Voices From the Field
We’re just over a month into the EAT! Small Farm Apprenticeship program. In celebration, I have something special to share today — vox pops! 🍭 But first, the usual recap!
Last week was the busiest week of the program for me so far. I was out in the field for most of it, in more ways than one. On Tuesday I drove straight into the first wildfire of the season, decked out in audio gear, to cover a legislative meeting on the imperiled Local Food Purchase Assistance (LFPA) program. I almost bailed given traffic and air quality conditions, but I’m so glad I didn’t. I’ll go over why it was so important to show up, to be there and listen, in the next newsletter (or two).
Towards the end of the week I got to exhale with my cohort at the Sierra Farm at sunset. I’ve been beating myself up about not having shared any audio with you yet, but I realized as I produced these clips that it couldn’t have happened any sooner. We all came into this experience four weeks ago as strangers, each with our own reasons and hangups. All new kids in the same class, we exchanged little but furtive glances. We needed the playground to bust up that awkward energy, to trip into each other and talk about our favorite colors. It finally happened on some flat earth in the cool night air.
Here are three diverse, incredible voices from my program sharing why they’re doing this. Why they’re turning to the land and this collective experience during this time in their lives. Have a listen! They’re short, I promise.
Jeanine 🔊
Art 🔊
One of the main reasons I started this newsletter was to capture voices. That includes your voice. Listening to Alejandra, Jeanine, and Art took me places. It’s graduation season, so I’m thinking about learning and the future, and the tension I often witness between self-sufficiency and community. I’m also thinking about vulnerability, and coming home. These meditations linger.
I’d love to hear where these voices take you. If you’d like to share, please write in! We can gather some reflections and share them here, and I’ll also read them out loud to my cohort.
Thanks again for the support so far. More soon!
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Wow, I loved listening to these voices. The fact that this program is free and so it lowers at least one barrier. The farm to city and back to farm family thread of Alejandra. Art’s recognition that he wanted to find his people. All these things feel so universal in their specificity.
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Great vox pops! I agree that a common thread amongst these folks is a desire to return to their roots. I’m about to re-read The Good Earth, which is definitely all about the land and how everything comes back to it. In the foreword to the book, I learned that Pearl Buck grew up in China as the daughter of a Presbyterian preacher man. She later returned with her husband, who was an agricultural economist studying Chinese farming practices. Her observations of the farmers heavily informed her work. The pull of the land can take you so many places, metaphorically and literally. :)
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