“I think we farm because we both share a sense of hope that this culture can become kinder, more thoughtful, and gentler with its land and its people. As a farmer my complete being is engaged and challenged physically, mentally, and emotionally. I work with my body, getting stronger. I work with my mind, getting smarter. I work with my feelings, getting steadier and more patient. I get to spend the days outside, observing and participating in the daily seasonal changes. I produce something real, tangible and nourishing.

“It’s hard not to feel grateful when those things that nourish and sustain us are the same things that greet us when we step outside each morning. If hope got us started in this, gratitude will keep us going.”

From Welcome Table Farm in Walla Walla, WA

“Farming is a lifestyle and a way to be intimately tied to a small piece of this earth. It is about creating a degree of self-sufficiency while being deeply involved in my community. It is about earth, sky, sunshine, rain, friends, and family. It is about poverty in the measurable and wealth in the immeasurable.

“I’ve chosen this career because in doing so, I’m choosing a lifestyle. I’ve had jobs—the 9 to 5, the commute, the cubicle—but I don’t want to live two lives. I don’t want a work life and a non-work life. I want to live one life where labor, family, health, happiness, intellect, and art all collide and merge.

“The small farmer’s strength is in his passion and in her belief that there is something better for our citizenry and communities. What must happen right now is that everybody who puts a fork to plate needs to know the politics and challenges, the lives and labor behind what is on that plate. Rural or urban, our society needs food that teaches those whose mouths it touches. Desire for good, local food continues to grow and there are many opportunities for new farmers to meet this demand. I have to believe we can make a living doing it.”

From Prairie Heritage Farm in Conrad, MT

Thanksgiving. Since the beginning, Americans have connected the BOUNTY of the Land and the Goodness of Life to DEMOCRACY. Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison – farmers ALL – envisioned an agrarian society. We have since evolved into a VERY different kind of society.

Back to the Land

“EVER thought of chucking it all and moving to the country? According to the Agriculture Department, an increasing number of Americans are doing just that, by embracing a “Green Acres” lifestyle. But few of them are making a living at it: more often than not, their work in the fields is subsidized by an off-the-farm job.”

NY Times: Farm Living (Subsidized by a Job Elsewhere)

“Each morning when Colin Phipps’ two young sons get up, they run outside to the chicken coop to gather eggs for breakfast. Next year, the family is planning on expanding their farm by adding a little pig or a hutch of rabbits. Just another day in rural California? Not exactly. Phipps lives in a row house in Bernal Heights — one of the city’s many high-density, single-family neighborhoods. The houses here tend to be more like cottages, the backyards downright postage stamp-sized. Yet Phipps is not alone.”

Urban Farming: Back to the land in your tiny backyard

We’ve been members of Slow Food for the last two years.  For the most part it’s primarily meant making a small financial contribution to the organization.  This last year we were able to attend a Slow Food gathering for our (new) local convivium here in Snoqualamie Valley.  I’m really glad to see that our area has it’s own convivium actually, most of the active ones are surrounding large urban areas (Seattle, San Francisco, etc).  While I think it’s quite important for urban dwellers (as we once were) to reflect on these topics as they certainly have specific challenges, I also think it’s great for those of us in the agricultural regions that often supply these large urban areas to kind of get out and celebrate what we contribute to the system.

This article spotlights the Victory Garden put in place for the Slow Food Nation event in San Francisco.  I can definitely see the logic for taking these large evenets to “the big city” (better audience for change and larger exposure) but I hope they don’t entirely lose track of their roots.  I’m also not trying to deny those determined urban farmers, I want to see more of them!

“Farm aid, the annual concert dedicated to raising funds for the American family farmer, has been held in such agricultural strongholds as Manor, Texas, and Ames, Iowa. But the most recent venue, the distinctly nonrural borough of Manhattan, is not as incongruous as it seems. With its estimated 600 small-scale farms (which are often large-scale vegetable gardens), New York City is part of an urban agricultural boom in the U.S., where rising food and fuel prices are making city farming seem less and less outlandish. In July volunteers began transforming the front lawns of San Francisco’s city hall into the first edible offerings on that site since 1943, when civilians across the country were encouraged to aid the war effort by growing victory gardens.”

TIME: Inner-City Farms

“Dihydrogenated tallow dimethyl ammonium chloride
A derivative of rendered fat from cattle, sheep, and horses. Just boil it down and mix with ammonium (NH₄). After a series of chemical pit stops, out comes a quaternary ammonium compound, or quat—a positive ion in which the hydrogen is replaced by long-chain organic molecules. Quats effectively coat your clothing with lipids, making the fibers soft to the touch. These fats also make fabric a bit less absorbent—don’t use on towels or cloth diapers—and the positive charge neutralizes static electricity. There are a few other quats in Downy, with easily pronounceable names like 1-methyl-1-tallowamidoethyl-2 -tallowimidazolinium methylsulfate.”

What’s Inside — Downy Coats Briefs With Horse Fat

“For Brooklyn real-estate agent Maria Mackin, the obsession started five years ago, on a trip to Pennsylvania Amish country. She, her husband and three children—now 17, 13 and 11—sat down for brunch at a local bed-and-breakfast, and suddenly the chef realized she’d run out of eggs. “She said, ‘Oh goodness! I’ll have to go out to the garden and get some more’,” Mackin recalls. “She cooked them up and they were delicious.” Mackin and her husband, Declan Walsh, looked at each other, and it didn’t take long for the idea to register: Could we have chickens too? They finished their brunch and convinced the bed-and-breakfast owner, a Mennonite celery farmer, to sell them four chickens. They packed them in a little nest in the back of their Plymouth Voyager minivan and headed back to Brooklyn.”

Newsweek: The New Coop de Ville