Knowing the Farms That Feed Us

When Summer Moon Scriver and I collaborated on the book Hands at Work, we talked with and photographed a number of farmers. One of them, Henning Sehmsdorf, offered this vision:

Our dream is the community will feed itself. The only question people will ask about their food is which of their neighbors’ farms it came from. We believe we’re the future.

Photo courtesy
Hands at Work - Portraits & Profiles
of People Who Work with Their Hands

Two Lopez Island organizations—Lopez Community Land Trust (LCLT) and Lopez Locavores —have embarked on a three-year project to help Henning’s dream (and that of many of his neighbors) become a reality. BOUNTY - Lopez Island Farms, Food, and Community will tell the Lopez food story through photographs and profiles of twenty-seven Lopez Island farms (including S & S Homestead Farm, home to Henning and his wife, Elizabeth Simpson).

Sue Roundy, a past member of the board of the LCLT and current secretary of the Lopez Locavores, conceived of the project. “It’s time to celebrate our farmers and thank them for their hard work and delicious food,” Sue says. As Artistic Project Manager for Bounty, Sue has put together a team of photographers, interviewers, advisors, a graphic designer, and a writer for this effort.   In the project’s first year, photographers Steve Horn, Robert Harrison, and Summer Moon Scriver will develop a color slide show of the farmers, their land, and the food they produce.  The show will premier October 25, 2014 to celebrate the LCLT’s 25th anniversary at the organization’s Harvest Dinner.  The slide show also will be presented at the San Juan County Agricultural Summit in March 2015.

In Fall 2015, framed black-and-white portraits of farmers will be exhibited, first at Lopez Center in conjunction with the LCLT Harvest Dinner, then at Lopez Library and the Lopez Post Office. I'm honored to be involved in the project’s third phase, publication of a book including the photographs, stories and recipes. Bounty - Lopez Island Farmers, Food, and Community is scheduled for release in 2016.

The photographers and interviewers are documenting the process of telling the Lopez food story at the BOUNTY website.  Notes and images from farms such as Sunnyfield Farm Goat Dairy,

Julie, from Helen’s Farm, at the
Lopez Farmers’ Market

Sweet Grass Farm Beef, and Helen’s Farm  are filled with the same kind of passion that Summer and I found when we talked to people for Hands at Work. I look forward to discovering what themes will emerge from those whose hands are in the soil, those who witness cycles of birth and death of their animals, and those for whom their work is a way of life in which it really matters if it rains or not. 

BOUNTY is just the next phase in the LCLT’s history of supporting local agriculture  through its Sustainable Agriculture and Rural Development (SARD) program. It also joins the international movement to promote local, sustainable, seasonal foods and eating, ideas brought to public awareness by authors such as Michael Pollan, Barbara Kingsolver (Animal, Vegetable, Miracle), and Alisa Smith and J.B. Mackinnon (The 100-Mile Diet). Most recently, Vicki Robin chronicles the experience of local eating even closer to home with her latest book, Blessing the Hands That Feed Us. She committed to a month of eating only food grown within ten miles of her home on nearby Whidbey Island, WA and then wrote about it. During a visit last month to Lopez, Vicki talked about how she was “…surprised, peeved, moved, deprived, curious and empowered…” by her month of hyper-local eating and how she fell in love with the hands and lands that fed her. 

As so often happens, one person’s experience inspires others, and now the LCLT and the Lopez Locavores are organizing the “Lopez Bounty Food Experiment.” Beginning this September, participants will choose a month, or part of a month, to dedicate themselves to eating locally and blogging about it.  They’ll share what they miss most, what they’re most grateful for, and what new local foods they discover.  Interested? Contact the LCLT at lcltda@rockisland.com.

Whether you participate in the Lopez Bounty Food Experiment or not, you can be part of the community-funded effort to celebrate local farms and farmers. Contributions to BOUNTY will support the creation of the slide show, photography exhibit, and book that all will help tell the Lopez food story. I hope you’ll join us.

What questions do you ask about the food you eat? What do you know about the farms that feed you?

The Commute

These days, it’s warm enough to keep our bedroom door open at night. The rising sun wakes me just after 5 AM, and soon after, the hum of a ferryboat lulls me back to slumber. Two days a week, though, I have to resist the soothing thrum of the vessel carrying passengers from the mainland so that I can join other Lopez commuters who work on neighboring islands. For the last five years, I’ve been among them, leaving Lopez shortly before 7 AM for the half hour sailing to Orcas Island and my job as a school nurse. (see Nov. 2010 post Ferry Boat Meditation).

Lately, my commute has been the stuff of Hollywood movie sets. We’ve had a painter’s dream of clear skies and crystalline blue water, contrasting with the jewel-like greens of the shore. 

At the Orcas Landing, the red roofs of the market and the 110-year old Orcas Hotel welcome our arrival.

As I sip coffee from my travel mug, I chide myself for wanting to sleep in; I know I’d receive no sympathy from commuters on car-clogged freeways.

 

Today was the last day of my commute—not just for the school year, but forever. After forty years as a nurse, I’m retiring. Or, as I prefer to describe my departure, refocusing. I’ve thought of this day often, especially in the winter months when I’d rise, get dressed, and drive to the ferry landing in the dark. Those mornings I’d have preferred to succumb to the ferry engine rumble and tunnel under the comforter for another hour of sleep. 

Some days, though, I’d be rewarded for not hitting the snooze button, making it to the landing just in time to see the ferry approach the dock, the sunrise glinting off Mt. Baker’s peak.

Now I’ve learned that the M/V Evergreen State, the ferry that has carried me to my job on Orcas, is retiring, too. Or, in ship lingo, is being decommissioned. The Evergreen State was the first vessel custom built for Washington State Ferries in 1954. 

It will make its final run on the interisland route this Friday afternoon; if I were more sentimental—and didn’t have another commitment—I’d make an extra trip to Orcas just to say farewell to this vessel that’s one year younger than I am.

M/V Evergreen State will be replaced by M/V Klahowya to carry passengers and vehicles on the interisland route through the San Juans. The boat’s name comes from a Chinook Indian term for "greetings." I suspect I’ll spend some time on this vessel; I learned during my commutes that the ferry is a good place to write. Perhaps in the coming years, some of my “greetings” to you will have their beginnings on the Klahowya. But next week, I plan to just listen for the sound of its engine from my bed.

Do you commute to work? I’d love to hear your commuting stories—whether they’re current or from the days before you were “decommissioned.”

Convinced to Tweet

Day One of my writing program’s (Whidbey Writers Workshop) Spring residency found me in the session How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Social Media, led by poet and Whidbey alum Kelly Davio. I smiled when I read the title of the handout Kelly passed around—“My Plan for Launching an Online Presence in 2014.” ­ No problem, I thought, I already have an online presence.

First there was the website and then the Facebook fan page for my book, Hands at Work. Soon, another Facebook page for me.  That seemed like plenty of “social media” for this semi-introverted-living-on-a-remote-island Quaker writer—until April 2010, when I attended a meeting of QUIP - Quakers Uniting in Publications. There, Friends of all ages spoke of the Quaker history of writing as ministry and how it is evolving as publishing and communication change. With the guidance and encouragement of QUIP participants, I returned home convinced to blog; a few weeks later, as my writing group cheered me on, I created this blog site.

Maybe I hadn’t quite learned to love social media by the time I was sitting in Kelly’s workshop, but I wasn’t worrying about it—until I read the first item on the handout:  My Twitter Plan. I started to hyperventilate.

“Don’t you need a smartphone to tweet?” I asked Kelly. I’m off the hook on this one, I thought; my antique flip phone can barely make calls and handle texts.

“That’s how Twitter worked when it first started,” Kelly said. “But now you can tweet from your computer, too.”

“Oh… good,” I said, sweat starting to prickle my hairline.

Kelly became my interpreter and guide, introducing me to this new culture, a part of today’s communication stream I’d avoided. She walked me through the steps to begin:

·        Go to https://twitter.com/ and register a user name (mine is @irisgraville)

·        Add photo (or else Twitter will use the default image of an egg)

·        Write a brief bio – as with all things Twitter, you have 140 characters.

The mechanics seemed easy enough, now that I understood I could do all of this on my laptop. Then Kelly introduced beginning Twitter-speak:

·        Following – people whose tweets you want to read when you check your Twitter feed (a string of their photos and 140-character tweets show up when I log in)

·        Followers – people who want to see your tweets when they check their Twitter feed

·        @ is used to “tag” someone that you mention in a tweet

·        # - hashtags before words (such as #Quakerblogger) allow you to become part of larger conversations by linking you to all posts on this subject

·        Retweet – lets you “recycle” someone else’s tweet so your “followers” see it.

I know there’s much more vocabulary and nuance to this new language. Just as I do with my elementary Spanish skills, I’ll undoubtedly fumble and make mistakes, but Kelly taught me enough to get started.  And she offered some advice about hanging around this “water cooler of the Internet.”

·        Act like a person, not like a sales robot.

·        Think about the things you’re willing to talk about and share with others—Twitter is very public.

·        Demonstrate a sense of humor.

·        Share things that are worth reading.

·        Interact with other people, such as asking someone a question.

·        Promote other writers (or whoever your community is) in a real and honest way.

So far, I’m enjoying my exploration of this form of communication. I’ve been surprised by who else is involved.  For example, I’m following a number of Quakers and Quaker organizations such as:

@pendlehill

@westernfriend

@friendsjournal

@DianeFCNL

@jonwatts.

Many of my writing friends, plus well-known authors (@AnneLamott, @AmyTan) tweet regularly, too. 

One of my questions when I started to blog resurfaced with thoughts of entering the world of Twitter:

Do I want to spend more of my already-full life in front of the computer screen engaging in this virtual, but distant, way with others?

I’m still not clear about that, and I have concerns about these “connections,” about the quality of interactions, and the quantity of input.  But for now, I’m feeling convinced that Twitter is a helpful tool to expand my writing and Quaker networks.

           

How about you?  Have you been convinced to Tweet? Why – or why not?

New Kids on the Literary Block

Over the past two weeks, I’ve transferred a little magazine from my backpack to nightstand to kitchen table to desktop.  Its corners are curling, and its white cover is smudged, sure signs of well-appreciated reading material. Each time I pick it up, I’m glad I’ve subscribed to this new literary magazine,  The First Day. 

Published by Jana and Mike Llewellyn of First Day Press, The First Day is a quarterly print magazine that features in-depth articles, essays, and creative writing related to the arts, culture, and faith. Although The First Day is guided by Quaker principles and values, it strives to offer stories of hope, inspiration, journey, and discovery for people of all spiritual traditions and beliefs.

The inaugural issue does just that. Its pages are full of thought-provoking essays such as Chuck Fager’s personal look at racism in “Playing the Lottery,” and Kody Gabriel Hersh’s essay, “Queer Lessons for Spiritual Life.” There’s also fiction by Elizabeth Spencer and Quaker minister J. Brent Bill, and a dozen poems.

One of the issue’s highlights for me was interviews with writers Tracy Chevalier and Amy Brill.  Both authors have written novels with Quaker women as the main characters (Chevalier’s is The Last Runaway and Brill’s is titled The Movement of Stars), and the interviewers explore with the writers the books’ spiritual themes. Another delight was reviews of two television shows, Orange Is the New Black and Breaking Bad.  Even though I haven’t watched either program, I’ve heard plenty of buzz about both and appreciated the reviewers’ examination of the moral questions the shows raise.

In her introduction to this premier issue of The First Day, Jana writes of the uncertainty she and Mike felt of whether they would receive “well-written and poignant submissions.”  It’s clear from Volume 1, Issue 1, that there are plenty of writers out there who, as Jana found, “…show the deeper truths beneath stories of personal journey.”

While this slim volume supplies reading to occupy me for many hours, I don’t have to wait for Issue 2 for more offerings like these.  I’ve also subscribed to the press’s The First Day Blog for regular online posts about a wide range of personal spiritual experiences.

Jana and Mike Llewellyn bring considerable experience in writing, editing, and publishing to this endeavor, and it shows.  As a result of the couple’s faithfulness to a call to merge faith, culture, and creativity, people of all faith traditions, as well as those seeking a spiritual home, will find a welcome refuge at The First Day.

Afterthought #21 - One Hundred Posts

I don’t follow the stats for this blog, even though blogger.com collects all kinds of them.  Like how many pageviews each day, the number of comments posted, and the number of people who follow my blog.  Those numbers don’t mean anything to me, but one recently got my attention—the number of posts since I began the blog on May 9, 2010.  I’m creeping up on 100 posts (I think this one will be 99).

It took some convincing for me to begin to blog (I've Been Convinced to Blog), so reaching 100 entries is noteworthy.  My original plan to post once a week lasted, well, three weeks.  Just took three times for me to realize a weekly, 500ish-word essay didn’t work for me, so I revised my goal to post twice a month. I did pretty well with that through the rest of 2010 and 2011.  By then, I was on a roll (most of the time), and added a third posting the last day of each month (like today) that I call an Afterthought, after a Quaker practice of sharing a brief reflection after silent worship.  That brought me up to 3 posts per month, which I’ve maintained pretty consistently since Jan. 2012.

So that’s how I got to 100 pieces of new writing, and I’m celebrating.  Celebrating some meaningful interactions with readers on the blog, through e-mail, or in person; new connections with other writers; and a body of work that, until I started blogging, I never would have believed I could have created.

Here’s to the next 100.

Enoughness

It was Day One of my writing program’s Fall Residency, and I was feeling my usual doubts about whether I’ve got the right stuff to be pursuing an MFA in writing. I’d signed up for a nonfiction workshop with eleven other students and knew that the next morning I’d receive critiques from them and my teacher, Ana Maria Spagna, of a chapter of my memoir. I’d also attended the first session of my other course, a Directed Reading in Literary Journalism taught by Larry Cheek, and was wondering how I’d get through the list of nine books and handful of articles on the syllabus for the semester.  And that was just the morning. 

After lunch, I plunged into the afternoon line-up of three, hour-long workshops by guest faculty. As often happens at the residency, I wanted to be two places at once for the last hour of that day. I had to choose between a session about “Working with Editors” led by freelance journalist Michelle Nijhuis (her earlier talk about nonfiction story ideas had been terrific) or an hour with David Oates

Writer and Teacher, David Oates

for the first of his three sessions about “The Writing Life.” As much as I craved to learn more about editor-writer relationships from Michelle, a contributing editor for High Country News, I opted for the group meeting with David. 

The view from the outdoor workshop spot

David writes nonfiction, poetry and fiction about the paradoxes of nature and culture. That, as well as the knowledge that his session was to meet outside, intrigued me, but what drew me even more was the word “joy” in the workshop blurb.  David began by quoting Adrienne Rich who used to ask her students, “Are you in it for the long haul?” By 4:30 on that first day, I was wondering the same thing, or at least was feeling uncertain of the how of making it through the next nine days, not to mention the slog a writing life can sometimes be.

I learned over dinner one evening that David has spent time around Quakers, so it’s no surprise that questions sprinkled his talk, and his writing prompts resembled queries. How to persevere as writers was the question David set out to help us answer in Part 1 of his series. He urged us to “keep sight of where the pleasure is in this arduous, solitary pursuit, and let that radiate in everything you do.” Then he asked us to write in response to these queries (I mean writing prompts):

What was the last moment of pleasure you can recall in writing?  Can you reconstruct what it consisted of?

Think about your writing life generally.  Jot some notes to yourself about your typical moment of “Ah” or “Aha”—when you know you have a potential story/poem/essay.  What is the pleasure there?

Where else (or when else) do you get a glow of satisfaction, or a burst of pleasure, in your writing process?  Is there any pattern about where or how this “writing pleasure” happens?

After the rigors and stimulation of the first day of the residency, I felt my shoulders relax and my forehead unwrinkle. I smiled to myself as I let my fingers tap across my keyboard thoughts about the times words sing and come together in ways I don’t expect.  I wrote of my pleasure in the repeated experience that writing leads me to understandings I don’t access in any other way. 

Next, David turned to an exploration of how the writing life is full of paradoxes, too. One of the contradictions for writers is the challenge to, as he described it, “write from your gut, write from your heart,” and also write for the reader.  “Follow your lead and persevere,” he advised. “Be grounded in your process as a writer so that your writing isn’t dependent on what others think.” He urged us to put our work out in the world and let it find its readers. “Take pleasure in that,” he said, “pleasure in whatever audiences receive your writing.”

Which leads to another puzzle for writers: defining success. “What I want in my writing life is enoughness,” David said.  “It’s ok to not be famous and fabulously successful.”  Instead, he seeks contentment in his writing life. “Have incredibly high standards, and be easily pleased,” he counseled.

Writing to David Oates’s prompts helped me make it through the residency’s incredibly high standards and pleasures and reminded me of the rewards of the writing life. In the coming weeks I’ll likely encounter more tests of my personal definition of enoughness; there undoubtedly will be rejection letters; failures as I try new writing techniques; the juggle of my school nurse job, course work, and my own creative writing.  But today, in the midst of a pile of dirty laundry, handouts and notes to file, and the beginnings of a schedule for upcoming reading, writing, and critique assignments, I know the joy of being a writer.  I light a candle and enter into silence before I begin to write. While this may be solitary work, I know I have the support of my MFA writing community and my writing groups here. And I have readers like you.  More than enough.

A Little Bit of Wisdom

       

            

The last day of Spring Residency for my writing program (Northwest Institute of Literary Arts), guest faculty Kathleen Dean Moore talked with the Craft of Nonfiction class about writing essays.  A philosophy professor at Oregon State University, Kathleen writes prose that questions and celebrates our cultural and spiritual connections to Earth in a style reminiscent of poet Mary Oliver. 

Taking notes on my laptop as Kathleen spoke, my fingers barely kept up with the wisdom she shared. Here is one of her gems:

Every essay is connections and a little bit of wisdom tucked into experience. 

I took in a quick breath and felt tears stinging my nose and filling my eyes as Kathleen spoke. That’s why I read essays, to find connection and that little bit of wisdom tucked into a story. Kathleen’s wisdom usually is surrounded by experiences in nature—such as watching an osprey taking time to notice a shadow in the water and then having the courage to dive.  She says that’s the work of nature writers (I would argue all writers):  “observe patiently, lovingly; keep watch for shadow; plummet toward it and engage it.”

That’s what I want my writing to be.  Sometimes there’s only a very little bit of wisdom.  Most of the time, I don’t know it’s there until I start to write. I’ve tried to be organized and systematic in my writing. Sometime I write out a rough outline, topics and themes sprouting out from an experience or an insight. That technique does help me to have an idea of where I’m going in my writing. But usually I don’t know which road I’m heading down until I wrap my fingers around a pen, or place them on the keyboard, and let them lead me across the page.

I have a similar experience in Meeting for Worship when I quiet my mind enough to open myself to that essence or wisdom beyond me.  And just as in my writing, that opening and centering usually takes me to unexpected places.

Kathleen also challenged us to think about the kind of writing we should do.

“In a ‘world of wounds,’ it’s not enough to write about a marsh as it’s being bulldozed for a K-Mart parking lot,” she said. “We’ve run out of time; we have to move quickly and reach a wider audience through new venues such as newspapers, blogs, and radio essays.”

To know the kind of writing we should do, she urged us to answer three questions:  

What are my gifts?

What breaks my heart?

What are the world’s deepest needs?

“Your calling is at the intersection of these,” she said.

Maybe I should follow the behavior of the osprey both when I settle into worship and to write—take whatever time is needed to listen patiently and lovingly, keeping watch for shadow. There’s plenty of that as I open myself to my own flaws, mistakes, and regrets. And observing more widely, I’m aware of the shadows of hurts, disappointments, and wrongs in my community, my country, and the world. I want the courage of the osprey to dive deeply into some of those shadows and to engage with them. But I often just skim the surface and pull back to my comfortable spot of gratitude for the blessings in my life.

I’m discovering more all the time the amount of courage needed to write the connections and tuck in a little bit of wisdom. I often stop myself because I know that I possess just a portion of knowledge of an issue or a situation. But my portion (or yours) might just be what is needed for greater wisdom to emerge. I want to be courageous enough to shine the light on my little bit of wisdom.