Faith and the Farm

Do you want to play?

2007-03-10T01:51:00.000-08:00

I followed the directions that the neighbor boys gave me and soon found myself approaching the basketball court. A few people were warming up, and even from a distance I could see that they seemed to be dunking the ball with ease. As the saw that the white man was coming towards the court -- and even dressed conspicuously like he wanted to play -- a couple of them sounded their salutations. Once I was courtside it was all introductions and high fives and questions about everything. But one question stood out among the rest: Do you want to play?

To make a long story short, I became good friends with these ball-players, who turned out to be the basketball team of the Zambian military. During my next several weeks in Lusaka, I spent a lot of time with them on the court, off the court, in buses, at markets, on dance floors, visiting Victoria Falls (the picture here is of us swimming just upstream), and even on the farm and in church. My best friend on the team was a fellow named Fadiga. He was a showboat who always wore sunglasses and liked to remind me about his remarkable resemblance to the actor Wesley Snipes (for those of you familiar with the classic basketball film White Men Can't Jump, I did my best to play Woody Harrelson alongside Wesley).

What does all this have to do with faith and the farm? That's what I was asking myself, and even starting to feel a wee-bit guilty enjoying all this free time to play ball when I hadn't made it out of the city yet. (This was mostly because it just took a lot of time to make contacts in rural Zambia, but more on that in the next entry). Little did I expect that being a basketball player would lead me to things of direct interest to my project, but it just so happened that Fadiga's father, Mr. Manzila, was a retired pastor living in the city who recently started a farm a short drive outside the city. So we arranged a day when I could meet his father and visit the farm (we actually had to cancel the first day that we planned and reschedule another because there were police blockades and demonstrations concerning the recent presidential elections blocking traffic out of the city.)

When I finally did make it out to the farm, I learned quite a bit from this aging but spry farmer. Allow me to share a few of the thoughts he shared with me:

When I look at all of nature, I see God.

You know, water is almost the source of all life. (Spoken while standing watching water come out of the pump, gesturing at the trees).

When we see nature, we see God beyond nature. We see his works.

I have not left the village. My spirit is still there.

In the village we live side-by-side with nature. You sit under a tree and it is peaceful. I need to go back there every year or so to go to where you can't hear any cars.

There are a few elders in the village who go to the big tree to call to their Gods when it doesn't rain. But we Christians know that rain comes from above, and if we pray to God it will rain when it pleases him.

I left the village because the river has mostly dried up. It was filled in by soil, by wind erosion. It is now flat across where there was a gully with a river in it. I wouldn't have said it was possible, but it has happened. That river was our source of life. It gave us fish and water.

I think this change is natural. But some say it is because they built a dam 1100 kilometers away on a different tributary of the Zambezi. This is for the ecologists and environmentalists to discover.

I use as much chicken manure as I can for my maize. I don't know enough to say why, but the synthetic fertilizers don't work as well. Chicken manure will nourish the seed from germination to harvest, but we've had to add synthetic fertilizer several times.

I won't see the fruit on these. These are for my children. (Spoken while walking by waist-high mango trees).

The African way of farming is to clear all the bush from the land that you are going to farm. On my plot I have left the trees in the middle of the land, and I grow my maize and vegetables in the cleared area around the bush. I've been trying growing different things here in the trees. First I tried growing tomatoes among the trees but that didn't work, so then I tried keeping turkeys there, but they were getting stolen. Now I have planted these grapes and [another vine fruit that I did not know]. We'll see how this works.

We did most of this talking as he was leading me around the farm, showing me what he was growing. He had lemon, orange, mango, and other fruit trees. He had sweet potatoes, Irish potatoes, cassava, maize, carrots, rape (kale), spinach, onions, squash, and other crops as well.

He gave me a ride in his truck back into town, and he gave me a bag of carrots and cassava (also known in English as manioc), and this turned out to be quite a tasty gift. During the drive home one of the things we spoke about was that he would like to learn more about farming practices he could do, but that the government directed most of the agricultural training efforts towards big commercial farms. This was my first real introduction into the role that the government has had in shaping the lives of small-scale farmers in Zambia, but I was to hear much more about it over the course of the rest of my time there. So I will write more on that next time. Later on I was also able to spend some time in a remote village, and so Mr. Manzila's words about the difference between city life and village life took on a richer meaning for me. But, again, I will write more about that when we get there.

Just a quick note on the present time: I have recently arrived in India. Sadly, I had to change my original plans to stay in Sri Lanka because of the violence there. However, India is already proving to be a very rich place for me to learn about faith and the farm.

And now with treble soft

2006-12-19T20:35:00.000-08:00

I’d like to start this entry with the first and last stanzas of a poem that I happened to read just before boarding a bus to take me north from London to Scotland. It seemed to describe me in some uncanny way; I felt like I had written the poem but was reading it for the first time, and though it was actually composed by John Keats, I was reading A Song About Myself.

I.
There was a naughty boy,
A naughty boy was he,
He would not stop at home,
He could not quiet be-
He took
In his knapsack
A book
Full of vowels
And a shirt
With some towels,
A slight cap
For night cap,
A hair brush,
Comb ditto,
New stockings
For old ones
Would split O!
This knapsack
Tight at's back
He rivetted close
And followed his nose
To the north,
To the north,
And follow'd his nose
To the north.

IV.
There was a naughty boy,
And a naughty boy was he,
He ran away to Scotland
The people for to see-
There he found
That the ground
Was as hard,
That a yard
Was as long,
That a song
Was as merry,
That a cherry
Was as red,
That lead
Was as weighty,
That fourscore
Was as eighty,
That a door
Was as wooden
As in England-
So he stood in his shoes
And he wonder'd,
He wonder'd,
He stood in his
Shoes and he wonder'd.

I arrived in Inverness after riding on the bus all night, and after checking in to a hostel I decided to take a walk around the city, following my nose. I was on this wandering walk when whimsy had her way with me, pulling me into a bookstore. As I browsed the shelf a book called Land of the Living caught my eye. It was the first book I pulled off of the shelf, and the cover showed a picture of a tractor under the subtitle, Christian Reflections on the Countryside. Interesting, thought I. Closer inspection revealed that the author, one Ivor MacDonald, had worked as an agricultural extension agent. Even more interesting. I kept reading the back cover and learned that the author lived on the Isle of Skye, roughly a mere 100 miles from Findhorn, with his wife and children, and he was the minister of a rural church. Ruminating on the nature of chance, fortune, providence, and dumb luck, I bought the book.

After reading most of the book while at Findhorn, I emailed Reverend MacDonald to let him know that I was in the Highlands of Scotland enjoying his book, and, if it was his pleasure, I would like to come for a visit. He consented, and I arrived in the town Portree the following Sunday night, just in time to hear Rev. MacDonald as a guest preacher at one of the churches there. After the service he introduced himself as Ivor and then promptly introduced me to an older fellow in the congregation named Andy. Andy was a sheep and cattle farmer and the three of us talked for a little while about what farming was like these days in Skye. The main thing that Andy and Ivor had to say—and I was to hear this often over the next few weeks—was that good prices were scarce and the hoops that the government made you jump through were abundant. But we’ll get back to that.

After Andy went home I sat in a pew chatting with Ivor about his book and about what the heck I was doing traveling the world. When we finished he have me some names of other people I could meet on Skye and invited me to come later that week and lend a hand on his croft and then have dinner with his family. I happily agreed, and as we parted, I was only left to wonder what is a croft.

I had never heard of a croft before I came to Scotland, but as heard the word crop up again and again I gained a sense that I should figure out what it is. But one thing I have learned on this trip is that learning along the way is a lot different then learning in the classroom. There is no telling me the whole story from beginning to end while pointing out the important bits; I get to/have to shuffle through the word to find the bits of the story, try to figure the beginning from the end and the cause from the effect, and weigh the importance of each bit. What’s more, and now forgive me for getting a little ahead of myself, another thing I have learned from chasing the meaning of the croft is that sometimes to see a thing most clearly you cannot just look directly at it; sometimes a thing in and of itself is best understood as in between what it was and what it is becoming. So since this blog, whatever it is, is not just about me imparting what I have learned but perhaps more so about telling you what I am doing, I will try to introduce you to crofting as I learned about it.

I spent the next ten days on the Isle of Skye visiting a handful of farms and getting to know the farmers and their families. I also talked to an insurance agent of the National Farmer’s Union, a government official responsible for subsidy payments to farmers and crofters, a couple from Canada who had just bought one of the pubs in Portree, among other interesting people here and there. Maybe this was cheating, but I also spent a little time in the local library reading local poetry and history.

The first farmer I visited was a fellow named Peter. At lunch one day after a morning of repairing fences, he described to me what life was like growing up on a croft. Each croft had 100 to 200 sheep, one or two milking cows, and maybe a few more beef cows. Everybody grew potatoes, turnips, and a grain they called corn but was more like oats. The used stones and stacks of cut bushes as drying racks for the cut vegetables (it rained at least a sprinkle every day during my time on Skye), and salted everything to keep the mice off and for the health of the cows. Peter noted the irony as we ate corned beef from Argentina on our sandwiches. Sure of the answer but curious of the response, I asked Peter is any crofters kept a couple milk cows any more. No, he smiled, it’s just easier to drive to the supermarket than to get up before the sun and try to hunch under the cows while the midges swarm around you.

When I first arrived at Peter’s the day before, his two grown sons who farmed with him introduced me to the impressive operation. With a mix of enthusiasm and pride that you might call gusto, they explained to me a variety of details about the farm, from the breed of cattle (Limousine, and their size fit their name) to why the dog was licking the mower (they had slathered all the machinery with vegetable oil to prevent rust). They showed me how almost everything—from the cattle-holding pen, the feed pit, the lamb shed, the grain wagon, the way they spread lime on the fields to improve grazing—had been custom made or fit by their father. Here inventive innovation reigned under the authority of ingenuity. But I wondered, who was the mother of this ingenuity? Peter’s sons made two comments that provided some clue as to why they were so keen to show me their father’s innovations. This first clue was that, like Andy, they noted with uncharacteristic drear that product prices had not risen substantially in the last twenty years, but the cost of everything else, especially fuel, had. I would call this the spirit of necessity, the well-known mother of invention. The other thing they mentioned, which was a little more subtle and said in the context of defending their father and his success against perceived resentment from neighbors, was that he was just trying to make a better life for his sons. I believe this spirit was the source of both Peter’s ingenuity and his sons’ pride in their father’s farm.

The spirit of expansion, the stepsister of ingenuity, also impressed me as I got to know Peter’s farm. I learned that his acreage was comprised of a fair number of crofts that he had acquired over the years, along with a corresponding proportion of access rights to neighboring common grazing areas. The sons told me that there were a few other farms on the island that had more sheep and others that had more cows, but that nobody else had that many sheep and that many cows.

It seemed that in many ways this farm had outgrown the island and the crofting system. They were raising enough stock that it was more profitable for them to pay the hefty transport costs to bring the animals off the island to more lucrative meat auctions. At one time this would not have been feasible because all the flocks were mixed in the common grazing area and only separated according to their owner when they were all brought in on the local market day. However, in recent years the township that Peter was a part of had decided to divide up the and fence-off the common grazing area. As I understood it, this move to private fencing was not at Peter’s initiative, but it was to his advantage, given the location of the parcel of land he obtained and because he could now, with his flock separated by fences, bring his animals from the hillside into market (using dogs and all-terrain vehicles) on different days than his neighbors with smaller flocks.

Not all of Peter’s neighbors with still keep stock, and he rents land from some of these people. Sometimes he rents it at market price and sometimes his neighbors only charge him a nominal fee; they simply want to see the land being put to use. Others in the township decide not to have any stock in their plots. One day as we drove back from the machine sheds to the house for lunch, Peter’s boys showed me the visible difference along the fence line between the plots the neighbors let them graze on, and other plots that neighbors refused to rent. The reversion of these ungrazed fields to bracken and briar was brazenly stark, and I could sense the resentment in the air at the sight of good grazing land going to waste.

Several days later I visited another farm. After getting off the bus in the one-street town at the telephone booth (there was no bus stop), I picked a direction to start walking and soon found a couple of gentlemen standing and talking out in the rain. I inquired as to their well-being and location of Donald John’s farm. They respectively replied that things were well and that I needed to walk back in the direction I had come from, and then turn left up the hill at the old church. I thanked them and complied. On my way up the hill, a pickup truck stopped beside me. As I opened the passenger door, the driver asked me if I was looking for Donald John. My “yessir” was followed promptly by a smiling “you found him.”

I was happy to again comply with the hand gesture bade me climb into the pickup (an apt name for the vehicle, given my involvement with it), and Donald John steered it back down the hill that I had been climbing; he had to finish putting a load of hay that had arrived that morning back into the shed before it soaked up too much of the persistent precipitation. Thinking myself already familiar with the oscillating struggle of the windshield wipers against the recurring raindrops, I tried instead to familiarize myself with Donald John and his occupation.

“How long have you been farming?”

“Been involved with it somehow since I was knee-high to a grasshopper.”

“How have things changed since then?”

“Costs have gone up and profits have gone down.”

The sudden departure of his genial, almost jovial demeanor as he shared this reality gave me pause. As we drove down the familiar and friendly road, I watched Donald John drive. As the miles passed, and the clouds gave respite from the sun. (Oh, how that austere orb somehow benefits all! By its power the pickup rolls and by its light keeps to the road!) But the horizon deepens it hue, and the advent of some coming storm sharpened his focus on the demands of keeping course as challenges came. The adventurous aspect of his soul was even somewhat eager for this forthcoming test of dexterity and, depending on the sort of service that the solemn assembly on the horizon hoped to hold, tenacity. The healthy and powerful firstborn sons of the storm arrived, those globular drops, a catapulted announcement: battle had commenced. He clicked the wipers on and then quickly increased their speed; this deflecting defense allowed his only offense: to drive faster. The initial onslaught slowed and he relieved the combating blades into a more deliberate pace, meditating briefly on the benefit of a periodic downpour to sweep the murky and musty into the clear and clean. As if precisely roused into enmity by just such thoughts, the soldiers of the sky renewed their inimical march. The first wave was indeed a harbinger of a nefarious, multifarious infantry, as the first-flung fruits of catapults often are. This advance, steadily increasing in intensity, demanded acceleration of the wipers, his lone weapon. Their insistent swish punctuated the swift openings of the aperture through which he peered, serious and squinting, resolved to remain on the road. He even increased speed, despite the danger, eager now to be through with this risky engagement. Soon, though, the cavalry arrived, big walloping drops thundering beside the rushing and steady stream of foot soldiers. They succeeded in advancing on the gaps of vision the wipers strained to sustain. He clicked quickly to spur and bolster the beleaguered defense. Bump! A rapid glance through the malicious mist along with the tilt of the truck told him that a tire was off the road. He reduced speed and righted the course. True malaise begins to seep into his spirit and starts to worm its way into his confidence that he had chosen the right road. He grabbed the knob to call on the wipers to increase speed once more, but, oh! no twist or wrangle could effect a more rapid rate from these tireless warriors. They already toiled at the acme of their ability. What now? He could not stop and could not see what lay ahead. He was at the mercy of a seemingly merciless storm, which raged on to spite his best and sincere efforts. Surely the road now was cheerless; how could it have wanted him to continue, in view of these bitter gifts? It was only the familiar feel of the pavement passing underneath that told him he was still on the road. Never before this did he know the meaning of now faith is being sure of what you hope for and certain of what you do not see, but he questioned whether faith is at its deepest or shallowest when he questioned it even as he leaned on it.

This drive, of course, is not actually the one that Donald John and I took in his pickup. (We just went a quarter mile down to the hay shed). But this is the picture I got from our conversation (like the cereal boxes, I enlarged the picture to show texture). Donald John had chosen the lonely road of farming since he was knee-high to a grasshopper. Since then, the challenges of rising costs and stale returns have been the ever-increasing rainfall. The mechanical and chemical efforts to increase production in order to stave off these challenges have been the windshield wipers. And it has been difficult to get a good look at the future and whether the weather will clear up for farmers; visibility is poor.

At present, the rain shows few signs of abating, and farmers are pressed to expand their acreage, increase their efficiency and overall productivity, and to take advantage of every scheme procured by the powers-that-be, if they are to stay on the road and to provide for their family. How many of Donald John’s neighbors, finding themselves in the roadside ditch of bankruptcy, have turned around and left this lonely road in search of other routes? Donald John told me that he and Peter were among the very few on the island that still farmed full-time. It seems that the Isle of Skye was a microcosm of the UK in this regard; I read in Rev. MacDonald’s book that there is less than a third of the number of farm workers today than there were just after WWII. He also mentions the United States, where there were 6.5 million farms in 1935 but as of 1997 there were only 2 million, and 163,000 of those were large industrial farms that accounted for 61% of the national production.

Dismal, eh? But my day was not finished. I still had another farm to visit. I caught the bus going back towards Portree but got off half way there at Broadford, where I hoped to catch another bus down another wing of the island, where the farmer I hoped to visit was. After ten minutes of puzzling over the incomprehensible (or at least incomprehensive) schedules posted at the Broadford stop, a bus arrived. The driver told me he was going in my direction, so I boarded. I talked with him as we drove and learned what the schedule wouldn’t tell me: this was only one of two buses per week that goes down to this part of the island. When I realized the good chance or design beyond me that got me on this bus, I was reminded of finding the book in Inverness that brought me to Skye in the first place. The driver dropped me off at the farm gate, and I took my increasingly soggy self up the lane. After wandering past a few buildings that looked farmish, hearing a dog bark from within one of the buildings, and not seeing a soul, I decided to peek into a machine shed with a large sliding door already open by a few inches. I saw a light on in a small office in the corner of the shed, and it was in this office that I found Iain, sitting surrounded by old supply company calendars on the wall, bits of farm machinery parts under the motley selection of seats, and various ceramic mugs scattered about the crannies of the room. Each mug, with its uniform stains and unique slogans, offered its deference the teapot on a crude pedestal in one corner of the room; over the next couple of hours we each drank three or four cups of tea.

Iain greeted me warmly and we quickly fell into a conversation that spanned a considerable breadth of topics, each punctuated by his frequent jowl-shaking chuckles as repeatedly warned me that we must not get too cynical. This jolly, grandfatherly man, who has seen the price of a lamb fall from nearly a week’s wages to a mere fraction of a day’s labor, shared with me his view of the Isle of Skye. This view was rooted in experience of the past, perceptive of trends shaping the future, optimistic because of his nature, and tempered by the realism that seems to be found in most hard-working people. In short, you might say he imparted some of his wisdom on me. Consider what follows my humble attempt to pass a bit of it along, though I’m afraid it may be a bit like asking you to appreciate the taste of cold mountain spring water after it has been carried in a dusty sponge for some days; some will have evaporated and what remains will of course taste of the sponge. Nevertheless, I’ll render his words here, however roughly:

…When I was young and working on the farm we used to get together once or twice a week down in Elgol (the nearest town, down at the tip of the wing). We would walk there – four miles for me, more or less for others –after dinner, gather at somebody’s house to socialize, and walk back late under the light of the moon, if there was any. Then hardly anybody had a car; nowadays almost all of them take the driver’s test and get one as soon as they are old enough. But even though we all have cars now it seems like folks get together less often. I’m sure a lot of it is because of the television; it entertains us instead of us entertaining each other. It’s different with kids too. Even my kids used to spend almost all their time outdoors playing with each other, always building a raft for the stream or something other. Now they’re all indoors by themselves with their computers and Star Wars and all that…

…There for a while most of the young people were leaving the island after finishing high school, going to live in Glasgow and the such. But now many of them are coming back to raise their families here. And just by people being here, it ‘s turning the wheel forward, creating jobs and opportunities…

…Thee are also a lot of people moving on to the island from elsewhere, mostly Southern England. I like to cal them the “good-lifers”. Some of them stay, but a lot of them leave after two or three rounds with the Skye winters…

…People who come here to visit often don’t understand the way of life here. Sometimes I’ll meet tourists out walling and they’ll think it’s strange that I stop what I’m doing to have a chat with them. I can’t take my holidays [what we call vacations in the States] in the city because after a few days I need a break from it. Everybody is always in a hurry everywhere. Who knows where they are all in such a hurry to. I’ve never been to London myself, never needed to or wanted to…

…Tim was when every body did crofting because you had to survive. Now people are choosing to croft because they like the way of life…

…The good-lifers, most of them, are rootless. I don’t mean that in a bad way; it’s just different than us indigenous people here. They good-lifers might move every three or five years. It’s different for me, and many others on Skye. I know that generations of my forbearers lived on this same land …

[I, that humble sponge, might interject briefly here, only to say that during the course of our conversation Iain presented me with a photocopied excerpt of ten pages from some book unknown to me. These pages, never mind their origin, contained a precise history of his clan and this land they lived on. Accounts of the origin of the name of the family directly followed accounts of the names of the flora and fauna found on that wing of the island. His genealogy was to be found on the same page as the geography and geology of the land on which he lived. Indeed, it was a severe understatement when he identified himself and his family as different than the rootless people: his family identity is intrinsically linked to the character of the land that has held his family for over 650 years. But enough of my musings, back to way Iain had to say, and please remember this is not a sustained narrative, but the disordered drops that dripped when I gave my brain a good squeeze]

…Remember that even when prices were better most crofters didn’t make their whole living on it. But even my farm here used to support 12 workers most of the year ‘round. Now it’s just me and occasional help I get. The John Muir Trust is the owner of the land, and our arrangement is a bit different from the crofts, which are legally protected holdings. IN my case, either the Trust or I can, with fair warning, terminate the contract at any time. Now, because their goal is mainly to take the land back in time to more trees and such, they’ve given me incentives to reduce my flock from about 1000 head down to 400. But I wonder how far back in time they want to take the land; it used to be all covered in ice! I wonder if they are all that interested in keeping people on the land at all. Sometimes I wonder the same thing about the government too. They have all these schemes, and put all this money into helping us, but the paperwork is so complicated that a lot of us have a hard time keeping up, especially the old farmers (Ha! Look at me, calling others the older farmers). But I know one fellow who lost 6,000 pounds [almost $12,000 US] just for putting a check mark in the wrong box on some form. And most of the money the government puts into these schemes goes into managing the schemes instead of to the farmers…

…Most of the health restrictions because of hand, foot, and mouth disease are overwhelming and costly. But we are happy to ship in lots of cheap beef from Argentina and Brazil, where in many places the disease in endemic…

…Another factor is the grocery stores. They really force us into lower prices. You know a lot of times when you see the 2 for the price of 1 deals, it’s not just a sale they are doing. They just tell the farmer that they are doing a promotion and require him to give them twice as much product for the same price. I was once visiting a friend and saw a huge pile of carrots sitting in his shed. They were good, healthy looking carrots, just sitting there. I asked him why the were just sitting there, and he told me the grocery store rejected them because they were the wrong size, by less than an inch, most of them. The grocery store claim that they had to put on these size restrictions because it is what the consumer demands. Well I’m sure if you went up to any consumer in that store they wouldn’t care that much what size their carrots were…

After we had talked our way through several cups of tea he took me outside and showed me one of his farm buildings. He told me that this building used to be a church. It was built around 1845. It used to be so popular that people would come in boats from nearby small islands and walk several miles over land to get there on Sundays. The building, which seemed to me to be a pretty good size, was not big enough to hold the crowds, so they had to build balconies in it. These days, instead of people, it holds farm equipment for Iain.

One other thing that Iain said that stuck with me even though I don’t remember how it connected with everything else in our conversation was concerning the war in Iraq. He said, as Christians we have to remember that every civilian Iraqi that dies is just as valuable to our heavenly father as those soldiers that die in service. Last number I heard was that over 700,000 Iraqis, civilians and soldiers, have died in the war. Sobering thoughts.

The next day I went to visit the croft of Rev. MacDonald. I helped him round up his 20 or so sheep, with the help of his somewhat inept sheepdog Jack. There was one sheep in particular that he knew needed a certain treatment called, if I remember correctly, dagging. But it is difficult to bring in just one sheep that you want, and he had a certain medicine that it was about time to give all of them any way. After about half an hour of Rev. MacDonald, Jack and I running around, we had gotten all the sheep into the pen, except for one, and Rev. MacDonald said he had a sense that she was the one he especially needed to treat. By this point Jack was pretty tired and proving remarkably ineffective. The sheep was exhausted from all this running around too, and half-crazed—probably because she was the only sheep left being chased by this strange trio. Once we had her cornered, on the opposite side of the field as the pen, but then she leapt at the fence to try to escape us. I winced when she was clothes-lined as her neck met the wire, but by some sideways summersault contortion ended up on the other side, having gone through a gap in the fence no bigger than a basketball. Rev MacDonald promptly swung himself over the fence, grabbed the sheep, and lifted her back into the pasture. He retained his grip on the nape of her neck and tried to lead her toward the pen, but the sheep was unwilling to walk alongside her shepherd. Faced with the alternative of trying to chase this sheep across the pasture into the pen with nothing but the help of a tuckered out dog and a novice like me, Rev. MacDonald handed me his staff and opted to hoist the whole sheep into his arms. He proceeded to carry the terror-stricken sheep across the length of the pasture.

Now that we were inside the pen, each sheep struggled to squirm away while Rev. MacDonald squirted the medicine into her mouth. When he came to the sheep he had carried he also gave it the treatment I mentioned before: dagging. To dag a sheep you simply lift the tail of the squirming sheep and use a pair of shears to cut away the clumps of wool that have become, to put it mildly, soiled. (These clumps were the dags.) This sheep again tried to escape Rev. MacDonald’s firm but beneficent hold; she had little idea that without this treatment she ran a pretty healthy (unhealthy) risk of maggot infestation.

I include this slightly sordid episode in my story of my time on Skye for several reasons. First, I have very little experience with the care of livestock, so I was quite intrigued to learn a bit about how to keep sheep (and thought you might be as well). The second reason is because of the significance of the shepherd/sheep relationship in Christianity. My afternoon in the pasture with the pastor shed some new light what the psalmist may have had in mind when he or she penned, “The Lord is my shepherd.” Surely the psalmist had some experience with what a shepherd’s care of sheep actually entails, and surely the psalmist knew that sheep are prone to struggle against their shepherd’s wishes. Prior to this day, I had none of this knowledge, especially about how much sheep are afraid of humans. But even though it does seem to be an indispensable part of the story, this whole a-sheep-doesn’t-know-what’s-good-for-it-but-the-shepherd-sure-does (which, for some, may smell a bit old-fashioned, unenlightened, or at least a little too pat) was not really what captured my attention so much. I was more caught up in observing what a good shepherd – which I’m assuming Rev. MacDonald is – does in response to stubborn and wool-for-brains sheep. A good shepherd goes out of his way (over a fence, in Rev. MacDonald’s case) to rescue the single rebel who, for whatever sheepish and/or impish inchoate notions, decides to attempt escape by making the uncomfortable jump through a fence. A good shepherd could just let that one sheep go and concentrate on the rest, but instead patiently pursues the sheep and even, in some cases, will carry the sheep to where it needs to be. A good shepherd takes care of all the sheep, and gives special treatment to those sheep who need it. A good shepherd is willing to get her hands dirty to clean up the mess the sheep have made.

Depending on your point of view, you could either say that a shepherd is a likely figure for a pastoral people to use to describe their conception of God, or you may say that God created the relationship between people and sheep for the express purpose of revealing his (or her, again depending on your point of view) character to people. Or you might say both are true. Whatever its provenance, the pastoral poem we call Psalm 23 – along with a host of other biblical literature from parable to prophesy that call on the shepherd/sheep metaphor – has shaped how centuries of Christians and Jews think about and relate to their God. So even if the whole shepherd and sheep paradigm was God’s idea to start with, it would still be safe to say that sheep have shaped—or at least had some part in shaping— any number of Christian ideas, including the picture of God as the shepherd who gets his hands dirty to heal his sheep, and the view of people as needy sheep in need of a savior-shepherd. Not an inconsiderable sphere of influence for a flock of fuzzy nibblers.

(To give credit where it's due, the psalms come from the Hebrew Bible, but I'm not prepared to say much about the place of the shepherd/sheep metaphor in Judaism.)

All these ruminations (I know sheep aren’t supposed to ruminate, but the psalm doesn’t read “The Lord is my cowboy”) seemed worth remark because my primary idea heading into this whole project was to wrap my mind around a few ways religion influences our agriculture. Seeing a shepherd in action prompted me to ask the question the other way around: how does agriculture influence religion?

I thought about that question on the bus ride back to London the next day, along with the same question I encountered early on Skye. What is the croft? I’m not sure what you think a croft is after reading this; I’m still not sure myself what it is, even after spending almost two weeks on an island covered with them. I can say that the croft is a roughly ten-acre patch of land held in perpetuity by the renters, and clusters of crofts form neighborhoods along valley floors, with a common grazing area on the hillside. And, at the risk of romanticizing it, I can also say that a croft represents much more than that. The croft is a piece of history, a living relic of yesteryear’s agrarian community. The croft is a piece of art, a living reflection of the struggles small farmers face today. The croft is also a piece of prophecy, a living hope that the ever-surging seas of trade and industry will not sweep away people who have deep roots in the land.

Though my florid prose may not suggest so, there is much of this story still untold here, though I am neither able nor qualified to tell it. The whole story of the croft involves—among many other essentials I hardly understand—the Scottish clan system, the Highland Clearances, and globalization. After visiting this island where waterfalls and rainbows abound, cliffs rise out of the sea, strange rocky protrusions plunge skywards, and sheep graze everywhere, I only know that this story exists, having now heard a verse of it. This verse tells of the people Iain called the “good-lifers” who are keeping crofts just as holiday homes; it tells of Donald John’s struggles to get the hay in before the rain and to keep the farm afloat; it tells of how Peter’s neighborhood decided to fence the common grazing area; it tells that the croft as many have known it is passing away. There is a sadness in this, as when anything cherished is changing form. But there is another quality beside the sadness here, something akin to beauty, though I wouldn’t give it that name. Iain seemed to have some sense of this quality when he described, with a smile, people who grew up on the Skye returning from the city to raise their children here. This quality is expressed in another verse where I encountered the croft, and since he portrays it best, I’ll again leave it to Keats to tell the story. This is his Ode to Autumn:

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the mossed cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o'erbrimmed their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reaped furrow sound asleep,
Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers;
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cider-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too, -
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing, and now with treble soft
The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

Finding Findhorn

2006-12-01T12:04:00.000-08:00

Here I am. Standing in a circle, holding hands, with 16 strangers. Right palm up, left palm down. A candle stands in a flower-laden holder in the center of us. We all have our eyes closed or fixed on this flame. Our ‘focalizer’, who has not told us all her name yet, speaks in short quiet sentences. There is a long pause between each phrase.

Let us bring ourselves fully present…Feel the breath coming in and going out…Feel your two feet on the ground…Feel the two hands holding your hands…Now expand you awareness to this circle you are now a part of…Bring to your consciousness your expectations for the week…Now try to let them go…Let us invoke the Angel of Findhorn to guide our experience this week…(now even more quietly) Thank you.

A squeeze of palms circulated as we release each other and return to the more familiar communion of fleeting glances and grins.

The next day we stood in a circle again, slightly less strange to each other, all of us either in socks or bare feet. Our focalizers this time were David, with a soft voice and a graying beard, and Rona, a younger woman with a Brazilian accent and a large warm smile. They directed the 16 of us into 2 circles of 8. One circle was inside the other with the people facing out, so that each person was facing a partner in the other circle. The asked us to close our eyes, and then they rotated the outer circle.

Please keep your eyes closed. Please remain silent and try not to do anything that will expose your identity to the person across from you. Please put your hands in front of you and slowly move them until you find the hands of the person across from you. When you find them, just hold them for a time.

The directions continued, and they asked us to express different emotions to our unidentified partner, using only our hands. Curiosity: our fingers clambering over each other’s. Sadness: holding each other in a firm clasp, soothing with slow thumb-strokes over back of hand. Playfulness: our hands dancing, flapping, clapping in a blind game of paddycake. Love: I cannot describe what our hands did. But because of our hands, I thought of my father and when I embraced my father under the stars the night before I left and all the unsung songs of that ineffable bond pulsed through me and my hands and I felt warm unbidden tears flow down into my beard and I thought of my father’s beard and somehow sent that love through my hands. And I let myself be loved.

When you are ready you may open your eyes and, if you wish, speak with your partner.

Across from me I found the face of Charles Bentley, a tall man with a completely bald head and kind eyes sparkling down at me from under tired and heavy brows. Our hands remained joined as we smiled at each other. He spoke first.

Wow.

Thanks, Charles.

They say hands are the window to the soul.

The next day found Charles and I working together in the laundry room. Stephen, an exceedingly gentle Irishman with a great curly mop of salt and pepper hair, taught us the proper way to fold each of the four different kinds of sheets that were used at the Findhorn guesthouse. Stephen gave each piece of fabric precise care and attention as he carefully folded it. After Charles and I had learned the process, Stephen moved to the other side of the room to work at another task, folding napkins. Charles and I conversed while we worked, but Stephen remained mostly silent. Despite his silence, he was not withdrawn or being unsocial. When we asked him a question or when he had something to say, he would stop what he was doing and walk a few steps across the room to talk with us. For three hours we folded sheets, towels, and pillowcases. When our time in the laundry room had ended, we joined the six others in the home care team. We shared how we were feeling after the afternoon’s tasks with each other. Some people related joys, pleasures, and satisfactions; some people related difficulties and preoccupations that distracted them from being focused on their efforts during the afternoon. We ended the afternoon the way we began, sitting in a circle around a candle, holding hands.

Charles and I both found the attitude and practice of work that we experienced extraordinary. Caring attention was given to both people and the tasks. As the week continued, I tried with varying degrees of success to emulate the loving focus that Stephen gave to the sheets. One significant moment, as strange as it may sound, was when I was vacuuming with Amadeus (that was the name of the vacuum cleaner). I had been singing or humming some song to myself while I was moving Amadeus over and across the carpet. It occurred to me that I was not focusing on my task. I stopped singing and attended to my task. But I still wanted to sing. I started to hum again, a single tone, the same pitch as Amadeus. I varied my pitch, harmonizing with Amadeus in a third, then a fifth, and then a simple melody in the key that Amadeus determined.

My mind had wandered again from the task, focusing instead on the music. I had not really emulated Stephen, but after humming with Amadeus, I thought about how a simple thing such as singing or carrying out a conversation can potentially devalue the task at hand. Stephen, and others that I worked with at Findhorn, saw dusting and sweeping, mopping and making beds as more than a boring chore to be finished quickly. They saw these housekeeping tasks as important, each containing its own energy, and the energy and attitude with which we engaged with these tasks mattered. The people I worked with spoke of energies occupying spaces; as we worked, our service to our selves and to the community occupying these spaces was to cleanse these spaces of tired and negative energies, to refresh and rejuvenate these spaces. As such, each action and attitude applied in our task-making influenced the well-being of the whole community.

Three people living in a permanent RV-park founded Findhorn. One of these three people, while meditating in the garden in they kept, received communication from the spirits of plants in the garden, beings she called devas. She shared these communications with the other two, and they applied what they received to the care of their garden. Their garden flourished (think 40-pound cabbages), and as word spread of this magical garden growth, interested people began to come. Some people came and joined the three and the community grew, population fluctuating and flowing as people came and left, contributing to sometimes amorphous but always intentional relationships among the people and this place they occupied. Forty odd years later, Findhorn is composed of two main parts. One is a mix of an eco-village where people live permanently in homes designed to work with the natural and spiritual energies of this sand flat near the sea. The other is a conference and retreat center where people can do introductory programs like the one I did, and further programs, spanning months or more, that draw people deeper into Findhorn and its way of life.

As lovely as this may all sound, I was somewhat skeptical. But Findhorn hounded me. One practice I found quite intriguing was when we went into a garden kept near the guesthouse. Our focalizer (this is the word they use a Findhorn for the leader of a group, if that has not become clear yet), a young woman named Erin with a quiet voice who spoke slowly and always seemed on the edge of a mild smile, asked us to find a ripe vegetable that we wished to each, and to go sit, stand, or squat near it. We each found a green bean pod, a spinach leaf, or a parsley sprig. I stood next to a tomato plant, my eyes on a certain red fruit. Erin asked us to focus on the fruit or leaf we had found and to ask its permission to pick and eat it. She said whenever we felt it was appropriate, we could proceed with picking and, in process, eating. I felt a bit funny, but not silly, as I solemnly squatted next to the tomato plant. I touched a fuzzy leaf, feeling it between my finger and my thumb. I smelled that rich, tangy and earthy smell particular to tomatoes. I humbly requested permission to pluck that tomato. I paused for a moment. Feeling that I wouldn’t feel more appropriate if I waited any longer, I pinched the stem between my forefinger and thumbnail. I was conscious of cutting something umbilical. I rolled this round red fruit around in my palm, sensing its firm smooth skin, interrupted only by its recently severed stem, which leaked a small bit of fragrant and bitter fluid on my fingers. I looked around. Some people were smiling, eating. I smiled, and turned back to this plump fruit I held in my hand. I asked its permission to eat it; I am not sure if my lips moved. It seemed like it wanted to be eaten. I consented and complied, raising the tomato to my lips. My teeth met the its skin, which resisted for a significant moment before bursting, yielding a sweet, succulent, tart flood into and around my mouth.

I am not sure if I can call this a spiritual experience. I cannot say that I had some communication with a tomato spirit. But I did have some communion with a tomato. I must say that after that prelude, a foreplay of the lesser senses with this fruit, the full object of my attention, the communion I experienced via lips, tongue and teeth was most intimate, significant, and satisfying. I still don’t know whether to call that spiritual.

Throughout the week, I continued to learn with my hands, and to feel with my heart. These things became things to ponder with my head, but I first experienced them with my hands and my heart. I know that sounds a bit trite, but so did the substance of a lot of little rituals that we did during the first part of my week at Findhorn. For instance, on the second day, we sat in a circle with a candle in the middle (yes, this was quite a common situation). An unusual deck of cards was opened out around the candle, face down. One of our focalizers explained to us that these were angel cards. Each card had on it one angel, and each angel was a quality or a virtue such as understanding, healing, joy, efficiency, or discernment.

When you feel called by or drawn to one of the cards, please retrieve it and look at it. Don’t show it to anyone else yet.

My impression was that the whole angel charade was a bit corny and even contrived was confirmed when I picked up my angel card. My angel was depth. On my card was a little cartoon illustration of a winged fair-haired woman in a robe on the edge of a pool of water. This angel was wearing scuba gear. I considered this card.

You’ve got to be kidding me, right? I mean, a cartoon angel in a diving outfit? Give me a break.

Fortunately, I kept these smarmy thoughts to myself at the time. Depth turned out to be just the right angel for me to continue to consider throughout the week. After the experiences with my hands that I have told you about, and many others that I have not shared with you, I came to appreciate the emotional, spiritual, and even physical significance that the rituals of Findhorn can have. Once I got a little bit past my uncomfort and cynicism, though I must admit these garments are not easy to discard, the rituals did not seem simply quirky and contrived, or at least not much more so that any of the conventions that I have followed in other communities. These rituals were actually an essential strand in the common bond that united this community. Once I began to join in this community by participating in the rituals, I realized how lonely I was after traveling by myself for almost a month. The way that Findhorn met my loneliness is what will stay with me, more so even than my thoughts about their spiritually special gardens.

One of the several 50-something-year-old women in my group told me that she had noticed that at the beginning of the week my hands had been very cold. It was raining and a bit chilly the day when I arrived. As the week progressed, this woman, along with the others, was like a mother to me, sharing sympathetic smiles and hugs with me. The weather also warmed as the sun shone almost everyday (a rare week in the Scottish Highlands). On the day that I left Findhorn, it was cold and rainy again, but my hands were warm, warmed by the family I had found at Findhorn.

From the horse's mouth to the bird's eye

2006-09-11T03:41:00.000-07:00

Hey friends,

I tried writing a whole bunch of stories down, but I contracted writer's block. Hopefully that will pass. For now, I am at my friend Tafadzwa's in Oxford before I fly to Zambia. While I have his computer I thought I would take the opportunity to upload a few pictures. Hope you enjoy them; I will try to explain some of them but let me know if you want to hear more about any of the pictures. I hope you all are happy and healthy.

This is a tree planted by Reverend Robert Walker, whom I told you about in my last blog.

This is the road I was driving on to get to St. Winnow Barton Farm Museum.

These are pictures from my hike along the coast in Cornwall, when I got to sleep next to the waves.

Okay, I'm still figuring out how to work this blog, and I can't get it post any more photos for now. But there are more to come (even one's with people in them!). For now, I have a plane to catch...

Beyond yonder hedgerow

2006-08-16T05:08:00.000-07:00

Hello hello!

Oh, where to begin? AT the beginning, I suppose. My trip began at 4 AM on July 31st, when my mom drove me to Josh and Noah's. (Josh and Noah are friends from high school who have an organic vegetable farm a couple of miles up the valley. They were headed that morning to Madison, WI, for the farmer's market, which was conveniently nearby where I could catch the bus to Chicago, where I could catch the plane). My trip continued, at about 4:05 AM, driving back home with my mom to find my plane ticket, which I had realized I didn't have and didn't know where it was. Upon arriving home at 4:10 AM, I quickly found the ticket right where I expected it: in a Fed Ex envelope in the recycling bin. By 4:12 AM, Mom and I were back in the car, trying to chase down Josh and Noah by taking an alternate route that would hopefully intercept the vegetable truck in its path to Madison at a small town named Boaz. At 4:37 AM, as we drove through Boaz, we saw the headlights of the vegetable truck in the distance on the road perpendicular to ours, and by 4:41 AM, after a much too brief departure from my mom, I was in between Josh and Noah, rolling eastward, hurrying the sunrise, headed for the world via the Madison farmer's market.

Since then I have been to or through something like 7 churches, 6 grocery stores, 5 different sleeping arrangements, 4 museums, 3 farmer's markets, 2 farms, and 1 biodome complex. The churches have ranged from St. Paul's cathedral, with an organ and a full choir, to Pentecostals assembled in a park with a couple guitars. The grocery stores have ranged from Planet Organic to Tesco Metro Supermarket. The sleeping arrangements have ranged from a $120/night hotel in Notting Hill to under the stars with waves crashing 30 ft directly below me. Upon telling people that I am studying farming and religion, I have received replies ranging from "Oh, I definitely think there's a connection..." to "Oh, how bizarre."

One of the most interesting places I've been so far was the St. Winnow Barton Farm Museum, located at the end of a lane so narrow that I could barely fit the one small car I drove (driving in England is another story) between the 12 ft high hedgerows. The museum was an old barn packed with plows, tractors, scythes, and all sorts of farming equipment from the last 200 years. This barn sat a couple hundred yards from an old stone church: St Winnow's Parrish, built in the 12th century. Inside the church I read a memorial about Robert Walker, a Vicar of the church in the 19th century who also ran a farm adjacent to the church. I mentioned this to a kind middle-aged lady who was selling burgers at a little stand next to the barn (more on the burgers later). She introduced me to her mother-in-law, Frances, who happened to be the warden of the church. I walked to the bungalow just 40 yards up the hill where she lived, and she invited me in to sit down in her dining room. Frances was a lovely and sharp elderly lady who took neat notes as she asked me about myself and my interest in Robert Walker. As I explained the nature of my study, she became visibly pleased with my interest, because, as she told me, Robert Walker a truly extraordinary man who was perfect for my studies. She explained that he had purchased the farm adjacent to the church so that he could perform agricultural experiments. The intent of these experiments was to improve the livelihood of his parishioners, many of whom were poor and struggling farmers. I read one of his experiments, in which he tested eight different methods for planting wheat. He manipulated the plowing regime and the density of seed sown, and calculated the profit margin for each strategy. He found that the most popular method was among the least profitable of those in his study, in part because yields were actually higher when a lower density of seeds were sown. Ah, the knack of science for exposing the counter-intuitive.

I wonder also about the knack of religion for leading this man down this path. He was an Oxford educated man, active in politics, adept in science, and yet he came to this parish and served the poor farm families there as their vicar, advisor, and advocate. I do not know if going from success at Oxford to rural Cornwall seemed like a counter-intuitive path to Robert Walker's family and friends, but it might seem so to us today. If only I could have a chat with him...

That's about all I can tell you about it detail right now. Oh yes, before I wrap up, the burger. I had one, and it was the most delicious burger I have ever had! It was more like a tender steak with fried onions and cheese on a bun. The beef was produced right on the farm. The farm museum, you see, was actually just one of the outbuildings on this fully operational farm that surrounded the church. The farm had added the museum and turned a small orchard into a camp ground. Many of the small farms in Cornwall, and it seems they are all small, have had to add a tourism component of some kind in order to stay afloat financially. Many farms include bed and breakfasts, petting zoos, hayrides, or other touristy things. There's a lot to think through why this is the case and what the implications are, but we'll save all that for another time.

Thanks for reading all this. There are lots of other things I'd love to tell you about: renting a car and driving on the wrong side of the road, my trip to the Eden Project Biodomes, my four day hike around coast of the the SW-most tip of England, Fruitstock music festival where I took part in a dating game, the rise of organics here and the campaign to make all school lunches organic, the wonder of reading Dickens and Keats in Hyde Park, learning how to be lonely sometimes, how ice cream IS good everywhere you go, and on and on. Please write me if you really want to hear about any of these things, or just to say hi.

All the best to those of you starting school soon. This is the first August in a long time when I have not had that ahead of me; my heart and circannual rhythm are with you.
-Keefe

It's a start.

2006-07-25T15:34:00.000-07:00

Hi, and thanks for reading this. What I’m hoping this blog to be is mainly a place where I share stories of my travel year. Please feel welcome to reply to the stories with your own thoughts and questions for me and anybody else reading.

Of course, it takes a little audacity to have a blog. After all, instead of writing to particular people that I know, I’m writing to whoever wants to read. And if too many people that I don’t know start reading this blog, I’ll find myself with a certain notoriety. So just for the record (and because I wouldn’t feel comfortable starting a blog without some commentary about why I did so), I’ll have you know that I actually found myself waging quite the war with myself about whether to blog or not to blog. I’ll spare you the sordid details of my internal battle over blogging, but suffice it to say that while I was mired in a quandary over the hubris of this ignoble avocation, the poem below assured me that my aversion to stepping atop the cyber-soapbox was a myopic mistake.

Dilemma
by David Budbill

I want to be
famous
so I can be
humble
about being
famous.

What good is my
humility
when I am
stuck
in this
obscurity?

In other words, take my poetic justification for writing this blog and making my stories known to the world with a grain of salt. I actually have no hope that this blog will make me famous, but I wanted to let you know that fame is a risk I’m willing to take so I can share my stories with you.

With that said, I haven’t left the US yet, but I will on July 31st. My first stop is the UK, and my first real posting on this blog will probably be from there. But as a little prelude to the first real posting, and to give you an idea of what I hope to do and why, I have also copied two essays below that I sent to the Watson Foundation as part of my application for the fellowship. The first is my personal statement (about me, primarily) and the second is the project proposal (about the project, primarily).

Thanks again for reading. Throw me an email at keefekeeley@gmail.com if you’d like me to let you know when I write new stories. Until then.

Personal Statement for Watson Fellowship

I have always been engulfed in the culture of agriculture, though my immediate family does not farm. Many of my neighbors, friends, and extended family are farmers, so I grew up working on various pieces of land. On farms I experienced the communion of breaking the soil with my fingers to find potatoes, sometimes stopping to hear the oscillating sounds of Bob Dylan and Bob Marley emerge from the cassette tape player in the nearby pickup truck. On farms I experienced the rude shock of stepping outdoors on frozen December mornings to feed the neighbor’s mules. On farms I experienced the repeated pricks of brazen bushes rife with raspberries. On farms I experienced the unparalleled consummation of eating what I had harvested. And in hard farm work I am satisfied; there is a potent peace – a sublimity – in standing sunburned beside my co-workers in the late, long shadows, admiring our pickup full of harvested potatoes or a strawberry field redeemed from weeds by our hands and hoes. There was a time when most of the people on earth farmed. I imagine that this reflective moment represents a recollection of that ancient consciousness, a collective awakening: we are intrinsically woven with each other in our dependence on the land.

I am fortunate to know farmers on both ends of several spectrums, and the paradox of these poles holds my passion. To point: I have a cousin who runs a multimillion-dollar corn and soybean agribusiness; I have neighbors that till their fields with mules instead of tractors. My cousin is a Christian; my neighbors profess no formal religion. My cousin is focused on making money; my neighbors are more interested in preserving the land. This pattern seems to be common. Though there are important exceptions, the farmers at my church seem to employ conventional, earth-harming practices; the majority of earth-friendly farmers that I know through my father’s employment at an organic foods distributor are not church-goers.

Why is there such a split? Do people’s religious beliefs influence the values that shape how they farm? Some claim that indeed they do, and that this split – that Christian farmers tend to not care as much for the fate of fields – is persistent because Christianity contains an inherent mandate to subdue and domineer the earth. Much of the environmental squalor that the world faces today has been blamed on the regnancy of this attitude. I will be among the first to agree that Christian-Imperialist-Conqueror attitudes have shaped modern farming methods, and have caused ecological damage. But as a Christian who loves the land, I have harbored a deep distrust of the sufficiency of this simple explanation of the situation.

Allow me to digress from this distrust in order to explain why it pains me to see my fellow Christians despoiling the landscape on which I lived. Reading A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold was a galvanizing experience; it served to inflame and refine those passions that already existed within me. Leopold put words to my experience—the passing of the seasons, the interconnectedness of the species, the impact of humans on the land. While I grew up almost half a century after Leopold wrote his landmark work, my family’s trailer home was tucked in a small glade less than 75 miles away from the old farm that is the muse of Leopold’s tales. It is not hard to imagine myself hearing the same insistent call of the whip o’ will he often heard on that quiet farm. Our local landscape is graced with the quaint bouquet of manure from the cows grazing on our property, and after rains the erosion of the cornfields that fed these cows transformed the languid trout streams in which I played into liquid chocolate.

While I saw and experienced the same world that Leopold did, it was within his writing that I encountered the power of well-spoken wisdom that springs from observation. His words awoke a desire in me to live out the expectation that the land itself speaks to us, when we listen: be a part, not apart. He wrote of the land as a community of soils, water, plants and animals. His call represents an eloquent alert to the quiet tragedy of calling the land a commodity instead of a community. Where greed governs our earth-ethic, the land suffers, and – as part of the land – we suffer.

I discuss Leopold because I find myself in his footsteps: a boy who found himself growing up on a farm in Wisconsin; who found that he loved spending time in the woods; who found a passion for scientifically understanding the “complexity of the land organism” and the impact of humans on it; who found the common practices of his day unacceptable because they sought not the preservation of the land for future generations, but present-day profit. Leopold said that “no important change in ethics was ever accomplished without an internal change in our intellectual emphasis, loyalties, affections, and convictions. The proof that conservation has not yet touched these foundations of conduct lies in the fact that philosophy and religion have not yet heard of it.”

It is here that we return to my long-harbored distrust. Per Leopold’s proverb, my formative intellectual life did indeed suffer such amputation: I entertained no cognitive connection between fifth grade ecology lessons and the moral lessons I was learning in Sunday School at the small country church my family attended. Strip-cropping to save soil and salvation to save souls were never equated in my mind. In my church we prayed for rain during droughts and for comfort for farmers when milk prices dropped, but besides creating it, God’s connection to the land never went any further. And so I was left with dissatisfaction. My religion did not seem to hold any values that could substantially guide to how to live with the land.

Then I came to Swarthmore College. I began work with Earthlust, the environmental student group, and I noticed that friends with whom I worked were Jews, Hindus, Muslims, New Age folks, Atheists, and Christians. This contrasted the virtual Christian-or-not dichotomy of my corner of Wisconsin, and I started to witness how various religions might give birth to our values concerning how we live on the land. I started to become very curious about how one’s religion might inspire her to champion earth-causes.

This exploration became more formal when I enrolled in a class called “Religion, the Environment, and Contemplative Practice.” My professor laid the wager of this course: relieving ecological crisis is not a matter of the mind (we know what the problems are and how to solve them), but of the heart (we just do not care enough to change). In other words, the ecological crisis is a spiritual crisis. Our project became to plumb the religions of the world for their contribution to turning people’s hearts towards earth-care. In exploring Christianity, Judaism, Native American religions, Confucianism, Taoism, Shintoism, Buddhism, and New Age traditions such as Deep Ecology, we performed the rituals that these religions offered. These rituals became the crux of our study; they drew us into an intimate understanding of how these religions might inspire people’s moral actions.

I found the material on each religion fascinating, and wished throughout the course that we could go into more depth with each religion. As a conflicted Christian with a heart for the earth, I met the material on what my religion could bring to the eco-care table with extra eagerness. With fervor, I read authors who contended that the Christian God not only cares about the land, but that God actually imbues Godself’s own presence into the created material world. Thereby, the land becomes sacred; the soil becomes a site of the divine itself. Therefore, to have communion with the divine, one must have communion with the land. Here, care of the land becomes more than an option; loving God inevitably includes loving God’s creations.

What an epiphany for me! Woods that host my wanderings, creeks that cradle my canoe, fields I farm: these are sacred places. My spiritual suspicion, so long squelched, became real, internalized, and validated. It was not any sort of new addition to the religion that reworked my convictions. Instead, my faith was reinvigorated by authors and friends who founded their thoughts on traditions and texts from within the religion itself. It was not values bending my religion; it was my religion forming my values. That my two loves (land and God) might be organically fused in a seminal essentiality – what joy!

And so I thought: if the internal wealth of my religion – despite a sometimes sinister environmental history – can call me towards caring for the earth, can others also be so called? Could my Christian friends (particularly those who are farmers) find within the resources of the faith they already possess an inspiration for a new land-ethic? My own epiphanic experience suggested so. And if so, might this be a vital thread in the tapestry of turning our species towards sustainability? Might we come to value the preservation of the verdant spaces of this life-covered earth-crust for future children? With faith enlivened by this potent vision, one of my greatest joys is helping Christian friends to find earth-care inspiration within their own religion.

Now, I seek to travel abroad and witness how other religions inspire the values that guide how we commune with the land. I do not wish to intrude or to impress my beliefs, culture, or agriculture on others; I just want to experience this interplay of spirituality and land stewardship in the context of the religions and ecological issues of new places. My travel will be a real extension of my earlier desire to have more substantial encounters with other religions in that transformative course. This will increase my conception of how this process of finding values that govern one’s earth-action broadly works, and thereby enable me to more adeptly guide my Christian friends at home in the United States toward a healthy relationship with the land.

If you will recall, the perplexity of farming was the locus where earth-care and religion-born values first captured my attention. In some sense, it is precisely because I have been exploring this issue apart from the farm field that I long to go back. I really miss working with farmers. But though it has been more than three years since I have done a full day of farm work, I have been approaching agriculture from a new angle: biological research. The knowledge I have gained through this research has concretized my childhood conception that the farm represents humankind’s most intimate and influential interface with the land.

And now my most driving desire is to work within agricultures across the earth, and to unearth the values and religious rituals that farmers employ to frame their relationship with the land. I want agriculture to be the arena where I encounter persons in other fluxing societies wrestling with their religions to obtain a land-ethic. Developments in agriculture remain the foundation for fundamental change in entire societies, so I want to perceive how other religions engender values that push and pull farmers to act as land-lovers or world-wasters. Understanding this process for different places, people, and principles in will indubitably help me understand it for Christian farmers in the United States.

My greatest hope is to learn from others, not to teach them. So though I have spoken boldly about how my own religious beliefs motivate me to pursue this project, I realize that during my travels it will not always be beneficial for me to speak so explicitly about my spirituality. When it is appropriate and affirming I look forward to exchanging spiritual narratives with people. At other times, it will be best to observe and listen to others, withholding my own beliefs. In both cases, my hope is to become close enough to others to see the world from their perspective, and to thereby understand their religion and how it shapes their lives.

I am fortunate to have grown up experiencing the land as a community worth my love, and to have encountered people who farm differently and who have different values that may or may not be based in their religions. I am grateful for my opportunities to reinvigorate my convictions and to work to intellectually uncover how these differences might be intertwined. I am now eager to step onto foreign soils and encounter the confluence of faith and the farm mixing in new ways.

Project Proposal for Watson Fellowship

Abstract
I propose a project of farming with people of different religions in different regions of the world. I take great joy in farm work, and I seek an understanding of how people’s religious values affect the ways that they relate to the land. My itinerary includes the United Kingdom, Zambia, New Zealand, and Sri Lanka.

My Aims
I wonder what values farmers draw upon to make choices about how to relate to the land, especially in a world of dynamic technologies and demands. Further, what is the role of their religions in informing values that influence farming choices? My aim is not to acquire an academic knowledge of this process, but to gain understanding by befriending farmers who are making these choices. I enjoy farm work and the friendship that it fosters, so I plan to spend most of my time working beside farmers, following their lead, contributing to their cause, and learning how they employ their values to make daily farming decisions.

I also wish to learn about farmers’ religions in an experiential rather than a cerebral way. I seek to humbly and thankfully follow the lead of those farmers who will welcome me, and to join in their religious expressions. I do not seek to challenge or change the values of those with whom I work, I only seek to gain the experience of observing or participating in the religious rituals of farm families, and contemplating the interplay among the rituals, religious-born values, and the farm. In general, my approach to inquiry will be simply to form friendships as I farm with people. Fortune has granted me very close connections with the folks I work the fields with in Wisconsin; I hope that my hosts will also welcome me into their homes.

My Destinations
United Kingdom:
As an increasingly secular, industrialized nation, the United Kingdom may not seem like an intuitive choice for a sojourn focused around religion and agriculture. However, there are several very compelling reasons for my trail to pass through this place.
1) Organic food consumption. The UK ranks as one of the leading consumers of organic foods worldwide, which signifies that many people there are concerned with the origins of their food. Do these concerns arise from religious convictions? Is it a genuine concern for the state of the land and how it might provide for future generations or because of health concerns? Is it simply affluence? I hope to frequent grocery stores and food markets and talk to people and vendors about these attitudes.
2) Imported versus local food. Much of the organic food sold in the UK is imported, despite the existence of local producers. I am eager to meet and get to know some local organic farmers as I join them in the fields. I hope to learn about how they perceive their role in society, and what values motivate them to grow food organically. Are these values centered on a desire to treat the land well? Does this desire spring from any religious convictions, or is organic farming simply an attractive niche market for small producers?
3) Christian and Neo-Pagan inspired earth-ethics. There are multiple organizations devoted to practically linking church congregations with locally and sustainably produced food. Few organizations like this exist in the United States, so I am very excited to work with the people in these organizations and to learn from them. The UK is also a site of sizeable growth in pre-Christian religions such as Wicca, and there are interesting interactions with environmental movements such as Deep Ecology and eco-feminism. I will get to know followers of these spiritualities at Findhorn Ecovillage, an open community of Neo-Pagans that practice sustainable agriculture. I have also been in correspondence with Laura Deacon of Christian Ecology Link and Reverend Stephen Cope of the Rural Theology Association; they have said they can connect me with farmers.

Zambia:
Here is a land bursting with agricultural promise, trembling with the awakening of this promise, and yet struggling tragically with chronic poverty, periodic famine, and the devastation of AIDS. There are three main aspects of Zambia that beckon my inquisition.
1) The burgeoning organic foods market. Intriguingly, there are currently two main large organic exporters that hire much cheap labor. I have been in touch with York Farm, one of these exporters, concerning my hopes to work there. Why do the hired laborers work for wages on a large farm instead working their own small fields? How do they relate to land they do not own? Additionally, though organic farms are generally perceived as small and local, these large organic farms export most of what they produce to the UK. How do these operations compare with smaller farms in the area that supply food to local markets? How do the values towards the land differ among the workers and owners of these two types of farms?
2) Christianity and traditional ethnic religions. Christianity is the most prevalent religion, but roughly 15% of the population practices traditional religions. What are the differences in how each group values the land?
3) Attitudes toward genetically modified organisms (GMOs). In 2002, in the midst of famine, the Zambian government rejected aid from the USA because the aid package included large amounts of GMO corn. The government remains resolved against GMO intrusion due to the potential jeopardy to Zambia’s organic exports and due to hopes that organic farming operations, which contribute a sizable portion of Zambia’s agricultural exports, might remain outside the corporate clutches of US agribusiness. The resistance was led largely by Jesuits who have been training farmers in sustainable practices for decades. What are the motivations of the Jesuits? How do farmers view these policies, and how do their religions influence their attitudes towards GMOs in agriculture? I have contacted Jesuit priest Roland Lessups at the Kasisi Agricultural Training Centre with my hopes to spend time with farmers who have been trained there.

New Zealand:
Generally considered a Mecca of alternative agriculture, New Zealand contains 896 farms in the Willing Workers on Organic Farms program. Each of these farms welcome workers by exchanging room and board for labor, so it will be easy for me to find farms on which to work. My desire to travel in New Zealand stems from a long-held personal desire and from several specific reasons that concern my project.
1) Maori spiritual connections with the land. This intimacy with the land through indigenous nature-deities has been described as umbilical. The Maori have been forced into peasant agriculture instead of their historic hunter-gatherer lifestyle. How have they have applied the values of a religion from a hunter-gatherer society to their farming methods, especially since the New Zealand government has been eager to develop Maori lands in recent years?
2) Christianity in a very eco-aware society. I am curious to see whether Christianity operates as a source or a sink of land-loving values in such a society. Additionally, many farmers profess atheism or agnosticism, and I am looking forward to working with these folks and gaining some understanding of how they generate their values.

Sri Lanka:
Two central symbols of Singalese national identity are the rice paddy and the Buddhist temple. These symbols are fueled by a nationalist vision of pure, eternal, rural Buddhism, but are complicated by the fact that shrines to local deities surround Buddhist temples and other crops surround traditional rice paddies. This discrepancy between symbolism and reality is especially germane because of political tensions in Sri Lanka. I want to know how rice farmers live as a symbol in a culture that is rife with symbology.
1) Modern agricultural technologies and growing environmental problems. With a growing population that remains largely in poverty, there is much pressure on farmers to increase production through technology and by putting marginal lands into production, while specializing for export markets. How are rice paddy technologies such as fertilizers, insecticides, and modern seed varieties perceived? How do religious values affect these perceptions, and how do new technologies influence rituals that contain traditional farm wisdom and cultural identity? Is there a link between changes in religious rituals and environmental problems? I have been referred to the farmer G.K. Upawansa, who promotes traditional organic farming, and my exchange with him has been very exciting around these matters. Sandun Thudugala at the Movement for Land and Agricultural Reform has also assured me that they are able and happy to connect me with farmers.
2) Buddhism in a spiritually complex land where Christianity has had little influence. How do Buddhism and the abundant deities surrounding it in Sri Lanka shape the attitudes toward the land? What is the promise for a land-ethic in the annual religious harvest celebrations? What about in the wealth of sorcery, demons, spirits, local deities, auspiciousness, nature-divas, omens, and charms that compose the spiritual landscape? I am eager to learn from families navigating this landscape as they make farming choices.

This itinerary excites me to no end. The best part will surely be learning from friends made in the farm fields. Each country has different crops and livestock that I have not described in detail here, but I am very interested to learn. I am working on aligning my dates of travel to coincide with harvest season in each place. I plan to document my experiences with journaling and photography. Upon my return, I hope to draw heavily on my work in foreign farm fields to write a series of essays on global agricultural issues.

Skills and Challenges
I do not believe it will be a challenge to find farms at which to work. I have contacted organizations in each country that work with farmers, and I have found people that are helping me find farms. Additionally, I predict that farms will almost always take a friendly helping hand whom they do not have to pay. Language will not be a problem in the United Kingdom, Zambia, or New Zealand. In Sri Lanka, English is a common but not universal language; the director of the Murugan Bhakti (Living Heritage) Network assured me that there are farmers who speak English well and are happy to host foreigners who want to learn. Despite this, I plan to spend the greatest amount of time in Sri Lanka so as to learn some Sinhala, and because I want to spend the entire growing season there. The last main challenge that I can anticipate is that of general cultural assimilation. Though I have not lived in a foreign culture, I believe that I can adjust and look forward to the challenge. I travel alone often, and I am the sort of affable guy who strikes up conversations in airports. I am also an avid athlete and competent musician, so I am enthusiastic to get to know people across cultural barriers through these universal enjoyments. Most essentially, I love farm work, and I know I will connect with people in laboring with them.

The skills I have gained studying religion at Swarthmore will be essential to this project. My courses have provided the tools to interpret (not to categorize) the purposes, aims, and origins of diverse religions. It is vital that I be able shed preconceived notions and judgments so that I may fully experience and understand the generative power of religious rituals and principles to yield values that motivate farming practices. The Swarthmore Religion Department consistently studies each religion on its own terms, so I am well trained and personally committed to approaching each religion with humility and respect for the sincerity of expression that it embodies, without romanticizing, patronizing, or changing it.

Conclusion
The chance to dive into the dirt with farmers across the globe, to engage in soulful expressions with these farmers, and to intimately encounter the kind of kinship that perhaps only the farm field can foster: this is my dream. Why do all this? First, I am fulfilled in farming. More broadly, my very personal goal is to help Christians see how their religion might lead them towards earth-care. I believe that if I can understand how other religions inspire values that chart earth-ethics, I can help Christians grow ethically earthwards. Given its inestimable influence in this nation, it is imperative that Christianity contribute to sparking change, especially in practicing sustainable farming. These are knotty issues with no simple solution, but if our society is to positively change, our religions must play a key part in renovating our values. Realizing my dream – to live with farmers in their fields and faiths – will enable me to be a part of this imperative process.