I have spent a lot of time this week listening and thinking while in the garden. Garden chores are good for that. You can be in the garden and listen to the bumblebees, songbirds, and insects while you do chores. Or you can listen to podcasts and keep up with world events while weeding, which is what I do to distract myself from being impatient with (and disgusted by) the very weedy bits of the garden. The thing is though, what I am listening to this week is really hard to hear: the COVID 19 pandemic, racial injustice, and a divided country. I have so many thoughts swirling in my head about our country’s politics, healthcare, and food security. I am a white woman who has lived a life of privilege with a college education. I have freely made the choices that brought me to my life in rural Alaska on a small farm living a modern, hybrid, semi-subsistence lifestyle. And while I have experienced discrimination as a woman, it was never significant enough to alter my chosen path. My life here can be difficult. It is physically and mentally exhausting to raise a family in a land of extremes when Mother Nature or wildlife can take your life if you make a mistake. That challenge is part of what excites me about where I live. But I have no idea what it is like to live a life where it is other humans who threaten my ability to do what I want. I think the phrase on social media that caught my eye and strongly impacted my thoughts was “It is not enough to be non-racist. We must taken action and be anti-racist.” I am not sure how to make that happen yet in my context. I can connect with any human on a one on one but how do I become and how do I teach my children to be anti-racist? What action can we take? Right now I am listening to what life is like for the black and brown birdwatchers, nature lovers, and farmers in the United States because though we share the same country, we do not share the same experiences or the same freedoms that I often take for granted. I have a lot to think about.
On the farm it has been a week of weeding and planting and long days of repetitive labor. Sylvia and I planted over 900 onions…
…and a lot of frisee and lettuces.
Some of our horses came home for the next month and a half before heading north to work.
We had a hail storm in the middle of planting brassica starts.
And cutworms seem to be abundant this year. The little buggers…I hope they do not kill too many of my plants!
It is scary to put my nurtured starts out into the garden at the mercy of the weather, voles, and insects. There is so much potential and so much that could go wrong. That is part of what makes farming challenging.
The garlic is looking gorgeous, however.
And the May day tree is flowering.
This week I have also been thinking a lot about small farms and their role in the food supply chain. Too many times I hear about or experience customers who want more choice, or perfect produce, or cheaper prices. Farming is hard. Producing food in our Alaskan climate is hard. It takes long days and constant thought about how to work with the natural systems. Dirty fingernails, dirty clothes, aching knees, and sore backs are often the only reward at the end of the day. There is a disconnect between food customers and farmers in our country. I hope that the current Covid-19 gardening trend of “victory gardens” accomplishes a couple of things: One, that more people are bit by the gardening bug and continue to produce a small amount of their own food every year. Two, that people experience and appreciate what it is like to attempt to grow food and how difficult it can be. I hope their experience transforms into an appreciation for what farmers do produce, especially your local, small, diverse farms. Community supported agriculture is one local food security model where customers purchase a subscription for food in the spring, paying upfront. It supports the farmer at a time when they are lean on cashflow. The customer also takes on some of the risk of the natural systems along with the farmer: potential crop failure due to storm, drought, pest. In return the customer receives a portion of the weekly harvest. CSAs have been waning in popularity over the past decade as the customer base wants more freedom of choice in their weekly groceries. Then came Covid-19 and CSAs have soared in popularity across the nation. All of a sudden folks are interested in local food and with grocery store shortages, the customer base is happy to get whatever is fresh. I hope that as we move through and past this global pandemic that this appreciation is not forgotten. I hope that customers continue to chose to spend their dollars at farmers markets, local markets, and with CSA subscriptions. I hope that folks realize that producing food is a labor of love.
In the farming world there is an expression: “the best fertilizer is a farmer’s footsteps.” It means that the best way to be a successful steward of the land is to keep your eyes and ears open constantly walking the fields and observing both good and bad areas and figuring out how to make it better. Perhaps listening and observing is the best way right now to be a steward of human needs too. I need to listen to the other human voices and their experiences. Listening is a start.
Wood Frog Farm: A Boreal Forest Family Adventure 