Month: June 2014

I want to diverge from the blog prompt. In the Q&A after Eric Holt-Gimenez’s talk at the UVM Food Summit, he mentioned the importance of confronting sexism and racism implicit in the environmental movement, and especially the food movement. This comment was one of two during the day that earned immediate applause from the audience (the other being a proposal that higher education should be free). I want to use this as a jumping-off point to bring up an issue that is inextricable from food studies, feminism, mental health advocacy, and youth empowerment: eating disorders.

If we’re going to talk about food, we have to talk really seriously about the fact that some people have deeply uncomfortable and unhealthy (and unsustainable – for their bodies) relationships to food. According to the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders:

• 24 million Americans have an eating disorder. That’s around 7% of the general population.
• Only 10% of those with EDs seek treatment. Men are less likely than women to seek treatment. This is likely because it is seen as a feminine, and therefore less serious, problem that they should just be able to deal with on their own.
• 95% of those with EDs are between the age of 12 and 25.
• EDs have the highest mortality rate of any mental disorder.

And this one feels very relevant to my work this summer:

• Over 80% of 10-year-old girls are “afraid of being fat.”

My job includes working with kids, most of whom are in elementary school, and many of whom are girls. Just this morning, I weeded a garden with the help of two girls who are about to enter middle school. They have an unbelievable amount of pressure put on them to look and act in certain ways, at all times, from all angles. (Welcome to womanhood!) The wording of the phrase above really gets me – girls are afraid of being fat. This fear carries over to eating almost immediately. How can we hope to instill in anyone a love for growing and preparing and eating and loving food if they fear it?

All social issues are intertwined. We must, must, must confront sexism (not to mention the stigma surrounding mental health) if we are to get kids to love gardening and cooking. Girls can’t think it’ll make them fat (code for unattractive), and boys can’t think it’s girly (code for bad). But it goes so much deeper than that – girls shouldn’t think that being unattractive is a social death sentence, and boys shouldn’t think that the effeminate is inherently icky or unworthy of their attention. Thus: feminism. Boom.

If you’re interested in reading up more on EDs, check out the link above, in addition to the National Eating Disorders Association, National Institute of Mental Health, and Mayo Clinic’s page on the issue. For more on feminism, read bell hooks, Judith Butler, Audre Lorde, Eve Ensler… but most of all, keep your eyes open and be thoughtful and critical and respectful and for the love of god don’t tell a young girl not to eat too much at dinner.

I vividly remember going to a family reunion lunch when I was in seventh grade and sitting down next to a cluster of women and men wearing traditionally Mennonite dress.  My dad had explained that the Mennonite family present farmed an area of land that belonged to a member of our distant family– I think they tended several traditional crops and raised cows.  I had always been interested in farms and farming, and had recently begun investigating possible apprenticeship opportunities; I sat by the Mennonite family with the hopes, I suppose, of overhearing or engaging in a discussion of their farming history.  Instead, a vague relation turned to me and asked what I wanted to do with my life.  I replied that I had been thinking a lot lately about farming, and that I thought that work would be rewarding.  The cousin responded loudly, “why on EARTH would you want to be a farmer?”  The Mennonite family was silent.  I was mortified.  The cousin reminded me that my great-grandfather had farmed so that his kids wouldn’t have to.  I scrambled to defend myself, without much eloquence or success.  Retrospectively, I guess I’ve been trying to form a convincing defense ever since– whether I end up working a sheep and wool farm or merely tending to my own basil, I know that growing or raising living things will play a part in my future.

Berry writes that the Amish “esteem farming as both a practical art and spiritual discipline.”  I realize that what bothered me most viscerally about my cousin’s reaction at that lunch was not that she dismissed my interests as inadequate, or that she spoke in a way I thought was inconsiderate– it was that she did not esteem the work– practice, art, discipline —of farming that I felt (and still feel) deserves a kind of reverence and thanks.  I believe so viscerally in the potential of farm work– participating in the exchange of nurturing for nourishment–  to serve an artistic and spiritual function.  In my internship this summer, I have the opportunity to speak with 9, 10, and 11-year olds about the importance of the work f0od-growers and -raisers do.  Berry’s words will definitely guide my discussions; I guess I hope to help these kids come to the conclusion that farm work can be worthy of high esteem– awe– and to broaden my own understanding of that work.

Until 1959, Middlebury offered a major in Home Economics. Wendell Berry would be both pleased and amused, I think, by this title – for as he says in a different essay, the word economics  itself alludes to the home: the root is oikisteis, Greek for “household” thus making the name of the discipline rather redundant. Should not the economy be small enough that the proper running of a household should infer the proper running of the larger system? He would appreciate that students learned important skills, like “dietics” “nutrition” “sewing” but would perhaps wrinkle his nose when he saw that the senior seminar involved living in a mock house and practicing table setting.

Middlebury once offered this major, but does no longer, not on grounds of sexism (when Middlebury takes action on the grounds of sexism, and not capitalism, I will eat my hat) but on utility; the home economics major was considered too practical and therefore not proper for a liberal arts institution. It was phased out at the same time as the teacher training programs.

What am I getting at? That there is a fundamental difference between the way that Wendell Berry looked at the domestic role and the way our college did way back when. Our college saw it as practical, and Wendell Berry saw it as practical and therefore soul-nourishing. Practical, and through the practicality, spiritual. While he saw the two hand in hand, Middlebury tends to see anything that is practical as something that should not be taught, because the liberal arts is intended to cultivate the mind, not the land. In this sense, I believe that Middlebury defines the purpose of the liberal arts education in a way that runs parallel to Leo Strauss, in his essay, “Liberal Education and Mass Democracy.” In this essay, Strauss notes that the liberal arts is a study in culture, with the final product being a cultured human being. Culture is created, and as such the liberal arts is a metaphor based off of and understanding of Berry’s agriculture: the cultivation of “the soil and its products” which will necessarily involve maintaining and improving. The mind, too, needs to be cultivated with similarl ends in mind, but Strauss claims that cultivators of the mind are not as easy to come by as good farmers (although to this, I think, Berry would insert statistics of the decline of “the good farmer of the old school”).

These cultivators of the mind are teachers, but these teachers, too, are in turn students. Before Strauss gets pulled into a system of infinite regress, he mentions that there are also First Teachers – these are the minds that not also belong to pupils but are the greatest minds and live in the pages of books: the great books.

These books are supposed to teach us lucky few liberal arts students how to live. The great books will grant us access to culture, they will show us not just why, but what a virtuous life looks like. With this knowledge will come responsibility, and etcetera etcetera we will become leaders and light the way for the masses out of the cave of materialism and into the light of correct opinion etcetera.

What I am trying to say is that Wendell Berry and Leo Strauss start in similar points, they start with culture, and end in radically different places. Each thinks he has found an ideology that the lucky few should cling to, whether that is via farming or reading.

Middlebury seems to agree with Strauss over Berry, as we read books, not soil. And while this may be the best route to the ethical flourishing of the soul, for all of those masses trapped in that cave, I consider the way of agriculture to be a noble and heroic way forward. I don’t think I got to the best ending, I would appreciate dialogue – after all, I am most certainly a beginning pupil myself.

“They esteem farming as both a practical art and a spiritual discipline”

On a NOLS Semester in the Rockies, I found myself surrounded by the most picturesque scenery I’d ever seen. The thing was, it was aesthetically overwhelming. It sounds strange to say, but there almost a surplus of beauty—the grass was too green, the alpine lakes too aquamarine, everything flawless and therefore somehow false to my eyes. Maybe it’s not so different from industrial agriculture’s overabundant and unnaturally “perfect” crops. In retrospect, it’s also surprising to realize that the most poignant moments that I experienced in the Western wilds happened to me in the desert, a place that we often see as barren and lifeless. Yet I was intensely moved by the desert, and not alone in this sentiment—Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s famous protagonist agrees in The Little Prince: “I have always loved the desert. One sits down on a desert sand dune, sees nothing, hears nothing. Yet through the silence something throbs, and gleams…” What I took away from my short time in canyon country was the reassurance that there’s no single “right” interpretation of Eden. It doesn’t have to mean some far-removed and incredibly lush Garden. Somehow, I had fallen for a place that might be considered classically “ugly” with its spiny cacti, thick-skinned creatures, and endless (arid) soil. This is why I think farming’s emphasis on the soil beneath our feet is so important—it forces us to locate our small selves in a single place within the context of the larger world. Ultimately, it makes us appreciate even the smallest signs of life as evidence of beauty. My backcountry adventures impressed upon me the old saying that sometimes, less is more…meaning that farmers can be just as spiritual through the simplicity of soil as someone who grapples with the complexity of organized religion.

Although the spiritual often has “lofty” associations because we tend to think of the afterlife as located above, I’m becoming more convinced that spirituality is strongest when it grounds us. Is so-called “soul-searching” an oxymoron if what we search for—some hidden aspect of our identity­—has been intrinsic to us all along? Spirituality should not be a journey that draws us further away from ourselves towards an anticipated and distant end, but rather brings us closer to home in the here and now. I think it could be said that our spirituality ultimately lies in the soil that cultivates our personal growth as much as any plant. Wendell Berry’s praise of the Amish ability to “esteem farming as both a practical art and a spiritual discipline” rings true to me, though I’m neither Amish nor religious in the traditional sense. Some might accuse Berry of romanticism, but I agree with his belief that the intimacy of family farming is a kind of spirituality. The small-scale farmer has a self-awareness that modern agribusiness lacks, simply because the latter is mechanized. Machines may shorten the tedium of repetitive tasks that “inefficient” manual labor prolongs, but ironically, I think there is meditation in the monotony of working with one’s hands. When you think about it, just as a churchgoer folds his hands in prayer, the farmer “supplicates” to the soil. Farm rituals are religious rites. The farmer performs each daily chore as an act of faith that the soil will reward diligence with the miracle of metamorphosis, the moment when small, vulnerable seeds sprout and flourish.

At some level, there seem to be uncanny similarities between “conventional,” churchgoing religion and conventional, modern agriculture. It could be argued that both are “institutionalized” in the sense that they adhere to a set of standards, whether it’s observance of the Sabbath or a certain production quota (in contrast, subsistence-based family farms are less likely to resort to rigid numbers-crunching). Corporate agriculture calls for the consolidation and aggregation of resources, time, and personnel. Conventional religion congregates people and “preaches to the “choir.” In a literal sense, farmers do not fit the “pure” standards of religion. They do “dirty work” in every sense. Their thankless, tedious tasks are unromantic, but make them the backbone of America. What’s more, they engage in labor that others are reluctant to undertake. Yet society shows a double standard because it doesn’t glorify farmers like it does soldiers (for instance), both of whom make significant sacrifices for the greater good.

The point that I mean to make from drawing these parallels is that we’ve become too narrow in our belief system, be it theistic or agricultural. What constitutes official “religion” and what we might call “official” farming—the grossly over-productive operations valued over small farms because they enhance America’s overall economic prosperity, rather than enable only a single family’s survival—are more stringently defined than ever before. Somewhere along the way, we’ve allowed a puzzling hypocrisy to evolve. Here in America, where individualism is supposed to be sacrosanct, the farmers who still sow, till, plow, and harvest by hand are somehow seen as “behind the times,” maybe even “backwards,” even though their direct connection to the soil instills them with a unique knowledge of nature (the terroir of their farm) and awareness of their individual identity in relation to the land. It seems that we’ve stigmatized spirituality as a selfish pursuit, a claim that the subsistence farmer “substantiates” when he produces only for himself. But that’s so utterly untrue when we think about the ethics of smaller, more sustainable farming and its invisible implications. We fail to account for this type of farming’s close ties to wildlife, ecosystems, and neighbors, all of which benefit in ways that may not be monetary, but are most definitely holistic, eco-friendly, and enduring. The relationship between neighbors who have mutual respect for each other’s farming practices epitomizes the priceless social capital of small agriculture, something that can’t be quantified—at least in how agribusiness measures success. So in fact, the spirituality of the small farmer is selfless. Maybe it’s time to rethink the symbolic hierarchy of life, so that we start to see soil just as “heavenly” or “high” as the sky.

During the school year at Middlebury, I have felt considerably estranged from the kitchen. I’ve lived in Ross for about 2 years now and haven’t really made any effort to cook my own food. It’s difficult to muster up that motivation when you’re exhausted and there’s a dining hall a few feet away. I’m not the best cook and so I considered having others cook for me a blessing. But for the first week and a half of Foodworks, in which we had to feed ourselves (dining halls weren’t open), I came face to face with the fact that I have no idea how to cook. I lived mainly off of omelets, cereal, and pasta for that week. I survived, but feared for the time I would graduate and have to cook for myself for an extended period of time. It opened my eyes to the fact that the art of cooking is something I desperately need to get in touch with, if only just to provide myself with a balanced diet.

During that week, I also had to go into town to get food. I became very familiar with the coop, the farmers market, the meat shack, etc. Before the summer, I had never stepped foot into the meat shack (I didn’t even know it existed) and I realized that finding your food is an event in which you get to explore your community a little bit more and become closer to it. I’ve found myself getting stuck on campus during the school year, as it really provides all I need. But being forced to step out into town has given me a whole new perspective on the Middlebury community. The college’s farm sells some products to Otter Creek Bakery and there’s a satisfaction I’ve found from interacting with and participating in the community. While staying put in the Middlebury bubble is entirely my own fault, I think the school’s rigorous academics and the demanding rehearsal schedule for the theater faculty shows I’ve been involved with have encouraged that estrangement. It’s difficult during the school year to find time to food shop and cook for myself. I know I need to learn how to cook, and I hope to tackle that this summer, but I also need to find a way to continue during the school year.

So over Feb Break this past winter I went on a MALT trip down to this urban farm in a dilapidated New Orleans neighborhood with some friends. The owner of the farm was this 40-something year old opinionated guy who did not have health insurance or car insurance or a stable food or income supply but who felt very real compared to most people I meet. Anyways, he said a lot of things over the course of the week, mostly rants against the education system and the food system and national/local governments. The one thing he said that stays with me 4 months later is this: “We have to somehow convince thousands of bright college seniors (like ourselves) to open up farms after graduation instead of going into Wall Street or non-profits or wherever else people take jobs nowadays.”

Reading Berry’s Amish principles and defense of family farms, I cannot help think back to this man’s comment. It is tempting to extoll the benefits of life as a small agriculturalist and living healthily for both the natural environment and the people living in it. But choosing farming means very specifically not choosing other life paths. For me, and millions of college students like me, these other life paths have been ground into us from pre-school: “Do well in school so that you can go to a good college and get a good job and provide security for your family and don’t forget to be a good person.” Farming does not provide a predictable paycheck. Farming is not glamorous or sexy (according to many Americans). How do we convince graduating seniors to to pick it up as a lifestyle? Even if they all read Wendell Berry, they will not be convinced because they do not want to be convinced. Presenting these graduates with the logic of the family farm will do nothing. It is like any other social movement: the image of farming must been changed so that people will be more receptive to it. How to do this I haven’t a clue.

My family is descendant from the German Amish immigrants who fled to Pennsylvania where they, in a turn of events that Berry would find shameful, went from traditional farmers to candy makers. Somehow, my mother’s family ended up in Minnesota before settling in New Hampshire but even that didn’t last; my mother and I moved four times before settling back in New Hampshire only to up and go again, finally settling in Vermont, where we have lived for the last 14 years. I still can’t seem to settle. Even after attending college in my home state, it wasn’t until I traveled all the way to Kentucky that I become active in an agricultural/food community in more than just a passing way, which embarrasses me more than I expected.

Most of my work in Louisville brings me to Henry County, about an hour outside of Louisville. During my hour long commute, my co-worker Katie often tells me tales of her rural Kentucky upbringing, pointing out ways that the landscape has changed, what businesses have thrived and which have been bought out to make way for commercial sprawl. She prides herself on her decision to settle close to home in an effort to revitalize home through vegetable and meat processing plants that could bring food locals as well as the one restaurant in New Castle, Kentucky. The projected crown jewel on the town will be a single high end restaurant, offering a change of pace from “Starvin’ Marvin’s” the southern comfort diner that we often grab lunch and sweet tea from.

In high school, I took a two week course on local foods, and my Middlebury OINK trip focused on organic farming. Beyond that, I know Vermont through the eyes of a consumer or, at best, a back yard gardener. My family eats local meat and I push for more farmer’s market produce and fairy when I am home, but at Middlebury, I lose most of this convicaiton and settle for whatever is in the dining hall, not wanting to shell out the money at the co-op. In Vermont, ocal food is a luxury. Berry’s essay on Amish communities along with the discussion we had this week in our video-conference and during our fifth day led me to question the role of enjoyment in one’s life, both in regard to lifestyle preferences as well as to relationships with food and agriculture. As many of us in Louisville experience the reality of working a 9-5 job under the harsh Kentucky sun, myself included, I can’t help but think this experience will lead us to appreciate the work that farmers do but that many will not be interested in toiling away like this day in and day out. And as we look to notions of progress, how do we reconcile our desire to improve agriculture on a broad scale with the idea of personal enjoyment? As I find myself carving a niche in Kentucky, do I abandon it to revitalize my own drug-addled, economically unstable hometown? To do so would surely be seen as a failure to many in my community- didn’t I go to Middlebury so I could get away from a place like Rutland? Do I aim to return to Louisville, the only place I having food knowledge of beyond that of a consumer?

This all leads me to the Amish principle saying that members should “have educated their children to live at home and serve their communities.” I would not say that my family isn’t active in the community; on the contrary. The longer that we’ve lived in Vermont, the more we’ve moved towards local businesses, beginning a small one of our own. My parents often volunteer for school events and I substitute teach when possible in local school systems. But food was never the focus, and who is to blame for this? Did we lose sight of our Amish roots in favor of enjoyment, of the thrill of the next move, of the bigger house? Do I blame my parents for failing to teach me the importance of serving the local earth? And if I leave Vermont after I leave Louisville, how can I hold myself accountable in my next community? There is no obvious answer to this question, but I hope that the longer I spend here, the closer I can get to an answer.

“They have maintained the domestic arts of kitchen and garden”

This principle struck me because it reminded me of an experience that many of the Louisville interns had just last night. Carlyn works at Bernheim Arboretum, which we visited for one of our fifth days, and her supervisor, Claude Stephens, invited us over to his house for dinner on Saturday evening. Instead of having food prepared when we arrived, as has often been my experience at dinner gatherings, we arrived at Claude’s house at 5:30, picked herbs and vegetables from his garden, and prepared a feast with food that he had purchased at the farmers’ market just that morning. We stayed until late in the evening, and he told us about his past experiences and his house and its decorations (which were both AMAZING). This is exactly the type of experience which I imagine as described by “the domestic arts of kitchen and garden.” Although in my life thus far, I haven’t experience this frequently, I am becoming more and more familiar with feeling connected to my food and the people with whom I cook. Whether that comes from knowing the farmer who grew and harvested the food or planting it myself, this connection is becoming a more and more important part of my life as time moves  forward.

I also know that my experience growing up and lacking this understanding of food is not necessarily the norm, but I believe that this is a problem that many areas of the country face, partially as a result of the consolidation and mechanization of farms. I was only able to understand these connections by seeking them out – taking environmental studies classes, working on farms, going to farmers’ markets, researching food systems. I believe that living at a college or university, at least for the first couple of years, inhibits peoples’ abilities to practice the “art of the kitchen” and many times the “art of a garden.” Luckily, Middlebury is located in a place which has maintained its connection to food more so than some other areas of the country, and there is also space for the farm. Although cooking may be inconvenient in many ways (free time being one of the largest), there is still the chance for people who want to learn about food and farming to experience it firsthand. The challenge of cooking in college also brings into question the lack of time for preparing food that many Americans experience. Although I’m not sure how it would be accomplished, I think that a change in mindset, which views cooking as a communal or family event, which is done for the process and the experience, not just for the end result, would be an important step in understanding and reforming our food system and our perceptions of it.

Although I think that Amish people may have preserved the “domestic arts of kitchens and gardens” more successfully than the conventional American farm, I do believe that these arts still exist in many parts of the country and that they are achievable and enjoyable in many circumstances, as long as the intention exists. Cooking with Claude was one of what I hope to be many of these types experiences this summer.