lessons from a seven year old

A few weeks ago I had the joy of leading a group of 7-10 year olds on a creek wander in Sugar Hollow. One girl was smaller than the rest of the group and needed to return to camp to swap for better shoes and use the bathroom soon after we descended the short trail down to the creek access under our rickety bridge. Because of this, we walked that short path three times, each time noticing a small grasshopper, motionless atop of a leaf. "Maybe it's dead," we wondered. "These things do happen." When we finally finished our wander, having veered west up a small, colder tributary- rich with worlds of exposed, gnarled sycamore root embedded with rocks and an uphill scramble emerging from the creek bed- we again walked down that short path to retrieve the cache of water bottles we'd stashed for hands-free ease of exploration. Still, the grasshopper was motionless. Now we knew it was dead, hours had passed. The smallest girl, who had been by my side often throughout the wander, requiring an extra hand of support where her small feet had less stability, was moved, wanted to honor the grasshopper's life and place in the world, and knew what to do. She plucked a sycamore leaf, soft and broad, and a yarrow flower, fragrant and delicate. Tenderly she laid the leaf back a few feet from the path, placed the flower atop it, and laid the grasshopper in the center, his resting place. She took my hand and we crossed the country road to head back to camp.

I was so taken with her simple wisdom. These two plants, and how well they were fitted to the task.

Sycamore, who likes to have wet feet, leading us to water to wash away our grief, usher souls from this world to the other invisible side. Sycamore whose bark, close to the earth, is brown, rooted, and barky, but as the eyes moves up the trunk it begins to flake away, peeling back in layers, before emerging, white and smooth, branched arms thrusting towards the sky like wings. An image of transcendance, transition, passing.

And yarrow, who treats deep cuts, lessening pain, stopping the bleeding, is a fitting medicine for grief. Yarrow's recorded history of human use is interlaced with the advancement of metalwork technology, especially in warfare. With new blades came deep-life threatening wounds, creating the urgent need for analgesic, antiseptic yarrow to stop the bleeding, reduce the pain, prevent infection. The trauma of grief cuts deeper than the blunt force wounds of the everyday, and calls for the medicine of yarrow. The oldest known use of yarrow was in a Neanderthal funeral setting, found laid beside a human skeleton dated to 100,000 BCE in a cave in Iraq. (for more info, and my source, check out Ryan Drum's amazing page on yarrow) The leaves are dazzling complex, tiny and pointing in many directions, giving yarrow its specific name, millefolium- a thousand leaves. This image, combined with the exploding umbel flower structure, give me a feeling of dispersal, that seems to frame a healthy view of passing.

The next day my partner arrived at camp with bad news: that a white man in Charleston had killed nine people in a black church. A Charleston native, my partner was angry and heartbroken. In country life, there's often not a way to join in on a group vigil or demonstration or action. We read the news but we live further from places where people gather and it feels hard for us to give support. There is this awful feeling of helplessness that comes with human atrocity, with injustice. We walk and work with grief and anger and it has no where to go. I took him to our swim hole to cool down, relief from the summer sun, and then upstream to the place near the bridge where I'd learned about grief from a seven-year-old. Together we set nine little yarrow leaves downstream on nine little sycamore-leaf boats, along with a wish to honor those souls robbed of their lives, and a wish for the watching world- for clear eyes, willingness to understand the still-relevant legacy of racism and white supremacy in our world, and for the inner fires leading the work towards a more-okay world. We hugged and walked back up that trail. We got what we needed then from that small act. Now, later on, the watching world is seeing the confederate flag come down from the State House in Columbia, SC. My hope is for the new children, southern babies, black and white babies, who are being born into a world where that flag isn't flown by the state, we welcome them into a world that is a step closer to the world they need, and deserve.

ADVENTURE

"Never forget that life can only be nobly inspired and rightly lived if you take it bravely and gallantly, as a splendid adventure in which you are setting out into an unknown country, to face many a danger, to meet many a joy, to find many a comrade, to win and lose many a battle." 

Annie Besant

Spent a saturday exploring THE AQUACAVE

met up at this beautiful country store

wishing i could share the interior of the cave. pitchblack, coldwater, sandybeaches, crazy rocks. surreal.

post-cave swimming. that tree had to be climbed like a ladder.

supermoon and jubilation

Meanwhile In Carolina...

A dear friend of mine moved out to a farm with some good people to see what the place holds for them. I visited a few weeks ago.

This post is just for these few photographs, and to file away that full-of-possibility feeling that comes with breaking new ground. Wishing them the best of luck, and alla y'all a  Happy spring.

Kinfolk's Spring Playlist

"'Spring ephemeral' describes a life habit of perennial woodland wildflowers which develop aerial parts (i.e. stems, leaves, and flowers) of the plant early each spring and then quickly bloom, and produce seed. The leaves often wither leaving only underground structures (i.e. roots, rhizomes, and bulbs) for the remainder of the year. This strategy is very common in herbaceous communities of deciduous forests as it allows small herbaceous plants to take advantage of the high levels of sunlight reaching the forest floor prior to formation of a canopy by woody plants. Examples include: spring beauties, trilliums, and harbinger of spring. "

(from wikipedia)

Yes, the weather's been crazy. 

Check out this assortment of fleeting spring feelings from the folks at Kinfolk.

still need more inspiration? Check out this article on the Nature of Design from Yestermorrow Design and Build School.

In other news, someone nicknamed Lauren 'Folk Laur.' 

Here is a list of Spring Ephemerals. WHAT A WONDERFUL TIME OF YEAR.

• Claytonia sp. (spring beauty)
• Dicentra canadensis (squirrel corn)
• Dicentra cucullaria (Dutchman's breeches)
• Dicentra eximia (turkey corn)
• Eranthis (winter aconite)
• Erigenia bulbosa (harbinger of spring)
• Erythronium americanum (yellow trout lily)
• Hepatica nobilis
• Houstonia caerulea (azure bluet)
• Iris cristata (dwarf crested iris)
• Jeffersonia diphylla (twinleaf)
• Lamprocapnos spectabilis (formerly Dicentra spectabilis, bleeding heart)
• Mertensia virginica (Virginia bluebells)
• Sanguinaria canadensis (bloodroot)
• Stylophorum diphyllum (celandine poppy, wood poppy)
• Thalictrum thalictroides (rue anemone)
• Tiarella cordifolia (foamflower)
• Trillium

Six Good Questions: Good Food Jobs Edition

We are thrilled to be able to share with you an interview with the two ladies behind Goodfoodjobs.com, one of our favorite websites. In their words:

"Good Food Jobs is a gastro-job search tool, designed to link people looking for meaningful food work with the businesses that need their energy, enthusiasm, and intellect. We post opportunities with farmers and food artisans, policy makers and purveyors, retailers and restaurateurs, economists, ecologists, and more."

We read the site regularly: it's a delightful cross-section of the food scene in America, and we love keeping up with what's happening. Taylor Cocalis and Dorothy Neagle, co-founders of GFJ, are close friends and business partners. They met in 2004 at Cornell over 25 cent ice cream cones. They took a road trip together, and they had a great idea. Then they made it happen. Check out their answers to our six good questions.

dorothy and taylor at van leeuwen artisan ice cream, in brooklyn, ny. january 2012. credit: nicole franzen

1. What was the aha moment when Good Food Jobs made the transition from great idea/dream to a real thing that was really happening? How did it feel and what do you think encourages those moments?

TC You know the great thing about this is that we get to experience the aha moment over and over again. When did I know it was real? I knew we were going to do it the weekend that we came up with the idea, whilst on a road trip to Ithaca. We conceived of the idea on the way up, and spent the rest of the weekend in between meetings honing what it would look like, what to call it, and how in the world to get it started. Sure, it took WAY longer to actually get the site up and running (1 year, 3 months, and 22 days, to be exact), but I just knew we would make it work.

We had come up with two other ideas before this. The first was a canning shop, where we could teaching classes, and establish relationships with farmers to make use of their excess crops, and sell goods for people to preserve food at home. I joked that we could call it ‘Nice Cans’. But our lack of knowledge around the subject, the idea of having a hefty NYC rent, and a few days of making jam in July in my fourth story walk-up in 100 degree heat put an end to that idea relatively quickly.

A few months later, after a trip to our friend’s cheesemaking operation in the Hudson Valley, we thought ‘Let’s open a fresh dairy shop!’ You can’t walk a few blocks without hitting a cheese shop in NYC but nobody has a healthy supply of crème fraiche, cultured butter, fresh tangy yogurt and our favorite – ice cream – from local sources. If they do, it’s not a steady supply. But again, the lack of knowledge, danger of highly perishable inventory, and high start-up costs had us a little weary.

But surely we could do something to utilize our skills and make a difference.

When we started thinking about it, Good Food Jobs was perfect. Dorothy has a keen design eye, stellar writing skills, and interest in the environment, and I loved making food friends, had a whole host of crazy ideas about how to bring the community together, and had co-workers who jokingly called me a ‘life coach’.

But the beauty is that we keep having the aha moment: when we sat down with our now web developer (Efy from Webinhabit) and realized we could make it happen, when we finally bought the domain goodfoodjobs.com (which we had to pry from its original owner, located in the UK), when we posted the splash page that said ‘Coming Soon’, when – over the course of the summer of 2010 – we had 4,000 people sign up for our email newsletter via word of mouth alone, when we actually went live with the site in October 2010, when we got our first paid job (!), when we started paying ourselves a salary. And every single time someone sends us an email that says ‘thank you for doing this work that has inspired us’.

Those days feel good. When someone that you know says that they told someone about Good Food Jobs, and the person responded that they already know and love it. But we have 30,000 active members, and there are over 330 million people that live in this country alone. So we’ve got a long way to go.

But we’re pretty damn lucky, and we don’t forget it for one second.

2. A lot of folks we see with new and innovative good food businesses are exploring those places where friendship and business partnership meet. We like that you say your business plan was an excuse to spend a lot of time together. Can you tell us a little bit about that intersection for you guys.

TC: What we do would not be possible (for me, at least) without Dorothy. There are just certain things that would never get done (and even if they did, they would not get done nearly as well). A perfect example is our weekly newsletter. It’s such an important part of what we do, allowing us to reflect on the events of the week behind, or the weeks ahead, and provide meaningful insights and information to our readers. We think it’s a huge part of what we do, as it ascribes a personality to us and what we do, and helps to initiate conversations and let us show how much we truly care. Every week I write the newsletter, and every week Dorothy edits it. She might only changes a few words, or swap out a few sentences, or move things around so that they make more sense. But it is always infinitely better.

We are lucky. We used to live just a few short blocks away from each other, but shortly after we started the site I had the opportunity to move to Vermont. Although there are a few hundred miles between us we must correspond at least half a dozen times per day. The only thing that we have to work really hard at is to remember that work doesn’t replace friendship. We can go two weeks and have corresponded over a hundred times, and we still might not know what is happening in our ‘real lives’ because we’ve been bouncing web revisions, page designs, newsletter edits, and awesome email testimonials back and forth. It’s important to keep the balance.

A double rainbow looking over Taylor's garden in Greenboro, VT 2012

DN: I think that phrase about how working together can ruin a friendship has replayed vividly in my mind so many times, because it’s something you hear commonly and I was definitely afraid of taking that risk. My friendship with Taylor always felt so rewarding and solid, and I didn’t want to take that for granted. I don’t know if this would be true for everyone, but it has certainly been true for us that working together has made our relationship stronger, even when work sometimes takes precedence over friendship, or vice versa. Communication is key. As is the shared goal of something bigger than us.

3. What's your wildest dream for good food jobs? What would the perfect day look like?

TC: Oh boy. The goal of any business is to do so well at it that you make yourselves obsolete. If we help to revive the food culture in this country (and the world) so much that there is no need for an online vehicle for job searching in this field – because it’s so prevalent that people can just do it face to face without our help – then that will be a proud day for us.

DN: I think the perfect day is any day when we hear from people. Because inevitably we will get positive and negative feedback, and all of it helps us learn and gives us what we need to keep working. We’ll never be ‘done’ as long as people have something to say about what we’re doing.

a closer look at taylor's garden in greensboro, vt (taken july 2012); potato towers up front, followed by ten 5 x 10 foot double-dug beds

4. Do you have any metrics showing GFJ's usage and how it's grown? Reach? What are the factors that have gone towards this reach? (we'd love to hear a little about your advertising/marketing ethos and strategy.)

TC: We do! We’re not huge on numbers. I mean, we love numbers, but we care more about the qualitative analysis than the quantitative. But to give you an idea, we now have over 30,000 registered users. We send our weekly newsletter to over 24,000 people. We have posted over 6,500 jobs. And at any given time we have over 600 active jobs on the site now.

But someone wrote me an email today and in it she said, ‘You both offer inspiration and hope to people far and wide, and I have many MANY friends who have found new energy for their futures in food because of the work that you do for all of us.’ Those are the metrics that I use.

taylor, eating chocolate, surprise, surprise. february 2012

In regard to how we have grown . . . very organically. We only pay for advertising when we are trying to help the organization that is posting the ads (like a student-run gastronomy journal at Yale University, or in The Greenhorns Farmer’s Almanac), and have instead decided to devote our time, energy, and funds to get out there and meet people. When we were first launching we set up a ‘northeast college tour’, hitting up any colleges or universities that had a food studies program, or course, or Slow Food chapter, or organic farm. To this day we still get invitations to come back and address the students. For us, that $300 road trip was one of the best investments we ever made.

So thankfully our users do most of the work for us. We spend a lot of time curating and producing content that will be of interest to our community. And then they spread the word far and wide to people that they know / connect with, who have the same beliefs and interests as they do. We’re so fortunate for their faith in our work.

DN: The numbers always feel like a bit of a mystery to me, and because we don’t advertise on the site (which is part of our business model and mission statement) I like to think that we are not dependent on web traffic. But the truth is, of course, that in order for us to accomplish our greater goals, we DO need and want a lot of people visiting the site. Each week, we get between seven and twelve thousand unique visitors, and between sixty and eighty thousand page views.

5. Do you have a favorite moment or outcome that you'd like to share with our readers?

TC: Just recently we published a newsletter that was hard for us to write (http://us1.campaign-archive2.com/?u=99d1bf66dd5956720b2b5f22d&id=406d3c7989). It was on the subject of diversity, and told the story of our own battles realizing how we had unknowingly excluding a whole subset of the population by featuring a very specific subset of the population on our blog. The whole process was tough. We didn’t know what to write. We didn’t want to offend anyone. We didn’t want to seem insincere. But in the end we just told the truth. We imagine that in this circumstance most folks would think this ill-advised. After all, why would you want to draw attention to one of your flaws? But we have always prided ourselves on doing things differently. It’s almost never easy, but it’s always rewarding, and this case was no exception. We got so much positive response. And I don’t just mean people writing, ‘Oh you are so great.’ I mean real, genuine, positive response. People wrote in to thank us for opening up the conversation. They confessed to noticing this fault of ours and to feeling alienated. They responded with their stories of how this same issue had popped up in their work lives. They shared articles, and kind words, and made a deep connection. And that is why we love what we do.

a sample harvest from taylor's garden in greensboro, vt. september 2012

6. That's heavy. We give you props for tackling an issue that lots of folks have a hard time being comfortable with. We've seen y'all talk about stepping outside the comfort zone. We love that. Any advice for those trying to work the cutting edge of the local food economy and stay on top of what's coming next? 

TC: Do it. Just do it. Whatever it is. The idea doesn’t have to be perfect when you start. It will evolve over time. The important part is that you start the process.

And also, work on a farm for at least one season. Even though this might not be the direct line of work that you want to eventually do, it will inform the decisions that you make in your work and life in ways that you never expected. It’s the most worthwhile experience that I can think of.

DN: The whole concept of a ‘career’ is being completely redefined, across many industries. The best advice I hear is: work. Get some experience. It’s okay if it’s a lot of short-term, varied experiences. The great thing about all this change is that you don’t have to spend half your lifetime in order to prove yourself, only to find out that it isn’t what you wanted to do. A living that seemed cobbled together from many different part-time, freelance, short-term opportunities is no longer something to be pitied – it’s a new frontier, and it’s all about doing the work that sustains YOU. 

dorothy cooking in her brooklyn kitchen. 2010

A very very special word of thanks to Dorothy and Taylor for sharing so much with us. And thanks to you for joining us on this rad interview. We read GFJ all the time to see what's happening in the world of food. It's somehow reinforced (perhaps responsible for) this crazy idea we seem to have that "sustainable food system work" is a career path. Check out the GFJ blog here and we highly recommend liking them on facebook. And yeah, they're on twitter.We know heaps of you have good food jobs and are experiencing running businesses alongside friendships. What do you think? Has your experience been like theirs? Do you have questions for Dorothy and Taylor? We have a feeling they'd be open to follow-up, as long as it involves ice cream. 

Agro-Ecology Conference

Attended a conference last week on agro-ecology (which we defined as synthesis between agriculture- a word which in french means specifically raising crops- animal husbandry, and forestry: with a spirit of regeneration and stewardship)

As is always the case with events like these, the biggest outcome for me was reigniting the fire that inspires work in agriculture and environment. Getting a group of leaders in their fields like that together to share their ideas, techniques, and inner fire always brings further understanding and ideas for innovative solutions.

This guy's outfit was better than his presentation. It happens.

Crowd favorite, crushin' it.

One speaker in particular was a true inner-fire-candle (blow-torch?) An older man, he opted to skip the Powerpoint (gutsy!) and sat at a table facing us all and spoke. His words bore repeating, and I heard them again at lunch, both from my friends (he was the obvious favorite among the my young, african, agro friends) and at other tables around. He said, yes, we need agro-ecology practices that will assure durability from a socio-economic perspective, but we also need practices that will assure durability from a cultural perspective. He talked about integrative health of humans and ecologies- preventative before curative. He talked about learning from the peasants, and about taking into account traditional cultural values- tracking them and noting which ones are regenerative, which ones can save the world. He talked about poverty, hunger, and climate change as symptoms of a cultural malady- the divorce of man and nature. This resonated so strongly with me, with my permaculture training, the work I've done with Richard Louv, and the nature mentoring reading I've been doing. I love when life ensures that a particular message gets reinforced from different directions.

One aspect I was fascinated watching was the dynamic between the French and the Africans who were there. There was sort of this moment during the afternoon workshop where a French man asked the workshop host- the head of a Burkinabe coalition of sector-specific ag orgs- kind of incredulously why they were not working more closely with the equivalent organization in France. The workshop host answered respectfully and with a smile that the work could be done well autonomously. I was sort of silently picturing what this French guy would say if the workshop host had come to France and incredulously asked the head of an organization "Don't you know we have an organization just like this in Burkina Faso? Why aren't you working with us and following our model?" I was pleased that the workshop host treated him with such grace and kindness I probably would have asked him if he had some cheese somewhere he should be off eating (shout out to French people, I love you guys.)

My friend Paul listening dutifully after a long day.

I also experienced some Sciences-Po PTSD in the aforementioned afternoon workshop, which was about the dissemination of agro-ecology practices at the social and institutional level. The conversation was lofty, conceptual, and at times very hard to follow for a non-native speaker of crappy french (much like every moment of every day at Sciences Po Paris in 2009- shouts out!) I was a little jealous of my friends who'd attended the other workshops and talked about concrete, real things like compost and cow poop. But hey, thus is the fate of the francophony foodie-enviro-student of social sciences.

I've also been sitting in on some middle school courses, which is wildly humbling. I miss the way my brain worked before college and the internet.

I'm grateful for all the learning I've been able to do lately.