Urban WWOOFer: Lost crops everywhere

September 20, 2012

By this time of year, most farmers would have harvested their corn, and the soy would be well on its way to processing. Their fields would already be vast deserts, the bones of the plants remaining to indicate what was.

Instead, field after field sits still covered with corn's tall stalks and soy's leafy sea..but all the yellow and brown of death, unsalvageable and worthless.  The drought across the midwest this year made farmer after farmer lose huge percentages of their crop.  According to a USA Today article, the USDA estimated that US farmers would havest the smallest crop in six years this year (and according to the New York Times, the smallest since 1995).   According to the NY Times, "The drought has affected eighty-eight percent ofthe corn crop, a staple of processed foods and animal feed as well as the nation's leading farm export."  The drought that "settled over more than half of the continental United States in the summer of 2012 is the most widespread in more than half a century."  

The Times article makes note of how widespread the drought's effects are:  

- Land for all major crops is affected
- Seventy-two percent of land for cattle was affected
- Water levels in town resevoirs have dropped and levels have dropped in major rivers like the Mississippi and Ohio
- Shallow waterways are a dilemma for water needs.  Barges are forces to make trips half-full carrying lighter loads, and loss of crop, too, will affect the business of barges, along with that of trucks (and the jobs of those working in barges and trucking)
- There have been record wildfires
- Public infrastructure like highways, power plants, rail lines and runways have taken extra wear and stress for torrid degrees of heat

This is no small phenomena:  fifty-five percent of the continental United States experienced moderate to extreme drought this summer.  

According to one driver with whom I hitched, there is a giant ethanol processing plant in Decatur.  This year, it only received 10% of the corn it had expected from area farmers (this I looked up to verify but found nothing, and there is no reason to assume he should be an expert on the subject).  He found the situation hilarious after working for them and as a laborer all his life.  He had little good to say, and he had no sympathy for a system that uses unhealthy corn to burn and maintain unhealthy animals on giant unhealthy feed lots.

The detached, academic me says, "Perhaps this was mother nature's suble way of nudging to 'diversify'??  If not that, it is certainly incentive to consider ditching the big two (corn and soy).  Rather, turn the ground and don't plant a thing other than perhaps some cover crops.  Let some grasses grow, and buy some cows.  Let them replenish the ground (that you made infertile with chemical farming) for a few years, and in the meanwhile you have the potential of milk, cheeses, auction cows, and meat to sell." 

While that "academic" perspective speaks loudly, I also recognize the pain suffered by the families who work this land and who sowed these seeds (or who sat high up on giant tractors to do so). Their perspective will be far different from mine:  they do what they do for the same reasons I have taken unfullfilling waitressing jobs--to support themselves and their families--and it seems that the average factory farmer in this country today is more of a businessman who retains relatively little knowledge of the natural world, including about the systems that s/he is using, and not holistically knowledgeable about the other options available to her/him.  Humankind tends to habituate to the status quo:  to do what parents, family, and neighbors do, even if it makes little sense to the outside observer (or the academic who is ironically prized for questioning but expected to actually do nothing).  

Urban WWOOFer: Life and Farming in Bloomington

                                                                                    September 10,  2012

Farming in Indiana!
I am lucky enough to be staying in a household incredibly connected to small farms, exactly where I hoped to make connections.  Amanda works for the urban gardens of the city; Rob does a work-exchange on the raw milk farm; Mike works a couple of days on an orchard.  The forth roommate does urban planning for bicycles and pedestrians: I am such a good match for this bunch it is dumbfounding!


Schacht Farm:  

The first places I offered help was a turkey and pig farm.  They are organish, they say:  they do not give their animals antibiotics and generally stick to sustainable practices, but for a small farmer, organic feeds and the many hoops to jump through are far too large to become “Certified Organic”.  I arrived to the task of moving turkeys—1000 of them—from the indoor barn to a field.  Until that point in their first two months of life, they would have been too small to live through rain and cold nights outside.  Eventually, though, they grow to a point of overcrowding each other in their barn, and these were well past that (think PETA video). 

      The Job:

-          Unloading big, heavy turkey crates from truck to inside barn

-          Stuffing 10 turkey apiece in each

-          Loading full (and heavy) crates on truck

-          Hiking behind truck to field to unload all crates from truck and all turkeys from crates

-          Loading the truck with empty crates, returning to barn
-     Repeating x 3

      Highlights: 

-          Turkey feces and even turkey blood most notably on your shoes...but also everywhere else

-          Chasing turkey around in circles to catch them (a lot like the “Pig Scramble” I participated in at the Ottawa County Fair in small town Ohio at the impressionable young age of nine)

-          Shoving turkey in crate, scrambling for another, and watching the first jump out as you return to add the second

-          Being “paid” in sausage


Community Gardens

Bloomington has not only many community gardens, but it is small enough that they are organized collectively (not even conceivable in my oversized NYC).  The city partially funds both the gardens and actual paid employees (also not conceivable in NYC)!  There is a garden plot rental program through the City of Bloomington, gardening classes and information accessible through the city's website.  Mother Hubbard's Cupboard, a Bloomington nonprofit based on food as a human right, also runs several of the gardens.  They strive to ensure wide access to healthy food by maintaining a food pantry; by providing youth education and gardening education programs; and by maintaining several community gardens both with personal plots for individuals and collective plots that staff manage and volunteers help maintain from which anyone can come and take.

Community Past-times:

-    Alcohol.  For high schoolers, college students, and the community in general, drinking is a big part of life.  
-    There is very little dancing.  I was enthusiastic to explore any and all available dance, and found little supply and little demand.  If they worked on this, there may be less need for the alcohol!

-    Punk music.  Apparently, punk is big in midwestern cities. From the very little I understand about it from seeing it in action previously and in B-Town, it is the epitome of the Caucasian American music scene.  High noise but not necessarily high artistry, almost no dancing, lots of beers in hand.  Lukily, eventually I did find some great jazz (albeit everyone was consuming it standing still rather than participating by moving).

The Catholic Worker:
Dorothy Day was the founder and main visible symbol of the movement until her death in the 1980s.  She considered herself a "Christian Anarchist"--"Christian" in the sense of radical christianity, retracing back to roots in service, voluntary poverty, and acceptance, and "Anarchist" in the acceptance and approval of resistance against illigitimate authority.  

The CW's self-description in 120 words:

"The Catholic Worker Movement began simply enough on May 1, 1933, when a journalist named Dorothy Day and a philosopher named Peter Maurin teamed up to publish and distribute a newspaper called "The Catholic Worker." This radical paper promoted the biblical promise of justice and mercy.
Th CW movement has no centralized body and is comprised of entirely autonomous groups in different cities (or sometimes autonomous groups even within the same city) who rather than take orders ask themselves, "How can we live the mission and do good where we are?".  In that regard, it is much like the "Food Not Bombs" movement. 

Thus, each is structured differently. CW houses have "workers" and guests, whether they be semi-permanant, short-term, one-night, or visitors for meals only.  At Bloomington's CW, there are 6 permanant workers and space for about twelve guests.  Guests are allowed to stay for up to one year and can participate in the community at almost any level. They must be out between the hours of 9 and 5 Monday through Saturday, but have a room and the option of participating in community meals every evening.  They are not allowed to contribute finanically--they are allowed the time to get back on their feet.  One of the few rules is 'no untreated mental illness and no untreated drug problems' (implying that if they are actively seeking help, they are supported).

Workers, on the other hand, are expected to work part-time and contribute 50% of their income to the collective pool of the house.  The other 50% is theirs.  That money will cover food, housing expenses, etc. for everyone.  Other CW groups have completely different financial systems:  some ask you to contibute all income, while in  larger city like Chicago, for example, volunteers may be expected to give 40 hours a week at the CW.   Some have meetings to decide whether you can take out money from the discretionary funds for something you need/want, while others allow a weekly allowance that you can use as you like.  
In Bloomington, none of the workers are Catholic, but most associate themselves with some religion (Quaker, Methodist, Buddhist, etc).  Some are markedly non-religious; some only allow Catholic workers.                                                                                                                                      Bn
            

Catholic Worker (CW) homes are in about 200 cities across the country and around the world, but the first one I encountered was a CW from Chicago where I would have expected anything by that name:  at a massive political protest in Georgia of the School of the Americas.  The CW movement is materialized today in many different forms, but generally speaking it manifests as a collection of independent Houses of Hospitality, where Catholic Workers live alongside less permanant guests:  whoever may be passing through, the poor and the suffering.  Catholic workers strive to serve people, anyone and everyone, by offering shelter, distributing free lunches, running free clinics, community gardening, services for inner city children, political street theater, campaigning...etc.  Catholic Workers see themselves not as a charitable organization but as a family striving to live a beautiful vision of what could be rather than lamenting our broken society.  Many have chosen "downward mobility", that is often choosing to live a life less dictated by money and thus often without much.  

Grounded in a firm belief in the God-given dignity of every human person, their movement was committed to nonviolence, voluntary poverty, and the Works of Mercy as a way of life. It wasn't long before Dorothy and Peter were putting their beliefs into action, opening a "house of hospitality" where the homeless, the hungry, and the forsaken would always be welcome.

Over many decades the movement has protested injustice, war, and violence of all forms.Today there are some 223 Catholic Worker communities in the United States and in counties around the world." 

Apple-Picking at a Mennonite Orchard:

I stayed for three nights with a Mennonite family on their orchard outside of Bloomington.  The parents had nine children, all of them home-schooled.  They had built their own house and had gardens and orchards on both their land and rented land.  They both also teach in the winter at a local Mennonite college when Mennonite students from around the country come to study. 

I had not expected that their house would be very modern, their gardens not organic, and their diets industrial.  Mennonites are not Amish, although they have many of the same beliefs.  Both are Anabaptists, notable for: taking the Bible literally, women covering their heads, dressing simply, taking nonviolence literally, and having "believer's baptism", or baptism when they are "old enough to decide as adults to take god into their lives".  That said, while Amish accomplish their goals by separating themselves from mainstream society, Mennonites see their goals and needs being met by integrating into mainstream society.  

While there, I spent my days picking apples, picking weeds, sorting apples, and doing dishes.  Twelve people at each meal dirty a lot of dishes.  

I decided to join the family for the midweek church service for the experience.  I did not realize until we arrived that the father was the pastor!  The church was simple with wooden pews, a piano but not a single musician, and hymn books to be shared.  There were about 20 people in attendance:  11 of whom being the family and myself and 2 more grandparents.  Low attendance may be a good sign for heathens everywhere.  The service was terrible:  a form of torture.  The wooden pews felt as though a team of scientists had studied ergonomics and then designed to oppose their findings intentionally (perhaps preventative measures for sleeping in church).  No carpenter could have accidentally gone that wrong.  There was no music to join our singing, and all of the songs sounded quite meloncholic and depressing (even "No Tears in Heaven" was so depressing it made me want to cry).  The pastor had no intonation, no interest in his voice, none of the liveliness that other cultures expect in their church.  There were no bibles to be found; everyone carries their own regularly.  They ALL have memorized and can randomly recite bible passages.

The children participate in the yearly "Bible Bee".  The second eldest, now a freshman in college, has gone to nationals all three times that he has competed.  They study regularly:  in the car, one read the title to another (such as Job 1:1 - 2:10), and the daughter of about 12 recited verse after verse of King James with language so dated that I could not understand most of it.  To think of what it would take my brain to memorize like that; I can only imagine the amount of time these kids spend with their Bibles!

Urban WWOOFer: Downside of Living in Close Quarters

After 12 days of sleeping outside in Missouri's fall; living, eating, sleeping, and sharing close space with thirty other people; and barely showering with modest sanitation, it was only a matter of time before a stomach bug attacked.   The second friday of our course my belly began to churn.  I could tell it needed to send toxins out, but still by night everything inside hadn't been able to escape.   

To precede this story with a description of our accomodations, we are living extremely modestly.  There is a long path that has been cleared:  half of the path in the woods and half in a prairie at the crest of a hill.  We have all of our tents in the woods on one side of the path, right where the woods and the prairie meet.  The path widens near the camping quarters to fit both the cooking quarters--a tent for food storage, two rocket stoves, and a timber frame barn--and the university--the clearing where we pull up strawbales to sit on in a circle for class.  At the other end of the path is the compost toilet, about a 100 meters away.   

Knowing that the walk to the compost toilet is the last thing I want to come out of my tent to do in the middle of the 30 degree night, I made one last attempt before going to bed, with no success.   I fell asleep with a deep rumbling in my stomach and hoped for the best.  Several times I awoke with the thought, "Oh, god--I should go to the bathroom", but, naked in a sleeping bag to save body heat and afraid that after fully dressing, putting shoes on, climbing out of my tent, and walking 100 meters my stomach would still not be ready to expell, I rolled over and went back to sleep.  Finally, though, it was clear, and as I sat up, it was far beyond clear.  I pulled on my sweater, grabbed a flashlight, zipped out of my tent into sandals and made a run for it.   I made it no further than fifteen yards when it was clear that I had to find a closer solution, so I darted into the woods across the path (where I thought that no one was sleeping).  My stomach had made up its mind after hours of indecision and it had no intention on waiting for my convenience.  As I reached a few steps into the trees, I tore down my underwear and squatted to explode full force onto the ground out one end and began dry heaving out the other.  My two exit points finally calmed as I squatted--pantsless--in the forest in 28 degree cold under the starlight.  I turned on my flashlight and saw my underwear--shit!  Literally:  there was not just a drizzle but a complete bag full of diarrhea.  The explosion must have occured faster than my panties cleared the path of exit, creating a sort of bowl, perfect for diarrhea catchment.  Peachy fucking fantastic, I thought.  I pulled them off, wiped out the contents on the forest floor, and once back on the path set them down as a marker to find my way back to my poo-spot.  Then I waddled--carefully, as to minimize dripage--through the open clearing the rest of the 85 meters to the compost toilet.  On my return, I brought the compost toilet yogurt cup filled with sawdust (what we use to cover waste inside the compost toilet as an alternative to flushing fresh water), took a right at the soiled panties, and covered my pile.  I then threw the yogurt cup into the path for someone to find in the morning and hopefully return, picked up the offending panties and wrapped them in a piece of cardboard, and ran back into my tent. 

Needless to say, in the first morning I did not go down to the pond for morning breathing and meditation practices or do yoga; I did not wake for breakfast, and I stayed in bed for morning bread labor--or service on the land--as well.  I did not stay in bed because I felt so terrible; rather I feared that my still queazy stomach would explode again, only this time in the daylight as a broad spectacle for everyone to see.  (I am not sure which would have been worse.  When I did rise, all that was left stayed in.  But now, over a week later, my stomach still has not returned to normalcy.)  I finally rose and found that the yogurt cup had been returned to its rightful location at the compost toilet, certainly by a helpful but perplexed class member earlier in the morning.  I found a shovel and headed for the woods; then I began the process of detoxifying my panties.   

Later, when one of the course teachers realized I had been sick, he said, "Oh, that was you last night?  I heard something right near my tent...I have my tent pitched in the woods on the opposite side of the path, away from everyone else's."

Permaculture Training and the Gift Economy

The as-of-yet-unnamed Peace and Permaculture University at the Possibility Alliance offered its first class to 24 students: a gift-economy, 15-day Permaculture Design Certification course (Sept 24 - Oct 8).  

The Possibility Alliance is an intentional community in NE Missouri near Kirksville.  Ethan Hughes began the homestead 4 years ago, and since has hosted thousands of visitors, always using the gift economy.

What is the "Gift Economy"? 

The goal of the gift economy is to transform short, anonymous, impersonal relationships with direct, transparent, long-term relationships.  Currently, we live in a culture of placelessness with very few social contracts:  we don't owe anything to anyone because we can work to earn a living so we can pay with money for anything we need (earning far more than would be internationally sustainable and paying far less than the real cost of the good or service). 

However, when money stands in to replace our actual needs, it often coops our needs, and commodification takes us further away from meeting our real needs. when we are given a "gift", something is often moved inside of us to pay it forward in some way, out of joy and not out of obligation.  When we recognize our co-dependence and simply trade serving the needs of others and receiving gifts, our needs are met in a more humane, efficient way.  The "gift" is a currency of appreciation and reciprocity.  Some obligation is involved, but there is no expectation for immediate or direct repayment (I will probably not continue cooking my brother breakfast if he never offers me a thank you and a smile in return, and I'll probably stop offering my neighbors extra tomatoes from my garden if they never reciprocate my generosity by getting my mail when I'm away).  The currency of exchange has no value; it is only valuable to the person receiving the gift (often sentimental value).  And unlike any purchase in the market economy that quickly depreciates in value, the "gift"'s value continues to increase.

So why offer a Permaculture Design Certificate (PDC) in the "Gift Economy"? 

A PDC teaches the foundation and principals of sustainable design.  There are over a million people certified with a PDC around the world, but the PA is the first (known) group to offer it on the gift economy.  The PDC often costs in the range of $1,500.  Yet such an high price tag on such useful knowledge may fall into what inspiring West Coast activist Van Jones coined in the term "eco-apartheid".  PA founder Ethan Hughes explains, "Middle-upper-class environmentalists are demanding that low-income folks “green” themselves, yet all the information comes with a price tag. Seeing that gap really inspired me to create a free educational center, so nobody would be excluded."

Everything at the PA is part of the gift economy, which allows anyone to participate. The 1,200 people who come through every year (for short and long-term visits) are given knowledge — permaculture, organic gardening, orchard care, animal care and appropriate technologies--in order to share the ecological movement rather than charge to be part of it.  

More about the Possibility Alliance

The vision of the PA is to "live so all life can thrive". Doing so, we may all reach our highest potential as human beings. Members of the PA have found that five practices have been most valuable to our well-being and to the planet’s well-being: radical simplicity, service, social activism, inner work and gratitude. 

Read a great article about Ethan Hughes and the Possibility Alliance, and see an example of a normal season of classes at the PA. 

Urban WWOOFer: Quaker Community in Bloomington, Indiana

Bloomington, Indiana
Time:  EST (That's right, East Coasters, all the way out here.)  

Population: 80,000

University  Population:  40,000

Bloomington is a (relatively) progressive city (mainly due to the atmosphere of thought brought by having Indiana University) in the center of Illinois, an hour South of the capital, Indianapolis.  My first destination upon arrival was the Saturday market to find farmers who may need a hand.  I found plenty!  Between volunteering on farms, exploring Bloomington has uncovered many interesting niches and unexpected personalities. 

Quaker Meeting:  

Quakerism--Quakerism was born out of a Protestant history, branching out much further from Protestantism or even Christianity than did Puritans, but carrying much of the same cultural baggage that Puritans carried.  They did not believe in having an intermediary between the individual and God--neither priest nor book--so they worship without sacraments, liturgy or clergy.  They sought to strip away the religious infusions into our language and culture, changing the way they referred to time (as, of course, in English days and months are based on pagan gods) and they stripped life down even more to the bare essentials than did Puritans.  Interestingly, Quakerism has a very modern infusion of followers today of people who have moved back to the land and away from unsustainable lifestyles and unnecessary technologies.  One even explained to me that many Quakers are non-religious; they are drawn in by the focus on community and lifestyle.  Because there is no intermediary between individuals and God, the only real reason (that I have understood) to have weekly service is to build community.  Thus, in our Quaker service, we joined in community to sit for exactly one hour in silence.  We sat on pews that faced a center (hard wood-Ahhh!) with no one in charge.  Everyone gathers in silence and in their own prayer, waiting until someone feels that Christ has given them a message to share with the group, at which point individuals stand up and share the message:  a sermon, a song, a Bible reading, a prayer, or anything else.  Our service was pretty tame;  about five in total stood during the hour, and nobody seemed to be particularly out-of-body.  God speaks to everyone--all are ministers and none are elevated above others-- so everyone is welcome to speak out of the silence as they feel inspired.  Quakers have traditionally challenged social norms, been marginalized, but have continued to thrive in small communities.  All of the Quakers that I have met have been very active in creating sustainable communities in all aspects of their lifestyles:  food production, purchasing, intentional tool use, community building...essentially hippies + God.  

As there is no leader, each Quaker community is maintained and managed by the collective community.  They use concensus decision making and encourage all community members to participate on interest groups.

After our Sunday service, they had a shared meal and thn more meeting time.  I am interested in seeing a diveristy of Quaker communities:  from what I understand, this is only one in a very diverse grouping.

From an anthropological perspective, it was intriguing to watch, understand and dissect.   I can compare this form of worship to any other, whether Catholic, Presbytarian, or Buddhist, but I am very drawn to compare it to Vodun, a Haitian spiritual practice.  Typical to Vodun, during ceremony of song and movement, spirits will visit the ceremony, possess a person, and speak or act through them.  In each, there is a steady rise until people feel themselves “taken by the spirit”.  For the Quakers—who came on a cultural trajectory out of Europe through Puritan North America—they sit absolutely still to arrive there.  For the Haitians—who came largely out of a West African tradition—a crescendo of music and movement allows them to arrive.  Same ends with a very different means of arrival!  I lament profoundly that my cultural heritage aligns with that of the Quakers.  Movement and music is far more spiritual (for me) than sitting still and silent for an hour on a hard wooden pew.

Urban WWOOFer: Long Island Food Not Bombs in the News

Food Not Bombs Long Island helped me surpass the frustrations of life on Long Island.  Spending time with the empowered forward thinkers that make up LIFNB gave me inspiration every week!

 Solidarity, Not Charity!

Food Not Bombs is an organization that embodies the strive toward complete urban sustainability:

- FNB recovers and shares free food with the public.  Rather than take donations, they take the food that grocery stores and farmers can no longer sell (i.e. food that would be thrown in a trash or compost). 

- No restrictions.  Anyone is invited to partake!

- It is run by 100% volunteer power and is dedicated to nonviolent direct action to change society--food is a right, not a privilege.

This week there was an article in Newsday about a brand new location that they added to their already busy schedule of food shares.  Very impressive, LIFNB!  Solidarity, Not Charity!

Superheroes in the News!

Article about the Superhero Bike Ride in Oxford, Michigan:

 

 http://www.oxfordleader.com/Articles-News-i-2012-08-22-248494.113121-sub-Bicycling-Superheroes-land-in-Addison.html