Open Communities

Put this in the crock pot a few months back, kept stewing over it...

Traveling is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comfort of home and friends.  You are constantly off balance. Nothing is yours except the essential things: air, sleep, dreams, sea, the sky - all things tending towards the eternal or what we imagine of it. – Cesare Pavese

As we rolled into Orchard Pond Organic Farm in Tallahassee, with our kayak heavy truck and bikes hanging off the back of our camper, Thom (one of the farmers) asked, “are y’all trying out for the Survivor show?”  After a brief introduction and tour of the place Thom gave an impromptu talk about the history of the farm and its place in the local ecosystem, a truly interdisciplinary mind he wove together a verbal tapestry of anthropology, ecology, biology, history, and folklore.  Like any good lecturer whose mind moves faster than his mouth and who knows way too much about his subject, he was sometimes hard to follow, but over the next 6 weeks we always took away something unexpected from his talks and were always entertained. 

During our time volunteering at farms, we have met some interesting characters whose endearing dedication to quality, healthy food for people and planet inspires us to want to work harder and with greater intention.  The volume of food produced alone on such a small agricultural scale is impressive but the communities which develop around these places offer some unique lessons on sustainability.  By suggesting that there are lessons to be learned “down on the farm” I don’t wish to conjure up nostalgic visions of bucolic utopian missions.  These communities can suffer from the same problems which complicate any workplace.  They have people; people have histories embedded with the accumulated lessons of life.  People don’t just leave that on a shelf at home when they come to work.  Such is the nature of work nearly anywhere, but on a farm the weeds still grow, the bugs move in and the vegetables ripen all by themselves. 

For the volunteer who shows up eager to work, to learn, to live cheaply for a time and to eat really good food, these are great places to work.  Not to put too fine a point on it, I’ve seen it change lives.  But it’s not for everyone, it is hard physical work. 

Still, when you sign up to volunteer at these farms they welcome you as one of the team, a co-conspirator in their small revolution.  Part of this is because they often need every hand they can get, but the bigger part is that involving you from the start is essential to how they function.  They serve us by teaching, feeding and housing us (or at least giving us a place to park the rig); we can in return help them weed out the onion beds.  We didn’t send in an application, or resume.  We completed no reference checks, filled out no I-9, we simply emailed first, then showed up and they put us to work.  To get the best experience for all involved, to keep the organization running they have to be more than just polite or entertaining or interesting people, they have to create an open community. 

Open Communities which succeed best seem to foster the following:

• Inclusion – open communities view their new volunteers as partners, equals in the mission.  Even if the new volunteer doesn’t know kale from collards, she or he can learn and teach and may have some unique talent, gift or ability which might help serve a special need or project.  It may take a while to learn what this person’s skills might be.  Fostering an environment which accepts folks for who they are at that moment and makes them feel like a member of the family encourages immediate buy in and a stronger dedication to the farm’s mission.  This takes patience on the part of the community because sometimes it’s easier to simply do a task than teach the new kid how to do it.  Making teaching a priority is essential -- if you are intentional at the beginning the yield can be surprising, kind of like a garden.  Open communities do not expect volunteers to work the same hours as the paid employees, but they are welcomed to fully participate and join the party. 

The day after arriving at Rippling Waters Organic Farm in Maine we were invited to join them at a fund-raising dinner in nearby Portland on election night.  The Pizzeria got its food from many farms in the area and 1 night a month it shared its proceeds with a non-profit organizations in the area.  It was quality food, and a great opportunity to get to know the other workers and to share in the excitement of that evening not as mere visitors but as someone with a stake in that community.  Since we learned early on in our travels to say “yes” to nearly everything, we became further immersed through shared meals, evenings out and watching one of our co-workers steal the show in a local theater production.  When we pulled away after a mere 3 weeks, we felt like we were saying goodbye to old friends and a place into which we had put our heart and a whole lot of sweat equity. 

• Intentionality – open communities experiment with new ideas, and ways of doing things, not just because they want to innovate or take risks but because the act of doing something new is a reward in and of itself.  You take 8 farmers and put them in a room, you’re likely to find 8 different opinions on composting.  Is the unique way that one person composts important to the overall results?  While there is certainly a science to decomposition, it is also a process which happens all by itself without a lot of poking around.  The point is not that the gardener did or did not rotate the pile with leaves or if you just let it sit.  The point is that he or she focused energy and intention on the doing of the job.  This intentionality contributes to the end product in significant ways and I am convinced is the most important aspect of agriculture on any scale. 

Rippling Waters had undergone a process of transformation from traditional organic farming, involving heavy machine use to till the soil, and black plastic to control weeds, to a more permaculture philosophy involving raised beds, lasagna garden layering and far less machine use altogether.  This meant that we did an awful lot of intentional work, usually involving the pulling of a handcart -- intentional hauling of leaves, intentional hauling of compost material, intentional weeding, and intentional digging of old potatoes by hand (in Maine, in November).    I’m not sure I could handle this much intentionality especially on my back.  However, despite the physical toil involved in preparing the soil to perform the yield on these 3.5 acres was staggering.  The variety, quality and quantity of food grown here from seed to table were enough to make me believe in what they were doing and how they were doing it.

 

• Resourcefulness – farms have to reuse everything they can (see above thoughts on compost).  While weeds are a problem in the veggie beds, they make excellent soil stabilizers after being broken down.  Pallets on which the seed got delivered make excellent tables for the seed starter trays in the hoop house.  What inexpensive resources do you have around and in abundance?  In Maine, seaweed blown on shore from autumn storms and leaves in the fall make important layers in the “lasagna” garden beds, in Tallahassee shade from the live oaks becomes vital to the final processing of vegetables in the summer.  Resourcefulness is a way in which people begin to get creative about repurposing things for later use, especially when they don’t always have the money to go buy new.  The small scale farm can experiment with a small scale solution to an existing problem. 

When we arrived at Orchard Pond Organics in Tallahasee, we were told that Tuesdays and Thursdays were often used as special projects days.  Shortly after getting into the groove of the schedule, we asked the farmers if there was something useful that we could do to utilize our “MacGiver style” construction skills.  They expressed interest in turning the underutilized hoop house into a seed starter area, but needed tables which would could keep the seed trays off the ground.  There was certainly no extra money to buy tables or even the materials to build them.  When we asked what materials were available, they told us that just about anything sitting around the farm or the WWOOFer house was ours with which to play.  After an hour or so of assessing our raw materials, we collected pallets, 2x4’s, screws, necessary tools, and went to work building a prototype.  After just a few days of building, we completed 30 seed starter tables which were put to use the day after we finished them – and just weeks before northern Florida was hit with an unexpected cold snap.

One snowy day at the farm in Boulder, Karel our host, asked us to build a cafeteria mineral feeder for the sheep.  Don’t know what that is?  Don’t worry, neither did we, let alone how to build one.  A quick Google search later and we had a few ideas going.  Let me save you the step of searching for yourself.  The cafeteria mineral feeder is a small structure which allows farmers to put out minerals, salts, charcoal, etc. upon which the livestock graze when they feel the need.  The theory is that the animal will take what they need when they need it rather than trying to regulate some special formula in their feed.  The feeder simply sits in the pasture with the herd and protects the minerals from the weather while allowing the animals to get what they need at any time.  Two feet of snow blanketing the farm made finding available resources a bit more of a challenge, but there was no shortage of spare wood lying about.  After knocking together the rough shape, we realized it was functional but incredibly ugly.  The new buildings on the farm were decorated with “feather board” harvested from the trees which burned in a forest fire at Karel and Alice’s former property.  So, we decided to extend the theme to our little structure which ended up looking like a small log cabin with six pie plates on the front and rear deck and a corrugated tin roof which allowed access to a storage area for minerals.  We were pretty proud, and spent less than 10 dollars in total. 

• Compassion – Please and thank you go a long way – our mothers were right of course.   Compassion goes beyond mere politeness; it is an ethic which strives to find a niche for each person on the team while also serving the primary mission of that day.  It does not necessarily place the needs of the person over the needs of the farm, but neither does it forget that each person is there often working for collards and a cot.

The sustainability of these communities stems from the people involved including the new energy, excitement, and exhaustion which volunteers bring to the work.  Certainly we benefit from the perspective of the “part timer” who is here for long enough to stay engaged but not long enough to get caught up in the drama of the long-term employee.  Nor do we, as volunteers, have the same degree of investment or worry.  We remain unencumbered by the long-term projects which seem to eternally stay on the back burner, the list of things which never gets done even as so much gets done on a daily basis.  We bring a good attitude and strong work ethic but retain the “volunteer mind” which is free from all the responsibility of keeping the farm afloat.  We realize that our contributions may be small in the scheme of things, but for a time it seems like everyone is benefiting from just being there at that moment. 

We leave these communities feeling like we have become more than friends, more than colleagues, more than family.  We would happily return to these places we’ve spent some of our time, and if that’s not sustainable I don’t know what is.