The farming season is under way in southern Wisconsin. This means I have less time for reading and writing and more for thinking. True to nature what’s on my mind hasn’t changed. Here’s what I’ve been pondering while dirtying my hands and getting my back in shape for another growing season:

Culture seems to be the sum of the stories we are telling right now as a society. History is the sum of the stories that ‘stick’. Twenty five years ago the local/ sustainable/ organic agriculture movement consisted of a smattering of farmers and eaters here and there throughout the country. Today, dozens and dozens of local food activists can be found in communities like Boulder, the Hudson Valley, Portland and Madison, to name a few places. And, there is a growing interest in tens of thousands more people across the country.

Local food is now considered a movement and receives mainstream media attention. Historically, successful cultural changes are born as fringe ideas, grow into alternative movements, develop an underlying philosophy/ culture and slowly shift the way people live. Local/ sustainable/ organic agriculture is now an alternative movement. It’s time we begin to make it a culture.

As far as I can tell, much of what brought the movement this far is determined and stubborn persistence of the farmers. The more good food they grow for their communities, the more people start to eat and appreciate that food. Farming is not an easy occupation but with the passion borne of doing what one believes is right these men and women, their customers, and their advocates have forced the local food movement’s rise in popularity. Like a wedge driven into the end of a log, it is forcing mainstream culture to acknowledge its existence and react to it.

This gets to the gist of what I’ve been pondering. Now that we’re noticed, we need to broaden our impact. On the one side, we need legal advocacy and policy change. Law and policy are designed to adjust slowly so as not to be subject to the whims of the populace. The local food movement is now established enough it is time our lawmakers respond to its existence.

Secondly, and more importantly to me, it is time to build/ expand the philosophical underpinnings of this movement. This is a two part process. First, these underpinnings need articulated. Second, they need incorporated into new stories.

Thankfully, the lion’s share of the articulation has already been done by those in the tradition of Aldo Leopold, Wallace Stegner and Wendell Berry. Now, it is our job to tell the stories and begin to create a history for our movement.

Wes Jackson, director of The Land Institute in Kansas, likes to tell the story of his friend Leland who died several years ago. He spent his last 30 years in a 6′x16′ cabin not far from Jackson’s farm. During that time Leland lived off an annual income of only $500.

Leland believed that seeking pleasure causes violence against the land and against one another. He had no problem accepting pleasure when it came to him but took issue with the idea that it could be found. His response was to live a life that valued work, thrift and household economy.

Certainly, Leland is an extreme example. But, how different would our lives be if we valued these instead of cable television, cheap food and mobility? Perhaps, if we could learn to practice even a little of the restraint Leland lived by, we would be willing to pay a fair price for food. 

Food is not a luxury, but a necessity. It is not anonymous. It came from a specific place and passed through specific hands. Food is more than calories. It is the product of labor, of ten and twelve hour days spent lifting, carrying and sweating in the hot sun. Food has a story and so does every person who touched it. As a culture, we must learn to respect and appreciate these stories.

Good food is the kind of simple, elegant and undeniable pleasure that can come to us several times a day. Understanding this is the first step in solving many of the problems that tear the fabric of our social structure. 

Three years prior to publication of his famous novel Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck wrote In Dubious Battle, considered to be one of the gems of his lesser known works. As with so much of his writing, Steinbeck’s passionate sympathy for the oppressed and exploited is eloquently on display.

In Dubious Battle is the story of two men from ‘The Party’ who come to a large fruit picking valley in California. The workers in the valley have just received a pay cut. But, due to their poverty and lack of organization they only grumble. The men from ‘The Party’ organize a strike. The strike seems reasonable considering the conditions in which many of the workers are living: tent communities with no toilets or access to clean water in the campsites.

The novel is set during The Great Depression and not only looks at the plight of poor “working stiffs”, but also exposes the struggle between classes. The 1930′s fruit harvesters depicted were migrant white workers. Today they are of Latin American descent.

Certainly, our society has made great advances in the way we treat labor. But, we aren’t finished. Farm field labor is one of the most difficult and dangerous jobs in the United States. It is also one of the lowest paid.

My point is that the working poor are still there. They are still poor. They still work extremely hard for the little they have. Their wages are still defined by the end market of the products over which they labor, not by the actual work. And, we, the consumers still balk at food prices.

In a 2009 interview with Cerise Press, former U.S. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser defined poetry as follows:

“A poem is the record of a discovery, either the discovery of something in the world, or within one’s self, or perhaps the discovery of something through the juxtaposition of sounds and sense within our language. Our job as poets is to set down the record of those discoveries in such a way that our readers will make the discoveries theirs and will delight in them.”

I agree. But I think this definition extends all good writing. Ecclesiastes 1:9 says:

“What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun. “

This is true. But, there are new ways of viewing, new angles from which to approach thoughts, beliefs and philosophies. All good writing is the discovery of these new vantage points. Or, put differently, all good writing is a rediscovery of ideas.

Poetry is a form of last resorts, it seems. What is written in a poem could not be expressed in any other way. Essays, short stories or novels would warp the meaning. A piece of work becomes a poem when it fails to fit any other form. Put differently, a poem is a poem because there is nothing else it could be. This is true in the same way that an oak is an oak. Thus, it could be said, a poem is the discovery of a rediscovery.

Farming is also a record. Though slow to show it, in time the fields tell a story. Too often it is one of mindless repetition, damage, ignorance and laziness. But there is a new generation of farmers who are not returning to the land but coming for the first time.

They are part of a growing movement and are actively engaged in the art of discovery and rediscovery. In them there is hope. And in their work, beauty. Like a well written narrative they have illuminated the idea of food from a new angle.

These new farmers are not just coming to rural America where they are sorely needed. They are growing in the middle of our country’s most urban environments. Like a poem that has no choice but to be a poem, their form of urban agriculture is an elegant and refined record of what can be and what is. And it is delightful.

If culture is the sum of the stories we tell today and history is the sum of the stories that stuck with us, then we must begin to tell new stories. We need to discover and rediscover and chronicle our successes and failures. Often today’s stories and poems have more to do with stress, concrete and steel than with joy or dirt. It is time, with our hands, shovels and pens, to tell something new, lest history forget us.

The previous blog post is probably the last of it’s kind here. This is the first winter I’ve taken off (which is one of the great perks of farming). In my free time I’ve been reading and writing extensively.

Last month, I came across the memoir of William Kittredge called Hole in the Sky. In it he talks of the need to tell new stories, as a culture. I have pondered this, almost obsessively, since laying eyes on it.

If the local food movement is going to create cultural change we need to create our own culture. The groundwork for this is being done by the thousands of small CSA & direct market farms popping up across the country. I now feel it is time for the next step. It is time for the artists, the fiction writers and the poets to begin talking about what it means to ‘return to the land’ in the 21st century.

In the tradition of writers like Kittredge, Wendell Berry and Gene Logsdon, among others, we need a new generation of voices. I know this conversation is beginning to crop up here and there, in fields, barns and around dinner tables. I know there are artists and writers out there who are involved. It is my hope that, in some small way, this blog can begin to facilitate that dialogue.

I don’t yet know how it will all play out. But I know this: I will happily take submissions of stories and poems to publish here and link to my facebook & twitter accounts. Send them to rethinkag (at) gmail.com. Since I am a farmer and the season gets under way in about a month, I will be busy and may not be able to post as often as I would like. But, I will do my best.

That’s the story about rethinking my blog.