issue no. 777

SOMETIMES IT’S IMPOSSIBLE TO RECONCILE . . .

your daily reality with the consciousness of what’s going on around you. Many of us are relatively disconnected from national and global crises, but even when they reach our doorstep, it can feel surreal and otherworldly to witness deep injustice and total disregard for humanity.

It can feel disturbingly, maddeningly passive to fill up the gas tank in your car, or watch the figures tally at the grocery register. Still others of us have our full attention pulled toward smaller, more intimate crises, personal situations that demand every ounce of energy. Each of us, every day, is somewhere between these two things, attempting to feel connected to ourselves and one another.

Whether you’ve been with us for one week, or for fifteen years…we hope you know by now that we tend to show up with more uncertainty than authority. This is not because we are avoiding our power - in fact, we are committed to maintaining clarity around our guidelines and values - but because we know that power is also an evolutionary presence. The ways that we are willing and able to use our power can change over time.

We live in a world that tells us power is an authority. And perhaps it can be, at times. But just as often, the force behind authority isn’t power, after all, but fear or shame. It seems equally obvious to me that there can be tremendous power in the ability to sit with uncertainty.

In the conversations we’ve had recently with farmers about the challenges in running a sustainable operation - one that allows employers to pay their team members and themselves - one pain point has been sitting with us, in particular: the perception of food as a luxury item, and farmers as complicit in marketing it as such.

Certainly there are some farms / farmers that participate in that, but the reality we’ve heard from many farm owners reading this newsletter, is that even when they are not able to pay themselves, they charge only production cost for what they grow, and still are demonized for the price tag.

This complicated dynamic is, here in the United States and beyond, tied up with the history of agricultural work, which has a deep legacy in enslavement, preceded by a deep legacy in genocide of Native people. Much of the labor behind the production of food is still ‘hidden’ labor, and the wages that meet it are equally concealed and diminished.

How do we reconcile these things with each of our presence on the land, the weight of our footsteps and truck tires, our daily acts of buying, cooking, and eating, and the slippery details of ownership and value?

Also present in our agricultural history are the deep and layered qualities of classism. Capitalism disconnected us from the land, and colonialism put us in the position of dominating it, which has created - in the most simplified terms - a duality where farm work can be simultaneously degraded and dismissed as ‘less than’ and highly romanticized. This lives alongside a duality where the food produced by farms can be considered far less desirable than its processed end product, and at the same time weighted with elitism and inaccessibility.

I grew up in the country, in south central Kentucky, where commodity farming (tobacco and beef cattle) as a way of life was slowly giving way to opportunities off the farm. I saw the fields emptied out around us as I grew through the 1980’s and 1990’s. I became a self-proclaimed ‘bitter southerner’, a daughter of the dirt who fled for city and suburb, directly opposite the exodus my parents made before me. I long for home without knowing what exactly home is, or if it exists. The reverence instilled in me for mother earth is continually interacting with the ways that powerful systems say the earth must be controlled, extracted, bent to our will as humans, then carefully washed off at the end of the day.

I’m curious about the relationship to value that says you’re ‘not smart’ if you pay more for something when you could have paid less, and its intersection with an attitude toward food that upholds some meals as luxurious and others as ‘junk.’ Is it possible to reconcile the values of caring for the land, feeding ourselves and our neighbors, maybe even running a business that sustains our livelihood, with the realities of hunger, inaccessibility, and the combination of disconnection and deeply ingrained bias that keep so many of us at arm’s length?

Another way to be accused of being ‘not smart’ is to show your humility or vulnerability. To venture to ask a question that you don’t know the answer to. But it’s our belief that showing up to a conversation with humility is how you get to the good part: not the lightbulb insights and answers (although those can be nice sometimes) but the questions that we keep sitting with because they give us doorways into the stories of the people around us. We want to hear from you: what are the questions that you can’t find the answer to, but equally can’t stop asking? What are the pain points that you experience - whether intimately or distantly - around the value of food and farm work?

Before we go, one more thought on reconciliation. It’s tempting to think that it’s a form of completion, an end point in itself. Once reconciled, it’s ‘done’, and you can move on. But like power, I think reconciliation is a process that changes with time. Even when there is an outcome - for example, two people who, once in conflict, are able to reconcile - things don’t go backward. Change lives in the future, and we are all engaged in that change as we move ever forward, dragging our questions, fears, and uncertainties with us.

With courage,

Dor + Tay

tidbits...

resources on anti-racism, environmentalism and food culture AKA stuff we’re reading / listening to / watching / noticing / thinking about / captivated by this Tuesday . . .

Do One Small Thing . . . what are the questions that you can’t find the answer to, but equally can’t stop asking? What are the pain points that you experience - whether intimately or distantly - around the value of food and farm work? We’d love to hear from you on any of the questions posted above, or something else you’re struggling to reconcile right now. You can reply to this email or share in the comments.

In an overwhelming world we can’t think of more potent medicine than being in direct relationship with plants. Herban Cura offers several ways to engage, including their Seasonal CSA and their Herbalism Immersion Apprenticeship .

Rowen White gifting us these wise wild words on Fertile Resistance .

We’re grateful for all of the Fruition Seeds gifting events, but the Bulk Seed Gifting & Gift Culture Camp at their farm April 17th - 19th feels particularly potent as we plant the seeds for the type of world we want to inhabit.

When the Market Fails the Menu cuts right to the point: The math of the local food system is currently broken.

A new issue of What the Wolf Wore , Dor’s newsletter on personal writing projects and the passion of spiritual creativity, is coming out soon. You can sign up to receive monthly essays, plus news on her forthcoming book .

View and share this free guide to How to Write a More Equitable Job Post , and stay tuned for new resources to deepen this work.

" Plenty has been written about the economic impact of the pandemic on the food industry, but not enough about its lingering effects on the bodies of people whose mission is to nourish us. " Read the latest GFJ Story on the creator behind Anjali's Cup, with words by Nicole J. Caruth and photos by Christine Han.

got a tidbit? drop it here for us and we’ll share it in next week’s newsletter.