Counting 20 years of blessings

Yesterday I turned 20! I had a really nice day filled with friends and relaxation. Today I am just happy to be. Tomorrow is the last day of classes for this term, which wasn't especially great. While I am a little stressed about my exams coming up later this week, the sun is shining it is nice out for the first time in what feels like forever. I am remembering all the little things that have kept me going through the dreary winter, some of which I keep in this little box my sister Hannah gave to me for Christmas.

Knowing my love for Wendell Berry, she put this quote on it: "Whether we and our politicians know it or not, Nature is party to all our deals and decisions, and she has more votes, a longer memory, and a sterner sense of justice than we do."

One of my favorites, and it reminds me what I am fighting for in this lifetime. She also cheekily put chickens on it, knowing me aversion to birds, but also reminding me of the fears I have been working to get over! Those older sisters really know how to get you :) Inside this box I keep things that inspire me, for those days when all I want to do is be playing in the dirt but instead have to go to statistics class.
Quotes given to me by my sister Lindsey. A postcard from my sister Hannah with "Life is to be felt, not just figured out" and on the other side a note that reads "This quote made me think of you and your future. I know you'll just do your thang and follow your heart". A note from my brother Stew saying "I hope you can start planning out your own 'bit of earth' with this notebook!". Ticket stubs. A picture of Erin to remind me that every day is precious, if my 'e' isn't enough. Pictures of veggies, eggs, farming.
And then of course there is the slight plucking sound from the next room of my friend Alyssa and her banjo. Music has been great lately, with me and my friend Anna (and her ukelele) performing at an open mic last Friday as United Plaid (Local 309).

I've been watching That '70s Show on Netflix Instant lately, and this quote made me laugh out loud:

Bob: Well if you really wanted to cheer her up, you should have gotten her a banjo!

Red: A banjo, Bob?!

Bob: Yeah, you can't hold a banjo and NOT smile!

Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

I may or may not have an obsession with Wendell Berry...

But it is completely justified!!!

Today I was skimming through my copy of American Earth, and re-discovered "Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front". Excellent piece of writing! One part that stood out to me was this:

So, friends, every day do something

that won't compute. Love the Lord.

Love the world. Work for nothing.

Take all that you have and be poor.

Love someone who does not deserve it.

That last bit is especially important. Love someone who does not deserve it. Perhaps through loving that person, they can learn to deserve it. One very important thing I have learned in college is that not everyone was loved as much as me. I have family and friends who have always loved and supported me, and I always took that for granted. So many young people have not been given the love they deserve and are worse off for it. So my goal for this year is to love people who don't deserve it. Instead of writing them off as obnoxious or lazy, give them a little love! And perhaps they will realize a little more of their self-worth and pass it on to someone else.

Wendell Berry, again. (Shocking, I know!)

I was skimming Life is a Miracle by Wendell Berry, which I got out of the library the other day and found this little passage which I think is some good food for thought:

"Good artists are people who can stick things together so that they stay stuck. They know how to gather things into formal arrangements that are intelligible, memorable, and lasting. Good forms confer health upon the things that they gather together. Farms, families, and communities are forms of art just as are poems, paintings, and symphonies. None of these things would exist if we did not make them. We can make them either well or poorly; this choice is another thing that we make."

Wendell Berry, revisited

On the long bus ride to and from Chicago, I had some time to kill, so I did some reading not related to any of my classes (although it inevitably connected!). I read a few essays out of Wendell Berry's "Bring It To the Table: On Farming and Food", a collection of a bunch of his works. Lot of good things to think about!

One of my favorite bits is from "A Defense of the Family Farm (1986)":

Throughout this period of drastic attrition on the farm, we supposedly have been "subsidizing agriculture," but, as Wes Jackson has pointed out, this is a misstatement. What we have actually been doing is using the farmers to launder money for the agribusiness corporations, which have controlled both their supplies and their markets, while farmers have overproduced and been at the mercy of the markets. The result has been that the farmers have failed by the millions, and the agribusiness corporations have prospered...

From "Conservationist and Agrarian (2002)":

I am a conservationist and a farmer, a wilderness advocate and an agrarian. I am in favor of the world's wilderness, not only because I like it, but also because I think it is necessary to the world's life and to our own. For the same reason, I want to preserve the natural health and integrity of the world's economic landscapes, which is to say that I want the world's farmers, ranchers, and foresters to live in stable, locally adapted, resource-preserving communities, and I want them to thrive."

Wendell Berry is the man!

So as I continue to read "Bringing it to the Table: On Farming and Food" by Wendell Berry, the more I enjoy his writing. He is simple, blunt, to the point. He states the truths that any of us in sustainable agriculture understand inherently.

One of my favorite passages of late is this, from his essay "Stupidity in Concentration" (2002):

"The word 'sustainable' is well on its way to becoming a label, like the word 'organic.' And so I want to propose a definition of 'sustainable agriculture.' This phrase, I suggest, refers to a way of farming that can be continued indefinitely because it conforms to the terms imposed upon it by the nature of places and the nature of people."

I'm having one of those weeks where several things all go wrong at once. When I feel overwhelmed, I breathe and think about all the people who are there for me and I hear their voices in my head telling me to do the right thing. I'm lucky in sososososo many ways.

Miss you, Erin. I'm trying really hard to be angry at the right things, just like your mom said.

Water water water

Where does the time go? I have been very busy.
But that doesn't mean I haven't been thinking about all the things I want to post about.
Here are some random tid-bits:

I read a very interesting article/interview about water here.

I've been reading more of Wendell Berry's Bringing It To The Table. He says a lot of the things that seem obvious, but are never said enough, for example: "... if agriculture is to remain productive, it must preserve the land, and the fertility and ecological health of the land; the land, that is, must be used well. A further requirement, therefore, is that if the land is to be used well, the people who use it must know it well, must be highly motivated to use it well, must know how to use it well, must have time to use it well, and must be able to afford to use it well. Nothing that has happened in the agricultural revolution of the last fifty years has disproved or invalidated these requirements, though everything that has happened has ignored or defied them."
SO TRUE. How often do we think about the land we use? These requirements are rarely met.

Also, my Plant Biology class is amazing. I love learning about the inner workings of plants. Is photosynthesis not the coolest thing ever? When I read a passage in my textbook about how carrots were originally purple, I instantly smiled. One of my favorite things to do to get people interested in agriculture is to tell them purple carrots exist. People get so used to what they see at grocery stores it tends to blow their minds. :)

SO there are my random tidbits. More to come, of course. I have to write a paper about a human desire and a plant that fulfills that desire (based off of Michael Pollan's Botany of Desire), and I think I'm going to do control and GMO corn. So much exciting going on, and I'm also trying to find a way to get to Earlham to hear Michael Pollan speak in February. It's 2 weeks before my finals, though, so I'll have to plan VERY far in advance.

THINK ABOUT DIRT.
Have you thanked your vegetables today?