AgStacker Roundtable Premiere

No sweeping spotlights or breathless starlets thanking the director but still...

It was exciting. I was invited to spend sometime yesterday morning with Helen Freeman Helen Freeman and Kody Karr Lessons from the Land talking about ourselves and what we do here on Substack and on the farm, at the first Roundtable discussion organized by Helen. Helen is in the UK raising pigs and publishes a monthly Ag Stacker Community Newsletter that I cross post here on Grange Hall. Disclosure here, I am what you might term Ag Adjacent in this space. I absorb way more than I contribute about farming because well, I’m not a farmer. I am a gardener however. Same church different pew. I grew up around farms and spent some great times in the hayloft (catching and stacking bales, what were you thinking?) and helped milk a friends small herd in PA on occasion. So many different writers on here we would call our friends and allies. Who are we and what do we share in this space? The discussion helped me better understand the challenges farmers are facing but also the enthusiasm they bring to what they do.
I shared something about my background and upbringing. I have a high suspicion of just about anything organized (religion, medicine, news reporting, government, children’s sports programs) having lived through the 60’s and 70’s. I saw firsthand the upheaval of social norms and the tear in the fabric of society some of which deserved to be torn up. Sticking it to the man is a personal mantra for me. My philosophy lines up with this quote I found a few years ago reading about one of my favorite TV producers, Steven Bochco of Hill Street Blues fame. A groundbreaking TV series in many regards, Steven said in an interview before he died,

Years and years ago I worked for a producer who taught me more about how not to behave than how to behave. One of the most valuable lessons I ever had. This person said to me, "You get shit on by the people above you and you shit on the people below you." I thought, "Hah, there's a life lesson." I figure if you turn that upside down, you're on to something. So what you try to do is never shit on the people below you and only shit on the people above you. That always seems to work.
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I made that one of my life’s missions on the tail end of my career as a large health system oncology pharmacist to do just that. Patient Centered Care was anything but, I came to find out. I was personally fooled by the Sackler family, their Oxycontin and their money promoting the sacrament of opioids to “relieve pain”. A big regret of mine. It was health system profitability with a peel off label of patient care in many cases. I began to poke at those above me finding flaws in their systems and ideas they proposed much to my satisfaction. That annoyed the hell out of them. So they kept me in the trenches, unpromoted and passed over for management positions because I was labeled as “not a team player”. When I realized that Big Ag does not have the farmers welfare or a love for the land I saw the similarities. What I was reading about on here really raised my hackles.

I eventually retired and a continuing period of existence post career is now on deck. Who am I? I told the folks in our discussion yesterday that when you retire you had better be prepared to answer that question. If your answer is “ I am a pharmacist, banker, CEO” or whatever, then when that ends, what’s left? One of the things I love to do and am pretty good at is connecting people to other people and making them feel included and heard by amplifying their voice in conversation along with an openness to different points of view. Substack is a natural sandbox for me to find folks from all walks of life and attempt to bring them together. I hope you know that I find y’all fascinating.
I started out writing here as a way to process the changes in my life and I still enjoy doing that over at Mile Wide and Inch Deep, but with the launch of Grange Hall my great pleasure is meeting and getting to know, through comments and online chats some remarkable folks in the agriculture community. Liz Reitzig and Adam T Kuznia ,Farmer Sam👩‍🌾🐑🌱 Jenna Woginrich, Laverne, Tanja Westfall-Greiter and Lesley and Adam Cohen Al Knock, the folks at Cityplot, John Gonter and Jackie Bridgen and Hannah | A Feral Housewife to name just a few.

Farmers never really retire though do they? I came away with that yesterday. It’s who they are. They continue because it is a way of life. It is a way of life that is under attack. They quit perhaps when it becomes unsustainable for them or they are too damn tired to keep fighting or they run out of options. Those farmers I’ve met here in the Ag Community we’re building don’t want give up the best parts of what they do. Slow down, take a breath, pass it on, quit the rat race that it has become perhaps. They know something is broken and it seems that the interests trying to break them seem too large to fight. It is said soldiers don’t fight for their country, they fight for their buddy in the trench or rice paddy next to them. Farmers face a similar situation. When the farming community unravels around them they look around and feel that it might be senseless to fight when nothing is left except an idea or a shop worn history. Kody told us that he is 5th generation in the Missouri farming space; his Grands starting there before the civil war. At the time Missouri was not yet a state and still a territory. Remarkable. Still on the same land with family growing and raising animals. I want to keep that going.
It got me thinking about that. What is community these days? If we aren’t knocking on neighbors doors to share a black walnut cake with them over coffee are we now scrolling through a feed and commenting with emojis on a sentiment or posting our opinion and moving on. I hope we can do better than that. As Jackie Bridgen told me in a chat we must admit to needing real people and not the autonomy we have behind a screen. I agree. We also agreed that community IRL¹ is messy. Government intervention and the undermining of farmer’s interests and outright theft of farms is a real danger that Helen shared with us and knows only too well.
Growing your own food as a quiet act of rebellion was a theme that seemed to resonate in our discussion. Perhaps that is where our strength lies. Rebellion against what or whom though? Who is the enemy of our vision? They and them are mentioned all the time on posts here. How do you fight a man without a face. What is our vision and the principles that motivate us? Articulating and defining more sharply may be worthy of further discussion. If we know what we stand for it is more difficult to manipulate and control. Sun Tzu in the Art of War lays out principles one of which is to attack your enemies weaknesses, not their strength. Big Ag cannot adapt as quickly to the needs of their customers as a local farmer can. Buying food locally takes that customer away from them.

We talked about the challenge of getting and retaining help. There simply are not enough workers to go around. Movement into the city took many of the young generation away from farms into the city. Kody however, shared that he is beginning to see that reverse just a bit with young families interested in this way of life moving back out to the area he is in. How can we help these young families? From my vantage point at the tail end of my time on earth and most of the on ramp of my life in the rear view mirror what can my generation provide? I was thinking one thing we can offer perhaps is a remembering of the way of life we grew up with. Not to duplicate it, for we all agreed that some things have to change. Maybe to record it. There is still wisdom available in the memories of living farmers. We can record what they have to say and preserve it so it cannot be changed or manipulated in the future. Stories are the warp and woof of a community and the telling of those stories is priceless and critical to the health of any community. A shared history is a powerful force.

I talked about how many of my generation have land and houses that have appreciated in value that we are being taxed out of. We have accumulated our things in anticipation of our earning potential decreasing in old age. Many of my generation on the tail end of a scarcity mindset generation manufactured to makes a few industries rich after the wars are hoarding our resources. If you think about risk and benefit, we might be the ones who have the least to lose by taking a chance with our resources if we use them appropriately to help this next generation. I have no interest in feeding the retirement community industrial complex and die surrounded by aging folks in a sterile lifeless small apartment. Please keep me around children, (especially 3 year olds). We need each other. Let me keel over in the garden. I already have contacted an Oregon company who will have my body composted. You can have my soil.

We brainstormed. Helen mentioned WOOFing or Working On an Organic Farm as a way to help out or try out a way of life on a farm without going all in. Kody could use someone to raise a flock of chickens which he has no time for but would love to see on his place for what they can do for his soil. Similarly, I thought, how about creating a partnership with a young family wanting to make a go of it homesteading, as tenant farmers helping out on their land in exchange for a modest place to live and valuable work that gets us up every day with purpose. We will watch your kids when you need to duck out for a date some evening. Many of us are grandparents. We can keep a flock of chickens and feed your animals, drive a tractor and a front end loader along with other skills. We would love to share a meal over a table every so often and have our own life that cooperates with yours. We have healthcare and a maybe a small pension that will provide for our expenses and pay a rent to you to offset costs. We may not be related by blood but we do share a vision. We get purpose and get to dig in the dirt and grow food, learn and work on regenerating the land and give back. You can help us by looking in on us and sharing your land and your experience to keep us sharp, working outdoors teaching us new skills and what it takes to run a farm.
Anyway, this was one idea that came up yesterday that really resonated with me. I think there are others who might share or expand on these ideas.

Kody also talked about the distinction of Organic Farming Certification. Something he was looking at and revisiting. He mentioned that he read on here somewhere that Raw Milk and Organic Vegetables used to be simply Milk and Vegetables years ago and that the Organically Grown distinction and certification maybe something that has been manipulated for profit (not the farmer’s profit certainly who must pay for that certification). Kody said if you know your neighbors and how they grow and align yourselves with those who share your values spending time with them, you don’t need an organization to tell you what’s healthy. You trust them. Let’s get back to that. That’s the power of community right there.

So I came away from the first roundtable hopeful and excited to be involved with something I believe is worth devoting my time to. Defining community and finding ways to quietly rebel against the present system because so much depends on it for future generations. We each have our own personal battles that we face every day. One of those for farmers, that came up as we talked is their chokehold on ideas and practices just because they’ve always done it that way that they are reluctant to give up. As I quoted elsewhere in one of my posts, nostalgia if you’re not careful can gut you like a fish. Gotta know when to walk away, but you got to give a farmer a good reason to.

So much is at stake here. I want to commit my final time on this earth to restoring the stewardship of the land back to the individual and their families who appreciate that it is a trust and not a commodity to be stripped bare. I think this is where women farmers’ strength is and firmly believe that the movement will and should be led by them. Participating in this is a noble venture, for my family and yours. It is renewable and sustaining and beautiful. Get in touch with one of us, lend us your voice, participate. Message Helen Freeman if you’d like to learn more and perhaps join us for the next Roundtable to keep the discussion going.

So as I say when I sign off at Grange Hall, “You’re always welcome here at the Grange.” Maybe we’ll see you next month. We will have the long tables set up in the Hall and the coffee (and tea) on and there will be a fire going in the big stove. Sam and Irene on fiddle and guitar will play us some tunes before we sit down to eat. Just bring a dish to share (no desserts- we have it covered next month thanks to Celestine and Grace). Remember to bring your own place setting and of course the kids are always welcome. There will be plenty of experienced laps to sit on for the littlest ones.

See you then.

1. IRL- In Real Life jk- I know you all know what this means. It’s just that a bibliography makes an article look more important. IMHO