Rock & Roll Farm |
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Tuesday! Nov 23 2004 // 9:20 am // permalink bioneersThis post is terrifically overdue. I’ve decided to scrap my commentary, since all I came up with was a snapshot of me in the auditorium alternating between tears and fist-raising. Needless to say, I left the conference with renewed hope and energy to continue fighting for environmental and social justice. The end. The Bioneers conference is held every year in San Rafael, California; however I attended one of many ‘satellite” conferences held across the country. Each satellite conference had their own workshops and keynote speakers, and a then a part of the day was spent in an auditorium watching a transmission of the plenary speakers in California.
The Third GLB conference was organized by The Neahtawanta Center and SEEDS. Here’s a small article about the GLB conference at Michigan IMC. Grace Lee Boggs was one of the GLB keynotes. She spoke to us about Building a Movement to Grow Our Souls, and it was incredible.
Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! spoke, and I bought her book, Exception to the Rulers: Exposing Oily Politicians, War Profiteers, and the Media that Love Them. Terry Tempest Williams incorporated some readings from her new book The Open Space of Democracy, published by Orion (this book is on my wish list, hint-hint). Her speech was part of a tour promoting the book, and as part of her tour diary she wrote a little about her experience at Bioneers (and, thankfully, talks about some of the speakers I’m not mentioning in this post). You should also check out Williams’ article from the March/April issue of Orion. I am currently reading Red: Passion and Patience in the Desert by Williams, whose portrait is featured in the Americans Who Tell the Truth series. Read WHAT CAN WE LEARN FROM NATIVE AMERICA ABOUT WAR AND PEACE? The Progressive Pragmatism of the Iroquois Confederacy an article by the quietly inspiring John Mohawk. The daughter of Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai spoke about her mother’s work with Kenya’s Green Belt Movement. Here is an interview with Wangari at the Nobel website. Thomas Linzey of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund spoke about his involvement with Pennsylvania farmers fighting corporations. Read his editorial on the subject at CELDF, “Factory Farms, Corporations and Democracy” Aqeela Sherrills closed the conference with his talk about the death of his son and the Reverence Movement. There is a decent bio on the Green Festivals site, and an interview from Satya Magazine in November ‘02. Sunday! Nov 21 2004 // 9:29 pm // permalink Season’s endThe signs of the change are everywhere now. The persimmons are ripe, the chickens are molting, the great oak in the north field is bare, and yesterday the Thanksgiving shares were distributed. A special share was offered at $60 for nearly 90 lbs. of produce, and 24 people stepped up. We’ve been talking about this distribution as a target for a few months now, and it’s hard to believe it’s happened. During the week of the 15th, there was a great push to get all the potatoes out of the ground before they froze. It seemed like there was a perpetual “ten more rows” to be dug. Thank goodness for the digger we used on the large varietes (but nearly all the fingerlings were still dug by hand). Last weekend I attended a CSA conference up in Tustin. I’ll write more about that (and the Bioneers!) tomorrow. This week between discussing what would be in the share and how much, we worked on some winterizing projects. Tuesday morning we mulched the carrots. We unrolled giant straw bales like carpet over a few rows. These carrots will “overwinter” and be harvested in spring. Soon we will mulch the parsnips and possibly the garlic. We still haven’t planted anything in the hoop houses. They’ve been tilled, but we have to water them and wait for the weeds to sprout before moving on. The rye we sowed on the old squash fields looks like a lush carpet now. Sowing seeds has been one of my favorite activities so far on the farm. We used bag sowers, one of which still had an old price tag of $5.35. The whole time I walked slowly up and down the rows turning the crank I was grasping to remember the Parable of the Sower. I remembered it being one of my favorite bedtime stories as a child but I could not remember the whole thing. Looking at the biblical text, I think we must have had a storybook with an extended version or something because it was way more exciting. There are only two interns left on the farm and I’m taking this week off to visit my family. When I return there are any number of projects to be started. We might begin repairs on the barn at the new property (more on this story soon), or if the lumber comes we will start construction of a few small timber frame cottages to be used as intern housing. I’m looking forward to having my own little cottage with woodstove and loft. The space heater in the pumphouse is effective, but a woodstove would be much better. I got to try a Pawpaw this week. It was the best piece of fruit I’ve ever tasted in my life. I think we’re going to plant some. Fruit won’t come for 6 years, but I can wait.
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