I've always been so curious about how you got to where you are today? both geographically and emotionally. did you grow up or nearby the area or move your life because you knew what you wanted? how were you able to discover a place where you feel so at home and somewhere that sustains you emotionally?
Hey! hi! i got where i am today through luck or what happens when things fall into place, or something like that. I grew up in this town. this small farming town. in this small house that my dad built, and when my dad died when i was a baby, i lived in this house with my mom. my parents had an orchard, that was sold. my mom continued to work in orchards, that is pretty much the only and main source of employment in this town so when i was a teenager i started to work in orchards too. they were monotonous. they were long rows of the same thing. some of the farms i worked on were conventional monocultures, some were organic. all were monocultures and all were extremely not fun or cool or exciting.
my first job was picking apricots with my mom for a family who had purchased the farm of one of my mom’s friends. my mom stayed on as a farm worker, and said i could help. it was my first job, aged 14, i was green. i remember my mom called me green and i was so green i didn’t know what it meant. on one of the first days i can remember picking apricots in the desert heat next to a highway and just yelling down the row towards my mom “I HATE THIS I AM NEVER DOING THIS AGAIN, THIS IS ABSOLUTELY THE WORST JOB EVER HOW CAN YOU REALLY WANT TO DO THIS?!”
i continued to work in orchards and fields in the summers between grades of high school. I worked on a peach farm sorting peaches (they sprayed with roundup), i worked on a pepper farm planting nightshades (they planted in black plastic), i thinned spartan apples (they were a monoculture, organic certified, but my clothes still smelled disgusting because of the sprays used), i sorted cherries over a conveyor belt in a cement building covered in fluorescent lighting (it felt bleak).
i did not really enjoy any of these jobs. they were not very enjoyable, they were monotonous. I went to university for a Bachelors of Arts degree to escape what seemed like my only options in this town, i got a part time job at a flower shop in a notoriously shady mall, learned some flower skills then got another job in a flower shop in a notoriously high end tourist location. because i love flowers, i really do. when my bachelors of arts degree (double major in sociology / german, minor in home ec) did not return fiscal dividends (shocking i know) i worked full time at the high end flower shop. after learning about social theorists and political inequalities for several years, the lack of ethical care in my place of work (both to the flowers and the workers) contributed vastly to my sense of unhappiness, many other things also contributed to this as well, lets say I was in a bad place. lets say my life was not working. now, here is the luck. I surrendered to being completely incapable of continuing down the path i was on. i told my mom i wanted to not be where i was, i told her i couldn’t be. and luckily, with luck, the small house i had grown up in was vacant. my mom’s partner has a small farm. my mom was living with him, on this small farm. they were farming together. if i was going to move back home, it was the LEAST i could do, to help out in any way i could possible. (i have been allowed to stay in this house, i have been rescued). So this is how i found the farm i am working on now. I was not instantly un-depressed. but it was a drastic change, dramatic. I had very bad anxiety, living in a large city the way i had been living made it much worse. I found being in nature, and doing small manageable tasks was so healing and restorative. I told myself don’t be scared, you’re not supposed to know anything, if you have any questions just ask. And so i started to feel less anxiety about everything, more capable, more helpful and worthy of help. This farm was in my town the whole time and i had never really seen it. It feels hidden away even to people who live here. it is Special. But there are other farms just like it. The whole time my mom kept saying “it’s a permaculture” and i didn’t really know what difference that made, until i saw the farm, and yeah, it’s a permaculture. one day at work i told mom about the countries in africa working together to plant a border of baobab trees to prevent desert erosion and she said “yeah we can do a lot of things with nature, google Sepp Holzer, he does amazing things” and so i did (i would recommend it)i googled “sepp holzer” and “permaculture” and i started to watch videos and lectures about how farming COULD be. and in some places is already starting to be. (in all pre-modern places already was) And it was the most hopeful thing i had ever seen. I am consistently filled with hope by the ways humans are able to work WITH instead of AGAINST nature. How if you work with nature, your design becomes strengthened by time, instead of worn away. so many metaphors in farming that can be applied directly to the wounds of life.I know this town and this small 5 acre family farm isn’t going to be everyone’s salvation. But it has shown me the possibilities of a small plot of land, and the intense amount of satisfaction that can be created by creating something beneficial in the world. And i really want to share that feeling with as many people as possible. the 14 year old me did not see any of this coming, and it is truly a pleasant surprise.thank you, for your question and i hope my answer was helpful
