Michael Pollan, Joel Salatin & our relationship to all beings

As I've been sharing my gardening/farming perspectives with you these past couple of weeks, I've been noticing how much I've been talking about relationship--my relationships with my business partners, my family and its land, our CSA members, the plants, the soil, and the diversity of non-human beings that live on this land with me. In his book The Botany of Desire, Michael Pollan explores human relationships with plants from a plant-centric rather than human-centric view, suggesting that plants are using us to further their own evolution as much as we're using them to sustain our lives. I just came across this great TED talk in which Pollan expands upon that idea and proposes a system of agriculture which nurtures the relationships between species--plants, animals, soil microbes, farmers, and eaters--to create a self-sustaining system in which the health and well-being of all participants is enhanced. He uses Joel Salatin's Polyface Farm as a model for this type of farming system. Here's a link to the talk: Michael Pollan: A plant's-eye view.

Also, you can watch the film version of The Botany of Desire free on the PBS website: http://video.pbs.org/video/1283872815/. The first thirty minutes are a discussion of the history of the relationship between apples and humans, so you might be especially interested in that section given all of our recent discussions about apple production. But we'll be planting potatoes soon, so that might be an interesting section to watch as well. I think it's the last one.

Thursday, April 11: First Brunch!

For our first class brunch, we were hosted by Max and Hannah at Max's house (the day before their SIP readings, no less. Bravo!) It was a really lovely morning: sitting around the table together chatting with quiche warm in our bellies, safe from the cold rainy weather.

The quiche was delicious and made entirely from scratch. 

We first talked about course logistics, such as the brunch schedule, farm visits, the hoophouse raising at Green Gardens, and independent projects. Everyone offered their reflections on the first two weeks, and we discussed some form of more formal written reflection moving forward. Finally, we covered a number of conceptual issues: from government subsidy policy and the Farm Bill to acquiring (and keeping) farm land; Amy was kind enough to share her own story about the latter piece. Overall, one emergent theme was definitely how hard we're realizing small farmers work to provide healthy fresh produce to their community and care for the land!