Eric's Blog

I haven't updated in awhile. Part of the reason for this is just that I've been more busy now than I think I've ever been in my life. Workwise, while the season has slowed down some I'm still busy. I was able to grow the csa I manage from about 80 members a week to over ninety and next year I plan on starting out at 105 in May. Also, this year's season doesn't even end until the tuesday before thanksgiving, which means I have another five weeks of distribution. In september I started a welding class which is two nights a week from 6 until 10. I'm absolutely loving this class. True, it's contributing to this overall exhaustion I've been suffering from but the hands on training on a completely new skill has been challenging and fun. I've started looking for various types of welders to potentially buy for myself so that when the class ends in december I don't lose the skill I'm slowly building up. Last week I also started taking another class offered by the Adams County Penn State Cooperative extension titled "Exploring the Small Farm Dream." It's a class designed around a work book by the same name put out by the New England Small Farm Institute. That runs for four Mondays from 6 until 8:30. Although I've only had one session so far its been good because I've met up with some people who are more or less my age and who are actively pursuing farming as a vocation. My dad and I have been doing some traveling around the northeast to look for land to buy. I'm intent on buying land while I'm still working at this current job managing someone else's farm because I'm guaranteed an income and want to pay down on any land I buy while I have that paycheck coming every month.

And last but certainly not least I've been spending as much time as I can trying to get to know a woman I met in August who is into peace and living simply and likes to eat what I grow and who seems to not mind my eccentricities. And I really don't mind her eccentricities either so so far things are going alright.

I want to answer this question but I don't even now how to begin to frame an answer. I suppose I feel like there are certain things that I am still doing which are dumb, if dumb is defined as doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting a different outcome. Foremost in my mind, I'm painfully aware that I still let fear hold me back from certain things I really want in life. Like fear holds me back from reaching out to the people immediately around me and from whom I think I could have a richer life of relationships and friendships.

But then there are of course certain absentminded actions I have definitely done that were just dumb. Like jacking up a tractor with an unreliable jack that wasn't suitable for that large of a machine. I was just lucky, then, that I was turned around looking for a tool when the tractor fell backwards off the jack. But then we've all done things like that, not thought about what we are really doing, more than likely because we are distracted by some other thing going on. In the case of the tractor, I think I was fretting about something wholly unrelated and so wasn't fully present to what I was doing at the time. Now that is really dumb.

In my last few posts I really feel like I've been romanticizing farming. The ironic part about that is how even during the short time I've been doing this I feel like I've gone through more unromanticizing phases than actual romanticizing times.

For instance, farming isn't just heirloom tomatoes, eggplant, and feeling the sunshine on your skin, it's also late blight destroying your tomatoes, flea beetles eating your eggplant, and sunburn. There are mosquitoes in the evening and wet feet early in the morning. There's the constant stress about whether or not the irrigation is going to work that day or not and the constant drain on my energy as I try to do a lot with minimal amounts of labor and resources. At the end of the day there's also the realization that the hardest part about farming is actually making a profit. I laughed out loud the other day when I read an article talking about "america's rich farmers." I've never met a rich farmer unless his or her spouse was rich. And ironically although organic farmers can charge more for their food they actually tend to work harder and earn less than their conventional peers (in my experience so far - there are always exceptions).

Then there are days that I wonder why the hell I am doing what I am doing. I wonder why bother getting out of bed at all. Even with the CSA model I don't feel as if my labor and the labor of my interns is rewarded justly. My interns still earn less than most migrant workers despite all the rhetoric of living wages and my guess is that to charge my csa members for our produce the amount needed to pay my interns a living wage would pretty much mean we wouldn't have any csa members.

And there are days I throw my hands up in the air thinking it is impossible to run a successful and financially solvent small, independent agricultural business. But it is the stories of the successes that keep me going. I know people before me have transitioned back to the land and while they are in no way rich by the world's standards they are satisfied, but maybe tired, proud of what they've done, though they know there is more to do, and still bent on living out their convictions to the best of their abilities. Most of all, though, they are stubborn and strong, and refuse to give up on their convictions and in fact don't regret the choices they've made.

My summer intern packed up her bags yesterday and left for graduate school. August is rushing to a close with a landslide of tomatoes, peppers, and squash drowning us all. The first of the delicatta winter squash are ripening and the cherry tomatoes in the green house are now about 7-8 feet tall. The CSA harvests this season have been awesome. So awesome that I'm trying to add 10 more members for the fall bringing me up to the goal of 100 shares a week which I had since the season's beginning. My mom was here last weekend and canned 32 quarts of whole tomatoes from the garden.

It's funny, I'm still waking up most days at 5 yet the sun isn't up yet. And at night I'm noticing the sun is already down by the time I crawl into bed at 9. The sunsets are long and beautiful with oranges and reds making the sky look like its on fire.

My other two interns will only be around another two months. When they leave at the end of October it will only be myself and the assistant farm manager finishing off the season.

I can see the fall stretching ahead of me. A list of chores and projects I want and need to finish but always there are the lingering worries and questions which keep me from actually relaxing and fully enjoying the work outside and seeing all the labor myself and the farm crew have put into reaching the point we're at.

Bad Day on Farm = irrigation hose getting caught in tractor tiller and in the process knocking over a good portion of sweet corn then having to replace the main manifold for irrigation in the field + raining at inopportune times + the dog carrying around someones used tampons (where'd he get those? Do I want to know?)

To say yes is just to blindly believe a particular worldview. Science can explain a lot but I don't think it has the answer for everything. I think I'll just leave it at that.

When is it not OK to ask questions?

It's a rich time of year despite hard anniversaries and other unexpected family hardships. I can walk out to the cooler in the barn and help myself to eggplant and squash anytime I want or wander out to the fields and bring in lemon basil to make pesto. I'm lucky that there are so many fireflies here - they start coming out just as I head to bed - Of course, although I'm sometimes crabby and slow in the mornings waking up to the sunrise and looking forward to a day outdoors feels good and real. I don't mind the occasional aches and pains from hoeing for hours or the occasional burn on my arm as I fiddle with the diesel pump to try to make it work optimally. I'm lucky to be here learning how to do this work on someone else's dime before I try to break out on my own. The first few years of starting up an agricultural business is tough enough with experience growing and managing a business. Without this experience I don't think I'd be able to eventually do it. Despite these realities it's so much fun to drive past the tomato fields and see the first glimpses of yellow, purple and red as the various heirloom tomatoes I planted begin to ripen.

These days are full of long to do lists - everything from harvesting beans and fall potatoes to staking up the late tomatoes. It's already time to prep the beds in the greenhouse for fall and winter crops. Knowing this I feel a sense of satisfaction because that means I've made it halfway through my CSA season already.

There's still the fear of late blight finding my tomatoes or potatoes and I'm out there everyday checking the foliage looking for symptoms. That certainly has me on edge as does the powdery mildew on my butternut squash. If nothing else, it's a good year for fungal diseases due to the combination of high humidity, low temperatures and the constant overcast threat of rain showers. After the wet spring, for a few weeks we'd settle into a dry summer but now I have to call this a wet season.

Returning to a more personal note, one of the hardest things this summer has been dealing with what my brother is going through. He was diagnosed with a brain tumor back in the late winter and it's been a struggle to deal with all the waiting and unkowns. First we had to wait for the diagnostic surgery and after that came the occasional MRI reports first after radiation and chemo and now more recently after his monthly chemo pills. The good news is that the latest MRI seemed to show a shrinkage in the tumor, which is good but there is a reason I said "seems." No one really knows about this type of cancer especially given the location of the tumor, back in the brain stem. I'm extremely fortunate to be able to spend as much time with him as I've been able to. Just before all this happened, he quite his job in the hopes of finding something else (he and his wife were anticipating some life changing moves). Now since all this has happened and he's finally feeling better he found temporary, part-time job that is paying for lodging three days a week here in c-burg. Although I know he dislikes being so far from his wife once a week for three days I'm so glad to spend so much time with him in the evenings. I've enjoyed going out to eat with him or making him meals after he's done with work and I've come in from the fields.

What exactly is a day off?

Here's a nice juxtaposition in lyrics from two different hard rock bands. I guess you really can't assume rock n' roll to always be anti-establishment.

First, from Disturbed's song, Indestructible:

ANOTHER REASON, ANOTHER CAUSE FOR ME TO FIGHT
ANOTHER FUSE UNCOVERED NOW, FOR ME TO LIGHT
MY DEDICATION, TO ALL THAT I’VE SWORN TO PROTECT
I CARRY OUT MY ORDERS WITHOUT A REGRET
MY DECLARATION, IMBEDDED DEEP UNDER THE SKIN
A PERMANENT REMINDER OF HOW IT BEGAN
NO HESITATION, WHEN I AM COMANNDED TO STRIKE
YOU NEED TO KNOW,
THAT YOU’RE IN FOR THE FIGHT OF YOUR LIFE

On the surface, I think I'll stick with the more old school Rage Against the Machine, I agree more with their politics and I think Rock and Roll should still be about sticking it the empire, the evil empire that is:

Those who died are justified, for wearing the badge, they're the chosen whites
You justify those that died by wearing the badge, they're the chosen whites
Those who died are justified, for wearing the badge, they're the chosen whites
You justify those that died by wearing the badge, they're the chosen whites...

Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me
Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me
Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me
Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me

It's no wonder Disturbed is listened to by US troops getting ready to go out and slaughter who knows who meanwhile I can picture black block members getting ramped up for throwing bricks through the window's of Bank of America buildings at a G8 protest by listening to Rage Against the Machine. I guess both hard rock groups are used to garner rage and get ready to go out and take action by different groups of people, but then I think there's a difference between sitting in a tank and fighting for capitalism by killing people who don't look like you versus trying to point out the inequalities of the system by throwing a brick through a window of a bank that actively funds the aforementioned tank.

More from Rage:

The movie ran through me
The glamour subdued me
The tabloid untied me
I'm empty please fill me
Mister anchor assure me
That Baghdad is burning
Your voice it is so soothing
That cunning mantra of killing
I need you my witness
To dress this up so bloodless
To numb me and purge me now
Of thoughts of blaming you
Yes the car is our wheelchair
My witness your coughing
Oily silence mocks the legless boys
Who travel now in coffins
On the corner
The jury's sleepless
We found your weakness
And it's right outside your door

If only it would stop raining.

As I picked spinach from the fields this morning for our CSA distribution. I noticed again how much disease, largely attributed to leafminers, had taken over much of our spinach patch. My immediate thought was that maybe now that I'm instituting a several year rotation where I'm hoping to not have similar family types of vegetables planted in the same place within at least 3-5 years maybe this will take care of itself in a couple years time. Of course I'm upset that we lost probably a fifth of our harvest this morning but at the same time I'm realizing how important time and experience are for learning how to grow a healthy plant. In the past my initial instinct would be to run to the store and buy an organic fungicide or insecticide. But the key missing ingredient in that recipe is patience. Instead of running to the store I'm trying to let the problem work itself out over time and several generations of spinach plants planted over several years of time. In the long run if I can grow spinach without that problem coming to the fore because I've dealt with the cultural contexts which help propagate the disease I think I will not only be a better farmer but I'll have taken action toward being a better person and having helped create a more healthy earth. In addition, I'll have moved toward the model of farming I so wish to move toward where the ideal is to farm in cooperation with nature rather than to battle against it. The shift to this type of thinking means I will no longer be battling with nature or trying to control and defeat nature but rather actively trying to learn from and work with the life forces in which we are all immersed every day of our lives. Plus I expect the spinach will be much more tasty.

If I could sing I would like to go out and bellow at the moon an impassioned rendition and eventually incarnated version of Bruce Cockburn's If I Had A Rocket Launcher.

I don't know where the day goes, I keep swearing I'm going to be in bed by 9 and yet I find myself always doing something or other until almost ten. So, I guess time for bed and maybe I'll find time to write more tomorrow some time.

So one of the things I just have not figured out at all is how to take care of both home and farm. CSA members and even college admin people say that the farm looks more organized then they ever remember seeing it before. I don't know, I can't judge that all I see is what I haven't done, in addition, I'm not sure what those same people would say if they saw my house. I'm in no way exaggerating when I say that while the farm might look half decent God and the devil have decided to hold 9 rounds of Armageddon in my living room. Meanwhile my bathroom looks sort of like a Tasmanian devil on steroids had diarrhea and couldn't find the Maalox in time. My bedroom looks like a snot monster took up residence partially due to the fact that the latter part of this week saw me fighting some severe congestion thanks to a 24 hour flu bug hence hankerchiefs and TP I used as kleenex are scattered over the floor. My office, let's just say, has been commandeered by the Gods of disorganization and it looks like their occupation is going to be in perpetuity. Last I checked the filing cabinets had been chucked out the window and everything they contained is now strewn about the floor and resembles origami done by a half-blind somewhat arthritic cat.

I use to say, somewhat proudly, that while I might be disorganized I don't live in filth. Well I think that boundary has been crossed in a major way, like in "Ceasar's gone and done it and crossed the rubicon with his legions" type of way.

So, I think if anyone has any advice about how to handle the messes I've described I'd be happy to hear them. I, of course, would be even more happy if someone might want to come over and help me actually clean the damn place up, but considering I feel like I have a real dearth of friends just now I think this is just a childish wish.

I hear my mother occasionally saying about Sundays, "God really knew what he was doing when he created a day of rest." Usually she says this on a Sunday afternoon after waking up from a Sunday afternoon nap or while reading something or other like the readers-digest or a christian romance novel or a book about Palestine (so my Mom has a wide range of reading interests). Sometimes when she says "God really knew what he was doing when he created a day of rest" I find myself wanting to say something like, "well, you know, if God can do anything God could have made it so that humans wouldn't need a day of rest, or if God wanted he could have made it so that we'd have two days of rest in a week. It's really all very arbitrary don't you think?" I realize though that to say this would give in to the, what I call, more "pretentious-git" part of my personality so I usually don't say anything. But then maybe I'm being condescending by not saying anything, I don't know.

Anyway, since I've started farming I've found myself thinking a lot about sabbaths. Mainly, I realize they are an incredibly awesome idea and if anything I find myself agreeing with my Mom more and more, God was a pretty smart guy to think up the idea.

My sabbath ritual, far removed no doubt from what the ancient Hebrews did starting on the sundown before the sabbath, consists of collapsing sometime Saturday afternoon when I reach the point of physical and mental exhaustion from the week's chores of dealing with weeds, managing interns, broken pumps, greenhouses being too hot, building coldframes, tilling fields even though I'd like to go no-till but don't know how with the equipment I have and continue to do an 80 member CSA, plowing, planting, etc, etc. Netflix doesn't help with this tendency to collapse in bed watching movies but I also read fantasy novels , eat ice cream or get chinese take out. About mid morning Sunday I feel good enough to get up, check the greenhouses and water them, make myself eggs and whatever I have around (pancakes, french toast, bacon, etc). Then I usually take a nap, do laundry, think about how I feel guilty for not going to Quaker meeting, hope God understands, remember I redefined what I mean by God in Seminary and I shouldn't have to worry about that, feel guilty about redefining God and hope he's not upset about that, remember I shouldn't feel guilty about that but do anyway, think about my dog and how he probably needs to pee, wish God would come and take him for a walk so I don't have to, tell my cat how much I love her despite the fact that she can be stinky sometimes and tends to knock things over (she's the clumsiest cat I've ever seen), and then take another nap. Somehow I think Abraham would be disappointed with my Sabbath ritual.

Are Violent Video Games Adequately Preparing Children For The Apocalypse?

I think it is interesting that allsate is sponsoring questions on livejournal. I wonder what might be next? Monsanto sponsoring adverts on NPR about how they support sustainable agriculture? Oh they already do that. Ok, that might be a bit of a leap but still it doesnt make me me happy for a reason that I cant quite explain. I think because I like the daily questions and I like the fact that they seem to be asked usually by people not companies and all their subsequent agendas.

To answer the question though, Ill (BtW, my apastrophe key doesnt seem to be working) start by saying that Im not sure. The system needs to change but I think the problem warrants a solution much larger than just a financial overhaul. Id like to first see a reprioritazation of what we should value over what the current financial industry values. This goes way beyond the simple capitalist versus socialist labels that pundits and talk show hosts love and which they use because they are emotionally charged which elicit certain patterned responses from people. So in terms of reprioritzation I would like to see put on top - peoples health, food soverieghnty for the individual (no NAIS, no subsidies to agri business), clearn air and water for everyone, health care, and meaningful work. All of these priorities should be placed over profit, the freedom to pollute indiscriminantly, war profiteering, etc.

In my opinion the financial crisis is really just a symptom of a larger problem where greed is prioritized over being a decent human being within the context of our humanity and connections to earth. To overhaul it, without a shift in these priorities from policy makers and the regular average joe and jane isnt really going to get us anywhere.

I certainly don't get energy from seeking attention. Generally I avoid attention and would much rather do things behind the scenes (cooking, baking, cleaning) than step out and be center stage (master of ceremonies, the extrovert). I think this is part of the reason I ended up with farming as my vocation/career. I like doing things for people but I'm not into doing things in a sort of flashy way. I like small but vital. Returning to the party metaphor, I find I like my way of interaction with people to be seeing them enjoying a food I've created. I don't feel then that I have to somehow be a circus monkey but can relax in the fact that I''ve done something nice for people and they've enjoyed it.