The Mean Time

For all of you loyal readers out there, I must ruin the suspense and let you know what happened between the time my blog dropped right off sometime in 2009, and where we are now in space and time: spring time 2011.

For the rest of 2009, I continued loving and working at the Poughkeepsie Farm Project. My season there was filled to the brim with beautiful crops, fantastic colleagues, sassy teenagers, adorable children, CRAFT visits, new and lasting friendships, and lots of seed saving. My culminating project was Folk Seeds. Check it out here (http://thegreenhorns.wordpress.com/2009/11/04/folk-seeds/) and here (http://www.seedlibrary.org/wp/?p=461).

Words left here will never do justice or pay proper homage to that place, the farm, the people, all I learned, or keep learning about the work going on there. It was hard to leave the PFP and the Hudson Valley, and perhaps one day I will return. I spent a chunk of the winter chicken and house sitting for friends in Beacon, coming down from the highs and pace of the growing season, playing bass in the ephemeral Buff Orpington Quartet, and plotting my next move. I also spent some time with my family in Maryland while my Dad was getting radiation treatment, and was fortunate enough to be around DC for Snowpocalypse '10. I spent the rest of the winter in Guatemala with my dear friend Melissa and studied Spanish at the Proyecto Linguistico Quetzalteco de Espanol in Xela/Quetzaltenango. The PLQ is an excellent cooperative Spanish school of a radical persuasion, and they really try hard to teach and show students the complex cultural and political realities of the country. Learn more about it here: http://www.xelapages.com/plqe/, and go back with me! Pronto!

After returning from Central America, I shimmied up to southern Ontario in March 2010 to begin my apprenticeship at Orchard Hill Farm in St. Thomas. While working at the PFP, I became very conscious of the fact that I had not yet spent a full season doing solely farm work, and decided that before doing anything else related to food or farming, I really wanted that experience and to build my skills and knowledge base. On one of our CRAFT visits in '09, we happened to go to Natural Roots Farm (http://naturalroots.com/), a horse-powered vegetable farm in Conway, Mass. As soon as I witnessed farmer David Fisher wordlessly urge his fleet of four beautiful huge graceful muscular draft horses onto the field, with only the gentle jingle of the harness and the soft breath of the animals as music to our ears, I knew immediately what kind of farm I had to be on the following year. I had already had a sneaking suspicion that working with draft horses was something I needed to try, but seeing them in action for the first time that day simply swept me off my feet. I had been one of those horse-crazy girls growing up, but had been looking for a way to make them a more practical part of my existence. I loved farming, I loved horses, so farming with horses just made loads of sense (for emotional, economic, and ecological reasons too.) Some friends of mine pointed me to Orchard Hill and the likes of Ken and Martha Laing. Ken and Martha are seasoned farmers who have been farming the same land for 30 years, land that has been in Martha's family for six generations. They also have a reputation for being excellent human beings, very skilled growers, and supremely competent teamsters and teachers. (OHF's website is: http://www.orchardhillfarm.ca/).

I learned so much from K + M, and feel like I became more of a real person after spending a season working with their herd of 8 Suffolk Punch Draft horses. This could be a whole 'nother post in itself. It was a very challenging and rewarding season for me there. But I went there primarily to answer the questions: will I enjoy working with draft horses? Can horse-powered organic farms really work? My answers to both questions are a resounding YES. I loved it, I love it, I miss it terribly. It is something I hope to come back to just around the bend in the road, but I also learned that I'm not in a place where I want to "burn the ships" just yet, as a friend of mine put it, and go full steam ahead with starting a horse-powered farm. Which is fine, and good to know, and to be honest about.

So how the heck did I end up on the coast of Maine after moonlighting as a beginning teamster, and getting taste after sweet taste of the draft power world (through lovely gatherings such as Northeast Animal Power Field Days http://www.draftanimalpowernetwork.org/).

I think this is how it goes a bit: I experienced that even while living on the most beautiful idyllic wholesome family farm, one is not immune to the darker parts of life and humanity, crises of trust and faith and rearranging of ways in which you thought the world once worked. And truthfully, after going through some very trying times, more than not being immune or isolated, I actually want to be right in the thick of it. That right now I want and need to be better prepared to help myself, my loved ones, and people I don't even know deal with really hard stuff as it comes up, because it always does, and more is on the way. And that sometimes, you need to leave the farm to develop those skills, or at least I do. Moreover, I came to appreciate more than ever the healing powers of plants, animals, of being outdoors, and I feel a strong pull towards helping make these kinds of therapies and experiences available to more people. I am also deeply committed to the principles and values in food justice and food sovereignty work - and want to be more closely involved in community-based solutions to those systemic levels and structures of injustice out there, right here. And you know what, I don't actually want to be a full time organic farmer right now. There, I said it, its out and I can't take it back. Bless those who do, but I think a better fit for my own cocktail of innate strengths and wide ranging interests, might be part-time farmer, part-time lots of other things. And right now, a city is where I can find those Other things, try some stuff on for size, and be young for a little while longer.

So I am returning to community-based food projects, and am, as of Friday, the Youth Programs Assistant at Cultivating Community (http://www.cultivatingcommunity.org/) in Portland, Maine. It's been just great so far. More on that v. soon.