In Mid-October we were interviewed by the CBS Early Show to give our perspective on US agricultural farm subsidies and the impact on not only American eaters, but on American farmers.

William and I have had first hand experience with farm subsidies and the culture of dependence that they breed.  We were young farmers in 1996 when we went for the first (and last) time to our local USDA office and asked for a small grant to get us started on our family farm.  We needed less than $10,000 to start a business that had the potential to grow into a profitable living for our family.  But they wouldn’t even consider funding someone who wanted to raise tomatoes and get out of debt in 5 years.  They tried to steer us instead to $250,000 dollars in farm debt to produce soybeans and corn, heavy pesticide and herbicide use, and the promise of finally paying it all off when we eventually “bought the farm” with our deaths sometime in our 80′s.  Is that what they marketed in words?  No, but it’s what we saw time and time again in the lives of the Mid-Western farmers that followed that system. We just couldn’t see ourselves jumping on the sinking ship of government supported farming when our hearts told us that success was in private ownership and small business.

We’ve been following that path now for over 15 years and I’m grateful for every mile of it.

Do farm subsidies really promote obesity? Yes…and no. At the end of the day I believe that every person is responsible for what they eat. No one, not farmers, politicians, large corporations, or anyone else is force feeding the American eater a diet of Twinkies, HoHo’s, and Oreo’s. We choose what goes in our grocery carts, our mouths, and in our children’s mouths and are ultimately responsible for that choice. BUT, the American farm subsidy program encourages the continued production of unnaturally low priced foods that are filled with highly processed, “food like substances” (go read Michael Pollan’s books…great!!!) derived from corn and soy crops.

Take a Twinkie for example. Have you ever made a Twinkie? I HAVE made the homemade equivalent of a golden creme cake and it’s a lot of work. It requires a lot of ingredients, a lot of time, and a lot of baker involvement to produce the final treat. The only way that a snack cake with that many ingredients and steps in it’s production can be sold for such an inexpensive price is if the ingredients it is made from are sold incredibly cheap. It leaves me wondering how a Twinkie can be cheaper than an apple when it takes so much more work to get the Twinkie. I’m inclined to agree with Joel Salatin’s statement in the title of his new book “Folks, This Ain’t Normal” (go read Joel Salatin’s books…they are also seriously great!!!)

On a lighter note our son Ezekiel came in this morning declaring “There’s a Zephyr wind blowing this morning! Come feel how warm it is.” He was right. There was a delicious, nearly tropical breeze blowing across the farm this morning and it felt like a touch of Spring even in the deep of December. It makes me want to go dig in the dirt and get muddy. That’s really saying something because I usually feel that I’m fighting dirt like the Romans fought the invading Huns. I think I’ll put down my weapons of war, the broom, mop, and vacuum and instead seek an audience with my beloved enemy. Maybe we’ll have a picnic lunch by the lake, or just a stroll down the farm road, anything that takes me outside, under the sky, and near the soil. It’s a good day to be a farmer.

We were moving stones.

Each year when my father would work the ground for the garden more stones would appear, almost as if they floated upwards through the earth just to get to the sunshine at the top.  My tiny hands could only carry the smallest rocks, but I carried what I could.  We made a tower of them at the side of the field and I recall thinking that they looked like potatoes.

Years later I once again moved stones with my husband William.  He hitched our draft horses, Jim and John the huge Belgian geldings, to our “rock boat” which was a piece of steel bent up on all sides, supported by rebar, and used to “float” the heavy rocks out of the field.  He had used it a lot growing up in the red rock country of Hurricane, UT.  His family’s farm fields were filled with stones, but they were determined to grow in them every year.  We used the rock boat on our family farm in Missouri to remove stones from the area where we planted 1,000 fruit trees.

My children have had the pleasure of moving stones from the fields we’ve worked, building their own potato looking stacks, spiriting them away to serve as foundations for play forts or Anasazi cliff dwelling replicas.

Moving stones is as much a part of farming as planting seeds or hoeing weeds.   We are accustomed to hard work, well acquainted with the weight and weariness of it, and have felt the absolute pleasure of falling into bed at night exhausted but satisfied with a good day’s effort.

But recently I’ve run up against hard places where I’ve never been before and I’ve labored in fields that baffle, confuse, and sometimes pain me.  I try to make sense of the rocks in my chosen professional “field” and I confess that I cannot make sense of them at all.

Two of our fellow farmers and friends were recently raided on their farm in Overton, Nevada.  Their “crime”?  They were planning to serve fresh food from their garden, free range beef and lamb, prepared by a certified chef in a certified kitchen to their friends and farm members.

Does it confuse you too?  I’m baffled.

In fact I’m beyond baffled, I’m appalled.   I confess that in the past when I’ve seen some of the “food raid” videos I have thought to myself “they must have done something they shouldn’t have, they must have crossed a line somewhere.  A government agency wouldn’t do that…would they?”  But I happen to personally know Monte and Laura Bledsoe, the Nevada farmers who were raided, and what I know of them speaks so loudly of integrity, commitment, and dedication to principles of kindness and service that I can’t believe that they didn’t do everything in their power to comply with any regulations given to them by the health department.  I’ve been to Quail Hollow Farm multiple times, and the Bledsoe’s were just here at our farm in Oregon City two weeks ago.   I’ve seen the amount of effort they put into serving the people in their community, the efforts that they go to bring not only food, but comfort and compassion to their farm members.  I’ve watched Laura travel to Africa to bring the hope of education and freedom to countries that are looking for both.  I’ve heard her, a quietly diligent woman, stand and teach youth and adults alike to work hard, study harder, and to stand up for what they believe in.

Here’s Monte…he really looks like a nefarious character doesn’t he?

And here’s Laura with the Las Vegas chapter president of Slow Foods.  Yup…really suspicious.

Then I watched the videos of the raid, the responses of the Quail Hollow farm members and I ask myself:  if this is what food safety means where have our American freedoms gone?  You can watch the video yourself and read Laura’s words in this article: http://shanonbrooks.com/2011/10/people-live-dirt-roads-monte-laura-bledsoe-quail-hollow-farm-csa/

When friends are not allowed to eat a meal together to celebrate the bounty of the year, when a government official tells a state certified farmer that her food is only fit for a landfill, not even good enough for pigs, when people who have hired a farmer to raise their produce for them are not permitted to eat that food, when that same official tells a concerned citizen “that’s all the information you need to know” …I would say that it is well past time to speak up and say something.

This past year I testified in Salem before a committee that was considering the Oregon Agricultural Reclamation Act sponsored by Friends of Family Farmers.  I asked them to defend my right to produce the food that consumers want.  I was one among a good crowd of farmers asking for the same right, and lobbyists for big ag who were opposed to it.  Several of our farm members made it down to that meeting to show their support, not as farmers but as EATERS, for the freedom to obtain more easily the food they wish to consume.

But it’s not enough.  We MUST keep talking.  We must be diligent in defending our right to consume healthy food…because as this video demonstrates there are people in positions of power who do not believe you have that right.  And we need more voices.

What can you do to make a difference?  Let me give you a couple of suggestions:

1. Join and support Friends of Family Farmers.  I have been working with them for a while now and I am nothing but impressed with their commitment to preserving your food freedom and the right to farm.  They need more committed members to keep their vision going.  Visit their website at http://www.friendsoffamilyfarmers.org
2. Join and support The Farm to Consumer Legal Defense Fund.  I am currently a member and have found their advice to be a great help.  By helping them defend farmers on a national level you are defending the right to eat the food of your choice. You can see the mission and work of the fund at http://www.ftcldf.org
3. Last but not least…whenever possible buy your food directly from a farmer.  We are so blessed in this area to be surrounded by farms that are willing to sell direct to consumers.  Find them, buy your food from them, and let your purchasing habits send a loud and clear message that you want to be free to eat good food.  You have no idea how powerful your choice to buy farm fresh and local is to food freedom.  It’s what keeps the farmers growing, it’s what keeps the food available for next year, it’s what help drives the desire to farm sustainably, using natural methods that protect the soil, the water, and the animals and plants that take their living from them.

If we work together we can maintain our right to eat healthy food, raised in a way that builds healthy families and healthy communities.  Is it something you believe in?  Is it something you can defend?  One of my favorite quotes is from the pilot and author of “The Little Prince” Antoine de Saint-Exupery:

“Only he can understand what a farm is, what a country is, who shall have sacrificed part of himself to his farm or country, fought to save it, struggled to make it beautiful. Only then will the love of farm or country fill his heart.”

I learned while I was a young girl picking rocks out of a field on my parents farm what sacrifice for the farm meant.  I learned at their side as we traveled the country on back roads and scenic byways, visiting memorials and historic markers along the way about the lives of men and women who sacrificed to give me this land that I farm.  I have felt an obligation to them and to myself to preserve and defend what they lived and died for.  William and I have spent our married life defending it together.  We have labored with the land even when it hasn’t been popular, when our neighbors have accused us of being crazy, evil, or stupid for trying to raise our crops in a regenerative way.  We recently had a neighbor tell us in a very confrontational tone that we were doomed to fail, he didn’t want cows and chickens near his property and that we were fooling ourselves if we thought we’d grow anything but rocks in our fields because this land won’t produce anything else.

It may very well be that we harvest a few rocks from our farm…but then we’ve done it before and we are willing to do it again.  Because those who come after us will have fewer rocks to contend with if we care for our fields well today.  And in the meantime our fields of stone are yielding some pretty delicious “weeds” like these…

And these…

And these…

Thank you so much for supporting C’est Naturelle Farms.  Thank you for speaking up for food freedom with your grocery money.  We know that with the difficult economic times we are in every dollar counts and we don’t take them for granted.  Your commitment gives us the ability to keep going and we don’t take the sacrifice you make lightly.

Together we can till fields of stone and build the foundation of a healthy, free society.  It’s a battle, but if Napoleon was right and “an army travels on its stomach” then at least we’ll go to war well fed.

One of our farm animals made a recent addition to the farm in my children’s favorite place on the farm, “The Forest of Night”. It has been a great forest for the kids to play in. The have fought battles, raised dragons, circumnavigated the globe, scaled mountains, and been on deadly polar expeditions all without ever leaving those trees. And now it has been transformed into a natural nursery. Enjoy!

Thank you for your recent inquiry about bottle charges.

We have kept records each and every delivery day for who has returned bottles.  Our policy is: Return the same amount of bottles you picked up full with milk the week before.  You picked up 2 last week?  Return 2 this week.  We at the farm like simple math.

We don’t require you to make extra trips to get there before our delivery guy.  We just calculate returned bottles from two weeks prior delivery document.

What? How does that work?

Answer: when you pick up fresh milk, leave same amount of empty bottles from previous week’s delivery. They sit there for a week until Jon comes back to deliver fresh milk.  He picks up those lonely bottles, which as that point have been away from the farm for two weeks and miss us. He lines up those bottles, records the names and quantities and sends that info right from the drop site in an email to our office.  We have a long list of these emails.

It is has been a very busy summer, so it has just been now that we are tackling these records.  At this point, the fees you see listed are from bottles not returned from the first half of the summer.  We DO, however, check each time before we charge the fee whether a customer has been on vacation that week.  If so, we don’t charge for the missing bottle as we understand you weren’t there to return it.

Why such a big deal? We need bottles returned each week to be able to fill milk orders for the coming week.  We are at a point now that because we could not calculate bottles returns all summer and people became relaxed about returning, we are scrambling at the beginning of each week to have enough bottles for our deliveries.

So if you see a charge, there was a week where you did not return bottles.  There is no way we can check bottles delivered weeks later as being accounted for that particular week it should have brought back (so we could fill it up and send it back out again when we needed it.)  However, upon your word  we will refund fees if you have indeed at some point sent all your bottles back to the farm.  And in the future, always return the same amount of bottles you picked up the week before when you pick up your fresh milk.

Thank you for your efforts to help us continue on our road to sustainability.  We are a small operation, run on the power of vision and volunteers and it takes our farm members support and efforts to make it all work!

Sincerely,

Your Farm Team, C’est Naturelle Farms

And for your entertainment: A Video on how to mark your bottles for return

The Love of Family

It would seem that the title of this love letter is self-explanatory and universal.  It’s generally expected that most people love their families, either the one they come from or the one they create or are welcomed or adopted into.  It’s a fundamental, foundational belief across generations, cultures, languages, religions, political parties, and creeds…love your family.  I think I’ve been very obvious throughout this work so far about how I feel towards my own family and the intensity of the love I have for them.

The idea of familial affection speaks to the best that is within us because (let’s be perfectly honest) sometimes it is a struggle to love your closest relatives.  It’s nearly impossible to live near and have a relationship with your parents and siblings, in-laws and cousins, grandmas and grandpas without friction developing from time to time.  Tempers can flare over something as inconsequential as dirty socks or as seemingly insurmountable as adultery.  Those who love one another deeply can jump to choose sides, misconstrue motivations, misinterpret words, judge harshly, or withhold affection, support, and any outward sign of kindness in an attempt to remain uninvolved in personal differences of opinion and perceived slights.

It can be a rough road to travel at times, especially since we all drag along our collective baggage with us.  And sometimes when one member of the family finally lets go of his own baggage, there are others who, not as ready to let it go, feel compelled to go through that dirty laundry and stuff it in with their own bags and bring it along on family vacations, to reunions, and on cross-country road trips.

As family members we can support one another better, defend longer, wound deeper, and disappoint more than anyone else on Earth.  No one else’s studied disregard or casual indifference can hurt so deeply, and no other gentle hug and whispered, “Good job!” means so much.  We are often privy to the best and worst in each other and are by turns both less and more forgiving than the rest of the world as well.

We may love or loathe one another; we may distrust or admire or envy or pity one another because so many emotions are tied up with family relationships, but at the core of it is one basic idea; we belong to one another.  “Warts and all,” as my mother says.

This belonging requires a conscious effort on the part of all family members to look well beyond their own comfort, their own well-being, and their own satisfaction to seek out the needs of each other and help to fill them.  I don’t know how old I was when this notion really took a hold of me, but I’m guessing it was sometime around the summer I turned eight.  Up until then I had derived great pleasure in being the evil tormentor of two of my older brothers, Aaron and Jared.

We would sit in the back seat of our old green Cadillac as it cruised down the narrow two lane highways, Aaron and Jared by the windows, me in the middle, and I would worm my hand down by their legs and pinch them.  There was a reason for pinching their legs and not their arms; Mom and Dad couldn’t see me do it.  My brothers, not being as sly and devious as I was, would respond with a good honest punch on my arm, which mom and dad could see.  I would proceed to bawl and carry on with a wonderful dramatic flair after which mom and dad would launch into the “Don’t hit your sister” talk.  I’d smirk or stick out my tongue at my brothers, and they’d frown and silently threaten to pulverize me later.  I never felt sorry about this until my eighth summer when I did it for the last time to Jared.  I pinched, he punched, mom and dad lectured, and Jared gave me such a look of utter distaste for my behavior that I actually felt bad.  I was shocked.  The punch was nothing, that was just a couple of kids playing around, but that look?  It really knocked me for a loop and my mind started working.

It made him feel bad when I teased him?  He felt bad when we played nice one minute and I was mean the next?  It was hard to shed my little narcissistic cocoon; it was painful to find myself experiencing emotions outside of myself.  It would be nice to say that I never went back to teasing my brothers, but remember I was eight and it was a relatively habitual behavior.  But I gradually learned not to as I began to understand remorse and empathy the older I got.  Although I should clarify that I only felt guilty for pinching Jared, Aaron liked to flip my ears and I figured he deserved it.  Actually he still flips my ears by way of greeting, but since we live about 2,500 miles apart it has now become more nostalgic than annoying.

I understood sympathy as it related to my own pain.  I didn’t want to make Jared feel bad because then I’d feel bad.  It was still a kind of self-serving niceness, an avoidance of pain rather than a conscious seeking to do good in spite of it.  I spent the better part of my teenage years trying to understand that principle better, the wanting to perform good works out of a sincere desire.  Sometimes I got it right, more often than not I didn’t.  The blessing of a family is that you get the opportunity to keep trying.  Each new day you have the opportunity to try again to serve with love, to develop compassion, and to better understand mercy.

Becoming a mother in 1998 intensified my feeling of selfless love.  The first time I held my eldest son in my arms I began to realign my thinking, the way all mothers must, into recognizing that he wasn’t “me” anymore.  Not my body, as he had been, not just an extension of myself as I thought of him at first.  He was Ezekiel; he was unique, himself, totally new and undiscovered.  I couldn’t wait to hear his thoughts and know his feelings; and I was certain as I held onto him that I would do anything I could to protect him.  It was a strange and terrifying emotion to love that deeply and recognize in the same instant that it was my job to raise him in such a way as to ensure that he could survive without me.

When I found myself pregnant with my second child I was worried.  I honestly couldn’t comprehend loving another child as much as I loved Ezekiel; he was just such a wonderful little boy.  How could anyone else come close to touching that depth of love I felt for him?  I didn’t think my heart had room for any more love and I worried about whether I could be a good mother to both of them.

But then Ephraim was born and it was as if my heart had grown inside me just as surely as he had.  When I held his tiny little body to my breast, stroked his cheek as soft as a butterfly’s wing, and felt his little fingers hold tightly to mine, I could feel it swelling into new life, beating stronger than it had before.  I hadn’t realized until then that there was more love to be had, that it is not a finite commodity.  With the birth of Ephraim I found more love for Ezekiel and William as well, more love and gratitude for my parents and grandparents, more appreciation for my brothers and sisters, and a greater tenderness towards other children that were not mine.

Zeke was three and Eph was one in the late summer of 2001, and life was exciting.  William had worked for Doc Windom for over five years as a veterinary assistant.  He loved the work, loved working alongside Doc, who was a wealth of knowledge when it came to animals and the progress of agriculture in the Midwest over the past 40 years.  William learned so much more than husbandry on those trips with Doc.  He learned the impact of subsidies on farm families, the real cost of CRP and he saw firsthand the gradual dismantling of the greatness that was mid-America.  A desire was born in William as he and Doc drove those once thriving back roads, a desire to teach people what farming used to be about, that it was more than profit and loss statements, more than insurance claims and government handouts.  He wanted to show people that it has the capacity to be the foundation, the role it has always played, in a civilization.  He read, studied, and listened, and the more he learned, the more determined he was to be a voice for what farming could be, what we’ve always felt it should be.

He decided that summer to attend Northwest Missouri State University.  It was only 50 miles away; he would learn everything he could in their agricultural education department and then he would teach.  Little did we know then that it was not the answer he was looking for, that the education system was not geared to support and sustain independent land-owners or teach them relevant information.  We hadn’t heard of Joel Salatin then.  We didn’t know anything about groups like Local Harvest.  We didn’t know any of this yet and so we made plans to attend.  We looked for housing in Maryville, and William still worked with Doc, treasuring the last few months he had to learn from him.

It was a beautiful Indian summer day in northwest Missouri that September when I drove William into town to Doc and his wife Joan’s office.  Doc did the vet work, and Joan took care of the books and customers.  I drove over to my Mom’s house with Ezekiel and Ephraim to visit.  We sat at her kitchen table while the early morning sun filtered in through white Battenberg lace curtains and cobalt blue glass figurines and talked about my sister-in-law Joy’s harvest party coming up in October.  The boys were playing with building blocks in Grandma’s play room; it was a simple, pleasant morning.

Then Aaron called.  He knew Mom and Dad didn’t have cable or satellite TV, so he said, “Mom, you need to turn on your radio.  A plane just flew into the World Trade Center.”  She handed me the phone and raced over to her kitchen counter to flip on the old radio.  Every network was talking about it.

I asked Aaron to repeat again what was happening and he said, “They don’t know who it was but someone flew a plane into the World Trade Center in New York.”  My mind couldn’t wrap around it.  I think I asked, “On purpose?  It wasn’t just some horrible, freak accident?”

“No,” he scoffed grimly, “It wasn’t an accident.”

“How did they get an empty plane into New York airspace, right into the city like that?” I asked.

“It wasn’t empty.  They hijacked it.”

I think I handed the phone back to mom then.  Not empty?  I shuddered.  How many people? I wondered.  How many survivors?  We didn’t know about the second plane yet, we didn’t know about the collapse of the towers.  All I could think of was the plane.

William finished work early that day; I told him what I knew while I drove him up to his parents’ farm, eight miles from our little house in Denver, Missouri.  We watched videos on the TV of New York City.  We saw the planes hit the towers again and again and again and again.  Each time it was like a new wound.  We saw the towers collapse and the gray dust and rubble cloud cover the city streets.  As videos from amateur photographers emerged, we watched the same horror with new eyes.

William drove himself to work the next day while I sat, safe and warm on my couch, watching the war zone that New York had become.  I watched as images of the Pentagon emerged, as a field in Pennsylvania appeared with a giant black scar on the farm fields marking where flight 93 had crashed.

And again all I could think of were the planes.

I imagined myself on those planes.  The networks showed pictures of the passengers and I wondered what would I have done if I had been one of them?  If my child was sitting beside me and I knew we were flying to our death, what would I say?  How would I comfort my child?

And suddenly, as I sat there contemplating the unimaginable and the terribly real, I was seized by an emotion I had never really felt before…hate.  I had never known before that moment what it was to really hate another human being.

I hated, with an almost perfect passion, the men who had calmly looked into the eyes of their fellow passengers and then willingly murdered them.  The hate was so huge it burgeoned up inside me like a bomb.  It made my skin sensitive to touch, my ears attuned to more sound, and my heart cold.  It wasn’t enough that their bodies were disintegrated in the fire and buried beneath thousands of pounds of concrete and rebar.  I wanted them to suffer more than death; I wanted them to know a greater torment.  Hell was not even enough for me.  I wanted them to be cast down past even the burn of the fires of brimstone to where they could rot in the cold and empty silence of nothingness, where they could exist in nothing but the horror of their own barbarism, cruelty, and damnation.

For hours and hours I could feel nothing but that all consuming hatred.  I fed my children, I changed diapers, I started dinner, but I couldn’t move my heart past the cold of my emotions.  Finally I sat, with my children spread at my feet, watching it again and again and again.  I don’t think I realized I was weeping until Ezekiel put his little hands on my face and said, “Mommy, why are you crying?”  I told him, as simply as I could that some very bad men had flown some planes into the buildings and that I was crying because so many people had died.

“Why did they do it Mommy?” he asked.

I had no answer for him and none for myself so I just pulled him to me and hugged him until he squirmed away to go play with his blocks again.  His tender, baby boy hug calmed the hate inside, but I could still feel it threatening to overcome me.  It drove me to my knees, and I pleaded with God to take it away, to remove the hate from my heart.

I believe in God.  I believe in His active participation in my life.  There have been too many miracles and moments of transcendent beauty and strength in my life to deny Him.  This was one of them.

As I knelt there on the floor of my living room, my two sons playing beside me, pleading with the God of the universe to take the hate from my heart, I felt something shift inside my soul.  I have discovered over a lifetime of praying, seeking, listening, and receiving answers that God doesn’t just take things away.  He replaces with something else.  He doesn’t exist in or create vacuums and voids in our lives.  He replaces, fills, compensates, and redeems.

I didn’t know it but that is what I was pleading for: redemption.  And it came, as surely as sunrise and seasons, and was as painful as birth.  Because in removing the hate from my heart, He replaced it with something else.  Something I had felt twice before, only now it was deeper, richer, and more encompassing than I thought possible.  It was painful to grow and to accept what He wanted to give me—to accept a parent’s love.

At once, unbidden and clear the images of those planes filled my mind only now they were sharper and a terrible love filled me with joy and an aching sorrow.  In the clarity of that moment a thought, both beautiful and agonizing entered my heart.  It spoke to my mind words that changed me forever.  “All of the people on that plane were my children.  All are my sons and daughters.  All have need of my love and mercy.  Forgive, for your sake.  How much more need of forgiveness have my children who wound their brothers and sisters willingly?  Whom would you have me deny?”

All I could think in response was “None.” Somewhere in the Middle East there was another mother kneeling in prayer, seeking comfort in her loss; in England, New York, Japan, Australia, California, Mexico, Brazil, Kenya, China, and all over the world mothers were seeking comfort and peace in a world overrun with enough hate to fill an ocean.  I couldn’t bear to add one more drop.  There were already enough hearts given over to the cold nothingness of hate, revenge, and terror.  I didn’t need to be another one.

Love, compassion, sorrow, and forgiveness swamped me.  I trembled with the intensity and pulled myself up to the couch where I wept out my broken and newly bandaged heart.  Ephraim crawled over and I picked him up to rock and feed him.  Ezekiel climbed next to me and patted me on the shoulder.

I wept and wondered at the easy love between my sons, two brothers who had been friends all their short lives.  From his first view of him in the hospital bassinet Ezekiel had cried out “It’s Ephy!” as if he had just been waiting for his best friend to arrive.  I thought of the troubled relationships of adult siblings, marred by anxiety, loneliness, resentment, and envy.  I thought of parents who, no matter how old or young, worried over their children and choices they knew would lead to unhappiness and heartbreak, knowing every child must make their own decisions regardless.

My definition of family changed that day, and I was no longer just the youngest of twelve, or the last of the big parade.  I was a daughter of the divine, a sister to the noble, a mother of heroes.  I was also the daughter of transgression, the sister of fear, the mother of want and need.  I was no more and no less than one part of a tremendous whole, and I had a role to play on this stage of my existence.

I had to choose.

In the end that was the answer to my prayer.  God forced nothing upon me, because he never does.  He simply allowed me to see the two paths before me and let me choose.  Anger, hate, and a frozen heart or love, forgiveness, and a broken heart.  There was no easy choice, there never is, but there was for me a correct one.  I chose to love my family.

All of them.

Not just the ones that think like me, or look like me, or believe all the same things.  I had been well taught after all, by my own parents that we are a family because we choose to be.

Everyday we live we are given the opportunity again to love our brothers and our sisters, to look past perceived differences to what makes us the same in our hearts.  We all hope for a better world for our children, we all search for love and comfort, we all strive to find meaning in our day to day labors.  Each new day we are again shown our two paths—love and life or hate and death.  We walk in the paths our parents have shown us.  We forge new ones that lead us to greater understanding and peace.  We seek to know our legacy and either live up to or overcome it.  We do the work required to ensure that our name is synonymous with generosity of spirit.  We choose our place; and when we have chosen, we reach out to our neighbors, to those we come in contact with to build our family, our community, our world.

There is a need in the world for family.  There is enough and to spare of violence, bitterness, and condemnation.  It can be hard to stand in an angry mob and be a voice of courtesy, charity, and conviction.  Hard because it is difficult for some to understand that peace is not passivity and that humility is not weakness.   It is hard for some to understand that standing up for your personal truth does not equal a lack of consideration for theirs.  It takes many voices to make a choir, each member singing their own part.  An orchestra is richer for its diversity of sound—the melody, harmony, major, and minor notes all blending into a magnificent work of art.

The God that filled my heart with mercy on a beautiful late summer day in the middle of America made a world full of differences—mountains  and valleys, deserts and seas, farmlands and forests.  Opposites and opposition exist in the world, and all we can do is choose for ourselves.

I look at my brothers and my sisters, some that share no common blood with me, and I see only hearts that love as I love and hands that labor to do good.  The differences are lost in the depth of feeling we share with one another.  We draw no lines in the sand that separate us.  We have our differences and disputes but we draw a circle of love that welcomes everyone in to the warmth of family.

I look around me at the people I do not know, at the family I haven’t met yet, and I feel the yearning to draw them in, to know them better, to welcome them home to my heart so they will know they are loved, they will know that they belong.  Because in the end we all belong to one another.  Warts and all.

I didn’t know 16 years ago that we would have so many ups and downs, so many heartaches and so many blessings.  It’s nice to have a day or two of clarity, to see just how far we’ve come, to see just how much we mean to each other, and to be reminded that all of our blessings have been richer because we’ve been able to hold on to each other and our belief in better days as we’ve waded through the rough times.

Our anniversary was on April 22nd, and on Saturday morning as I was heading to the market to get some spinach for my green smoothie my phone beeped to let me know I had a message.  We were staying with my brother-in-law and his family who live in a beautiful rural town that is unfortunately a black hole for cell phones so I pulled over to the shoulder of their little country road to listen to my messages while I had service.  There were a few messages from family for my anniversary, and one from my mom asking me to call her back right away.  I could tell by the tone of her voice that something was wrong so I tried to call her back right then but her phone was busy.  I listened to my messages again and heard the message I had missed the first time and it nearly stopped my heart.

One of my cousins had committed suicide two days earlier.

Mom had been trying to reach me but hadn’t been able to with our spotty cell service.  I couldn’t believe it.  ”Why?”  Was the foremost question in my mind.  Why quit now?  Why when things were going so well for him?  We still don’t know.  He left notes but the police won’t let the family see them yet, they wouldn’t even let his wife view his body without paying $400 first.  They told his wife and parents that it will be at least 3 weeks before they will release anything to them.

I sat in the front seat of my car, crying as William held me, and couldn’t imagine the despair that must have driven him to that extremity.  And I couldn’t bear thinking of the pain my aunt and uncle were going through.  They were unable to physically have children of their own and had adopted a son and daughter and had loved them as much as any parent could love a child.

He’d been one of my heroes when I was a little girl.  I remember visiting them once when I was about 9 years old.  I had hit that unfortunate, gangly and goofy stage of youth where your teeth are too big, your arms too long, and no matter how hard you try you’re tripping over everything in sight with feet that suddenly can’t seem to figure out where they’re going.

I was avoiding injury and potential damage to the house by sitting alone out on the back patio and breathing in the smell of flower blooms and freshly mowed grass.  All of a sudden my handsome, teenage cousin came out with two glasses of lemonade one for me and one for himself.  Randy sat visiting with me, asking me about what I was currently interested in, about my friends, just about me.  It was a sweet moment for a young girl and I loved him for it.  I loved him for caring enough about me to take the time to visit with me and make me feel interesting when I was convinced that I was a hopeless geek.  I never forgot it, and even though life kept us busy and out of touch except for an occasional remark on facebook, I still loved my cousin.

As we drove home from our trip and I crossed mountains, deserts, rivers, and valleys all in the space of hours the trials, joys, sorrows, and regrets of years ran through my mind.  As I easily passed over rivers that had claimed the lives of early Oregon pioneers I measured my ease against their toil, my commitment to principles against their absolute determination to keep going to the end of the trail.  I thought of our garden waiting for us at home on Kirk Rd. and of the high desert garden I had just seen at my father-in-law’s house.  Those beautiful tender blooms hang on year after year in some of the most adverse conditions.   I drove past an apple orchard in full-bloom clinging to a tiny, steep-sloped hillside in the Columbia River Gorge and marveled at its persistence.

When we arrived home William opened up his sprouting chest and found to his amazement that his tomato seedlings, which he had given up for dead, were still alive and groping for the light.  In his absence, with no water, no light, and no hope of surviving without either of those things they still kept growing.  Their stems were a little leggy and they were drooping but a little bit of water and an afternoon in the sunshine refreshed them and they are now growing happily in the greenhouse, stronger than some of their other siblings who had no stress to overcome.

And then it struck me, as I watched William tending to those little seedlings, that humans are the only creatures on the earth who willingly give up the chance to live.  After years of tending crops, raising animals, and watching the cycle of life and death inherent to farming I have never seen a tomato plant die because it just stopped wanting to live.  Even with disease, mildew, pest damage, and broken stems and branches they still keep fighting onward and upward.  We’ve had animals that have suffered from injury and disease that have fought against their own damaged bodies to try to stand, to move, to just keep going for one more day.  We’ve done all in our power to help them and sometimes are rewarded with a miracle of healing and sometimes with the eventual death of a well-loved farm friend.  But no matter the outcome we are able to walk away knowing that we did everything that could have been done to save their life…because every life is precious.

It broke my heart, to think that maybe there was something I could have done or said to help my cousin, but now I have no way of knowing, and no way to fix it.  I can’t tell him now how precious his life was to me and I wish he had known.  How often do we consider our lives unimportant to others?  How often do we believe the lie that our life doesn’t make a difference to anyone else?  Far too often I’m afraid, but unlike the animals we work with and the plants we tend, the people we come in contact with have the power to choose  despair or hope.

Many of our farm members have shared their personal stories with us, their journeys that have led them in search of the healthiest food they can find in order to save their health, the discouragement they have felt from time to time when they felt they had no control over something as seemingly insignificant as what they could eat.  Many of them have been at that decision point that asks “Can I keep going?”

You can.  You can keep going and more importantly you can keep growing.  This is my message from the farm today…please, please, please just keep growing.  Don’t give up when you think you can’t keep going one more step.  There are people you can’t remember, people you may not even know, who need you.  Your life matters.  Not one plant on our farm goes to waste, not one.  All of the systems of our farm are interrelated and intertwined and a loss in one represents a loss in all of the others.  So it is with our community of friends, and in the larger family of man.

Your life is precious and you are the only one who can live it.

So take heart, and take the next step.

Just Keep Growing.

Not only did I get a piece of warm, fresh cooked bacon in my mouth, I was sent home with a sample of it so I could share with my husband.   Which is sizzling on the stove as I write this post.   Which inspired me to share on the farm blog.  Because it would be selfish of me to keep this experience of deliciousness all to myself.   That deep smokey flavor derived from : smoking!  Imagine that?  I saw the damp hickory and apple wood smoke spiraling up and around the meat only a few days ago.  Nothing else but smoke?  No extras?  Nope!  I even get to add my own salt, good salt at that.

I saw this pig, I spoke to this pig, my son helped feed this pig.  I knew what conditions in which this animal was raised.   A few years ago, had I met the ‘now’ me, I would have thought myself on the nutty side for even valuing and expressing gratitude for such things.  But I do!  And I guess I am nutty!

Why yogurt? Why is it important to learn about it, and further – why learn how to make it?? We have all heard about yogurt being good for our health, but honestly the yogurt they say is good for our health is full of unhealthy ingredients!

Case in point: Yoplait Strawberry Yogurt
Ingredients: Cultured Pasteurized Grade A Low Fat Milk, Sugar, Strawberries, Modified Corn Starch, High Fructose Corn Syrup, Nonfat Milk, Kosher Gelatin, Citric Acid, Tricalcium Phosphate, Natural Flavor, Pectin, Colored with Carmine, Vitamin A Acetate, Vitamin D3.

Verdict: not healthy. Notice the word “carmine”, it is a nice sounding word also known as Red#40. Notice how much sugar there is. After some digging we find that 108 of the 163 calories in that smart-shaped cup of creaminess are from sugar! (By the way if you go to the Yoplait website they provide all sorts of good information about yogurt and its nutrition facts, but conveniently their ingredient list is nowhere to be found.)

The first reason for making homemade yogurt is it tastes great! I used to think all plain, unflavored yogurt was too tart for my taste buds. And I assumed, wrongly, that all plain yogurt tastes that way – difficult to eat without adding something sweet!  THEN I tasted homemade buttermilk and yogurt and I could not believe it! So creamy, full of flavor, and yummy all by itself.  Add some flavoring such as fruit, vanilla, etc and it’s incredible.

Second reason – it is less expensive than regularly buying a container of whole milk yogurt from the store.  Plus you won’t ever find yogurt with as good of ingredients as you can get when you make your own!

Third reason – you get to eat yogurt without all the added additives, stabilizers, and in some cases – sugar!

Fourth reason – is it so dang healthy for you!
“The friendly little cusses like to set up a living factory in your digestive system and continuously produce an onslaught of B vitamins, which can help combat nervous disorders, mental and physical fatigue, anemia, skin rashes, and more. The lactobacilli thrive — and make yogurt — by converting milk sugar (lactose) into lactic acid. Lactic acid produces yet another of yogurt’s amazing health benefits: The toxic bacteria that cause intestinal gas and putrefaction (the rotting decomposition of food) cannot survive in an environment containing significant amounts of lactic acid. The resulting lack of toxic organisms in the metabolism may be one reason for the long and vigorous lives of the people in yogurt-loving societies.
This double whammy effect of lactobacilli — creating good vitamins while eliminating bad bacteria — is especially helpful after someone has taken antibiotics. The germ-killing medicines may successfully combat an unwanted disease, but they also tend to wipe out the body’s supply of internal lactobacilli and leave the treated patient susceptible to B-deficiency and intestinal problems. Therefore, sick folk (especially “bugridden” infants) should be given yogurt as an important health-restoring food.
On top of all of its positive effects, the fermented milk product is a digestive aid that helps the body absorb protein, calcium and iron. In fact, many people who literally can’t stomach fresh milk (the lactose present in the drink gives lactose intolerant people gas, diarrhea and other problems) can easily assimilate the healthful lactic acid found in yogurt.” [Mother Earth News, 1980]

Eating yogurt that is prepared with home culturing is an amazing way to consume millions of little buggies per bite that help scrub out your digestive system. It is delicious. And simple to do once you get the groove.

It may help to build strong bones enhance immunity, lower blood pressure, have anti-cancer and weight-loss effects. It’s high in fat and protein, and low in sugar. (This is considered a good fat, which is vital.)

The Bulgarian culture produces a thick creamy yogurt with a little tartness. The Bulgarian pheasants are famous for living for at least a century in their mountainous abode due to their creamy yumminess!

Traditional Greek yogurt is usually thicker than regular yogurt because it’s strained and the liquid whey is removed. It’s kind of a cross between yogurt and cheese.

What’s in your guts?????
Replenish your gut with the ancient flora from Bulgaria and Greece!

This morning she called me about an article she read in her little hometown paper, Bethany’s Republican Clipper.  The author was lamenting what he had discovered at a university bookstore during a recent trip to the Mizzou campus in Columbia.  “Where are the books?” he asked.  In their place he had found cosmetics, movies, toys, candy, and gift cards.  He pondered what was becoming of our society when we have become so dependent on digital knowledge.  He argued for the continuing necessity of physical books, those glorious works of art upon whose pages is recorded the best and worst of human thought.

It’s a good question…where are the books?

I see many of them on thrift store shelves.  I come home with a stack of them almost every week from Goodwill.  Their prices range from $0.10 to $2.00 each.  I don’t often check books out from the Library.  I’m incredibly grateful for the library, my children adore it, but I never remember to bring the books back on time.  I’m forever paying late fees and I’ve found it’s just cheaper to buy my own copy.  Besides that I’m a compulsive re-reader.  I seldom read a book just once…unless it was drivel the first time around, in which case I don’t waste my time.  I love words, the sound of them as they move through my mind, the texture of them on my tongue when I say them aloud.  I love the combination of words that lead to meaning, to thought, and to action.  There are passages in the books I’ve read that have the flow and cadence of poetry.  I like to reread it just for the depth of feeling and soul resonating power they engender.

I have often set down a book that has just filled my heart and mind up and been appalled to see the $0.25 price tag.  How could those thoughts be worth only twenty-five cents?  Grateful as I am that I could afford to purchase it, I am still appalled.  It comes too close for comfort to Guy Montag’s initial belief that books had no value in Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451.  And just how close to the hedonistic society described by Bradbury have we become when a box of Trojans has replaced a copy of Tolstoy on the shelf?

The act of bookmaking used to be an art form.  The illuminated manuscripts of the middle ages, the beloved and well-tended scrolls of the ancients, even the carved clay tablets of the early Mesopotamians were all created, cared for, and preserved because they were beautiful both in being and in content.  They were valued not only for the words on their pages, but for the time it took to create them, the joy that went into every stroke of the pen or brush.

It reminds me of farming.  “Vernie,” you say “Everything reminds you of farming.”  It’s true.  I’m a farmer…what else can I say?

We’ve had the most fascinating experiences over the last 10 months as we have been busily building a successful farm here in the Willamette Valley.  We have done our best to marry the joy of our ancestors farming methods with the modern technology of marketing.  We’ve tried to make it easier for our customers to order our farm goods while maintaining our commitment to raise our produce naturally.

What does that have to do with books or more specifically the value of books?  Just about everything.

We have become accustomed to the digital information age.  With our Kindle’s, Nook’s, and iPad’s we have access to 1000’s of books right at our fingertips.  Not only that, but we can search our books by keyword and idea, thereby chunking our texts into little tidbits, tiny bite size pieces that don’t take too long to consume.  We see this paradigm shift in our farming business as well.  We’ve made it so easy to order products on line that sometimes potential customers are unaware that we actually do raise the food they are purchasing; an effort which takes time.  I recently had several customers experience some difficulty with ordering a product in our web store.  I received multiple emails informing me that the system was not working because they couldn’t order what they wanted.  I had to explain, in a couple of instances several times, that it wasn’t the system…there simply weren’t any more (eggs, milk, kale, etc.).  “What?” is the response I heard “But I want to order some.”  It’s a producer’s nightmare, people want your product but you don’t have enough.  All I could do was explain that the chickens, cows, and garden can only produce so much.  We don’t force feed them, or put them in cages to make them lay, or sprinkle the ground with chemical fertilizers that would make them bigger.  We grow in harmony with the seasons and with the needs of the animals.

And it takes time.

Time.  That is the crux of the common dilemma between books, farming, raising children, cooking a healthy meal, or creating a work of art.

We can gain enough information in 15 minutes of skimming a book on the hand-held gadgetry of our choice to hold our own in a college class or coffee shop discussion.  We can walk or drive to the closest restaurant and have a fully cooked, ready-to-go meal in the same amount of time.  We can get on YouTube and pick up child rearing helps in little 3 minute bites.  We can bring home a well-balanced, supposedly nutritious pre-made meal that can be served up piping hot in less than 20 minutes.  We can take a mediocre digital snap-shot, run it through Photoshop to make it brighter, clearer, more colorful and voila! we have an instant work of art.

We can do all these things that save us time… but has it really saved us?  What have we done with all this extra time we are saving?  Is this kind of internet style book, food, and art surfing enough to change our heart, nourish our bodies or to move us to action?  When I have to explain that it takes time for the chickens to lay eggs, much the same as Aesop’s fable “The Goose that Laid the Golden Eggs”, I’m inclined to think that something is grievously wrong.  I often get off the phone or finish answering an email and I think “Don’t they know that it takes time to raise and grow good food?”  Many of our farm members do, I hear quite often from our amazing customers how glad they are that we persist in a farming method that costs more, pays less, but provides a superior crop.  They value the work that we do because they recognize the time it takes to do it.

Value is in direct relationship to effort.  We value what we work for, what we expend our resources for, what we sacrifice for.  We value what we take time to pursue.  That which comes too easily I’m afraid we discard just as quickly.

Farms, families, literature and art are not created overnight.  They take effort, commitment, and an intense dedication to whichever principles drive the creators.  Like Thoreau we must be “determined to know beans.”  To know the value of a book we must read it, hold it, ponder it, and discuss it.  To know the value of a work of art (be it painted, sung, played, or acted) we must spend time in observance, contemplation, and discovery of it.  To “know beans” we must plow the field, plant the seed, pull the weeds, and labor against mice (woodchucks for Thoreau), grasshoppers, and mold.

We must put the time in to reading, listening, seeing, and doing.  So that the next time someone asks the question “Where are the books?” we will be able to say with a surety, not unlike Bradbury’s Granger, that the books are in us.

Agricultural Revisionists...learning how to see.

There are many things I love about being a farmer:  the sound of the cows lowing, the happy cackle of chickens, the feel of warm dirt in my hands, the smell of coriander and fennel seeds before planting, and the list goes on forever.  But probably the thing I love the most, all nostalgia put aside, is the absolute necessity of Agricultural Revision.

I read a great article this morning in the New York  Times about the effects of digital stimulation on the brain.  How the more we speed up the rate at which information becomes available the less ability we have to focus on the task at hand or the information right in front of us.  We are caught in an endless cycle of becoming smarter, quicker, wittier, and having bigger, better, faster things fill our time.  As I read it the thought struck me that what this digital overload has done for us is to undermine our understanding of and appreciation for revision.

Revision literally mean “to see again”.  If you look it up in the dictionary it seems to apply almost exclusively to writing and the process of correcting.  I revise quite a bit as I write, seldom doing rough drafts.  I write and edit as I go.   Word processing software has made it easy to do this, but as I’ve been contemplating the New York  Times article (which you can find here:  http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/16/technology/16brain.html?_r=1&th&emc=th) I’ve been wondering if perhaps this isn’t a mistake.  Is there a process in the art of revising that is worth remembering?  Is the journey that leads us to our beliefs just as important as the belief itself?  I rather think that it is.

I believe revision is an art form.  I love to look at artistic “studies” created by master artists.  The drawings that Leonardo DaVinci made in preparation to paint a masterpiece are a fascinating look into the mind of  a creator.  The care taken to ensure proper veining along an arm or a leg in a sculpture or painting by Michelangelo is profound.  Were these studies mistakes?  Was the act of studying all in error until the finished work of art could be pronounced “perfect”?  I don’t believe that they were, in fact I believe that the studies themselves are valuable creations.  They are a look inside the act of creation, not simply the result.

I love to look at art, not just in a casual glance sort of way, but really LOOK at it.  The brush strokes, the blending of the colors, the texture of the paint.  There is beauty in the whole of the work because there is beauty in all of its parts.  One of Leonardo DaVinci’s mottoes was “Saper Vedere”  which translates to “knowing how to see” or “to see is to know”.  How much do we miss when we don’t know how to see?  How much beauty passes by us every day because we don’t have eyes to see it, or ears to hear it?  The great artists of the Renaissance saw beauty in the tiniest elements of their work.  They studied, revised, looked, practiced, created, and re-created until their ability to perform was equal to their ability to see.   Hence “re-vision”  is not just seeing again it is seeing, touching, thinking, and creating again.

This intense effort to create and re-create is an undeniable part of the process of farming.  Not all who look see, and therefore not all who farm see themselves as revisionists, but they are.  As Amos Bronson Alcott put it “He who loves a garden, still his Eden keeps, Perennial pleasures plants, and wholesome harvest reaps.”  Farmers by their very act of tilling the soil to bring forth life are artists and creators, taking their plot in Eden and recreating what they will in it.  It is living art, with nothing of their work left behind but harvests stored on pantry shelves.  So many people today have never seen a “fruit room” like my husband, William, grew up with; a cool place in the basement where jars upon jars of canned peaches, beans, tomatoes, and apricots (along with a host of other crops) were kept for use in the coming year.  Just like a renaissance artist studied the musculature of the human body or the layers of petaled flowers the farmer/artists that influenced William studied the weather, the soil, the mountains where the needed water would come from, the remains of last years work, and then throughout the cooler months, when the soil rested from its labors they studied.  They drew garden plans, they plotted how to glean the best harvest from the soil, they noted down where the garden needed more work, where the manure should be placed to be most effective, where the beans were located last year so that this year they could be moved to a new place.

No, they wouldn’t have called themselves artists.  To them is was simply a way of life.  And isn’t that a testament to the goodness of living close to the land?  It wasn’t going out of their way to recycle waste to improve the earth; it wasn’t going out of their way to conserve water to ensure there would be enough for the summer crops, it wasn’t going out of their way to not waste one bit of usable food to feed themselves, their families, their friends, and several complete strangers:  it very simply was their way.  Each and every year they planned which crops to plant to improve the soil.  With each harvest they preserved the seeds from the very best fruits from the field so that they could plant again next season.  Each and every year they re-created abundance without robbing the soil of it’s life.

That is what I love best about farming.  Each year, each season, with each harvested crop we have the opportunity to look for a new vision for our farm.  We have the chance to look at what we’ve done with a critical eye and find what works, what doesn’t, and improve where we can.  There is no finished and perfect work of art at the end of farming because there is no end to farming.  A crop may be harvested, but the garden goes on.  That is Agricultural Revision:  to know how to see the world around you, your place in it, and accept your responsibility to it.

It is a beautiful place to live, here in the middle of a work of art.  I’d like to pass it on.  I’d love to see a renaissance in agriculture, a Georgic Reformation in our communities.  Perhaps I can start here with a request:  find something in the natural world to touch, see, or hear today.  Spend time studying it, open your eyes and ears to it.  See it the way an artist would see it, as if you needed to recreate it in someway.  And then, when it really feels beautiful to you, pass it on.  Every bit of beauty we see and share is like a mark on an artists canvas, each part makes up the majesty of the whole.  Together I believe we have the ability to create a lasting and moving work of art.