Photo courtesy of Jesse Pruneda
It’s usually at about the halfway-point on my bike ride that I wonder as I pedal up the ridiculous-steep hill what I’m doing on a back road outside of a Connecticut blip at 4:50 in the morning smelling of week-old cow dung.
In each blister, I know, there shines in the serum a lesson; in each callous is tucked a handful of credit-hours. Even somewhere in the endless poison ivy rashes I can see the glimmer of a time-tested maxim or rule of thumb.
Soil management, crop rotation, plant biology, livestock management, fertilization systems, business management, dairy, cheese-making, compost management, tractor-driving, machining, welding, engine-repair, handyman-stuff, mucking, feeding, haying, washing, harvesting, selling, marketing, cooking, grasping the world-food system concept - it could be reasonably argued that a Liberal Arts degree is one of the few traditional-education backgrounds that could prepare a person for the fiasco that is a farmer’s life.
Not that my Liberal Arts Degree did that - it could just be argued.
As with medicine or physics, the rabbit-holes abound, and all are endless. That’s the beauty of the thing - you can pick any one of the aspects of farming and make a life of examining it in full. You’d die with a to-do list.
Somehow, this motley selection of knowledge combines under the hilariously humble banner of “Food.”
How taken for granted is this concept? When is the last time that any of us has seriously fretted over the source of our next meal? Food, as an entire concept, has been relegated to the realm of utilities along with water and electricity. You pay your bills, you getsyour grub.
New York hipsters are eating engineered California tomatoes in the dead of winter. Bananas (a tropical fruit) are expected - not even demanded, just expected - in every single grocery store in the United States of America (overwhelmingly not-tropical) on every single day at every single hour.
At this level, I generally assume that this un-sustainability is self-evident and therefore not much of an argument-point. This assumption is wrong. Realizing that things need to change is a direct precursor to actually changing, and that alone is enough to stop most people dead in their tracks.
Besides, what other options are there?
It’s interesting to think about how many farmers you know. I happen to know plenty, now, but that’s only because I forced myself into their midst. Ten months ago my number would have been a very hazy one, on a good day.
Now, not knowing a farmer speaks to the realities of the decreasing prevalence and perceived austerity of farming as a lifestyle, which is the result of many social constructions and is really less frightening the other reality to which it speaks - no one knows how to do it anymore.
Seed + Water = Food, sure, but do you know anyone who can make that happen well enough to feed you? The reality is that if the enormous food industry was crippled by, say, a fuel crisis, we would largely be some hungry, desperate folks.
Now there’s a job market with a future, eh? High-demand, basement-level supply.
How are we, as a movement, losing this one?
Well, we can’t offer December tomatoes or anytime bananas. It’s almost just that simple. Also, we have no money. That doesn’t help. Also, a lot of our ilk are card-carrying Crusty Hippies. That might be the K.O. shot.
So, what am I doing, pedaling up this hill?
I’m fighting, in a way. Struggling, in another.
Can we feed ourselves, and free our practices from the suffocating confines of petroleum-dependence? There is only that one well-known way to find out.
I’m trying to figure this out for my family, for you, and for myself. I happen to think that we can do it.
We just need a plot of land, a favorable location, and some greenbacks.
How we’re going to manage that, I’m still figuring.
But we’re doing it, damn it.
We’re doing something.
So, I keep pedaling.
