Wild Roots 

            Jon Turner kneels down to collect a mushroom from the ground at his feet, and brings it up to his nose to smell it—slowly, eyes closed—and then he holds it out to me so I can do the same. I’m not sure what I should be smelling for, but I would be lying if I said the soil clinging to it didn’t smell good. Like fresh earth. A field in late summer. Rogue childhood dirt angels in the family garden plot. 

            Jon starts peeling the base of the mushroom apart, explaining how it has begun to break down the woodchips that it engulfed underground. It contributes to soil health by breaking down organic material, which in turn allows nutrients to become available to plants more quickly. While mushrooms may appear to some as obnoxious alien growths that disrupt a pristine lawn, Jon sees them differently because he recognizes the important role they play in the soil biome on his farm. Jon breaks the mushroom into four pieces and walks to a line of peach trees, placing one piece under each tree.

            Jon’s farm is named Wild Roots, and is situated on a small hill on the outskirts of Bristol, Vermont. A few pine trees tower above a large hoop house, and tire swings are looped to their lower branches. There is a patch of grass and a garden plot next to the trees, and then a hill rises steeply, a faint path zigzagging to the top. The rest of the farm is out of sight over the crest of the hill, but comes into view through the trees as you reach the top of the driveway. There a rusting red pickup truck is parked next to a small enclosure where chickens and geese live together, squawking loudly as they weave their way through shrubs and flowers. A bunny munches on grass beneath a hammock, and five goats happily graze on shrubs and brambles in their enclosure. A yurt is situated in the middle of miscellaneous trees and garden plots, and a line of laundry hangs behind it. Where the hill begins to slope downwards, there are three distinct lines of cultivated plants where assorted trees, flowers and bushes grow amongst one another. Behind them is an insect corridor– two lines of smaller plants that border a shallow gully, providing habitat for various insects. A lone looming solar panel stretches upwards next to a row of tomatoes. 

            Despite covering only ten acres, the farm produces enough food for Jon to feed himself and his family, and there is even enough extra for them to sell and give away to other members of the community. Species of trees, nuts, fruits, and berries make up much of what he grows, but Jon says he also rotates various animals through the farm when he sees a way for them to benefit the greater system. As we stand beside the peach trees, Jon examining the mushroom in his hands, I ask him about the five goats hard at work in the confines of a ring of adjustable fencing. His eyes light up – he explains that the goats are a new addition to the farm as of this year, and are completely altering the landscape by eating poisonous plants and clearing out brush. Ultimately they are able to accomplish things on the landscape that Jon cannot, simply due to his lack of being a goat. Jon celebrates the fact that he can rely on other creatures to accomplish things on his farm that he would be less effective at. As he stretches his hand out to nudge one of the goats, he says, “having the goats and chickens go through, and watching how the land regenerates and kind of balances itself out is an incredible feeling, and I can’t not look at it every day and be entirely at awe.” 

            Jon is small in stature, but large in personality. His blonde hair peaks out from beneath a faded baseball cap, smile lines are ever-present around his eyes, and tattoos curve and weave together on his arms and legs. He is incredibly thoughtful and wise, but he gruffly throws swear words into the breeze like a sailor as we walk through the farm together. He is a young dad, war vet, humble farmer, yurt-dweller, and a passionate community-builder. The simplest question can lead to an outpouring of knowledge so impressive that you wish you could just make his brain into a book. His knowledge extends from abstract ideas about how the human-nature relationship should be conceptualized to nitty-gritty understandings of how individual plants on his farm interact with one another. When he describes how grass reacts differently to being cut with the teeth of a ruminant (like a cow or goat) than with a metal blade, he laughs and shakes his head, muttering “fucking insane,” before getting distracted by a perfectly ripe tomato and moving on to a new topic of conversation. 

            Jon tells me that he and his wife sort of stumbled into the whole “farming thing.” A decade ago, they decided to try keeping a small 10 foot by 15 foot garden plot. One afternoon, he set out to make some raised beds, and still remembers clearly the moment when he took off his shoes and put his feet in the soil. In that instant, he says, something clicked for him, and he was hooked. During that time, Jon was readjusting to civilian life after returning from being in the military – a transition that proved to be very difficult. But through it all, he was able to feel a sense of purpose and simple happiness in the garden, and it took on a spiritual dimension for him. Years later, he found out that there are bacteria in healthy soil that, when absorbed through your pores, trigger a release of serotonin. Scientifically, then, it makes sense that working in the garden proved to be such a positive element in his life. All he really needed to know back then, though, was that it felt good to work in the soil, and for the decade since he’s kept at it. 

            I first met Jon during my freshman year of college. My Natural Science class had been learning about soil and cover crops, and on a Friday morning in early October we took a field trip to Wild Roots. We sat under a pair of mountain ash trees, glowing yellow in their autumnal prime, as Jon stood before us, waxing poetic about the relationships his plants have with one another and the importance of knowing and listening to the land. In the three years since, that day has lingered in the back of my mind, influencing how I think about farming and humans and the land around me. 

            Then, three months ago, a friend mentioned that she was going to start working on the farm a few days a week, and she asked me to come out to meet Jon with her while he showed her around the farm. I agreed, and we made our way out on a hot August evening. Jon introduced us to the goats, and invited us to pick as many cherry tomatoes as we could fit in our pockets to bring home. During the hour that we spent talking and walking with Jon, I realized how drawn I felt to the farm, and have been joining Jon to help out for a few mornings each week ever since. 

            As we sat on a few logs together one morning in early October, dogs at our feet and late morning sun warming the chilled fall air, Jon told me about a memory that has stuck with him for almost three decades. He was in the car with his uncle, returning from a camping trip, and they passed large swaths of land that had been clear-cut for housing developments. After observing the devastation for a few moments, his uncle very abruptly and angrily remarked that sooner or later humans wouldn’t be here anymore because all the trees would be gone. 

            On Jon’s farm, trees are abundant. Forest lines his property on each side, and the functioning of the farm is dependent upon the nearby forest ecosystem. The forest is a source of pollinator populations, hyper-local temperature regulation, biodiversity, and predator and prey populations that are necessary to the local food web. In addition to the forest that surrounds his property, Jon has planted individual trees throughout the farm with intent. Peach, apple, and plum trees are scattered among the beds, while hickory, walnut and pecan trees can be found along the edges of the farm. In addition, there are a variety of other trees, which, upon first glance, may not look to be of any particular value, but in reality provide important services to the plants and animals around them. For example, black locusts are one of Jon’s favorite trees on the property, even though many consider them to be invasive because of the speed with which they grow. Black locusts fix nitrogen in the soil, making it available for other organisms to use, and they grow quickly, creating shade and shelter for the goats. The leaves are exceptionally nutritious, and the wood is rot resistant. The trees also create small microclimates around them and are an important source of forage for various animals. “Plus we can eat the flowers!” Jon says with a smile. 

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            Our task today is trimming branches off of the black locust trees and organizing them into broad lines across the hillside. Trimming the trees accelerates their growth, and the wood that we place on the ground will break down, adding nutrients to the soil. The visible effects of this practice are obvious, too: where Jon has laid the wood in the past, there are now straight lines of taller grasses interspersed with a diverse array of flowers and small spiny shrubs. Sometimes Jon situates the goat pen around one of these lines, and the goats shoot right for it like it is a buffet. 

            Over the course of the past few millennia, humans have become increasingly dependent on farming methods that favor annual crops instead of perennials. Perennials do not die yearly, but rather remain living for long periods of time, which means that they do not need to be replanted each year, and thus do not require frequent plowing or herbicide application. As a result, soil integrity is better maintained with perennials than with annuals. The biotic communities within the soil are left to grow and strengthen, the water holding capacity is increased, and the physical structure is stronger and more resilient. Where annuals are plantedand soils are plowed, soil carbon is lost and released into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide, soil erosion and nutrient leakage are more common, and the biological communities in the soil tend to be less diverse.  We seem to have come to believe that agriculture that is principally reliant on annual crops is the only type of agriculture that suits our current social and economic systems. In fact, though, the use of annual crops combined with the industrialization of agriculture undermine the resilience of the ecosystems that all life depends upon. 

            On Jon’s farm, the prosperity of the land is a top priority. He favors plants that fix nitrogen, deter pests, and bring in predatory bugs that will eat remaining pests. He also describes the functionality of trees that accumulate nutrients by sending deep tap roots into the earth and bringing those nutrients into the foliage, which eventually drop to the ground and fertilize and enrich the upper layers of soil. Rather than attempting to simplify the complexity of these systems, Jon relies on it. 

            Essentially, Jon’s farm is a cultivated forest – and he sees it as such. He notes that through his time on the farm, he has developed a system that is allowed to be interdependent, and that characteristic increases its resilience and overall health. Because of this, the land will continue to reap the benefit – he says that even after he is gone and has returned to the soil himself, the impacts of his cultivation should be long long-lasting and positive, and he hopes his actions will support many lives beyond his own. When compared with the effects of industrial agriculture, Jon’s farm is remarkable in its potential for restoration. 

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            One morning a few weeks later as I arrive on the farm, the usual calm is interrupted by the sound of Tchaikovsky’s piano concerto no. 1, which swells through the air as I walk down Jon’s driveway. I nod a quick hello to the chickens as I pass, and catch the blur of the family’s pet bunny being chased by Jon’s new puppy, Wilson. As I round a giant bush and approach the gardens, I discover the source of the surging concerto: it is blasting from Jon’s pickup truck, all of the doors flung open to optimize the acoustics. The back of the pickup truck is filled with manure and Jon is standing in the middle, launching it into a pile on the ground one shovel-full at a time. 

            As much as I hate to interrupt the seemingly meditative state I have found him in, I clear my throat to alert him to my presence. He turns and nods hello, tosses one more shovel full into the pile, and then jumps from the truck, landing with a thud. “Today is garlic day,” he says with a grin. A pause – “shut that shit off, would you?” he says, referring, of course, to the concerto still blaring from the truck, and then turns and sets out towards the beds.  

            We sift through a fourteen-pound bucket of garlic cloves, searching for the largest ones. This garlic is from last year’s crop and has been dried, each clove ready now to return to the soil and create new life: doubling, tripling, quadrupling underground in the turn of a season. The farm is quieter today – Jon has just given away his geese to a neighbor down the road. Now there’s no sound of the two of them yelling at one another intermittently, almost like an old married couple. Nevertheless, the sounds of life surround us. The early morning hum of insects and the soft melody of birdsong provide a soundtrack for our garlic planting. 

             Even as we kneel in the beds, digging our hands into the dark earth, it is easy to forget about the sheer amount of time that has gone into the formation of this soil. It is easy to fail to consider the slow seasons that have made up millennia, in which the sun rose, the rain fell, and plants and animals lived and died together – all contributing to a larger functioning system. 

            Soil formation is a long and slow process, and the soils that we work in now are ancient artifacts of the glacial epoch of this region. Twenty-three thousand years ago, an ice sheet that covered Vermont retreated northward as quickly as a few meters per day, and as the ice moved, it scratched the rock below. Throughout much of Vermont, the soil that formed in the wake of this glacial movement is loamy and well-drained. The perfect soil for growing garlic. 

            Today we are planting in the beds that we prepared last week. Jon refuses to till the earth, instead opting for the slower, more strenuous method of using a broadfork to aerate the beds. A broadfork is a wide tool: two long handles extend up from a horizontal crossbar, which connects them, and below the crossbar, eight six-inch-long metal spokes jut out. Jon takes hold of the two handles, driving the broadfork into the earth, and then jumps onto the crossbar with both feet to dig it deep into the soil. As he shifts his weight backwards, the spokes heave a chunk of soil up and out of the ground. But then, as the broadfork is removed, the soil is returned—still intact—to where it came from, now with a little more air in the mix. As aggressive as this process may sound, the broadfork is a unique method because it only mildly disrupts the soil in order to prevent compaction, maintaining the structural integrity and biotic communities that exist within. 

            The full process of bed preparation is long and arduous: in addition to broadforking, we haul wheelbarrow loads of compost and manure from the other side of the farm to the beds, mixing them together in the beds with our hands, and then spread hay overtop for good measure. This process is a new one that Jon is adopting, and despite the taxing physical labor at the outset, he knows it is worth it as it will pay off in long-term soil health. 

            The air is cool and crisp with fall, but the sun is warm on our backs as we work in the beds, burying the cloves in the soft soil. Steam rises from the beds in the morning sun, and it feels almost like a sacred act to be planting in the midst of these wisps of cloud quickly rising from the earth. Once the garlic cloves have been planted in a neat checkerboard pattern, Jon runs his hands lightly over the soil, smoothing it out. “This is my favorite,” he says, referring to the feeling of dirt beneath palm. 

            We sit on the steps of the yurt together after a long morning of hauling, broadforking, and planting. We have been bent over for too long, and now we stretch backwards on the steps, reveling in the feeling of loosening back muscles. The sky is blue, and clouds wisp across it. The geese haven’t started forming their V’s yet, but I know they will soon. The transition from summer to fall has begun. You can smell it in the air. 

            I ask Jon about his method for rotating crops and pushes himself up from the steps, disappearing inside and returning with a book, slips of paper sticking haphazardly from its edges. He returns to his spot next to me and opens the book to the middle, where a few faded loose-leaf pages are nestled. It is somehow shocking to me that Jon’s extensive knowledge –his careful approach, his entire methodology spanning multiple years—is compiled on these two worn pieces of paper falling out of the pages of a book. He traces the sloppy diagram on the paper with a mud-caked finger, explaining that later in the season peas will be planted, which will benefit from the tendency of the garlic to repel pests. Additionally, as legumes, the peas will fix nitrogen in the soil. Following the peas, Jon will plant potatoes, which will benefit greatly from the added nitrogen. This rotation of plants is something that Jon is continuously tweaking, trying to find ways to better benefit the plants as well as the soil. 

            Jon’s methodology approach a farming technique used on this soil in this same area for hundreds of years called ‘The Three Sisters,’ where corn, beans, and squash are planted together. The corn offers the beans support, the beans pull nitrogen from the air and bring it to the soil for the benefit of all three, and the large leaves of the squash protect the three by shading the soil, keeping it cool and moist, and preventing weeds. This method was used by Native Americans, but became less prevalent in the wake of an influx of settlers, who brought disease and violence, as well as entirely different ideas about farming and the correct way to deal with the natural world. With the influx of settlers came widespread deforestation of Vermont in order to create space for sheep to graze and for the formation of large, monoculture fields. These practices have been the source of widespread ecological damage, and the impacts of monoculture fields and industrial agriculture certainly continue to be felt throughout Vermont. But now, on his own small plot, Jon hopes to return to wisdom used by native people as part of his greater philosophy of resilience and interdependence. 

            Just as the land witnessed the violence of settlement, colonization, deforestation, and industrial farming, Jon too has experienced violence. He was deployed to Iraq twice, and was awarded a Purple Heart after sustaining a shrapnel wound. Since he began farming, he has been able to nurture the land, and has felt nurtured by it in return. He came to realize that the land could aid and benefit him in ways he had never realized. When I ask Jon about what he gains spiritually or emotionally from his relationship with the land, he gazes into the distance. “I don’t know if this is too crunchy-hippie or whatnot, but…” He pauses and considers his words. “I feel like the environment that I choose to tend cradles me in times when humanity cannot.” 

            As I watch Jon lower himself to his knees and begin to mix the compost and manure together in the beds with his bare hands, I get the sense that this land is lucky to have him the same way a puppy in a pet store is lucky to be picked by a particularly loving child. It is not a common thing to see a human treating land fully as his equal. He states, in an almost pleading voice, that this type of farming is possible on larger scales that industrial agriculture is not the only option for feeding a growing world population, no matter what we’ve been told. As the climate changes, farming techniques that are gentler on the land, less dependent on fossil fuels, and conducive to ecosystem resiliency will be of the utmost importance.

            We stand in the patchy shade of Jon’s half-built goat shed, taking a break from moving logs into the sun to dry out, and morning sunlight streams through the open slats of the roof above us. Jon sips his tea from a jar, and I ask him what he hopes his kids might gain from living on the farm and witnessing his unique approach to interacting with the land. He peers out of the side of the shed for a moment, surveying the small plot of land that he has poured so much of himself into. 

            Finally he says, “I don’t expect my kids to be farmers or homesteaders when they grow up, but I expect them to have an understanding of what it takes to put a meal before them, and to be thankful for the process that put that meal before them.” He pauses and looks to the dirt beneath our feet. “Everything from the soil microbes to the farmer that harvested and washed and cleaned and packed…it teaches them that we are here because of the landscape that surrounds us. The landscape is always going to be here, and it will regenerate over time, and that’s resilience…that’s I want them to understand and appreciate: what it means to be resilient.”

            Jon’s approach to farming embodies the values of humility, respect, and wonder. Jon talks about the importance of knowing the land. He speaks of it as if it has personhood – it changes, and he tries to take note, keep up, and adapt to the shifts. The changes in the landscape are inevitable. It is his job to listen, observe, and respond. Rather than trying to figure how to get what he wants from the land, Jon flips that approach on its head and considers what it is the land wants and needs, understanding that in the long run such an approach is in everyone’s best interest. Jon’s child-like and wonder-filled perspective is invaluable, and he believes that farmers and non-farmers alike could benefit most from adopting a more observant attitude. “There’s nothing wrong with being quiet and being observant, but we have to allow ourselves to be that way.”

A dragonfly lands next to me. I wonder – in what small and magnificent way has it contributed to the farm today?