More farm visioning
Oct. 13th, 2021 08:06 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
greenstormAn exercise for farm school is to envision what arrival would look like: if everything turned out right, far in the future, on an average day. A lot of participants talked about people and people are important; I love the idea of the land swelling during the quarters and cross-quarters with harvest celebrations and workshops, with a tiny village springing up of tents and tiny houses and camper vans. I want that feeling of people bustling, everyone cooking or making something, all the campstoves and outdoor kitchen full as folks prepare for an evening bonfire potluck. I want to see everyone chattering excitedly around the fire about what they learned that day, sharing experiences where everyone noticed something slightly different and it bubbles up as enthusiasm to share and talk and process and then, if these are the right people, as the fire dies down the talk drifts towards how to make the world better in concrete ways. Can you use cottonwoods to bust up concrete and plant in it? What does functional aquaponics look like on a small scale if you're trying very low inputs? What does a system look like if you prioritize aquifer replenishment? And also questions about the space right here under our feet: would it be better to shade the creek a little more? Maybe it would be more efficient to have the goosehouse downhill? What about trying a long-straw wheat?
There also need to be days when I wake up and go out alone and walk and look at everything. Every day there will probably be something that surprises me, a question that makes me think, something that I work at in the back of my mind when I go to bed that night.
The land itself isn't a jigsaw puzzle, it's an organism. When you go to a garden someone will point to a plant and say "that's a rose" or something like. I want to be able to point to something and it has so many uses and interconnections and purposes that I don't really stop until I've described the whole farm: this is an apple tree, it feeds us apples, it feeds the geese apples, it purifies the goose water, it shades the rhubarb, it stabilizes the slope, so on but more. Like any organism change is always occurring and homeostasis is more conceptual than real: annual crops come and go, numbers of animals or plants wax and wane, predation on crop plants swells and diminishes through the years. New organisms are added, seeds are selected so even remaining organisms change over time -- the Mammoth Russian sunflower I started with is maybe squatter and stronger two decades later, and occasionally throws multiple heads, or the KARMA mircle tomato is bigger and a little earlier -- but the whole is still itself in the same way that eating a sandwich instead of a steak or going to sleep or getting a sunburn or even replacing an arm with a prosthetic doesn't change your own essential nature.
For this visioning we are asked about customers and what they appreciate about this specifically, and the thing folks receive from me would be the story of interconnection. There's never just one thing: this is not a goose farm, or a soap farm, or a seed farm. This is where the soap is made from the same molecules as the charcuterie goose breast because it is one system. Everything isn't available all the time: it's a seasonal celebration of the land's generosity, maybe a basket per season that goes out full of treats and stories. Folks could open it and learn, open it and play with things within that they'd experienced before but differently, and things they hadn't experienced before. Breeding stock, seeds, and workshops connect the place to the places and the work of others. Part of the joy of it is that folks don't need to know what they need when they come: there's room to talk and discover that on the way.
The exercise asks, who supports you? Who is there to help you on the farm? I think of a workshop, many hands making light work, and that is one kind of support. There's another kind of support that is the recognition of purpose, that is belief. This is the support that acknowledges that it is worthwhile and desirable and sometimes achievable to change a little corner of the world. This is the support that also loves the land. I can't imagine having this kind of support.
The exercise says: you have just received word that the thing that happens next is about to begin. What is that thing? And that thing is that the organism produces offspring. The next thing would be that people with ossabaws and ancient grains and weird corns and geese have their own Places and there is a flow of information and genetics back and forth and the world is actively changing because more of these things are being grown and preserved, because people feel they have a network that helps to support them, because we're enabled to do this and we aren't alone. That's the long future, the next step.
Then we were asked to write a vision statement, which is the big soul-goal of the place and how it fits into the world as a whole and isn't to be shared, and a mission statement which is more concrete and achievable.
The vision statement will be something like: We who touch this land all know, together, that we are so many kaleidoscopic pieces of one intricate glorious system of systems; we all come away with better tools to steer those systems as authentic selves in collaboration with other entities. Standing on this land is to feel all the systems ticking like clockwork, to love those systems, and to know we have a place within them.
Or a little less woo:
Plants, humans, and other animals knowing together that we are so many kaleidoscopic pieces of one intricate glorious system of systems and giving humans better physical, intellectual, and emotional tools to steer our piece of that collaborative system.
The mission statement will be something like: Promoting creative place-based systems through hands-on experiential knowledge that supports diverse human, plant, and animal partners in flourishing in appropriate interlocking niches.
There also need to be days when I wake up and go out alone and walk and look at everything. Every day there will probably be something that surprises me, a question that makes me think, something that I work at in the back of my mind when I go to bed that night.
The land itself isn't a jigsaw puzzle, it's an organism. When you go to a garden someone will point to a plant and say "that's a rose" or something like. I want to be able to point to something and it has so many uses and interconnections and purposes that I don't really stop until I've described the whole farm: this is an apple tree, it feeds us apples, it feeds the geese apples, it purifies the goose water, it shades the rhubarb, it stabilizes the slope, so on but more. Like any organism change is always occurring and homeostasis is more conceptual than real: annual crops come and go, numbers of animals or plants wax and wane, predation on crop plants swells and diminishes through the years. New organisms are added, seeds are selected so even remaining organisms change over time -- the Mammoth Russian sunflower I started with is maybe squatter and stronger two decades later, and occasionally throws multiple heads, or the KARMA mircle tomato is bigger and a little earlier -- but the whole is still itself in the same way that eating a sandwich instead of a steak or going to sleep or getting a sunburn or even replacing an arm with a prosthetic doesn't change your own essential nature.
For this visioning we are asked about customers and what they appreciate about this specifically, and the thing folks receive from me would be the story of interconnection. There's never just one thing: this is not a goose farm, or a soap farm, or a seed farm. This is where the soap is made from the same molecules as the charcuterie goose breast because it is one system. Everything isn't available all the time: it's a seasonal celebration of the land's generosity, maybe a basket per season that goes out full of treats and stories. Folks could open it and learn, open it and play with things within that they'd experienced before but differently, and things they hadn't experienced before. Breeding stock, seeds, and workshops connect the place to the places and the work of others. Part of the joy of it is that folks don't need to know what they need when they come: there's room to talk and discover that on the way.
The exercise asks, who supports you? Who is there to help you on the farm? I think of a workshop, many hands making light work, and that is one kind of support. There's another kind of support that is the recognition of purpose, that is belief. This is the support that acknowledges that it is worthwhile and desirable and sometimes achievable to change a little corner of the world. This is the support that also loves the land. I can't imagine having this kind of support.
The exercise says: you have just received word that the thing that happens next is about to begin. What is that thing? And that thing is that the organism produces offspring. The next thing would be that people with ossabaws and ancient grains and weird corns and geese have their own Places and there is a flow of information and genetics back and forth and the world is actively changing because more of these things are being grown and preserved, because people feel they have a network that helps to support them, because we're enabled to do this and we aren't alone. That's the long future, the next step.
Then we were asked to write a vision statement, which is the big soul-goal of the place and how it fits into the world as a whole and isn't to be shared, and a mission statement which is more concrete and achievable.
The vision statement will be something like: We who touch this land all know, together, that we are so many kaleidoscopic pieces of one intricate glorious system of systems; we all come away with better tools to steer those systems as authentic selves in collaboration with other entities. Standing on this land is to feel all the systems ticking like clockwork, to love those systems, and to know we have a place within them.
Or a little less woo:
Plants, humans, and other animals knowing together that we are so many kaleidoscopic pieces of one intricate glorious system of systems and giving humans better physical, intellectual, and emotional tools to steer our piece of that collaborative system.
The mission statement will be something like: Promoting creative place-based systems through hands-on experiential knowledge that supports diverse human, plant, and animal partners in flourishing in appropriate interlocking niches.
no subject
Date: 2021-10-22 02:58 am (UTC)It sounds like you're already *doing* a lot of this, and the question is how to make it sustainable?
no subject
Date: 2021-10-25 04:16 pm (UTC)