Dear Folks, Well, if we could just average together last year and this year, we’d end up with two terrific growing seasons.
Every Saturday morning I empty the rain gauge on our garden gate and write the week’s accumulation on the calendar in the kitchen. Last summer the readings went like this — 0” – 0” – 1/2” – 0” – 0” – 0” – 1/4” -1/8” – 0,” and this newsletter was full of agony about the drought. This year, starting in June, it has read so far — 1/4” – 1” – 1/3” – 1/2” – 1” – 2 1/4” – 3 1/4” – 2 1/4”. Those last two readings totaling 5 1/2” actually represent not two weeks’ worth of rain, but three days worth, as the edge of hurricane Bertha swept by.
Trees crashed down. A branch fell on the power lines behind Ruth’s barn, burst into flame, created two other-worldly, humming, blue-radiant power surges and took out the electricity and the phone.
Blow-Me-Down Brook rose into a torrent, which, at the worst point of the storm, broke into Scot and Chrissie’s beautiful brook garden, the showpiece of Plainfield. Potatoes, beans, tomatoes were a foot underwater. Green peppers were ripped from the plants and washed against the fence. Haybales that Scot had used to line the fence were swept down to block the bridge, backing up the water still higher. The frustrated stream cut away at the bank upon which the bridge rests, so now it rests on almost nothing. The next morning we sloshed around mournfully down there, propping up what we could, reburying little potatoes that the water had unearthed.
The hay got rained on four times after it was cut and is a total loss.
Sigh. It would be nice to see a plain old average weather year again.
And … and … in spite of the pounding, the farm is SO beautiful! The rain has turned it into a riot of green. Some of the tall delphiniums and lilies have been bashed by downpours, but most are holding up well, enjoying the abundant moisture. There are flowers everywhere. In the front yard is the Fred Hager Memorial petunia garden, a riot of pink, red, white, and purple. In the perennial garden the red beebalm is dominant, and buds are forming on the tall pink phlox. There are white Shasta daisies and gold gloriosa daisies and deep blue lobelia and pansies. Down in the garden is the bed of annuals, enriched by Chrissie’s compulsion to adopt every reject from Edgewater Farm, where she works. We have flowers I never heard of. Among the ones I have heard of, the snapdragons, larkspur, marigolds, Shirley poppies, bachelor’s buttons, dianthus, dahlias are bursting into bloom. The chickadees plant sunflowers all over, as they drop seeds from the feeder, and we let a lot of them go, just to scatter bright surprises throughout the garden. And mid-July is the height of the daylily season. We have some fancy ones, but mainly the farm is covered with the old-fashioned plain-orange wild ones. They grow in great beds. I consider them a nuisance and keep trying to get rid of them.
The other day, just as a beautiful evening sun was cutting under a bank of departing thunderclouds, Scot and Chrissie and I climbed the hill behind the main garden — the vantage point from which we can look over the upper gardens and the farmyard. It’s a place we usually don’t take the time to stop at, but we should, because from there we can see the fruits of our labor. We gasped when we got up there and gazed over our small domain. It was washed in western sunlight, and it looked orderly, lush, wonderful. In the odd weedy corners where I hadn’t yet beat them back, there were bright orange clusters of daylilies. For the first time I saw them as blessings. They turn the neglected corners of this place into July glory.
The harvest is already beginning to overwhelm the kitchen, and we haven’t even gotten yet to the heavy hitters — cucumbers, tomatoes, corn. (They’re coming well, but everything is late this year.) It’s zucchini time, of course, and broccoli, cauliflower, green and yellow bean, Swiss chard time. And raspberry time — the best raspberry harvest we’ve ever had. We picked nine quarts over the weekend, froze five and scarfed down the other four in fruit salad, raspberry tapioca, raspberry pancakes, and — because Pavla Polechova was visiting us — Czech raspberry dumplings. Tonight’s picking I’ll make into jam. We’ve already put up black raspberry jelly, strawberry jam, gooseberry jam, and carrot-rhubarb marmalade.
Mmmmmm. Everyone should be able to live on a farm in the summertime!
The sheep are up to their knees in clover. I don’t know what we’re going to feed them next winter, but they’re having a great summer. The baby chicks are almost full size now, and the baby ducks, patrolling the garden for slugs, are almost as big as their mothers. The three grey geese noisily but unsuccessfully try to protect the pond against intruding green herons. The beavers are everywhere, down in the wet morass they have created with multiple dams on the brook. The old dog Basil sleeps in the sun to warm his bones, and the young dog Emmett zooms around at full-tilt, as if he had greyhound blood in him. He loves to run. He gets going so fast he can’t stop and crashes into trees. He’s turning into a good dog, except for the fact that he can’t be trusted around ducks or chickens — so we have to keep the fences in good shape.
On the expanded farm/community front, we’ve been working hard, having meetings, meetings, meetings. There are so many people who have to get to know each other, and there’s so much to do! We put in offers last week for the two farms in Hartland. They were complicated offers, worked out with great care. We asked for two-year options to buy each farm at $275,000, with a total of $30,000 in up-front payments that could be lost if we don’t go through with the sales. These seem like enormous amounts of money to us, but they’re well below the asking prices, and we expect that we may have a protracted bargaining process ahead — if we don’t lose the farms altogether to other buyers. If we do get these farms, I’ll tell you all about them in detail, but in the meantime I don’t want to get either your or my hopes up. There are plenty of other farms. But these have announced themselves to us from the beginning as The Place.
Meantime we’re struggling with the human side of community-building. There’s enormous interest in our vision. Lots of folks are thirsting for community and for living more responsibly and for having a long-term relationship with the land that feeds them. Just by word of mouth some extraordinary people have been attracted to us. If they would all just foolishly and blindly jump right in, I know we could make a wonderful community — and some are jumping right in. Most are more cautious, more fearful. Who else is going to be part of this? What rules will bind us? How much money are we talking about, per family? What will the buildings look like? Who’s going to do the farming? Who’s going to do the dishes? What are the schools like? How will we earn a living? How much of a “living” is it necessary for us to earn?
Reasonable questions. The trouble is, they can’t be answered while everyone is circling around waiting for the answers. They can only be answered as we jump in. Logic and caution versus faith and trust. The one attitude that will guarantee that the community will never get off the ground is: “you guys put it together, and if I like it, I’ll join.” And yet that’s the only sane attitude to have.
Fortunately a few of us are not sane, just barely enough of us to get things going. Many others have enough dawning faith at least to participate in the discussions. And so it will go, I hope, until the community becomes a mix of the reasonable and cautious with the courageous and trusting — just what every community needs. What is wonderful, so far, is that we realize that we need that mix; we’ve acknowledged just where each of us is on the “let’s go!” or “hey, wait, not so fast!” spectrum; we’ve honored the legitimacy of every point on the spectrum; and it seems to be allowing us to move forward, not as fast as the “hotheads” would like, but quite a bit faster than the doubters would like — and that’s probably the best pace.
Boy, this is an interesting process! I am way over my head (on everything — the world of real estate and lawyers, incorporating a new institute and a homeowners’ association, architecture and landscape design, farming that will have to be real Farming, energy and water flows, and of course the shifting kaleidoscope of human interactions that makes community.) Think of all that we’re going to have to learn!
On alternate days, as I walk around this beautiful farm, so much more functional than it was 24 years ago when we moved here, already paid for, already well-known and loved, I think I’m crazy to leave it. And on the alternate days to those alternate days, I know that this next community is Going to Happen. The Universe is directing it; I’m just trying to follow orders. The Universe will decide if our offers on those two farms in Hartland will be accepted. The Universe will send the right people to make the community. (I heard a good joke the other day: If you’re searching for the key to the Universe, the bad news is, there is no key. The good news is, the door has never been, and never will be, locked.)
Unfortunately, and against my best resolutions, this is turning into a summer of Too Much Traveling. (Note for next year: from May to November Do No Traveling — except for Balaton, of course.) Next weekend I go to Portland OR to meet with timber barons about the commodity project we hope to get going. Last weekend I was in Maine again, Bar Harbor this time (a beautiful drive through the NH mountains and along the ME coast — but seven hours each way — too long!) The occasion was an auspicious one, a summer workshop of the Board on Sustainable Development of the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences.
That may take some explaining. The National Academy is an elite group of scientists and social scientists from many disciplines who are elected by their peers to be members.. Every industrialized country has such a body of senior scientists — I guess it probably started with the British Royal Academy. This body does many useful things: puts out a prestigious journal, makes international connections with the academies of other countries, and — through the National Research Council — does blue-ribbon studies, usually at the request of the government, on scientific issues of interest to public policy.
There was, for example, an excellent National Research Council study on alternative agriculture that brought together solid information on the actual performance of organic farms. There was an NRC study sorting through the evidence on children’s exposure to pesticides. There’s one forming right now on endocrine disrupters. It’s good news that now the NRC has a Board on Sustainable Development. The purpose of this workshop was to decide what questions under that broad concept science could help to answer.
I never will be a member of the National Academy. But some of my friends are. So I was invited to the meeting. I usually avoid things like that. As you know, I much prefer working on the ground with the little folks than up in the stratosphere with the important folks. But there is also something in me that says, “if the important folks ever really got grounded, they could make an enormous difference.” So every now and then I go play with them. There were stellar names on the invitation list. And friends asked me. So I went.
Well, it was exciting and frustrating. The exciting part was to be with those stellar names. Dick Harwood of Michigan State, the guy who understands more of the science of organic agriculture than anyone else in the world. (I got some good ideas from him about how to revitalize the pastures on the Hartland farms.) Bob Repetto, the economist who dealt some of the first and most telling blows to the false indicator of GNP. Kai Lee, the gracious “compass and gyroscope” political scientist, who is a man of wide intellectual scope and generosity. The great Climate Warriors — Jerry Mahlman, Ralph Cicerone, Bob Watson, Warren Washington — who have been through the international process that is bringing — way too slowly — growing agreement about greenhouse gas forcing. They are not only sharp thinkers, they have become patient and wise by having the courage to bring their science into the political realm. (They are also worried as hell about the planet.) I could have listened to them, trying to drink in their knowledge, for days.
When I got frustrated, I calmed myself by thinking what a privilege it was just to hang out with these people. The frustration was the normal one of people trying to grapple with the overwhelming broadness and vagueness, yet obvious crucial importance, of the idea of sustainability. Plus there was the same challenge we’re dealing with in trying to form our community — the long process of getting people to know and trust each other and speak a commonly understood language. Plus the presence of a lot of highly articulate egos (the vast majority of them male) who are used to being stars. As is so often the case, the meeting gave me enormous appreciation for the 15 years of community-building that allow our Balaton meetings to circumvent grandstanding, move fast, and get right to the point.
Well, all those frustrations I had expected. One doesn’t expect Academy members, who have long and distinguished careers in their own fields, to be leading-edge thinkers on sustainability. So I brought my knitting to soothe my soul and to know at the end of each day that I had at least produced a wool sock.
I hope I produced more, that I pushed a bit in good directions. There are so many aspects of sustainability that a clear-minded NRC project could help set straight. First and foremost, there could be a rigorous study of carrying capacity — not in the simple-minded “how many people can the earth support?” mode (though of course that’s a darn good question), but the new science of seeing carrying capacity as a noisy, dynamic, erodable or expandable, evolving or devolving, resource-by-resource, sink-as-well-as-source concept that applies at many geographic scales, from a single field to a watershed to the planet’s atmosphere and oceans. There’s the wonderful hope that the scientists could probe to the bottom of their paradigm differences, to ask profoundly and persistently why Bill Nordhaus brushes off the climate change problem while Jerry Mahlman loses sleep over it; why David Pimentel thinks soil erosion will do us in, while Pierre Crosson thinks it’s a nonproblem. There was a great deal of interest in bringing scientific rigor to the selection of new indicators — that was the most lively discussion of the meeting. I would be wildly enthusiastic if there could be a scientific compendium of the information and response delays in the feedback loops (including market prices) by which we hope to steer the planetary economy as it approaches its physical limits. It seems a primitive navigational question to ask, “Is this system even theoretically controllable? What’s our turning radius, relative to our speed?”
And so on. There is plenty of good work for that group to do. I must be grateful I was asked to participate, and I must practice patience — though my own analysis makes me believe there is not a whole lot of time for diddling around within the confining barriers of our old paradigms. After all, my own analysis was also done within the barriers of a paradigm. Who am I to know, or any of us? Maybe one of the best things the NRC could do would be to admit our common ignorance and get us properly grounded in humility. That, especially coming from the NRC, would be a refreshing change.
Well, anyway, that part of Maine is beautiful, I had a lovely evening talking to Bob and Ellie Kates who live there, the College of the Atlantic, where we met, is a school firmly planted in the new paradigm (I kept hoping the colorful posters the students have produced would rub off on the visiting scientists), and I got a lot of socks done.
Love, Dana
