“I got into farming because I like the idea of feeding people, and I like the idea of feeding people stuff that’s good for them, that makes them feel good, that makes their days better, that’s pleasurable and nourishing.”

As I write this, I see that building a farm creates a feast of gratitude, from the people around us to the food on our plates: it is all conncected. We could not make food without the people who help us, and we would not have people to help us if we did not have food. If Garrison Keillor is right when he tells us, “gratitude is the deepest way we are happy,” and I believe he is, then we have had a year of unbelievable happiness.

So, as you sit down to your bountiful meal today, consider for a moment how this food came to be. Consider the people around you and how they came to be among you. Focus your minds eye on all the connections present at your table and take pleasure in it. It will make you happy. I promise.

I leave you with the words of Wendell Berry,

Eating with the fullest pleasure – pleasure, that is, that does not depend on ignorance – is perhaps the profoundest enactment of our connection with the world. In this pleasure we experience and celebrate our dependence and our gratitude, for we are living from mystery, from creatures we did not make and powers we cannot comprehend.

I wish you all the deepest pleasure of gratitude this Thanksgiving. Be well and eat well.

(Editor’s Note: while I’m not typically known for wearing my politics on my sleeve, I felt the need to offer some of my impressions of the GA Agricultural Commissioner candidates; it’s an under-sung office up for grabs in the ever-under-sung mid-term election cycle that is pretty important for farmers of all shapes and sizes. It is my hope simply to bring attention to this election and to use my opinions to get folks thinking about this particular office. It is not my aim to sway anybody towards or away from a candidate. What follows are my own impressions, which I hope are useful to you. If not, pay them no mind. Either way, I urge you see the candidates for yourself.)

About three weeks ago, I had the opportunity to attend a debate between the three candidates for Georgia’s agricultural commissioner. This is kind of a big deal. The office of Agricultural Commissioner in Georgia has not changed hands in more than 40 years, but now, Tommy Irvin is stepping down from his perennial incumbency and three new gentleman are vying to take his place: J.B. Powell, Gary Black, and Kevin Cherry. These men played to a packed house. Apparently there were over 600 RSVP’s to the event, making it the largest political event so far in this election season, further disarming the credibility of arguments that suggest organics and sustainable food is a “hippie/yuppie fad.” If these politicians learned nothing else that night, I hope they learned from the attendance level alone that we are a very real group of the voting citizenry and must be taken seriously.

As for the candidates themselves, here are my impressions:

Gary Black: Mr. Black has both tremendous agricultural and political experience. He appeared to be a competent candidate, with a firm grasp on a number of issues and practical and pragmatic approaches to handling them. I feel fully confident that he understands how to move within the political arena to get things done. However, I question exactly what he would do. He offered to support the economic development of local agriculture by doing things such as devoting a section of the Georgia State Farmer’s Market in Forest Park exclusively to local and organic producers. While this change would be nice, it is a mere token. Very few consumers of local foods even know the State Farmer’s Market exists, much less shop there. The real business for local producers lies in supporting and creating new local farmer’s markets, developing relationships with institutional providers such as hospitals and schools, and facilitating efficient means distribution throughout the State. Bolstering an already flimsy existing institution felt like being tossed a few crumbs.

Black also suggested that small-scale, on-farm poultry processing needed “more research” to deal with potential environmental and sanitation hazards. This was a red flag for me. While I do agree that small-scale processing is in desperate need of research (there’s hardly any out there), assuming that the hazards of processing 1 million birds can be related to processing a mere 1000 is absurd. Anacdotally, on-farm processing at a small-scale level has virtually no environmental hazards and is generally much better in terms of food safety. I would have preferred to hear a plan for generating research in this area, perhaps lead or supported by the Commissioner’s Office. For me, what was underwritten in Black’s comment was concern for the protection of Georgia’s largest agricultural commodity: chicken. If on-farm, small-scale processing is found to be as safe or safer, how would that make Georgia’s big Tyson farms look? Frankly, anyone who thinks that it is not the job of the Agricultural Comissioner to protect those poultry houses is deluding themselves. It is and will be for some time. What is important is that whoever is elected is forward-thinking enough to support activities that may or may not change the status quo in the future; indeed, to give the underdog a chance to show its worth rather than silencing it. Black’s comment that more research is needed with no caveat to support such research I read as a deflection more than a real answer.

During the course of evening, Black’s history of support for big agriculture became clear along with a temperament I found reprehensible. Black has headed the Georgia Agribusiness Council for the past 20 years and through this organization has lobbied for the interests of big agriculture in Georgia. While there is nothing outwardly wrong with such activities, his involvement in this organization shows a certain proclivity towards the interests of big agriculture that leaves me wondering, along with his other lackluster offerings to the local organic agriculture community, if he is seriously interested in lending an ear to our cause.

What is outwardly wrong with Black’s involvement with the GAC are the allegations of ethics violations, specifically tax fraud during his tenure, which Black has not been able to sufficiently put to rest. While these allegations are cause for concern, what alarmed me the most what when candidate Kevin Cherry brought up Black’s involvement with GAC and questioned how someone who was a lobbyist for big agriculture could reasonably address the needs of small-scale local producers. Black responded by asking the audience if they knew Alice Rolls, the founder of Georgia Organics. He then asked the audience if we knew that Ms. Rolls was also a lobbyist. His self-alignment with Alice Rolls drew huge applause from the folks wearing Black buttons in the audience. It drew a loud hiss from me. This rhetorical slight of hand was a textbook example of a red herring with a particularly dexterous division fallacy embedded within it. The comment was a red herring because it simply failed to address Cherry’s question and redirected it down a different path. Cherry asked how Black’s affiliations with an organization that lobbied for agribusiness would affect his ability to vouch for small producers. It is not at all clear how the fact that Alice Rolls is also a lobbyist is relevant to Black’s ability to vouch for small producers. Black’s division fallacy within this red herring I found particularly offensive. Black’s comment equates himself as a lobbyist with Alice Rolls, who is also a lobbyist. The comment does not account for the fact that not all lobbyists lobby for the same cause. To say that Alice Rolls, who lobbied for the benefit of small, organic farms is the same as Gary Black, who lobbied for large-scale agribusiness on the basis that they are both lobbyists is asinine and frankly, I found it insulting to the work Ms. Rolls has done on behalf of small, organic producers.

Kevin Cherry: Cherry was far and away the biggest crowd pleaser. From the moment he opened his mouth, I knew he would be making a lot of friends in the room that night. He was very clear about the need to change agriculture in Georgia; to move away from agribusiness and towards small-scale, local production. His very first sentence was, “The era of  corporate, cheap oil, chemical and fertilizer-based, steroid and anti-biotic based farming is over.” Yep, he was singing our song. As the libertarian candidate, Cherry took the textbook libertarian stance, clearly against what he called “government subsidies and interference in the market.” I listend to him with rapt attention. Was he serious? Was there really an agricultural commissioner candidate that was sympathetic to the cause of small-scale, sustainable production? I wanted to get up and cheer with the rest of the audience, yet something held me back. What was his plan for achieving these goals? How would he convince the Tyson farmers that smaller is better? How was he going to get Georgia cattlemen to stop sending their steers to feed lots in Nebraska? How was he going to help increase the market for Georgia-grown produce? I waited. I listened. No real answers came. It seemed, to my disappointment, that once I heard Cherry’s initial, very exciting statements, I really didn’t hear a lot more. Sure, he was able to address nearly every question that came his way intelligently; he offered great ideas, such as to privatize inspection of food processors (as an aspiring dairywoman, I would love to see inspectors come into my facility who have actual expertise in what a cheesemaking plant should look like and run like as opposed to someone who has simply read over the regulations and arbitrarily enforces them, but that’s a whole other article for another time). He also offered some horrible ideas, like the privatization of water (which has been tried and is one of the fastest ways imaginable to put a farmer out of business).

Overall, I loved what Mr. Cherry had to say, but I couldn’t agree more with Mr. Black when at the end, he asked Cherry directly, “You’re elected tomorrow, what’s the first thing you do?” Embedded in this question was the skepticism I too was feeling about the reasonability of Cherry’s goals. While Cherry initially addressed the question strongly with talk of a need to analyze the rules and regulations within commissioner’s office and to develop a plan for dealing with the complex issues around the budget crisis, he quickly entered murkier waters, saying he would then “get with the legislature” to develop a plan to change the priority of the Commissioner’s Office from one supportive of agribusiness to one that is supportive of small, local producers. I just shook my head. Don’t get me wrong, I loved what Cherry says here, but he’s talking about a sea-change in Georgia’s approach to agriculture. “Getting with the legislature” to affect this level of change is a tremendous undertaking, and one that Georgia’s agribusinesses would fight tooth and nail by also “getting with the legislators.” Frankly, I’m not convinced Mr. Cherry is fully capable of this formidable task. Why? Not only did he lack in providing sufficient evidence of a plan to achieve his goals during the debate, but I am unsure that his background would serve him well in a political office, particularly in agriculture. His biography on his website reads:

I am originally from Florida, born in Miami and raised in Jacksonville, Florida. I moved to Georgia in 1983 and settled in Douglas County in 1986. Agriculture has been apart of my life since I was a lad. My father worked in the citrus fruit industry for 25 years and my uncle was a commercial vegetable grower in Asheville, North Carolina. I am a former Army Signal Corpsman, Honorably Discharged in 1981. In 1987 I got involved in dealing with Food Safety and Public Health issues as a Certified Pest Control Operator, and I haven’t looked back since. Currently I hold certifications in Georgia and all surrounding states. In Georgia I hold the Public Health Pest Control Certification. Currently I am the Technical Director for Trutech Pest and Animal Removal Inc. of Marietta, Georgia.
I am the Chairman of the Douglas County Libertarian Party affiliate, a former member of the State Executive Committee, and was the Libertarian candidate for Public Service Commission District 5 in 2006.

Cherry has minimal expirence in agriculture. He runs a pest-control business and ran a mere two years ago for the Public Service Commission, whose mission “is to exercise its authority and influence to ensure that consumers receive safe, reliable and reasonably priced telecommunications, transportation, electric and natural gas services from financially viable and technically competent companies.” Which leads me to ask, what in the world does that have to do with agriculture? And, more importantly, if Mr. Cherry wanted to be on the Public Service Commission, why does he now want to be Agricultural Commissioner? Something seems odd here.

I can only surmise (and somewhat cynically, I know) that Cherry’s primary interest is not in agriculture, but is in the Libertarian Party, which often employs a political strategy of “get elected into any office you can in order to give the party more legitimacy.” My interpretation of Cherry’s motivations here, leads me to believe that while at the debate, he was making a huge appeal to pathos, the rhetoric of emotions. Cherry knew his audience would be made of GA Organics members and those sympathetic to its politics. Nowhere else save for this debate, can I find Cherry making such sweeping comments about small-scale,  local agriculture. All this leads me to understand Mr. Cherry through the age-old warning: if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

JB Powell: Powell is the Raw Milk Man. The one comment the whole night that got my enthusiastic applause was when I heard Mr. Powell say that he would work to legalize the sale of raw milk in Georgia. If I were a single-issue voter, Powell would have had my vote right there. Oddly,  apart from his comment about raw milk, I have a great deal of difficulty remembering anything else about him. In point of fact, what struck me the most was that, at the end of the debate when the candidates could ask questions of each other, no one asked Mr. Powell a single question. It seemed that both Powell and Cherry were aligned in attacking Mr. Black, and Mr. Black only fired questions to Mr. Cherry. Clearly, both Cherry and Black did not find Powell particularly threatening, or else they would have drawn attention to him. This troubled me. Why were his opponents so unthreatened?

Powell’s biggest point, which he made multiple times over, and over, and over again was to use existing institutions, particularly in the University System to expand and legitimize the market for local products. Indeed, this seemed to be the blanket solution for the first few questions posed to Mr. Powell, including a question regarding the difficulty in legally processing pastured poultry, for which there is already an underserved market. How expanding the market for a product that farmer’s can’t easily process in Georgia will help farmers meet their demand is beyond me!

What I find most interesting about Mr. Powell is what he chose to omit during the debate. One of the cornerstones of Powell’s campaign is his push to legalize horse racing in Georgia. It’s the second major issue point on his website after food safety and he regularly mentions the notion in the press. However, horse racing is an issue that is not even under the jurisdiction of the Department of Agriculture. Powell makes the claim that legalizing horse racing will provide a boost to Georgia’s economy, but given recent declines in the financial feasibility of horse racing, even in Kentucky, I’m not so sure. Bizarre though I find Powell’s stance here, I found it plenty more odd that nowhere in the debate did anyone, including Powell himself, mention this issue. Why not? If he really believes that it is a legitimate solution, or that this idea can at least help Georgia’s overall agricultural economy, than why not say something about it? And, moreover, why didn’t one of his opponents bring it up during the last round where they could question each other? It’s just plain strange.

Be that as it may, I did find that Mr. Powell and Mr. Cherry were often aligned in their goals and philosophy but my eyebrows raised less often by Powell. He at least seemed more pragmatic in his comments and, being himself a life-long farmer and member of the State Senate, I find his motivations for seeking the post of Agricultural Commissioner more legitimate. But on the whole, I am afraid he is a fairly weak candidate. While he is certainly more amicable than Mr. Black and more pragmatic than Mr. Cherry, nothing about him strongly stood out.  No one wanted to argue with him, and apart from his statement about raw milk, little he said was memorable or engaging. While the other candidates ran hot and cold, Mr. Powell stayed quite tepid. And it’s hard to rally around tepid.

So, who am I voting for? Honestly, I wish I could vote for a hybrid of all three. There are things I find unacceptable in all three candidates and there are things I really appriciate and admire about all three candidates. I want Black’s pragmatisim and political connectedness, Cherry’s idealism, and Powell’s moderateness.

Who do I think will win? Gary Black. He’s a strong candidate that folks can clearly rally behind, he’s got loads of experience both politically and agriculturally (as well as in the meeting of the two), and while he would be fresh blood in the office, he’s not hugely different from Tommy Irvin in terms of policy. He represents a slightly shifted status quo, is a Republican candidate in a Republican state, running for an office that not many folks apart from predominately conservative, rural farmers care much about. Steve Nygren, who is working hard on behalf of sustainable small-scale agriculture down here in Chattahoochee Hills asked me if I thought Black could be educated about our cause. Honestly, I don’t know. I’m glad that whatever happens, there will be fresh blood in the Agricultural Comissioner’s Office, which is always more pliant than a 40-year old, ensconced tradition of more of the same. I think it’s worth trying, and it certainly is not going to stop me or anyone I know from farming the way we do.

These birds are so much fun. I’ve spent an unusually large amount of time just watching them. I can watch them for hours, given the chance. I find myself saving chicken-related farm chores for the very end of the day so I can take my time with them and just watch them. It’s hard to describe the mesmerizing effect they have on me. It’s not that they’re doing anything particularly interesting, I mean, they’re chickens, not The Bourne Identity, and yet somehow, I find them just as riveting. So when I came across this article by Peter Lennox titled Pecking Order at the Times Higher Education website, I began to understand their hypnotic power over me. Lennox writes,

Watching chickens is a very old human pastime, and the forerunner of psychology, sociology and management theory. Sometimes understanding yourself can be made easier by projection on to others. Watching chickens helps us understand human motivations and interactions, which is doubtless why so many words and phrases in common parlance are redolent of the hen yard: “pecking order”, “cockiness”, “ruffling somebody’s feathers”, “taking somebody under your wing”, “fussing like a mother hen”, “strutting”, a “bantamweight fighter”, “clipping someone’s wings”, “beady eyes”, “chicks”, “to crow”, “to flock”, “get in a flap”, “coming home to roost”, “don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched”, “nest eggs” and “preening”.

It’s really, really true. There is something about watching these feathery creatures that clarifies the human condition. These birds elicit a zen-like inner calm. It’s as if the chicken, a creature so utterly and helplessly in-the-moment, transfers a part of its most central nature to its watcher; this central nature, is bound up in the fact that,

Humans got the mental wherewithal to try to control everything; the chicken’s future rested on being tasty. Chickens are thus relieved of an enormous responsibility, making their lives simpler. They don’t have to organise the whole world, or attend meetings to discuss policies “going forward”; they don’t have to invent the future continually – it just comes when it comes.

It is therefore a serious relief to watch chickens. They serve to remind me that the great responsibility of “inventing the future”, which is precisely the thing I am finding myself constantly engaged in as I build this farm, is all a bit silly. The “I’m running a business here” mentality I have been know to affect melts away in the chicken house as does (quite blissfully) the time I could be spending doing other things. When I watch them, I am learning, among other things,

competition without co-operation is nonsense; you can’t win by simply eradicating all the opposition – that’s a pyrrhic victory. In life, winning really isn’t everything – it isn’t even anything. Taking part is all.

Reward and risk go hand in hand. The top cockerel has to take the biggest share of both. A flock can manage without a cockerel, but a cockerel without a flock is nothing.

A flock can keep you warm, inform you about dangers and advantages, and provide you with companionship; but you have to work at it.

Everyone should have a place in the pecking order. Strive for your place in life, not someone else’s. Someone else’s bread isn’t necessarily tastier than your own. Envy will cost you dearly.

Don’t let “flock-think” smother your own opinions; give yourself space to be an individual. Common sense is useful, but it’s not always right. The society you’re in may prompt you to behave badly, but only you can change that.

I can’t wait to start entertaining requests for hosting corporate retreats at the farm with required chicken watching. . . Go read the article and start spending time with chickens. It’s good for you and it’s good for business. And of course, in the meantime,, you can enjoy watching them here:

]]> http://www.thedirtyway.com/2010/03/15/zen-and-the-art-of-keeping-chickens/feed/ 0 http://www.thedirtyway.com/2009/09/13/untitled/ http://www.thedirtyway.com/2009/09/13/untitled/#comments Sun, 13 Sep 2009 22:42:00 +0000 rebecca http://www.thedirtyway.com/2009/09/13/untitled/ I talk about Michael Pollan a lot in this blog. I should mention that it is not that I mean to. I don’t rally behind him, I don’t think he has any kind of new, special understanding of or insight to our food systems and the ways we eat. Why I reference him so often is simple: he is our mouthpiece. He is the necessary, singular voice that carries the voice of thousands alongside it. He reports about the doings of this our movement and desire for better ways of eating and living. He’s a journalist, and a damn good one, who has generously and happily devoted his journalistic eye to us and helped the general public to at last, take an interest in the wild and weird world of farmers and foodies. His most recent contributions have been largely of a political nature. A common theme among food activists since President Obama was elected is our need to show this president, who has a sympathetic ear to our cause, our movement: make him look and listen. That is the American way, after all, democracy in action. Pollan has turned this need into a rallying cry, one that has most recently gained traction in the form of a farm to school movement.

I’ve spent the last few weeks assisting our local Slow Food Convivium in putting together an eat-in for the national Time for Lunch Campaign. I cannot stress enough how important it is to provide children with healthy, nutritious foods, so I am going to let Mr. Pollan take a stab at it for me through his outstanding New York Times Op-Ed piece that came out this week:

Big Food vs. Big Insurance
By MICHAEL POLLAN
Published: September 9, 2009

TO listen to President Obama’s speech on Wednesday night, or to just about anyone else in the health care debate, you would think that the biggest problem with health care in America is the system itself — perverse incentives, inefficiencies, unnecessary tests and procedures, lack of competition, and greed.

No one disputes that the $2.3 trillion we devote to the health care industry is often spent unwisely, but the fact that the United States spends twice as much per person as most European countries on health care can be substantially explained, as a study released last month says, by our being fatter. Even the most efficient health care system that the administration could hope to devise would still confront a rising tide of chronic disease linked to diet.

That’s why our success in bringing health care costs under control ultimately depends on whether Washington can summon the political will to take on and reform a second, even more powerful industry: the food industry. Read more. . .

Armed with copies of “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” the article tells us, internship-seeking students offer farms little more than the educated and impassioned where what the farmers really need are “farm hands”. I take farm-hands to mean folks who know how to work hard and fast with little complaint and whose intentions are to do a good job for a day’s wage. Conversely, it seems, these liberal arts students are interested in pursuing a Pollanesque ideal. Clearly, the article sets up a certain tension that looks like there’s a world of “real farmers” and a world of “wannabe farmers”.

It’s true: there are many saber-rattlers in the organic/local/ethical food movement who have raised the battle cry for good food and who have made eating into a political act (and rightly so). The present young and educated, like their 1960′s counterparts, are perhaps the most prone to answer this call. But, the fact of the matter is that farming is more than politics and ideals. It’s a lot of sweat and sleepless nights. People like Michael Pollan and Barbera Kingsolver are not farmers. They are writers. It is their job to use words to convey ideas and ideals that are meaningful and important that fall into our logical framework and that pull strongly at our own pathos. And yet we wonder why English majors are suddenly attracted to food and farms?

But I also wonder about the farmers themselves; those folks who break their necks making ends meet. . . the folks who get sweaty and dirty not for the experience, but because they have to; because it is their lives and livelihoods (to say nothing of the success or failure of this movement towards sustainable agriculture) on the line. But are these farmers not themselves idealistic? Something the Times article simply does not address is how is it that the farmers themselves came to farm. Sure, many farmers inherit their farm, they grew up doing the work, and maybe for some it was the only option. But not all. Some folks choose to farm. Indeed, every farmer out there made the choice to do the work he or she does on some level, and no choice is ever purely practical. There is inherent, incontrovertible romance in the desire to farm. If there weren’t, why on earth would we keep doing it? We would all own vast acres of corn and soybeans in Nebraska if it was simply about putting calories on American tables. Put plainly, it would be a job. I don’t believe that farming is just a job. No good farmer would ever tell you that. It’s a vocation, it is something that must be done for our survival and so a desire, a calling to do it must occur.

It seems from the increase in interest among the young and educated that Pollan has propagated, that there are some who are being reacquainted with this fundamental call. And yes, “these are kids who are not used to living in a small trailer or doing any kind of work. . . most of them are privileged and think they want to try something new. They need structure.” Indeed, they need to be taught. They need to learn what it is to work hard and get dirty and, moreover, they need not “trade poetry books for sheep.” Liberal arts students, perhaps, are better prepared to be farmers than the agro-economy student. These English majors have minds that are prepared to make the link between poetry and that which creates poetry: experience. These students need to learn how to use their understanding of poetry to better understand sheep and worms and poop, sweat and sore bodies. They need to be taught the hardest lesson; that poetry comes from suffering, it guides us and shows us how to do things better and helps us to understand why we do them at all. Once a student can marry the suffering of life with thinking about the suffering of life, the world will get a worker and a farmer more willing and more capable than any merely working for a wage.

It seems that some farmers who hire interns expect free labour. But you get what you pay for. Students are passionate, but unskilled. If a farm needs farmhands, hire farmhands. Pay them a good wage and expect them to work hard and achieve results with little input. But an intern is a different thing all together. It seems that some farmers think that the work itself will provide the experience. It will, but not without creating tension on the farm. It is the job of the farmer who puts interns on his or her farm to turn the students’ desire for experience (perhaps born as much from the poetry they read as from the saber-rattlers) into a desire for education, and then to fulfill it.

I worry that this lack of distinction between “farm-hand” and “intern” is driving a wedge in this new agricultural movement. There is a tendency to shun the young and enthusiastic intern who would, “report her organic farmer for using antibiotics on sick sheep” rather than to teach her and to use her passion for the benefit, rather than the detriment of sustainable farming. Indeed, if education is how we best preserve our culture, and we, as farmers and as eaters want a world with good farms and a culture that values our work, we must use the flames that Pollan has ignited and direct that passion (and sometimes cool it down a bit). We do this through teaching.

I know this all sounds like one more thing farmers have to do; teach a bunch of spoiled, inflamed kids about farming; but honestly, the work of the farmer is just this. Farming is about more than the cultivation of crops; seed to table, though an ambitious and difficult goal in and of itself, is not enough. It is about the cultivation of people. Farming is not only science, it is not just botany, biology, chemistry, and economics; it is an art. It is the interplay of all disciplines of knowledge and is a singular tool for teaching and learning. And these interested young, willing workers with their liberal arts degrees are a valuable crop too few farmers are cultivating.