May 20, 2009
If I write this now, if I write the story of what this is about, maybe I can understand the journey enough that I can understand what it’s purpose is. If I write the story, maybe I can live the story. Maybe this story can be my life.
What do I want to get out of this journey back to my family’s farm? There is what I don’t want. And that is clearer to me: I don’t want to lose my connection to the intellectual and newly progressive life in the Nation’s capital. Things are HAPPENING here, finally, with the election of President Obama. Could we have imagined a president with that name two years ago?
But what I want is much less clear to me. It is less about the farm and more about living connected to the land. And that is where the rub is. I loved the cabin in the woods I had before I adopted my daughter. When I would go out to my little space on the edge of the Shenandoah, it felt as if the molecules in my body were realigning themselves into the structure they were meant to have. They got all twisted and corrupted and out of place in the city. But in the woods, they relaxed back into their natural place.
But that is not the farm—140 acres under cultivation in southern Indiana where my family rents the land to farmers who grow corn and soy beans, a big ol’ farmhouse, and-yes-40 acres of classified forest. But the farm is not for pleasure: it’s for work. Farming is a life style and a livelihood. But on our family farm in Indiana there’s not much style, to my way of thinking, in the life. The struggle of livelihood, yes. But things are changing. And now I’m participating in communities that are having conversations about things like biodiversity-friendly agriculture and the social, cultural, and ecological “services” farms provide.
And so I’ve started a conversation in the family about bringing the farm into the 21st century. And I’ve started entering into the conversations about farms going on here in the Nation’s capital (which, by nature of the location, often center around policy discussions and the social ideals for, demands, services, benefits to and from agriculture).
So we have a matter of scale. Can the farm be part of something bigger going on? The environmental movement? The move to shift our energy policy to greener sources? And even bigger than that, a fundamental restructuring of the human attachment and connection to the land. I have a very personal connection to that last. And that is the other scale: the personal and also the familial. I am the only one from my generation that takes an interest in the farm that’s been in my mother’s family for over 100 years. I’m 51 and a half. If my generation is going to take on the management of the farm rather than get rid of it, I’m going to have to take on learning farm management. The is the urgent and fairly immediate motivator. It is also part of a large question about the succession after me. There is even less interest in the limited children after my three sisters (my adoptive daughter and my oldest sister’s two daughters). What happens after me even if I do take on the farm? I possibly only have 20 good years of farm labor in me now. Do I really want to grow old and spend the end of my life on the farm? That is the kind of commitment we’re talking about.
So, there we are, the public and social conversation about the plight of the family farm, the new public discussion about supporting farmers, particularly small-scale family farms, and the personal story of my family in this moment, which is very risky for preserving family farms, of generational transition.
It’s complex. But I’m only at the beginning of the journey. I know nothing. And I don’t yet know what the core of this story is. I don’t know what it’s theme will be or what the threads are that will weave the theme. So that will be the writing journey along with all the rest. On some level, I’m excited. I love journeys of discovery. There’s a lot at stake.
There’s a lot of obstacles. I’ll have to transcend the family politics. Most immediately, the thread hanging over the farm is the pressure to sell it. You can make yourself rich by selling the family farm, or impoverish yourself trying to hang onto it to preserve the heritage and the roots. My mother talks about not wanting to be there. (She’s just turned 80.) They (and my Uncle Gene, who also retired to the farm) have no physical challenges that prevent them from being able to work the farm chores of gentlemen farmers at the moment. But how long can that last? My father subsidizes the farm with the resources he has built over a lifetime as a PhD engineer. He enjoys being on the farm, which almost, but not quite pays for itself. It’s still a lot of work, just to break even on the farm. What is the hard to describe value that balances against a comfortable retirement in the suburbs.