contribute

i was in ceremony at the lodge last night, and it came very clearly to me, that my purpose here, in life, is to contribute. contribute at all levels: physically through my work and actions, emotionally and spiritually through love and truth. i am not interested in money, titles, or any of that. enough to get by, yes, but not more. right now, i feel that what i want most is to contribute to life in a positive way. the hardest thing about it is that i feel like there's so much to be done, and it can be overwhelming. for a specific example, with what i've learned for the past 7 years of farming, i now think that our current agricultural practices are toxic to us, to the land, to the environment. there are many indicators pointing to this: our pollinators are in big trouble due to neonicotinoid pesticides; monarch butterflies are about to become extinct due to glyphosate herbicides; people we all know are suffering with cancers, immune diseases, neurological diseases, and so on, all of which, i am convinced can at least in part be traced to toxins in our land, water, and air. i feel like i know something about all this now, and i want to share it with people. but it's hard to give the bad news. you come across as a wack job. so i try to stay focused on the good news, which is that every single time you purchase something, you are in fact casting a vote in support of the practices used to produce that thing. with food, for example, you can support those practices that do not use herbicides and pesticides, or practices that treat animals and the land with care and respect. but you have to do the work to find out what producers are using what practices.
if, for example, you are purchasing Genetically Modified corn products (which are everywhere), or something else from the supermarket or your local farmer, that was produced using roundup herbicide, you are voting for the continued use of roundup and all of the effects it causes; if you are buying something that was produced by exploiting child labor in a third world country, you are supporting those practices. i know that this is not easy. the companies that employ these practices do not want us to know it. we have to find out on our own, by putting in our own time and effort, and who can do that? we're all busy, so busy, and tired, and distracted.
what happened? how did we get into this proverbial rat race that keeps us too busy to care for our own good, for our children's good, for our planet's good?

going back to contributing. in the end, when we die, what will be left? our "things" won't matter; a few generations down the lines, nobody will remember us; to me, the only things that will be left are the ways in which we contributed to the world. and if we do nothing, that is our contribution too.

some days i feel so overwhelmed by the huge tasks i see that need to be addressed. other days i am just happy to do a small part, whatever i can, as long as it is in a positive direction. other days i just don't want to think about it, and have no time, so i work and keep busy. some days, like today, i cry, and i gather my sacred things around me and try to find peace. other days i pay attention and enjoy the kind words of someone who loves me; the way it feels to love back; the sound of rain; the cry of the coyotes at night; the sweet longing for something from a dream; the bittersweet experience of being here now.

peace

links

In case the links in my previous post did not work try this:
Jose Mujica's interview in Human
the Al Jazeera interview

Jose Mujica - why isn't he more well known?

I learned about Jose Mujica, ex-president of Uruguay, in Yann-Arthus Bertrands's Human (part 1), a beautiful, moving documentary I highly recommend.
Probably like most people, I had never heard of Mujica before, but I was so intrigued by what he said in his interview, that I had to find out more. From BBC and al Jazeera news, I found that:

• he gives away 90% of his salary to charity, which led him to be dubbed the "poorest" president in the world (he disagrees with that choice of words).
• he lives in a simple farm house and works the land with his wife
• he drives an old VW beetle, no limo
• he strives to live like the majority of people in his country, so that he understands where they come from, what they worry about, what they need
• he is an atheist but respects the Pope
• he questions consumerism and the idea of economic growth 
• and other things, but that was enough to seriously pique my interest

I would say that among presidents, his lifestyle, ideas, and way of speaking set him apart quite a bit. Certainly, our presidential candidates here in the US could learn some things from him (to put it very mildly).
To me, he sounds more like a life coach than a politician. Kind of like what you'd want in a real leader: someone with life experience, wisdom, and integrity.
Here's the Mujica interview. I found it inspiring and authentic.

And if you liked that one, here's another, from al-Jazeera; it's worth watching just to see Mujica't house and the way he serves tea, which is pretty funny:

Peace

A great day in NYC

NYC tomorrow!

tomorrow, the girls and I will be spending the day in NYC. Sena is having a meeting with a marine mammal specialist and an ocean conservation fellow at NRDC (Natural Resource Defence Council). we like the work NRDC is doing worldwide, and so we are very excited about this meeting. we're going to an indian restaurant afterwards.

things have been extra crazy on the farm since Ed started his new job this past monday. we've done all we could to prepare the animals, the field and the workers for our day away.
i rummaged through the closet and dug up a nice clean dress appropriate for the occasion, and i even plan to wear earrings (the girls made me buy a pair a few days ago special for this occasion). we'll hit the city and have a great time, as we usually do when we're together. i will not think back to anything that needs to be done on the farm until Thursday morning when i'm prepared for a huge wave of tasks to hit. but that's ok. i'll be ready.

here's the mission of NRDC off their web page. we're excited!

NRDC works to safeguard the earth—its people, its plants and animals, and the natural systems on which all life depends.

We combine the power of more than two million members and online activists with the expertise of some 500 scientists, lawyers, and policy advocates across the globe to ensure the rights of all people to the air, the water, and the wild.

peace

Opal and I

Thank you to Kim Bova for this photo, which I love.
Peace

A long post about a very hard decision

This is a long post. I have to tell you something hard. I kind of don’t want to because it’s a downer, but I feel like I must do it because it’s true, because it’s not something you’ll hear a lot these days, and because it may be helpful to others in the long run.

Ed is starting a new job on Monday.

Why? Because despite all the hype about small farmers and local food, farming as a full time occupation still does not pay a living wage. Although farmers have become mini-celebrities in the media, and in their communities, many farmers find that their work is not valued enough to allow them to make a living at it. At some point, many farmers face the heart-breaking decision of having to stop farming.

Farmers don’t get into farming because of money. They get into it because of love. But in the end, after much struggle, the truth stands clear: love is simply not enough to pay the bills.

Back to a more personal level:
The job Ed got is at Franhauffer Institute, which is located a couple of miles from our farm. They do research on fuel cells and water purification systems, and he’ll be working in a lab. He is excited to start.

I will continue to farm, homeschool, homestead. The girls will help me, and we’ll have our workers too.

I feel heart-broken that Ed had to take this job. But after several years of marginal income, he realized that if he wanted to have any chance of getting back into a technical field, now is the time. He’s been out of engineering for 7 years, and this job came along and is in a field he’s interested in. For me, this is nevertheless very hard.

We have put so much into farming: time, energy, money, and emotionally we put a lot into it too. This has been coming for some time. When he first mentioned the idea of looking for another job about two years ago, I sobbed. The he stopped mentioning it and I thought everything was ok. But he was always thinking about how financially precarious our situation was until it got unbearable for everyone. After countless sessions of trying to figure out how to make things work; after many arguments, we both started feeling like farming is taking too high of a toll on our family. For Ed especially, the facts became very clear:

·         our income places us below poverty line;

·         we cannot afford health insurance (we do get free insurance from the state, with limited benefits, based on our low income);

·         we cannot save for an emergency, the kids’ education, or retirement;

·         we have raised our prices as much as we think the market will bear

Farming demands a very high, relentless amount of work, which is valued so little that often it is not enough to pay farmers a living wage. I am here to tell you from my own personal experience over the past 7 years, and from the experience of other small-scale environmentally minded farmers I know, that financially, full-time farmers are barely scraping by. Part-time farmers is a different ball game. Here I’m talking about those who must support the farm as a business as well as their own (often minimal) personal expenses with the income they generate from farming.

The main problem we and many others face is low food prices. As a small farm we are competing with industrial agriculture. Yes, people are willing to pay more for our products; but not as much as it takes to sustain this type of farming. The bench mark for everyone is the grocery store price; and we just cannot compete with that. Industrial agriculture sells food so cheaply because it exploits people, animals and the land in order to produce it; workers are paid below min wage, and the agricultural practices devastate animals and the land. We pay our workers more than min wage, and our farming practices are environmentally sound.  We just don’t fit in with the industrial model, and the true price of producing the food we do does not either.

I could write much more about all this, but this article highlights the story of a farming family like us that decided to stop farming, for basically the same reasons Ed decided to get a job. It clearly illustrates the disconnect between the local food craze and the farm economic reality on the ground. I pulled out some passages that really felt true to our situation.
 
….
No one wants to think about farmers calling it quits. It muddies the heroic glow cast around our food producers. It cuts through all of the feel-good chatter about food systems and local economies. Each time a farmer quits, a little piece of our new agrarian dream dies. But however hard it is to discuss, the rate at which farmers are walking away from their farms—whether by choice or by force—may be the most important measure of whether or not our food systems are actually working. Because although farmers’ markets are springing up everywhere, the average small-scale farmer is barely surviving.
For farmers like Jim and Tina, who believe in producing food by stewarding their land responsibly and supporting biodiversity, a direct-market relationship with customers who support those production values makes sense. But if our farmers cannot charge prices based on the cost of real production numbers, this model falls flat.
…..
A 2011 study showed that southern Arizona farmers and ranchers on average sell a collective $300 million of food products per year, yet spend $320 million to raise those crops. The same study finds net farm income trends have been negative since 1989, which means that our farmers have consistently lost money producing food. According to the same study, southern Arizona farmers and ranchers reportedly lost $106 million in 2009.
National numbers reflect our region’s numbers. According the 2012 Census of Agriculture, farmers earned just 10 percent of their income from farm sales, while approximately 90 percent of their income came from off-farm occupations. The projected median farm income for 2015 is negative $1,558. Nearly half (or 1 million) of the 2.1 million farms in the U.S. require at least one member of the family to work off the farm.
….
Behind the scenes, farmers spend hours at the computer, wearily adding up market totals and expenditures. It is here in this solitary lamplit space that farmers visit some very dark emotional places. It is impossible to convey the deep anxiety for everything at stake, the fear that accompanies the risk, and the wounds that this stress inflicts upon a psyche or a family.

a quote from Thoreau

"I believe in the forest, and in the meadow, and in the night in which the corn grows." 
~ Henry David Thoreau

So what ya giving?

been singing this to my tomato plants at the top of my voice recently, when working in the greenhouse. it's one of the benefits of not being in the office, around "normal" people. i can do whatever i want when i'm with my cows and tomato plants.

Unthought Known (Pearl Jam)

Feel the sky blanket you
With gems and rhinestones!!!
See the path cut by the moon
For you to walk on
For you to walk on...

See the path cut by the moon
For you to walk on
See the waves on distant shores
Awaiting your arrival

Dream the dreams of other men
You'll be no one's rival
Dream the dreams of others then
You will be no one's rival
You will be no one's rival...

A distant time, a distant space
That's where we're living
A distant time, a distant place
So what ya giving?
What ya giving?

Look for the helpers

I saw a quote once saying something like when there's a terrible event happening, always look for the helpers. Well, we've had a deluge of bad news recently it seems, with so much violence and suffering everywhere, so here's some good news. You have to look for the helpers, and in this case it is NRDC.
Thank you NRDC!

If you've seen "Sonic Sea" you have a little bit of an understanding of how disruptive and dangerous sonar use by the Navy is to whales, dolphins and other marine life. It disrupts their mating, feeding and often, it forces them to beach themselves and kills them. NRDC (Natural Resources Defence Council) and others working with them were able to get legislation to pass such that the Navy will not be able to use low frequency sonar for training, testing and other routine operations.

https://www.theguardian.com/…/us-navy-banned-from-using-son…

US Navy banned from using sonar that harms dolphins and walruses

Low-frequency sonar used for training and testing can injure whales and other marine life, and disrupt their feeding and mating

theguardian.com

Wild Geese by Mary Oliver, another favorite poet

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
~ Mary Oliver

mid-july

why does mid-july always catch me by surprise? it happens every year, same story, then i forget.
this is the time when the big harvests start coming in: cucumbers, zucchini, tomatoes, garlic; the weeds are always on the verge of getting out of control; and basicaly there are not enough hours in the day to possibly keep up with everything. this week, to make things extra challenging, we have less help than usual because our farm manager is at a week-long permaculture course (which we're happy for him), and we do feel it, him not being here. this is also the cows' least favorite time of the year, temps in the high 80s and 90s and very humid. i feel for them, i'm not at my best in hot humid weather either, the only upside being that when the breeze comes in early morning and late afternoon, after being out all day, it feels so amazing...
also, this past weekend Aiyana broke her arm playing with her friends. they threw her up in the air because she was supposed to be a firework, and she landed on her wrist and broke her radius. she has a cast on which she will keep for 4 weeks. my mom also broke her leg about 4 weeks ago in Prince Edward Island. i hope we're done with the broken bones, please.

garlic, fresh out of the ground. so earthy...

peace

so inspiring, so cool

if you'd like to read some good news for a change, here's a very exciting and inspiring article about Bhutan.
two of my favorite highlights from the article:

• Bhutan is a country with negative carbon emission (amazing!)
• they abolished the concept of GDP (gross domestic product) in favor of GNH (gross national happiness) as a measure of how well their country is doing (how cool is that?)

and a great TED talk on this topic.

thank you to the people of  Bhutan, for setting such a great example on how to live sustainably, and happily, thank you for giving the rest of us hope and a path to follow.

peace

on marriage

everyone knows marriage is not easy.
i will give an example of why not. i think it will help me deal better and maybe it will be helpful to others too in recognizing that we're not alone. nobody really wants to talk much about the nitty-gritty, details of marriage. this is one of those details.

ed is very organized. i am not. he likes things to make sense and be orderly. he likes things to be put away where they came from. he likes the right lid to go on the right pot. this characteristic is in great part responsible for the success of our farm, and for the fact that everyone appreciates ed's work. when he does something he does it well. also, this characteristic, combined with my opposite, causes a real problem between us at times.

i am more of a hodgepodge kind of person. organization is not one of my strengths. i work with whatever i have and if i don't have the right lid for the right pot, i can use the wrong lid as long as it sort of fits, and i can make whatever i'm making in the pot. in general, i'll make do with what i have, it doesn't have to be perfect, or even near perfect, as long as it works. for example, everyone was horrified when i went to get new glasses recently, and they asked to see my old pair, and i pulled it out. it was the very first pair glasses i've ever had, since i was 22 years old, all bent and somewhat scratched, totally out of style, but they worked, so i never felt the need to change them. for some reason, this generated great interest at the eye doctor, and they passed my glasses around the office in disbelief.
the most notable exception to this hodgepodge characteristic is when i work with my plants out in the field, where i am the complete opposite.

as i was saying, ed's organization skills have served him and all of us well, the only problem being that he is never really fully satisfied. or not for very long. he has a hard time putting up with messiness or disorganization of any kind, or any kind of uncertainty. and let's face it, life is messy. for me, to be content and work with any situation comes much easier. not that i'm saying i'm right and he's wrong, you know...

anyway, the pot with a wrong lid became a problem this morning. i was making my coffee (i drink turkish coffee since my french press broke. i can adapt. now i use a pot), and ed saw that once again, i had the wrong lid on, and got cranky with me and gave me a mini lecture, because when you have the wrong lid stuff drips on the stove and messes it up and causes a fire hazard. and cleaning the stove is not one of my strengths either. me, i just wanted to make my coffee in any pot. i don't care what pot, or what lid, i just care about the coffee.
anyway, we had a short, tense exchange, and then silence. i felt like i will never be good enough for him, i've tried, but it's never enough. and you know what? i really don't want to be good enough any more. this rebellious part of me suddenly felt that i've tried long enough and hard enough, and still he's not satisfied, so from now on i'll use whatever damn lid i want. the first lid i can get my hands on.

after having my coffee in silence, i went outside to milk the cow. ed came to help, which i knew was an indirect apology. eventually he apologized with words too, not for the lid directly, but for being snappy. he hadn't had breakfast yet. that should be a rule, that we don't talk about anything before breakfast, and definitely not before my morning coffee. it's not like he said that from now on he won't care about the lid anymore, or about any of the other stuff that's not put away right, and so on. that will not change. and neither will the fact that organization is not my strength. so, somehow we got to learn to live with this difference. and many others. which at times, seem insurmountable. and at times, we just sort of forget about, or see the positive side of. i do sometimes appreciate that he likes his stuff organized, and he does sometimes appreciate that i can be heppy with whatever. and othertimes it drives us crazy.
that's how marriage is.

peace

laugh and cry at the same time

check out this little video, of a news reporter losing it and being honest. i'm not sure if the guy is a real reporter or a comedian. but it doesn't really matter, does it, because it is true.

Rocky Neck Beach

Yesterday, Sena, Aiyana and I went to Fiddleheads and Oyster Club down by the shore to deliver their weekly vegetable order. We got some snacks from Fiddleheads and headed to the beach for the rest of the day. I was so looking forward to being by the ocean again. I haven't gone since last summer, and after the craziness we had at the farm on Thursday, with the well and the pump, I felt like a day by the ocean with the girls would be lovely. I was not disappointed.

 Peace

Day in the life

Today was crazy!
Started off normal, going to milk the cows. Then, as Ed was filling their water trough, he noticed that the water pressure was very low and getting lower by the second. Soon enough there was no water pressure. This is our CSA day, when we really need water for washing and prepping all the vegetables we harvest to distribute to our CSA members. Not to mention that it was a million degrees out there in the field, super sticky and muggy, and drinking water would've been really nice. In any case, Ed said that either the well went dry, or the pump is busted. The well being dry would be worst case scenario; it would mean no water to irrigate crops and no water for the animals, until the well has a chance to refill, which could be who knows how long: days, weeks? Not good. The pump being busted is no fun either, about $1500-$2000, not a small expense on farm income. And all this just as I wrote in my last farm newsletter how lucky we are to have a good well.

But lucky we turned out to be in the end. We called in some pump guys to check things out, and it turned out that the well is not dry (phew), and the pump is not busted, but only a wire was burnt out, and it only cost $180 to fix (I mean only because I'm thinking in relative terms to what could've been).

So all ended well in the end, but I am still exhausted because it was stressful not knowing what's going to happen, and our routine was all messed up, and we needed to change plans for the workers, as far as who is doing what, who is harvesting, who is washing, or not washing, etc. And everything still had to be ready by 3 before customers arrived. And it was ready in the end. But I was done and I just had to crash into bed and let my mind rest for half an hour from it all, while Sena, Aiyana and Kristin were helping customers at the CSA. I recovered enough to appreciate the rain and thunder storm we got this afternoon. Beautiful, heavy rain, and lots of thunder. So grateful for the water!

Peace

tomatoes and milk

When I went to prune and tie the tomatoes this morning, I was stunned by how much they grew since last Friday. In only 4 days, they grew least 1ft on some of them. I wish Delfino was here to see them. He would've been really happy. Delfino worked with us for 5 years and he really cared about our plants. He taught us a lot and gave us a lot. He's now farming on his own farm, using some of the methods he learned working with us (such as how to grow without pesticides and chemical fertilizers). He is an amazing farmer, farmed his whole life since he was a child, and although he is much more experienced than us as a farmer in general, I am glad that we were also able to bring him something. We are grateful to him for everything he taught us, and for how he cared for our crops, and we wish him the best on his own farm.
Here are pictures of the tomatoes from Friday versus this morning:

And a picture of Jasmine's good milk. I got back into my morning milking routine after Jasmine had her calf, Jupiter, and although I must admit that I was a little anxious at first about the extra work this entails at this time of the year, it turns out that being with Jasmine and her calf every morning, just being in their gentle presence, more than makes up for any added work.

 Peace

Out of Africa

had an evening to myself and watched "out of africa" last night. i loved karen blixen's style since i first read her stories in the 90s, but had not read this book or watched this movie before. very beautiful.

Chek out our

July 2016 Shundahai Farm Newsletter