The sliver of a new moon peeked through the broken clouds above the farm last night. We had a ½ inch of rain this weekend that brightened the new lettuces, greens, onions, garlic and cover crops here on the farm. What a wonder is the spring! We begin the harvest of the transplants and seeds sown in the end of January. In the coming weeks you should see new lettuces, tender greens, and asparagus, the peak of spring crops.
The farm is also abloom with a riot of flowers: cover crops flashing pinks and purples of flowering peas, yellow mustards, white radish flowers, purples of vetches and lupins, the orange flash of poppies in undisturbed swales. These wild edges complement the snapdragons, ranunculus, anemones, and fruit trees that are now celebrating longer warmer days. It is a showy beacon for bees, birds, lacewings, ladybugs, and aphids, each getting what they need. Diversity creates opportunity for the unanticipated and serendipity is an outcome of that designed diversity.
The amazing part is that if a farmer doesn’t participate in supporting the design, building the opportunity for this life to visit a farm, one will never realize the potential there. The focus of a farm’s production is often profit and yield, but these are such narrow measurements. To realize the benefits of an investment in diversity, one makes a conscious choice to support the principle and the rest seems to fall into place, resulting in a more inclusive expression of life being made manifest.
We have the opportunity to invest as designers/farmers, fostering the potential for more total life here in a shorter time than if we just did nothing to support that life. Principles of diversity, equity and inclusion are part of an open mind to see a more vibrant farm realized.
We embrace those principles here and find if we focus on equity, as a principle of honoring other life forms who can find a home here, we design with a different eye. Here the beauty is not just order, clean crops, straight rows, weed-free fields, or uniformity. Those things are part of an efficient farm, but those straight rows share space with a rambunctious nature that is also given place here.
Making these design principles fundamental to a multigenerational farm is quite a task. It is always easier to make fields bare, find shortcuts to feed the vast complex of life underfoot. It is easier to tear apart and make bare in the name of efficiency than to nurture justice and complexity. It can be so much easier to abandon the structures that give attention to those parts that have not been considered in the design of the whole. The pattern of life embraces diversity, fairness, equity, and interconnectedness as cornerstones of justice.
Wise ancestors taught that “what you do for the least of us, you do for all of us” and “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” and these adages can be applied to a good farm where more layers of life are given a home and sustenance. The resulting productivity then has a wildly different measurement.
So to fight historical injustice or bad farming practices, we nurture stewardship of new patterns, not as bias but as a collective realization that we can be better. The reward is delight and joy- and sometimes unruliness that challenges the status quo. Our cover crops this season comprise tons of unruly beautiful vegetation that harvests nitrogen, carbon sugars, and plant matter, all of which serves as food for insects and soil microbes. We understand that unruliness and diversity build resilience and ultimately become food for the whole cycle of life here.
Here is hoping that you all understand that what we are trying to do is a very different approach of making food. We hope that our efforts support your image of what you hope from a farm and it in turn supports your well-being. May you be like a wild fat bumblebee attracted to the spring riot of blooms, knowing your needs will be nurtured, busy with the haste to be fed while helping to propagate the needs of subsequent springs.
Full Belly practices the work of designing a different farm. We try to embrace a pattern of life being made welcome- each spring a manifestation of life again renewed! This wildly wonderful spring, we walk in a creation that asks us for our attention and hard work. When there is rain, we have a moment to pause and remember and breathe it in.
Paul Muller
