking points were bandied back and forth until it was time to go home.
On the way out, as we waited to enter a slowly moving stream of people, a woman leaned toward us and enthusiastically commented, “Oh, nice costumes!” We looked to confirm if she was even talking to us (she was) and then looked at what we had thought were decent, public-suitable clothes: boots albeit shoddy ones, loose pants rolled up to the ankles because it had been hot, collared shirts of various accepted patterns and colors, and our short-brimmed caps. We looked back to her, confused; it was still very loud outside, and maybe we didn’t hear her correctly.
She spoke again: “Aren’t you guys dressed up? Like Bolsheviks, from that movie? You guys look dead-on like Bolsheviks!”
Before we had a chance to come up with a response, she was carried away by the flow of people, saying loudly, “Workers of the world unite!”
We left the meeting hall dumbstruck. What had just happened? We thought we looked nice, not like communists! Were the red-shirted Tea Party members not the only ones to have pushed so hard and ended up on the fringe?
The two experiences got me thinking. I don’t want to be merely a farmer in a clearing of the woods; I want to be an active participant in the navigation of our community. If in our small, small-farm world, our notion of looking presentable summons a perceived alignment with leftist, revolutionary politics, aren’t we unnecessarily obstructing the empathic, reasoned discussion necessary for a community to come together around common goals and pursue them to their conclusion? I don’t want to exacerbate a sufficiently contentious environment by looking like a Bolshevik.
I also want to ask questions that are larger than those prompted by fashion, because it’s obvious that our wardrobe malfunction was emblematic of the whole evening’s disarray. And so, I ask: What aspects of Nevada County are these red-shirts proud of? Why did I not recognize them from the farmers’ market? Would the culture of our open-to-all weekly potlucks really be welcoming to them no matter what they brought? What do they think of Community Supported Agriculture? Have they even heard of it? Do they listen to the longstanding community radio station? Do they take pride in the Yuba River? If the red-shirts didn’t infer we were in costume, making a mockery of something, did they write us off for other reasons? What would it take to communicate that we’re serious people, laboring through the best years of our lives to grow invigorating food that increases our community’s autonomy and security and begins to make again possible a place-based local culture? Is it their responsibility to come to center or ours?
This project of finding common ground with people who voice conservative ideals would be a lot more daunting if our agrarianism wasn’t an honest attempt to embody the most fundamental of conservative tenets: There are limits to everything. Given that, I believe local farming can be a rallying point for those on the left and those on right who refuse to believe that the other half of this country is made up of pea-brained aliens, despite the evidence so vehemently presented to the contrary. You know, by pundits.
So, in broad strokes, ecological farming is currently thought of as a liberal project. It’s seen as a continuation of the seventies environmental movement in its consideration of the health of all beings in relation to human health. Those environmentalists pleaded for our society and economy to be realistic in their use of natural resources. This assertion of limits was critiqued by conservatives on the grounds that it was unrealistic in how it understood human needs. (A discussion about limits will always revolve around realism; each side is always saying, “Let’s be realistic. . . .”) So, whereas conservatives generally recognize social limits (such as the ability of the institution of marriage to accommodate an unfamiliar arrangement, for example) and economic limits (such as our ability to fund and manage a federal system of entitlements), they have deferred to liberals to fuss fecklessly about natural limits. When isolated and set against one another, it’s clear which set of limits — social, economic, natural — guides the electorate.
* * *
A woman looked me over and said in a tone so disdainful that I thought she had to be joking, “You look like a liberal.”
* * *
Ecological farming arrives on the scene, fulfilling the environmentalist objective of relating to the natural world within the understanding that there are limits that we surpass at our peril, and withstands the corresponding conservative critique by doing the real work within these limits to provide the human necessities for ourselves and our communities. (We aren’t coming from the city and asking foresters to please, goddamnit, mind the pretty birds.)
All this is done while trending to the values of simplicity, commitment, and intimate, stable communities, all values associated more with the right side of the political spectrum. So, granted that bucking the dominant agricultural system takes a bit of the liberal world-can-be-better mentality, how many of our goals are liberal in the sense of being untested and perhaps foolishly optimistic?
We want to farm with methods and tools tested by hundreds of years; we want to do physical, skill-based work; and we want to actively and tangibly provide for a community, enabling an intimate connection to a place and its people. We gladly accept the challenge of creating rich lives within these constraints because we agree with the conservative sentiment that satisfaction and a life full of meaning cannot be achieved merely through professional accomplishment, the accumulation of toys, or even a long healthy life — great though all those are. Rather — as reluctant as I am to say something so pious — we believe that a life is made rich by one’s relationships within a cohesive community. It’s not food we’re after; it’s meals. To the liberal mentality that prioritizes the actualization of the self above all, we are saying that this has gone too far, and we are embracing family and community commitments. We are realistic in our belief that relationships within a community cannot be contingent upon mere chance or similarity, knowing from experience that a community without relationships based on economic ties of mutual assistance is loose and unsure of itself.
So, I think that even though we might dress like liberals, have been educated like liberals, create products generally bought by liberals, or come from liberal families or communities, at heart and in deed we are quite conservative. I do not want to attempt a takeover of conservative ideals, but rather to make small-scale, ecological agriculture available to self-identifying conservatives by recognizing that we too are tangibly pursuing these values — and we need their help. I don’t think ecological agriculture is being used to its full potential for establishing new and potentially strong political alliances, not to mention cohesive communities. Once we recognize that we have the same goals, we can unify our means.
What recent generation has been so blessed with a clear purpose by which to focus its energies? To be given the task of blending the old and trusty (if a bit rusty) with the new and promising (if a bit plastic) to revivify the American promise of materially autonomous, self-governing communities with place-based traditions and cultures? I’m sure it was something spectacular to live in a time of old-growth forests and prairies. But what of the privilege to plant so many seeds and nurture as many saplings? Yes! Thank you! We want to work! We are ready to work. We will take them to adolescence.
Resources
WEBSITES OF CONTRIBUTING FARMERS
Erin Bullock
Mud Creek Farm
www.mudcre
ekfarm.com
Courtney Lowery Cowgill and Jacob Cowgill
Prairie Heritage Farm
www.prairieheritagefarm.com
Douglass DeCandia
Food Bank for Westchester
www.foodbankforwestchester.org
Evan Driscoll
Running with Pitchforks
www.runningwithpitchforks.com
Sasquatch Acre
http://sasquatchacre.com
Andrew French
Living the Dream Farm
http://ltdfarm.com
Adam Gaska
Mendocino Organics
www.mendoorganicscsa.com
Liz Graznak
Happy Hollow Farm
www.happyhollowfarm-mo.com
Brad Halm
Seattle Urban Farm Co.
www.seattleurbanfarmco.com
Lynda Hopkins
Foggy River Farm
www.foggyriverfarm.org
The Wisdom of the Radish
www.wisdomoftheradish.com
Sarah Hucka
Circle h Farm
www.circlehorganicfarm.com
Ben James
Town Farm
www.nohotownfarm.com
Neysa King
Dissertation to Dirt
www.dissertationtodirt.com
Samantha Lamb
Samantha Lamb Photography
www.samanthalamb.com
Sarahlee Lawrence
Plots to Plates
http://plotstoplates.wordpress.com
Rainshadow Organics
www.rainshadoworganics.com
River House: A Memoir
www.sarahleelawrence.com
Maud Powell
Siskiyou Sustainable Cooperative
www.siskiyoucoop.com
Meg Runyan
Wild Goose Farm
www.wildgoosefarm.net
Ginger Salkowski
Revolution Gardens
www.revolutiongardens.com
Sarah Smith
Grassland Farm
www.grasslandorganicfarm.com
Sarajane Snyder
Look at the Sky and Tell the Weather
http://fairweatherly.wordpress.com
A. M. Thomas
Wear a Wax Dustcoat
http://wearawaxdustcoat.com
Tanya Tolchin
On the Lettuce Edge
www.thelettuceedge.com
Josh Volk
joshvolk.com
www.joshvolk.com
Slow Hand Farm
www.slowhandfarm.com
Jenna Woginrich
Cold Antler Farm
http://coldantlerfarm.blogspot.com
RECOMMENDED READING
Katz, Sandor Ellix. The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved: Inside America’s Underground Food Movements. Chelsea Green Publishing, 2006.
Kimball, Kristin. The Dirty Life: A Memoir of Farming, Food, and Love. Scribner, 2010.
Kingsolver, Barbara. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life. HarperCollins, 2007.
Pollan, Michael. In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto. Penguin, 2008.
———. The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals. Penguin, 2006.
Salatin, Joel. The Sheer Ecstasy of Being a Lunatic Farmer. Polyface, Inc. 2010.
Smith, Alisa and J. B. MacKinnon. Plenty: One Man, One Woman, and a Raucous Year of Eating Locally. Harmony Books, 2007.
Smith, Jeremy N. Growing a Garden City: How Farmers, First Graders, Counselors, Troubled Teens, Foodies, a Homeless Shelter Chef, Single Mothers, and More Are Transforming Themselves and Their Neighborhoods Through the Intersection of Local Agriculture and Community — And How You Can, Too. Skyhorse Publishing, 2010.
FARM OPPORTUNITIES — APPRENTICESHIPS AND JOBS
GrowFood
www.growfood.org
Runs an organic volunteer program that connects volunteers with farms
Northeast Beginning Farmers Project, Cornell University
http://nebeginningfarmers.org/farmers/learning-to-farm/farming-opportunities
NCAT Sustainable Agriculture Project
www.attra.ncat.org/attra-pub/internships
Backdoor Jobs
www.backdoorjobs.com/farming.html
Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms (WWOOF)
www.wwoof.org
PLANNING WORKSHEETS
“Exploring the Small Farm Dream:
Is Starting an Agricultural Business
Right for You?”
New England Small Farm Institute
www.smallfarm.org/main/for_new_farmers/exploring_the_small_farm_dream
A decision-making workbook published
by New England Small Farm
Institute
“Self Assessment & Resource Assessment”
New England Small Farm Institute
www.smallfarm.org/main/for_new_farmers/resources_by_topic/self_and_resource_assessment
Worksheets
Northeast Beginning Farmers Project,
Cornell University
http://nebeginningfarmers.org/farmers/worksheets-2
BUSINESS PLANNING
Born, Holly. “Agricultural Business
Planning Templates and Resources,
RL042” NCAT Sustainable
Agriculture Project, June 2004.
https://attra.ncat.org/attra-pub/summaries/summary.php?pub=276
Center for Farm Financial
Management, University of
Minnesota
www.agplan.umn.edu
Minnesota Institute for Sustainable
Agriculture. “Building a Sustainable
Business: A Guide to Developing a
Business Plan for Farms and Rural
Businesses.” Sustainable Agriculture
Research and Education, 2003.
www.sare.org/publications/business/business.pdf
Tunnicliffe, Robin. “Business Planning
for Small Scale Community Farming
Enterprises.” Community Farms
Program, FarmFolk/CityFolk, 2009.
http://farmfolkcityfolk.ca/programs/farm/cf/business-plan.html
Wiswall, Richard. The Organic Farmer’s
Business Handbook: A Complete
Guide to Managing Finances, Crops,
and Staff — and Making a Profit.
Chelsea Green Publishing, 2009.
LAND ACCESS GENERAL REFERENCE
The Greenhorns. “Land. Liberty. Sunshine. Stamina. A Mini Compendium of
Resources for Beginning Farmers on the Topic of Finding Sustainable Land
Tenure.” Cornell University Cooperative Extension, 2010.
www.thegreenhorns.net/resources/GH_landtenureworkshop_minicompendium.pdf
American Farmland Trust
202-331-7300
www.farmland.org
Non-profit land access help
Equity Trust, Inc.
413-863-9038
www.equitytrust.org
Farmland Information Center
800-370-4879
www.farmlandinfo.org
Land for Good
603-357-1600
www.landforgood.org
National Community Land Trust
Network
503-493-1000
www.cltnetwork.org
LAND-LINKING PROGRAMS
Network Participants
International Farm Transition Network
www.farmtransition.org/netwpart.html
A comprehensive list of state-based land-linking programs
PROFITS AND PRICING
Born, Holly. “Enterprise Budgets and Production Costs for Organic Production,
RL041.” NCAT Sustainable Agriculture Project, 2004.
www.attra.ncat.org/attra-pub/summaries/summary.php?pub=187
Economics, Statistics, and Market Information System
United States Department of Agriculture
http://usda.mannlib.cornell.ed
u
Growing for Market
Fairplain Publications, Inc.
800-307-8949
www.growingformarket.com
“News, advice and resources for market farmers”
Macher, Ron. Making Your Small Farm Profitable. Storey Publishing, 1999.
Organic Price Report
Rodale Institute
www.rodaleinstitute.org/organic-price-report
TAXES AND ACCOUNTING
Aubrey, Sarah Beth. Starting & Running
Your Own Small Farm Business. Storey
Publishing, 2007.
Beginning Farmer and Rancher
Resources
http://beginingfarmerrancher.wordpress.com
A resource blog by Poppy Davis
Salatin, Joel. You Can Farm: The
Entrepreneur’s Guide to Start &
Succeed in a Farming Enterprise.
Polyface, 1998.
Small Business/Self-Employed Virtual
Small Business Tax Workshop
Internal Revenue Service, U.S.
Department of the Treasury
www.tax.gov/virtualworkshop
USDA BEGINNING FARMER LOAN LITERACY
Farm Service Agency
United States Department of Agriculture
www.fsa.usda.gov
The Farm Service Agency (FSA)
provides direct and guaranteed loans
to beginning farmers and ranchers
who are unable to obtain financing
from commercial credit sources.
Contact them for information on
their programs and to find your local
FSA office.
National Council of State Agricultural
Finance Programs
www.stateagfinance.org
For information on state loan
programs
LEARNING AND NETWORKING CONFERENCES
EcoFarm Conference
Ecological Farming Association
831-763-2111
www.eco-farm.org
Held annually in Pacific Grove,
California
Farmer to Farmer Conference
Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners