Week 12 Newsletter

As we are driving back from Canada I am making an effort to write on my laptop. We (Jody, Johannes, David, Linda, and I) all went to pick up Annemarie from her summer camp. Annemarie has spent the last four weeks on a canoe trip in the wilderness of Temagami, Ontario. This summer camp has become a family tradition; Johannes spent three summers there, also. Northwaters/Langskib is an opportunity for young people to discover their limits by going out in a canoe with not much more than some (freeze dried) food, a few sets of clothing, and a tent for four weeks. Think of “Survivor” without the competition. Young people learn things about themselves they never thought could be possible; carrying their supplies and canoe for miles over rough terrain to connect to another lake or river, and simply having to get along with another person while overcoming many physical obstacles. Annemarie had a partner that not only had real difficulty in getting the canoe and wanagan (a wooden box with supplies that is carried with a head band) over the cliffs and other obstacles but he hardly spoke English.
As I was listening to the many stories the campers told us about what they had learned on their trips I was amazed at the support they gave each other and the complete absence of personal competition. Many kids realized that self reliance is only possible when you work together in community. I was thinking how their experiences resonated with our efforts at the farm. Last week I wrote to you about immigration reform. I was pleading for us to treat immigrants as people and not as objects we fear. I am sure that many of you did not see the connection between this issue and the farm. But our views on agriculture do not stop at the farm gate and for some reason these kids put it all together for me again. Please allow me to back up here for a moment as I will try to explain how this all relates to our farm methods and the CSA.
When we bought the farm it was all planted in corn or potatoes. We found that almost every inch of the land had been tilled and planted to maximize its production. There were ruts from tractor tires two to three feet deep in sections of fields that are too wet to grow crops in. The farm was treated like an object and the crops were seen as commodities. Today the farm is treated as something that is unique; there is only one Roxbury Farm and we will never be able to replicate it anywhere else in the world. By setting goals to not only protect the soil against erosion but to also increase its fertility, we have to constantly review its use. By allowing the farm to become a living individuality we care for it like a living organism. Any living organism is defined by a semi permeable boundary like a cell wall, or a skin; in our case it is the woods where our property ends and becomes the neighbors’. Any living organism is qualified by its integrity; when it is invaded, it existence is challenged. Not only do we have to find integrity in our relationship with our members we have to find this in our relationship to the land as well. This can often be a struggle because our need to produce vegetables can overpower our ability to listen to the land. There is a real tension between the needs of the people and the needs of the land and we farmers often feel like we stand in between like an acrobat on a tight rope.
Some people may look at our farm and think that we are not using it to its fullest potential because so much of it is in permanent grass (we could expand the CSA and make a lot more money). In our eyes the highest possible use of these sections is hay or pasture and not vegetables or other row crops. We find ourselves taking more and more land out of production which limits the growth of the CSA. But grass and woods offer a place for animals. Pigs by nature want to dig and they were destroying the pasture. Some people put a ring in their nose to keep them from digging but we didn’t feel right about that. We want the pigs to be able to be pigs. Looking at the farm we had two sections of woods that had become full of thorns and rose bushes. The woods seemed to be a good match for the pigs. They don’t like being in the full sun because they easily sunburn and the shade from the trees would keep them cool and out of the sun. We have to be careful to not overstock the two wooded pastures or they will quickly become degraded. The two groups of pigs we have in the woods now are very content. One section of the woods becomes a small pond when it rains. The large sows can completely submerge themselves in the water with just the tips of their ears and snouts sticking out. They look like hippos on hot summer afternoons. But since we only have limited number of acres in woods, we can only raise a limited number of hogs. We will never have enough pork to meet all the members’ needs.
As this letter is too short to go into more details I just described a few little aspects that describe how we make decisions. Jody and I sit down at the end of the season to talk about what worked well and what changes we need to make. The objective is to both serve you and to serve the land while respecting the farm as an individuality. This kind of individuation process is similar to our own Self development. I should note that it is actually quite the opposite of what we commonly refer to as self-realization as the former requires a willingness to develop empathy and listening (oh yes, I have a long way to go in my own development). In order to see things clearly we actually have to leave our comfort zone. Watching these children tell us how they had overcome some of the hardest obstacles in their lives by learning to fully trust each other reminded us how much better we can do as farmers listening to our land, animals, workers and customers. The children had clearly made a connection with something in themselves. The stillness of the Temagami wilderness and the harsh conditions allowed them to hear it and unveiled the uniqueness of each other, accepting it with all the inadequacies.
~Jean-Paul