I feel under qualified to tackle the plight of the small farmer in a lot of ways. I'm married to someone who can't not grow things. we've figured out some ways to make money while he does that, but really, when it comes to technicalities, we are not farmers. eric worked full time last summer as a farm manager for a CSA in town, but even then, we didn't own the land or the business so a lot of what this article talks about are things I don't deal with firsthand. but more than the struggle of the small farmer (and I am quick to agree that there are plenty of struggles in farming), I am struck by the general attitude of the piece as a whole. let's start with her definition of making a living:
"I wondered how many small farmers actually made a living. Before I set out trying to answer this question, I had to define what constitutes “a living.” I decided making a living meant three things: 1) The farmer had to pay herself a weekly wage that equaled what a person working full-time would make on minimum wage, which in my town would be $360 per week. 2) The farmer had to abide by labor laws, meaning no unpaid workers or interns doing essential farm tasks. 3) The farmer had to earn her income from farming, which meant nonprofit farms that survived on grants and donations didn’t count; neither did farms that sustained themselves on outside income sources."
setting aside the idea of farming for a moment, I can't think of a single family in my circle of community that meets these standards of "making a living." every family I can think of has more than one source of income. every family I know has someone who provides unpaid labor whether it is a family member providing childcare, a barter with another family for some goods or services, or a stay-at-home parent who does the brunt of the household responsibilities without a paycheck. now granted I swim in a circle of creative, intentional people who choose to live out loud their passions and pursuits, so maybe my sample pool is not your standard americans. but really, I am surrounded by people with cool etsy shops and side businesses, people who piece together a variety of jobs in order to make ends meet and still have time to spend with their families or do things they love. I know a lot of underpaid overworkers, too. and I know a lot of folks doing really cool things through nonprofits and grants, and I would hardly say they don't count towards making a living. I get the point the author is trying to make, but I just don't think that is where we are anymore.
the more I read this article the more it isn't about farming to me. I agree with the author that we need better policies for farming, that farmers should be paid fairly for their dedication and their product, that being trendy still doesn't magically make farming sustainable. in fact those ideas are true of many life paths that people are choosing today to do work that matters, to make something that feeds people in one way or another. the bigger picture says that "making a living" isn't how we do it anymore. we've tried that and it made us greedy and isolated and focused in the wrong direction, both in our farming and in our lives. and now we get to choose what to do next.
in happy conjunction with my love of reading farming articles is my love of podcasts on spirituality. the synchronicity of reading this article on making a living and listening to joanna macy talk about what a wonderful time it is to be alive is just too perfect. she not only agrees about the futility of this old model of "making a living," she goes even further to say this:
"I'm ready to see. I'm not insisting that we be brimming with hope. It's okay not to be optimistic. Buddhist teachings say, you know, feeling that you have to maintain hope can wear you out, so just be present.The biggest gift you can give is to be absolutely present, and when you're worrying about whether you're hopeful or hopeless or pessimistic or optimistic, who cares? The main thing is that you're showing up, that you're here and that you're finding ever more capacity to love this world because it will not be healed without that. That was what is going to unleash our intelligence and our ingenuity and our solidarity for the healing of our world. So that is what keeps me going. So the Great Turning is a revolution that is underway, the transition to a life-sustaining society, that this is sprouting up in countless ways, new ways of holding the land, new ways of generating energy, new ways of producing food, some of them very old ways that we are going back to, wisdom of the ancestors and of the indigenous people often, new ways of measuring prosperity and wealth, new ways of handling differences through nonviolent communication, through restorative circles instead of outside the dominant punitive penal system now. There's a tremendous energy …Now something else is going on too, which is the Great Unraveling under the pressure of the destruction caused by the industrial growth society. And the awesome thing about the moment that you and I share is that we don't know which is going to win out. How is the story going to end? And that seems almost orchestrated to bring forth from us the biggest moral strength, courage, and creativity. I feel because when things are this unstable, a person's determination, how they choose to invest their energy and their heart and mind can have much more effect on the larger picture than we're accustomed to think. So I find it a very exciting time to be alive, if somewhat wearing emotionally."
now is our chance. it isn't going to be easy and we won't get paid well for it, but now is our chance to do work that matters. now is our chance to do the right thing even if it means a lack of paycheck. now is our chance to raise a generation of people who see life differently, who don't think of a job in terms of making a living but instead see their work as their part in the great turning. now is our chance to focus on our contribution to the bigger picture rather than our contribution to the economy. now is our chance to fight the great unraveling, to be absolutely present, to be a bit worn down emotionally but still so excited to see what happens next.
I am not saying that is an easy path. it's incredibly idealistic and that might make it somewhat unrealistic. but even acknowledging the possibility of redirection, of a chance to choose differently, to know there are others out there reaching in the same way--well, I'll just let joanna macy say it for me:
"You're always asked to sort of stretch a little bit more, but actually we're made for that. There's a song that wants to sing itself through us. We just got to be available. Maybe the song that is to be sung through us is the most beautiful requiem for an irreplaceable planet or maybe it's a song of joyous rebirth as we create a new culture that doesn't destroy its world. But in any case, there's absolutely no excuse for our making our passionate love for our world dependent on what we think of its degree of health, whether we think it's going to go on forever. Those are just thoughts anyway. But this moment you're alive, so you can just dial up the magic of that at any time."
