This farm has a conscious.
We watched "Farmer John" this week and that thought has been on my mind since. This farm, indeed, does have a conscious.
It is all connected, every element of it a thought that pops into my head often. As I muck the horse stall, I take the uneaten hay and toss it into the sheep for bedding, which turns into compost that covers the vegetable bed. We ate lettuce last night from it, it felt healing. The small farm used to take care of communities and families on a direct basis. Now people eat unconsciously, not knowing where it was grown or how, and much of it is grown not on a farm but in a factory. Farmer John recognized this many times, and lived it, and lived through the '80's while farmers around him went under. But he turned it around. There's a solution to very problem if you think creatively and openly. It took a lot of courage to do what he did,and ingenuity,and hard work. Now he is helping feed people, and educate people from the city - that farm is helping people.
I do not have the adequate time or energy to write a proper post - the farm event this weekend" is keeping me on overdrive - but I wanted to write that. This farm is leading me, us somewhere. Just as it heals us, we are healing it - as it sat so neglected for years. It is a long road ahead for us. But like Farmer John said, it is almost as if the farm tells you, guides you, with what to do. It inspired both of us to continue to work toward our plan of being more sustainable, and then taking that ability and sharing it somehow with a small community.
I think that movie should be required for school children, and then again to 20 year olds with all the answers, and again at 30 when you know you don't have the answers, and again, every decade of one's life - to give courage and inspiration. It is a beautiful, moving, inspiring story of a boy who grows up, a family, a farm, and the struggle, fall and eventual triumph of all.
It also inspired me as an artist - as one can feel like an outcast, odd, 'she's different', quirky, weird, etc,...But you have to find your own beat and drum it out loud, with head up high even while the neighbors snicker at the church social.
