Common Ground Fair

Let me paint the picture for you. 8 o'clock, Friday morning. Maine. Standing on the edge of a forest, clinging to a $2 cup of coffee and huddling with six other Overlook volunteers against blasts of 30 degree wind. In the forest through which we just walked, there are horses harnessed to felled pine trees, led by men with long beards and plaid flannel shirts, an image straight out of the 1800's. Before us, a gate leading into a giant fairground that doesn't open for another four. I'm wearing four layers and still freezing. I'm clutching a program that lists MOFGA's (Maine Organic Farmers and Gardener's Association) Common Ground Fair's Friday workshops. As the wind blows the pages every which way, my fellow volunteers and I are trying to map a mental schedule of the workshops we'll be attending for the day. 9 o'clock: Permaculture and Medicinal Herbs. 10 o'clock: Sustainable Agriculture in Central America. 11 o'clock: Intensive Gardening, starring Will Bonsall, who, if you're in the sustainable ag/seed saving culture, is quite the celebrity. Noon: Sheep Dog Demo.

By the time the gates open at 9, I am beside myself with icy pain. As the crowd that has been building for the past forty minutes (some 60,000 people visit the fair every year) move into the fairgrounds, a variety of white tents splay out before us. Boot Root Kitchen, featuring organic, home grown carrot soup and eggplant sandwiches. A stand selling hot apple cider. A huge tent devoted entirely to alpaca fleece. A barn demonstrating heritage breeds of chickens. Men with giant oxen mill about. The marketplace is buzzing with people selling handmade crafts and sweaters and composting toilets and a million other things I can't afford.

As I walk through the fair on my way to Permaculture, I am surprised by how normal everyone there is. Having very little exposure to the New England organic farming culture, I have been expecting a sea of dirty hippies and barefoot children covered in flowers. Not really the case. Mostly, just average people bundled up, talking about the summer's tomato blight, or their success growing a certain variety of faba bean, or the prices of apples (Ok, perhaps not ordinary topics of conversation). I am reminded of my grandparents, Nana and Harry. Imagine a sea of them, and that's what the Common Ground's crowd is like. Of course, there are a few exceptions. Freegans, for example, were around. People who only eat free food. Pulling plates of food from trashcans all over the fair.

So, this is a glimpse of my experience at the Common Ground Fair in Maine this past weekend. It was an amazing time, and I learned a lot. As soon as I have the land, I'm ready to grow my own organic commercial garden. And I definitely caught some of the excitement about everything that is happening with organic farming and gardening. It was a lot of fun. I highly recommend you go next year. I don't know how to end this entry... LOOKOVERTHERE BYE!

Cow Rollick

Is Overlook Farm a real farm? Yes, and No. If you brought in a commercial farmer (the real sustainable kind, of course) who had livestock and crops, he would rub his stomach and laugh heartily. Mostly at our animal husbandry. This is not against the livestock folk who work here at all. But, we're a farm of young volunteers who come and go every few months, who aren't working experts, who lack forty years of animal experience. It is a farm run by amateurs. Not to mention the random variety of animals here. Cows, pigs, goats, all standard. Then, there's a camel, water buffalo, alpacas. Where are the experts on those animals?

This came to mind today, as five of us tried to move six full grown cows. Big debacle. They get lose [switching to present tense], so we move them to some old pasture, but, Uh Oh, the bull is close by and looking ominously through the flimsy fence at the nice lady cows. So, we move them again, except Stephanie gets in the chicken pen and starts eating the chicken feed, and Clancy is over by the woods, and the rest of the cows are figuring out that the electric fencing isn't ON, so plow, plow, no more fencing, more loose cows. Thirty minutes later, we've got a bucket of feed to lure Stephanie, while the other volunteers, knee deep in manure, are yelling at the other cows to keep them at bay and trying to move fencing. Big mess. And it's raining.

Truth be told, however, it was an entertaining adventure. And, all in all, no harm was done, and we volunteers are laughing at our own misadventures.

Ok, this is a farm, sort of. You do have to consider that there are farmers/animal husbanders whose cattle obey verbal commands, who don't need to use buckets of feed to control their livestock, who run things more smoothly, who take things more seriously. I mean, they are trying to make a living. We, the Overlook Vols, are a lot more ragtag and haphazard, and the whole point of this farm is education, not production.

So, for the naive like me. When you own cows, teach them some damned obedience.

Gateway to Difference

The absence of my updates (did you notice? Oh how touching) is due to the BUSY-ness of my week. Man, oh man, it has been a week. By week, I mean four days. Monday, I had a five hour program with a group of 6th graders, and then, on Tuesday, straight into the Global Gateway program. It's the biggie. A group comes in and stays for three days. As the facilitator, you spend nearly all of those three days with the group, and in the spare moments, you spend your time getting ready for the next step. It's a whirlwind, I tell you.

So, The Sharon Academy (TSA) of Vermont brought 36 kids Tuesday afternoon. I took fifteen of those kids under my wing, while two other volunteers took the rest. We had a busy time together. There were tours, chores, three different activities (Survival, World Map, Identity) that helped the group focus on issues of poverty, chronic hunger, and community, meals in the Global Village, and lots of debriefs and discussions. I think I worked from 8-8 yesterday. I am tired.

But, my group (who named themselves "Breta") was full of unbelievable kids. Truly, they are an example of why my job is a good one. They were all very open, very engaged in everything, unafraid to talk and discuss. In a lot of ways, they did my job for me, getting their minds working without my help. I had so much fun with them. I'm starting to cry. Oh boy. How emotional. Someone strike up the band. It's singing time.

But in all sincerity, it was an excellent first Gateway program for me. The highlight might have been the orientation we did before they spent the night in the villages (2nd night). During the orientation, we use a lottery to assign different roles to the "families", aka: the groups of kids sleeping in different village sites. So, a few became handicapped, and I put gloves on their hands and taped their fingers together. A few became pregnant, upon which I had them put full water balloons in their shirts, and then promptly taped them in. One of my guys, Ben, became pregnant, which was hilarious. And then, after dinner, each gave birth and had a new baby. Ben had a particularly loud and dramatic labor.

So, I think the Gateway program is perhaps the best of all. Because it gives the kids some authentic, different experiences. I don't know. I'm not crazy about throwing out statistics for starving people, or lecturing about inequality and injustice. It's all abstract. But, when a community of kids have to live in a Tibetan yurt (nomad tent), pretend to be pregnant and handicapped, build fires, buy food together from a market, and haul water from here to there, they really learn something. Poverty and hunger move from the abstract to the detailed. A teacher can't teach you that stuff. Experience is a far better teacher. And, the thing I love about experience is that it involves feelings. Not just rationalizations. Experience is about more than coming to conclusions or making ideas neat and tidy. It complicates things, and helps you to hesitate before you make your mind up. At least that what it does for me. So, I feel good about the role I play here. I feel good about what this place provides. I got that going for me. Which is nice.

I'm about to go to Maine for an agricultural fair. Very excited. Should be a cool experience. Stay tuned.

Dark Day

I'm sad to announce the experience of my first animal death today.

The death count has actually risen to three by lunchtime.

The first dead animal was found this morning. We were down in the pasture by the driveway, moving the sheep to some fresh grass. In the middle of the flock, a little white lamb had died. I didn't realize it at first, as one of the livestock vols picked the lamb up and carried her outside of the fence. Then, I noticed how limply her head hung, and knew what had happened.

Two goats also died today. None of them was a surprise. This past summer, the farm received an absurd amount of rain, which led to a lot of parasite-related illnesses among the sheep and goats. The three deaths today were related to something parasitic.

I guess I have to wonder what my reaction is, or what it should be. I live on a farm now, with a lot of livestock. Death happens. Animals get sick. And they aren't pets. After living here a while, the way people romanticize their pets almost seems childish, I guess because animals are such an ever day part of life. That, and as a farm volunteer, you tend to look at all animals as resources.

But, still, I was sad to see that dead lamb. She was so small. As time goes on, I'm sure I'll become desensitized to the whole thing, the animal birth and death cycle. Maybe a part of me will always dislike it.

On a lighter note, in response to John Lewis' comment, Abu kicked one of our vols in the mouth, because he was agitated. She is fine. A tooth got knocked loose, but has been repaired. And she has a whopping bruise on her arm. I didn't see the camel kick, but I heard it was a frightening sight to behold. Camels are usually quite gentile and not to be feared, unless you piss one off, apparently.

Freakin' Sheep

Freakin' Sheep. I hate freaking sheep. Almost as much as meat turkeys.

Oh sure, they're woolly and go "Bah" and have provided the human race with domesticated service for thousands of years. Besides that, though, sheep suck.

Mostly, sheep suck because they are the most flighty, nervous animals imaginable. Everything freaks them out, and when sheep freak out, they run like crazy. Everywhere.

This tends to be a problem because we have to move the sheep out to and back in from pasture every day. In an ideal world, they run in a neat pack, following someone holding a bucket of textra, i.e., "sheep crack". This hardly ever happens. Most of the time, half of the pack gets nervous and ends up running the other direction. Last week, three sheep ran about a half a mile into the woods.

My disdain for sheep came to a peak about three days ago. It was late afternoon. I was exhausted. I get a radio call to come help in Abu's (the camel's) pen. I run over there, to find out that Abu has kicked one of the volunteers in the face. Don't worry, she's ok. Apparently, the vol's had been trying to catch a few sheep in the pen who needed to be pulled aside for breeding (the sheep share Abu's pen at night). Abu had gotten upset. So, we have three sheep running around with the pack, and we need to catch them. Thirty minutes later, two have been caught. The last one is totally freaked out and, every time we try to corner her, she bolts. There was a lot of diving onto solid ground, and volunteers making a line with their arms outstretched. At one point, the damn sheep actually lodged her head in the fence, and still we didn't catch her. Finally, Susan made the dive, and we got her, and then had to wrestle her the thirty yards to her pen, which took three volunteers and ten minutes. I hate sheep.

So, here's a joke. How many volunteers does it take to catch a sheep? Answer: seven. Ha? On the next edition, find out why I hate meat turkeys.

Sustainability

This is a buzz word if there ever was one. Sustainability. You hear those young hipsters saying it all the time. It's definitely become part of the new "green" fad, and I am one of those people who tends to distance myself from fads. I haven't been opposed to the idea of it, but I've avoided diving right in and proclaiming its glory. What you are about to read is a conversation I've been having in my brain, between two different perspectives.

But, as one of my fellow volunteers pointed out to me, fads often lead to something bigger. If you think about it, most cultural/literature/artistic revolutions probably began as fads. The Renaissance. Big fad.

In any case, I find myself using the word "sustainable" regularly these days. It happens to feature very prominently into the tours that I have to give. Several aspects of the farm are aimed towards sustainability. We have an organic garden, a gigantic compost mountain, composting toilets, low-flow shower heads, etc. We also rotationally graze our sheep and goats, which allows our pastures to regenerate and keeps our soil healthy. Several of our Global Village sites demonstrate sustainable technology, like a methane converter that collects methane from composted manure.

As I give tours and educate kids more about sustainability, my attitude towards it is changing. (I'm still wary of preaching about it, and definitely don't preach when I give tours.) It was my boss Todd who changed my mind, when he described sustainability as "taking care of the present to protect the future". I think that's what he said. For those of us with some privilege and luxury, the future is not of great concern. We will have access to food, we will have good health (or medicine at the least), and we don't care that much about what we leave our children. Dammit!

But, as I'm starting to understand, if you're a subsistence farmer in the highlands of Guatemala, your worldview is a little different. The future is precarious. You barely have access to food as it is. Health is limited by malnourishment, and determined almost solely by what you eat (whereas I hardly ever link my health to the food I eat). You have a little land, the rest being taken up by agri-businesses like Dole and Chiquita, and your land will be divided among your children. If you want to promise them a future, you need to leave them good land. When you live like this, it is unbelievably important that you sustain. That you take care of your resources. Because when they run out, you run out of options.

Does it make sense to use organic fertilizer (and not chemical fertilizers) if you're a subsistence farmer? Yes. Does it make sense to buy into sustainable practices (that are culturally appropriate)? Yes. Is it a fad? No. Not to them.

I am not playing a pity angle here. I don't pity the Guatemalan subsistence farmer. Actually, one of my favorite parts of giving tours in the Global Village is leading the kids to the realization that living in a bamboo hut in Thailand is not necessarily miserable, or that the point of the Global Village is not to take a poverty tour. Different cultures, not worse-off cultures.

Anyway, I don't pity the subsistence farmer, but I do recognize that help is needed. And that there are solutions. Like sustainability. To shrug it off because it's a fad is bordering on arrogant. You might say that I'm thinking in a different person's worldview. You might say it's part of my job. So it is.

When I'm on the Job

This morning, I officially became "on the job". When this guy is on the job, watch out. It's like a hurricane of trouble... and good looks. Good lookin' trouble, they called me, in high school. Glooble.

So, today I gave my first "tour". It's not really a tour, but I am lacking a better word. The word

"tour" brings to mind lots of fake smiling and memorized information and bad jokes. What I did today was more of an "experiential educational program". An EEP. I'm abbreviating all over the place tonight. At 8:45, 48 9th graders from St. Peter-Marian arrived in a school bus. Catholic school. I inherited a group of 16 and the sacred duty of guiding them through the "Humans and Habitats" program. Here's the basic layout: Introduction to Heifer's Mission, and a video about Heifer' work around the world. Then, a tour of the farm and garden, followed by a tour of the Global Village, followed by a village meal at one of the sites, and topped off by the World Map game. My group of kids were fine. Very, very 9th grade-ish. Pretty nice, somewhat interested, but not enough to be uncool, and flirty flirty. Nevertheless, they did their best to learn about Heifer and livestock and stuff, and I didn't have much trouble with them. We had our lunch in Thailand, and I was actually quite impressed with them. Our fire only took twenty minutes to get going, and they liked the Thai food.

The conversation at the village meal was probably the most meaningful. They went through the wood collecting and fire building and food preparation and cooking over an open fire. And then, we all sat down after we cleaned our bowls, and I asked a few questions, such as: "Did you like the meal?" "Would you eat it every day?" My personal favorite part was asking them how long it usually takes them to make lunch. Answer: three minutes, for a pbj. How long did this meal take? Answer: an hour. When you think about the labor, the smoke, and time, would you want to cook this meal two or three times a day? Answer: Hell no! But, if you lived in this area of Thailand, you would have to. So, food for thought. A very good conversation.

Anyway, the ball is now rolling. From this point on, things will be busy busy, and I will be working working. Ready as I'll ever be.