Always I have been fascinated by seeds--their vivid shapes and colors, their power and mystery. When I joined the Seed Savers Exchange (http://www.seedsavers.org/) in 1982, I fell in love with the stories attached to seeds gifted to me. Most of our culture at the time had not yet awakened to the "heirloom phenomenon" we see today. Matter of fact, most gardeners and farmers had come to believe as they were told by seed companies and university breeding programs that modern hybrids were far superior. These beautiful seeds that I had requested would arrive at my door accompanied by wonderful handwritten stories about the seeds like these:
"My family lost almost everything during the Great Depression, but these beans kept us alive."
"This was the only corn to make ears during the great drought of '34."
"My people carried these beans on the Trail of Tears."
I added my own stories when I sent seeds in return: "Midnight, late July, Aunt Mary's Sweet Corn in full tassel and silk--strong stalks and setting two ears--I feel such powerful ecstatic energy."
Seeds and culture intertwined. There is more encoded in seeds than their DNA. Seeds have stories to tell and they are still waiting for us to listen.
So, yes! I do think seeds have agency. They are my sisters, brothers, and teachers. Since it appears that climate change may encourage us to rethink agriculture, what kinds of questions should we consider that connote a relationship between us of mutuality and reciprocity? Here are a few that I have been pondering:
Have we misinterpreted our ancient ancestors' true motivations for selection of seeds for food crops? What about the seeds/species we did not select (such as perennials) and those we have chosen to leave behind?
How might a nurturing/stewarding seed culture emerge in our Great Lakes Bioregion?
What critical consciousness skills will we need to bring to the table when we consider genetically modified organisms?
What about all the seeds that sit in cold storage in seed vaults? Where are the gardeners to find out if these seeds could have a new "homeland"?
How might we re-vision our educational ethics so that seeds and our healthy relationship to the biotic community mean more than power and money?
This talk at a Bioneers conference by John Mohawk talks about the role that the human relationship with "domesticated" plants has played in allowing humans to adapt to many different environments and how that relationship will be important as we adapt to the coming climatic changes. Take a listen:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6kOA-KtPxw.
In class on Thursday, we'll share a bit more about our relationship to seeds and examine seed catalogs to see what options are out there for varieties of crops and types of seeds that we can grow. There seems to be a lot of confusion among the general public about different types of seeds that are available today, including "heirloom," "open pollinated," "hybrid," and "genetically modified" seed crops. If you aren't sure about what these terms mean, watch this Jimmy Kimmel Live clip and feel better about yourself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzEr23XJwFY.
Seriously, though, we'd like to get a sense of what you already know and think about these different types of seeds. So in your comments, please tell us about your experiences with and knowledge about seed types. What do the terms "heirloom," "open pollinated," "hybrid," and "genetically modified" mean to you? Where have you heard these terms and what have you learned about them? What are the sources of the messages you've received about these different types of seeds?
Finally, write briefly about your reactions to the Winona LaDuke and John Mohawk videos we've shared. Do any of the ideas in these talks challenge your cultural assumptions about your relationship to food and plants? If so, how so? Do parts of the talks resonate with your own experiences and beliefs? If how, tell us how!
Looking forward to exploring these ideas with you in person!
Monday, March 28, 2016
Amy's Post: Relationships to Food, Farming, Each Other
To kick off our series of Thursday conversations, I'd like to invite us all to reflect on our relationships to the food we eat and the systems (and people, plants, and animals) that produce it.
I'd like to start my own reflection with an excerpt from a piece I wrote last year that will give you a little background on my own relationship with farming:
As soon as I was tall and strong enough, I was given chores. My first responsibilities were feeding the cows and young calves, then cleaning stalls and milking. In the summer there was field work as we grew and harvested the crops that would feed the cows through the winter. It was hard, physical work but I enjoyed it. I loved being outside, working with my family. We were a team, working together to take care of the cows, who in turn took care of us by giving us milk, meat, and money. Neither of my parents had off-farm jobs, so everything we had came from those cows. If they flourished, we flourished.
No childhood is perfect, but my first ten years were pretty satisfying. I determined that I wanted to live on a farm forever and planned to marry a farmer when I grew up. (That it didn’t occur to me that I could be a farmer myself should give you an indication of the gender dynamics in my family.) It was when I was about twelve that I started to realize that something was amiss in the world of agriculture.
In the mid-80s, a decade after former Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz (read about his legacy here: http://grist.org/article/the-butz-stops-here/) extorted farmers to “get big or get out,” the dairy industry hit a crisis. Production, bolstered in part by government price-supports and buy-ups of surplus product, rose to unsustainable levels. As part of an attempt to reduce the surplus milk flooding the market, the federal Dairy Termination Program offered a buyout option which paid farmers to stop milk production.
“Well, family, what do you think?” my father asked, looking from my mother to my brother to me. “Should we take it?”
“No!” I yelled, shaking my head vigorously, eyes wide, shocked that we would even consider such a thing. I couldn’t imagine life without the cows, without the farm. What would we do?
I don’t know how much my reaction actually figured into my father’s decision not to take the buyout. Many of the small dairies in our county did. And though my parents didn’t stop farming when I was a kid, they determined that they would be the last generation of my family to farm. “Go to college,” they told my brother and me. “Get a good job off the farm. You can’t make a living doing this on a small scale—it’s too hard.”
The agricultural policies promoted by Butz and others who shared his interests (and the fallout from these policies) have changed the landscape and ecosystem in which I live. Once my township and those surrounding it were dotted with small, diverse farms. My father remembers the days when every family had a garden, a pig, a cow, and some chickens. Now a few large farms dominate the area with corn, soybeans, and dairy herds which contain thousands of cattle (at its biggest, my parents’ herd was a couple of hundred).
“Plant fencerow to fencerow,” Butz said. Today, even the fencerows have been cut and plowed, destroying precious buffer zones and ecologically diverse habitats. In the effort to get maximum yields per acre, erodible land is tilled and soil washes into our rivers and streams. Chemical fertilizers and herbicides have destroyed the life in our soil and they also wash into our watershed, wreaking havoc in our aquatic ecosystems. Livestock, also, are pushed to the limits of production through breeding, feeding, and confinement practices that leave them with shortened and unpleasant lives. And farm workers share that same fate as they put in exhausting workdays which frequently include dangerous working conditions and exposures to toxic substances.
If asked what I think the biggest problem in our current food system is, I’d answer that it resides within our relationships—our relationships with ourselves, each other, and the non-human beings who sustain our lives. We have, in this country, a system of relationships based on exploitation in the name of maximum production and profit. For the most part, we accept this as the normal state of things. We accept that shoppers are going to try to get the most/best goods they can for their shopping dollar, that employers are going to try to get the most work out of their employees for the least compensation, and that farmers will try to get the most production out of their soil with the least amount of care expressed as labor and expense. It doesn’t matter so much to us that our shopping dollars support employers who force workers to labor in unsafe conditions for poverty wages and we have entirely forgotten that the health of the soil has anything to do with us. We have forgotten that our health and our fates are intertwined with that of both our human and our biotic communities."
I'd like to start my own reflection with an excerpt from a piece I wrote last year that will give you a little background on my own relationship with farming:
"My first friends were farm animals. Cows, mostly, because my parents were dairy farmers and so I was surrounded by them. We had chickens too, but they pecked me when I tried to collect their eggs and the roosters flew at my head with their dusty wings and sharp talons whenever I entered the chicken yard. I preferred the cows. I remember one old cow who always chose the same stall in the middle of the barn. I liked to sit next to her and stroke the soft underside of her neck as she calmly chewed her cud and waited her turn to be milked. I was pretty young then, too young to be of much help in the barn, but I loved being around the cows, touching them and smelling their sweet breath.
As soon as I was tall and strong enough, I was given chores. My first responsibilities were feeding the cows and young calves, then cleaning stalls and milking. In the summer there was field work as we grew and harvested the crops that would feed the cows through the winter. It was hard, physical work but I enjoyed it. I loved being outside, working with my family. We were a team, working together to take care of the cows, who in turn took care of us by giving us milk, meat, and money. Neither of my parents had off-farm jobs, so everything we had came from those cows. If they flourished, we flourished.
No childhood is perfect, but my first ten years were pretty satisfying. I determined that I wanted to live on a farm forever and planned to marry a farmer when I grew up. (That it didn’t occur to me that I could be a farmer myself should give you an indication of the gender dynamics in my family.) It was when I was about twelve that I started to realize that something was amiss in the world of agriculture.
In the mid-80s, a decade after former Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz (read about his legacy here: http://grist.org/article/the-butz-stops-here/) extorted farmers to “get big or get out,” the dairy industry hit a crisis. Production, bolstered in part by government price-supports and buy-ups of surplus product, rose to unsustainable levels. As part of an attempt to reduce the surplus milk flooding the market, the federal Dairy Termination Program offered a buyout option which paid farmers to stop milk production.
I imagine that a conversation similar to the one my family had one February evening took place across many farmhouse kitchen tables that year. My father explained the terms of program. We’d have to sell the cows and agree not to produce milk for a certain number of years, which meant we’d be done dairying, since it wasn’t feasible to get back into the business after being out for several years.
“Well, family, what do you think?” my father asked, looking from my mother to my brother to me. “Should we take it?”
“No!” I yelled, shaking my head vigorously, eyes wide, shocked that we would even consider such a thing. I couldn’t imagine life without the cows, without the farm. What would we do?
I don’t know how much my reaction actually figured into my father’s decision not to take the buyout. Many of the small dairies in our county did. And though my parents didn’t stop farming when I was a kid, they determined that they would be the last generation of my family to farm. “Go to college,” they told my brother and me. “Get a good job off the farm. You can’t make a living doing this on a small scale—it’s too hard.”
The agricultural policies promoted by Butz and others who shared his interests (and the fallout from these policies) have changed the landscape and ecosystem in which I live. Once my township and those surrounding it were dotted with small, diverse farms. My father remembers the days when every family had a garden, a pig, a cow, and some chickens. Now a few large farms dominate the area with corn, soybeans, and dairy herds which contain thousands of cattle (at its biggest, my parents’ herd was a couple of hundred).
“Plant fencerow to fencerow,” Butz said. Today, even the fencerows have been cut and plowed, destroying precious buffer zones and ecologically diverse habitats. In the effort to get maximum yields per acre, erodible land is tilled and soil washes into our rivers and streams. Chemical fertilizers and herbicides have destroyed the life in our soil and they also wash into our watershed, wreaking havoc in our aquatic ecosystems. Livestock, also, are pushed to the limits of production through breeding, feeding, and confinement practices that leave them with shortened and unpleasant lives. And farm workers share that same fate as they put in exhausting workdays which frequently include dangerous working conditions and exposures to toxic substances.
If asked what I think the biggest problem in our current food system is, I’d answer that it resides within our relationships—our relationships with ourselves, each other, and the non-human beings who sustain our lives. We have, in this country, a system of relationships based on exploitation in the name of maximum production and profit. For the most part, we accept this as the normal state of things. We accept that shoppers are going to try to get the most/best goods they can for their shopping dollar, that employers are going to try to get the most work out of their employees for the least compensation, and that farmers will try to get the most production out of their soil with the least amount of care expressed as labor and expense. It doesn’t matter so much to us that our shopping dollars support employers who force workers to labor in unsafe conditions for poverty wages and we have entirely forgotten that the health of the soil has anything to do with us. We have forgotten that our health and our fates are intertwined with that of both our human and our biotic communities."
My re-entry into farming as a small-scale vegetable grower in 2010 was motivated by a desire to enter into a more intimate, conscious, and conscientious relationship with my local community. I'd been growing my own food for many years and the idea of sharing the joy I found in that work with others as a part of a larger movement to transform our food systems excited me. I was especially attracted to the Community Supported Agriculture model of farming, since it seemed to offer a relationally-based alternative to the "cash-for-product" economy which (in its focus on product rather than process) often passes hidden (and not-so-hidden) costs on to the larger community and future generations in the form of ecosystem degradation and threatened health and well-being.
Over the past six years of developing and working this business, I've experienced deep satisfactions and deep grief. I've moved from hope to discouragement and back to hope again. I've pulled myself back from the edge of burnout and bitterness, dug deep to recover the joy I find in working with the earth, and learned (am learning!) how to be increasingly honest with my community about what I need from them in order to sustain this work.
I suspect that in order to create a truly sustainable and resilient agricultural system, we have to change some of our fundamental cultural beliefs about who we are in relationship to the other beings of this earth and to the earth itself. My farming practices are an exploration of the possibilities for those changes in my own life and being. I take inspiration from people like Winona LaDuke, who remind me that there are cultures who are living in a very different paradigm of relationship than that promoted by Earl Butz and others who share his vision of agricultural success. Take a listen to this TED talk of LaDuke's to see what I mean:
In your comments, I would like to hear your own reflections about your relationships to food, farming, and community. What beliefs and knowledge about food and farming did you absorb through the circumstances of your childhoods and early adulthoods? When did you first begin to be aware that something was amiss within our agricultural systems? How have you responded to this awareness?
Sunday, March 27, 2016
Blog Assignment Guidelines
We'll use this blog in two ways.
First, each Sunday John & Amy will post a "preview" of that week's farm practicum, along with materials for everyone to review in preparation for their time on the farm.
Second, the facilitators of the coming week's Thursday class will each compose and publish a blog post by Sunday evening as well. These posts will relate to the food/farming related issue that the author would like us to explore during their hour of Thursday class. These posts should contain:
1) a personal reflection about the author's interest in/relationship to/ideas about the problem at hand,
2) links to reference materials that will help the class understand the issue in some depth,
3) information about or links to materials that describe attempts to solve the problem,
and
4) questions that you would like the class to respond to in their comments on your posts.
Keep in mind that we want this course to be personal and solutions-oriented. In order to move toward real solutions, we need to understand the issues in all of their complexity. Your blog posts should contain lots of factual information to help us with this understanding (and please make sure your factual information is coming from sources you deem credible!). But they should also be written from a personal perspective. Why are you concerned about this problem? When did you first learn of it? How does it affect you personally? How are others attempting to solve this problem and how might you personally engage with its solutions?
Your blog posts should end with an open-ended question or two that you'd like the class to respond to by Wednesday evening. Everyone else in the class will respond to your post with a comment that addresses the question(s) you've posed. Commenters, please spend some time composing thoughtful responses--200+ words is a good length to shoot for.
First, each Sunday John & Amy will post a "preview" of that week's farm practicum, along with materials for everyone to review in preparation for their time on the farm.
Second, the facilitators of the coming week's Thursday class will each compose and publish a blog post by Sunday evening as well. These posts will relate to the food/farming related issue that the author would like us to explore during their hour of Thursday class. These posts should contain:
1) a personal reflection about the author's interest in/relationship to/ideas about the problem at hand,
2) links to reference materials that will help the class understand the issue in some depth,
3) information about or links to materials that describe attempts to solve the problem,
and
4) questions that you would like the class to respond to in their comments on your posts.
Keep in mind that we want this course to be personal and solutions-oriented. In order to move toward real solutions, we need to understand the issues in all of their complexity. Your blog posts should contain lots of factual information to help us with this understanding (and please make sure your factual information is coming from sources you deem credible!). But they should also be written from a personal perspective. Why are you concerned about this problem? When did you first learn of it? How does it affect you personally? How are others attempting to solve this problem and how might you personally engage with its solutions?
Your blog posts should end with an open-ended question or two that you'd like the class to respond to by Wednesday evening. Everyone else in the class will respond to your post with a comment that addresses the question(s) you've posed. Commenters, please spend some time composing thoughtful responses--200+ words is a good length to shoot for.
Saturday, March 26, 2016
Week 1 on the Farm 2016: Ecosystems & Soil Systems
Weather Forecast: Tuesday, mostly sunny, high of 59 degrees F; Wednesday, 30% chance of rain, high of 66 degrees F.
Weather permitting, we'll begin our farm practicums this week with a walkabout to introduce you to the land and ecosystem within which we farm. With any luck, you'll have a chance to meet some of our neighbors who have recently returned from southern climates.
If you haven't had an opportunity to look at our farm website, please a few minutes to browse through it so that you can get a sense of our farming philosophies and what we do:
https://harvestofjoyfarm.wordpress.com/
On our walk, we'll stop by some of the gardens to take soil samples and talk about how different soil types affect what and how we grow. Prior to class, please review this short article by Tom DeGomez (University of Arizona), Peter Kolb (Montana State University), and Sabrina Kleinman (University of Arizona) which explains the 5 basic components of soil:
http://articles.extension.org/pages/54401/basic-soil-components
Then, watch this 15 minute video in which Dr. Elaine Ingham talks about the effects of "modern" agricultural practices on soil health:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEtl09VZiSU
If we have time, we'll begin building a compost pile so that you can get some hands-on experience with the soil-building practices described by Dr. Ingham.
IMPORTANT NOTE!! Please wear clothing to the farm that you will be comfortable getting dirty, stained, and/or torn. This includes footwear. You may want to make a trip to a used clothing store to pick up some farming clothes and shoes if you don't currently own any. Also, it is frequently colder and windier on the farm than it is in town. Dressing in layers and bringing one additional warmer layer than you think you will need is a good idea.
Weather permitting, we'll begin our farm practicums this week with a walkabout to introduce you to the land and ecosystem within which we farm. With any luck, you'll have a chance to meet some of our neighbors who have recently returned from southern climates.
If you haven't had an opportunity to look at our farm website, please a few minutes to browse through it so that you can get a sense of our farming philosophies and what we do:
https://harvestofjoyfarm.wordpress.com/
On our walk, we'll stop by some of the gardens to take soil samples and talk about how different soil types affect what and how we grow. Prior to class, please review this short article by Tom DeGomez (University of Arizona), Peter Kolb (Montana State University), and Sabrina Kleinman (University of Arizona) which explains the 5 basic components of soil:
http://articles.extension.org/pages/54401/basic-soil-components
Then, watch this 15 minute video in which Dr. Elaine Ingham talks about the effects of "modern" agricultural practices on soil health:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEtl09VZiSU
If we have time, we'll begin building a compost pile so that you can get some hands-on experience with the soil-building practices described by Dr. Ingham.
IMPORTANT NOTE!! Please wear clothing to the farm that you will be comfortable getting dirty, stained, and/or torn. This includes footwear. You may want to make a trip to a used clothing store to pick up some farming clothes and shoes if you don't currently own any. Also, it is frequently colder and windier on the farm than it is in town. Dressing in layers and bringing one additional warmer layer than you think you will need is a good idea.
Slow Farming Syllabus 2016: Resilient, Just, and Joyful Agriculture
In this senior capstone course, students will explore solutions to problems created by our current food systems. We will critically examine recent movements in organic, local, and sustainable agriculture and discuss how we might engage in transforming our individual, institutional, community, and political relationships with food and farming. This course includes a practicum in “slow farming” at Harvest of Joy Farm LLC. Students should attend an informational meeting or speak individually with Professor Amy Newday prior to enrolling in this course.
Senior Capstone Programmatic Components
- draw students from various majors together through collaborative engagement with critical issues facing the world today.
- encourage cross-disciplinary thinking and problem solving.
- maximize student control of content, process, and knowledge generation.
- encourage students to explore connections (and disconnections) among components of their K-Plan.
- invite students to articulate a narrative of their education in anticipation of their lives after graduation.
Course-Specific Objectives
- To discuss our responsibilities and relationships to the human and non-human beings who provide our food
- To envision practical solutions to current agricultural crises
- To explore different approaches to manifesting the changes we desire, including (but not limited to) personal lifestyle and career choices, community advocacy, and political activism
- To examine the implications of the individual and cultural narratives that frame our relationships to food, farming, and ecology; to re-envision these stories in ways that enable healthier, more resilient and satisfying systems to emerge
- To practice “living in resistance” through the development of food production skills and knowledge at Harvest of Joy Farm LLC
- To practice collaborative, community-based action through a student-generated project centered in the Kalamazoo community
Course Framework
Shared teaching & learning: This class will meet on campus once each week for a two-hour class period. Harvest of Joy Farm LLC farmers Amy Newday and John Edgerton will use some of this time to provide background information about their farming practices and visions. The bulk of these class, periods, however, will be led by students. Each student will be responsible for facilitating (or co-facilitating) at least one class period in which they will engage the class in a solutions-based exploration of an issue related to agriculture and/or food systems.
(These topics might include but are not limited to: food justice, access, and sovereignty; human health and nutrition; agro-ecology; genetics; climate change; farmworker justice; soil health; agricultural policy; agricultural economics; institutional food policies and purchasing; farming and law; animals and agriculture; agricultural technologies; fuel and energy; “conventional” vs “alternative” farming practices; culture and agriculture; agriculture and education; women and minorities in farming; indigenous agriculture; urban farming; community-based and/or cooperative farming; cooking and food preservation; and careers in farming and food systems.)
Students will provide the class with background information and multiple perspectives on the topic of their choice, present examples of attempts to solve problems related to that issue, and lead the class in an exploration of how we might personally engage with solutions to these problems. One week before the class period that they are to facilitate, they will post a reflection on our class blog that includes an exploration of their personal relationship with the issue they would like us to discuss, a list of materials they’d like the class to review (they should provide links to any of these that are online and hard copies of those that are not), and a question that they would like the class to reflect upon prior to our next class meeting.
On-farm participation: Students will spend three hours each week on the farm, participating in farm activities under the supervision of the farm’s owners. They will learn how these activities fit into the larger scope of the farm’s operations, how the farm fits in to the food-shed within which it operates, and how Amy & John address critical agricultural issues through their farming practices.
Student-generated project & Hoben garden project: As a group, students will decide on a collaborative project they wish to undertake as a means of actively engaging in food systems transformation during the course of the quarter. This project will take place in the Kalamazoo community, on or near campus. In addition, students will have responsibility for maintaining a small garden plot started by previous classes behind the Hoben residence hall. This will serve as an opportunity for students to integrate and apply what they’ve learned at Harvest of Joy Farm to a different growing situation.
Reflections: Each week students will be asked to write a reflection on our class blog in response to the question posed by the facilitator of our next on-campus meeting. At the end of the quarter, students will write a reflection and evaluation of their overall experience in the course. These will be used in planning future versions of this course.
Grading: Since the success of this course depends on the efforts and investment of the students involved, this class will be graded on participation in each of the four activities listed above:
Class facilitation (providing matl. & reflection questions; leading discussion): 25%
On-farm participation (showing up on time each week prepared to dig in!): 25%
Class-generated project + Hoben garden (active participation in visioning and follow-through): 25%
Weekly blog posts, in-class participation, and course reflection (providing thoughtful, in-depth responses): 25%
Course Materials
Course materials will be determined primarily by the course participants. The facilitator of each class period will determine what information he or she would like the class to review prior to that class meeting. Amy and John will also provide informational materials to help the class better understand their farming practices. Most of this information will be conveyed via the class blog, but some may be in hard copy form. We may decide to read books or watch films together and there may be opportunities for students to attend food and farming events throughout the quarter, including a visit to WMU’s Gibbs House and the Jijak Foundation’s Great Lakes Intertribal Food Summit.
For the on-farm classes, students should bring clothes, shoes, and gloves that can get wet, dirty, torn, and/or otherwise ruined. They should check the weather report prior to leaving campus and bring multiple layers of clothing in order to adapt to changing weather conditions. It is often much colder and windier on the farm than in town. Rain happens. This course offers students the opportunity to experience daily farm life, which includes working outdoors in less-than-wonderful weather.
Class-generated project + Hoben garden (active participation in visioning and follow-through): 25%
Weekly blog posts, in-class participation, and course reflection (providing thoughtful, in-depth responses): 25%
Course Materials
Course materials will be determined primarily by the course participants. The facilitator of each class period will determine what information he or she would like the class to review prior to that class meeting. Amy and John will also provide informational materials to help the class better understand their farming practices. Most of this information will be conveyed via the class blog, but some may be in hard copy form. We may decide to read books or watch films together and there may be opportunities for students to attend food and farming events throughout the quarter, including a visit to WMU’s Gibbs House and the Jijak Foundation’s Great Lakes Intertribal Food Summit.
For the on-farm classes, students should bring clothes, shoes, and gloves that can get wet, dirty, torn, and/or otherwise ruined. They should check the weather report prior to leaving campus and bring multiple layers of clothing in order to adapt to changing weather conditions. It is often much colder and windier on the farm than in town. Rain happens. This course offers students the opportunity to experience daily farm life, which includes working outdoors in less-than-wonderful weather.
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