Earthblog

A farmer seeks roots in more ways than one
Written by Nicolas Theisen
Thursday, 29 April 2010

Photo by Seth Roberts

Being a farmer without land is lonely.  A partially unsocial nature has led me to seek non-conversational companionship and solo work that for the better part of the past decade has been with the land.  Walking out to the fields in the morning is like a ritual cup of coffee with an old friend, a friend with whom so much time has been spent that you both view time with words unnecessary.  The accompanied silence is settling and comfortable, creating a tingling awareness that sharpens lines.  A friend loved so much that working fingers raw goes unnoticed.  Relentless work powered by the meridian sun that no matter how sincere and dedicated it may be does not compare to the selfless gifts returned.

Winter was restful and the land-farmer separation was subtle, but spring once more is accompanied by longing.  Most of us are agrarian by ancestry and even if that embedded inheritance has never been utilized the longing still comes.  I hesitate to share this using romantic language that could be misunderstood as analogy, which it is not.  I am lonely and, in the most elemental intention of the word, ungrounded.  Limbo is my current home.  I have unexpectedly arrived here following years of various manifestations of peasantry, working someone else’s land in one form or another.  The termination of our last foray into land tenure left me disenchanted and in want of a place to call my own; I no longer care to be a vassal of any human lord.

I dream of verdant hills and arable lands fingering into hardwood forests, stonewalls and faded red paint, cows on pasture and pigs in the orchard.  Omnipresent pastoral yearnings pervade me.  On a farm in the foothills where I spent many years I herded sheep from corral to pasture at dawn and dusk conducting the flock with a hooked shepherd’s cane.  Walking up the locust lined lane with the red hogback to the east, the green ridge to the west, and the valley settled between is what I yearn for, mundane beauty at its quintessence.

The winter was approached as our own eastern expansion, pilgrims heading home.  A winter spent looking for a new home.  The first realization, obvious as it may be, is that to find something you first must know what you are looking for.  When defining what it is I am searching for I first honor my personhood and second my identity as a farmer even if for practical reasons the inverse would be true.  I want an inspiring landscape, one that brings a twinkle to my eye, subtle it may be.  The air must be worth breathing and the water worth drinking.  The people shall be living life artfully and respectfully.  The town will make this apparent upon first sight with the presence of a well-loved and supported library, preserved historic buildings, thriving independent businesses, bicycle lanes, thoughtful governance, and vibrant people, many of which exist in my current home making it even harder to leave and more difficult to find a replacement.

It is incredible how exhausting all of this is, but it is exhaustion that brings no rest at the end of the day.  I pass days weighing the options teetering from one place to another, one farm business plan to the next and as night falls the same thoughts permeate my dolorous sleep.  Initially the prospect of taking a year away from production in search of a new dwelling felt liberating, but it has proven thus far to be a ubiquitous burden on my heart and mind.  I want nothing more than to work, but instead I am paralyzed by choice, a choice that feels grossly privileged. We are really looking for is happiness, not the phony sort characterized by a perennial smile, but rather a sustained okay with periodic bouts of delight.  A tear-shedding alright that is often inspired by the happily sad vibration of the cello or violin.

Marcy Wetor, my grandmother of German decent married my Luxembourgian grandfather Earl in 1940.  Both were children of dairy farmers and continued with the family trade.  My father left the farm in his twenties using the G.I. bill to be the first in the family tree to go to college.  As a kid my dad spent his summers working and living on a neighbor’s farm so that my grandparents could save money having only eight mouths to feed instead of nine.  He hitchhiked to college from the farm and between semesters would hitchhike home for visits.  It’s curious that my father’s departure from the farm is the very thing that empowered me to want and be able to choose farming as a living.  I have come to farming through education.  The societal and planetary problems in my worldview can only begin to be addressed by first developing a respectful relationship with the land.  As a young boy I remember sitting in the den with my grandma and talking about farming.  I couldn’t fathom why someone would choose to farm, why one would choose such a lowly existence?   My grandma insisted that I had it all wrong and that life on the farm was in fact the good life.  Years would pass before I would catch up with her words.

My grandparents owned their farm coming from less than I.  I don’t understand why it must be such a struggle to realize the same.  Perhaps it is because I am an intrastate immigrant.  I left the north woods the summer of my eighteenth birthday.  I left water for height and trees for sky, living now where most are not from.  I came to play with the land and I will leave having learned to work it.  Though I have come to love my new home and family, I must now go.  Admittedly, the pressure to leave is both a push and a pull.  Pushed away by inflated land prices, oblivious self-desiccation, and barren land better suited for seasonal inhabitation not for unchecked or un-discussed permanent settlement.  Pulled by ancestry, water, and forests and lakes that give wild rice, fish, blueberries, maple syrup, cranberries, apples, ginseng, plumbs, raspberries, and mushrooms, though not all native but all now adapted to the wild.

For the farmer in me a population wanting healthful food and preserved agricultural land is necessary.  We must seek out clean and abundant water and fertile and well-structured soil.  We research weather patterns and the real estate market.  Is the market saturated, does the infrastructure exist for local food distribution?  Will we be filling a niche in the community or stepping on other growers’ toes?  How will we heat our home, are the health department and building codes overbearing?  Is there a farm equipment dealer near by?  Is the state extension office promoting sustainable agriculture or are they serfs of industrial agriculture?  Will the community caste us as hobbyists or will they recognize the validity and necessity of the small farm?

Passing through hundreds of towns and meeting with dozens of farmers is dizzying.  There are simply too many places, too many worthy endeavors, and too many factors to choose from.  We just have to try something.  I am not going to waste years looking for something that will never exist when I could spend those years trying to create something that could.   I am an amateur gastronome and an alimentary Joe.  The field and the kitchen are my home and sharing the fruits of both is what I can offer to my community, and this is what I will do.