Ecological Farming Conference
I’ve just returned from California visiting family and friends and attending the Ecological Farming Conference in Pacific Grove. At more than 1,200 attendees, the Eco-Farm Conference is the largest west coast gathering of the sustainable agriculture community.
As one might imagine of a conference of this size, there are many more workshops than one person can possibly attend. And often, the ones you find most interesting are all scheduled for the same time!
One of the first workshops I attended was titled “Precision Cultivating: New Techniques from Both Sides of the Pond”.
Weeds are the most common “pests” that farmers contend with. Farmers like myself that are committed to sustainable and organic practices do not have available the arsenal of chemical herbicides used by industrial agriculture. Consequently, we devote a great deal of time and labor to the mechanical removal of weeds. In other words we spend a lot of time weeding! This is the primary reason that organic food is more expensive than non-organic. The labor of hard working individuals is more valuable, and there for more expensive, than a bottle of chemicals.
In the case of Artisan Organics, I primarily farm by myself. This means that it is important that I utilize my weeding time to the greatest advantage. While the tractor implements featured in this workshop are way more expensive than I can afford (more than twice the farm’s income for a year), I did get some good ideas about modifying less expensive equipment to do the same tasks. And, it confirmed my thought that I need an Allis Chalmers cultivating tractor. They are getting more and more difficult to find so I’ll have to keep an eye out for one.
My favorite workshop was a book reading by my favorite author, Mas Masumoto, and a new author, Wendy Johnson.
Mas (http://www.masumoto.com/about-mas.htm) is a third generation peach farmer and the author of a number of books about family farming. My favorite of his books is “Epitaph for a Peach”. This book is a very lyrical description of a farmers connection to their personal history and to the history of the land they farm.
His newest book, “Heirlooms: Letters from a Peach Farmer” further explores this theme of connectedness. This book is a collection of his articles written for the “Fresno Bee” newspaper. Unfortunately, I didn’t find it is lyrical as his previous works.
Rather than spending all of his time reading from his latest book, Mas asked the audience to participate by volunteering the seminal moment which called them to farm/garden. It was very moving to listen as members of the audience rose to speak of their heartfelt passion for connecting with the earth.
Wendy Johnson read from her soon to be published book “Gardening at the Dragon’s Gate: At Work in the Wild and Cultivated World”. Wendy is a lay Zen teacher and the former Head Gardener of the Green Gulch Zen Center in Marin County, CA. From the reading, I am certain her book will be well worth reading. I’ll post a review of it at this blog when I receive it and have a chance to read it.
Wendy, being the wise woman that she is, choose to close the workshop by allowing the members of the audience to continue to share their emotional stories about becoming farmers/gardeners. It was amazing and humbling to hear these practical and pragmatic farmers speak with trembling in their voice about their very deep connections to the soil, the plants, and the sun. It was wonderful to know that I am not the only one who experiences the desire to farm as a “calling” rather than as mere occupational choice.
