Revitalizing Culture
Michael Fields Agricultural Institute- East Troy, WI
"My point is that food is a cultural, not a technological, product.... A healthy culture is a communal order of memory, insight, value, and aspiration. It would reveal the human necessities and the human limits. It would clarify our inescapable bonds to the earth and to each other.... A healthy farm culture can only be based upon familiarity; it can only grow among a people soundly established upon the land; it would nourish and protect a human intelligence of the land that no amount of technology can satisfactorily replace." Wendell Berry
In a committment to the Culture of Agriculture we expect to be adding stories, photos, and other cultural information to this section of the MFAI website.
Embarking On Another Journey of Trust
I remember how sad I was last fall when the zucchini rows I had been harvesting with our fifteen year old son, suddenly disappeared with the first frost.
Anna, our daughter, after her first year of college, looking for summer income, had taken up growing some crops for a young entrepreneur in his first year of distributing organic vegetables to outlets in the cities four hours away.
After nine years of living in this town of 5,000 in southwest Wisconsin where we came to find a more wholesome place to raise our children, it was the first time we had actually been involved in the primary occupation of this area: farming.
Coming to visit Anna while she spent hours by herself planting, watering, weeding and
picking her tender greens, sun drenched with her bare feet, bandana, rolled up shorts and halter top, we couldn’t help but want to pitch in a little too.
Her younger brother, Gabe, agreed reluctantly to take on some crop harvesting also, simply to make a little money when he wasn’t busy playing baseball, basketball or golf.
Seeing that he could not be convinced that there was any good reason to ever pull a weed, and that there were some valuable work lessons to be learned, I decided to get involved by helping him.
In the process we had some wonderful bonding moments that I will always treasure: simply being on the land for a couple hours together every other day trying to get the rows picked before the sun went down, fighting over me going too slow and him going too fast, having our dog with us, getting taught that if you don’t pick on time the crop gets too big and is worthless, watching him smash the tail light of our old station wagon while backing up on the field on a foggy evening, and feeling the pride of driving boxes of carefully weighed crops to the cooler shed where the young distributor was working late into the night loading his truck for its morning run.
These were precious father/son times that had become a part of my weekly rhythm, only to be permanently and abruptly severed by that unexpected drop in temperature.
Now it’s spring again and winter plans for another summer crop to help pay for Anna’s next year of college and Gabe’s upcoming car insurance needs are about to get underway.
Only this time, as I feel myself wondering like other farmers how this weekend’s rain will enhance our soil and chances for optimal planting success, I know it’s about much more then money. It’s about embarking on another journey of trust.
Daniel Chotzen
4/26/09