First Steps

How do you write sincerely about social change? The vocabulary of the subject is so lofty, about changing the world, about ideals and what's wrong and what we should strive for and how to get there. Where do you start to get a handle on issues like that? I've been learning about environmental economics, Gandhi and non-violent protest and how hippie communes failed, feminism, on how social media is changing society and yet I still feel inadequately informed. I want to take action but I've struggled because how do you even start if the tip of the iceberg is more than you can even grasp?

I think being fed up is the starting point for social action. Just as the Occupy Wall Street movement in NYC was starting up two weeks ago, I organised a Turning Point Gathering in Fredericton with the help of a few friends and Leadnow.ca, a Canadian independent advocacy organisation. These gatherings were held across the country in an effort to co-ordinate the efforts of people who are concerned about the direction we are heading. I invited dozens of people at market and the CSA and hundreds more on Facebook. In the end, only nine people showed up on the rainy Sunday afternoon (not one of the 20 confirmed attendees from Facebook came).

I was secretly relieved by the dismal attendance because even with the Host Agenda sent to me by Leadnow, I felt that my amateur organising skills would be easily overwhelmed. And I understand how hard it is to get people to show up to something like this. When you're comfortable, why go out of your way to learn and talk about things that don't seem to affect your life? But I think people are becoming increasingly uncomfortable about our direction.

The gathering was simple. We voiced our concerns for Canada (that we don't know what we stand for, economic inequality, irresponsible environmental policy, increasing lack of transparency and democracy in government), what things give us hope for the future (local public demonstrations, the organic farming movement, widespread accessibility to alternative media sources) and what we think we could do together (writing letters to the editor and signing petitions allows politicians to recognise that their actions and policies are being scrutinised). The results of the meeting were sent to Leadnow as a first step towards mapping where we want to go and how we'll get there.

Across North America, the Occupy Wall Street movement is gathering voices too, in a much more dramatic fashion. The movement started unorganised and without a leader yet their goals are crystallizing through the addition of more opinions and dialogue and their methods are evolving. They want the interests of people to be put before the interests of corporations, for people think hard about root causes of the problems, and they will do it non-violently.

A turning point means a new direction for everyone involved. The event-organising is certainly new and somewhat awkward for me. I'm still learning about alternative modes of thought, about different ways to affect my surroundings. Someone noted at the meeting that grassroots movements have a difficulty because they are organised by people who have jobs and families they care about and limited time and resources to use to organise for change. This is in stark contrast to the budgets that corporations devote towards shaping society. I feel a lot of uncertainty but I believe with enough confidence to act that capitalism has outlived its utility, that the negative far outweighs the positive. A change in direction needs to be considered and I don't know what that looks like or where it leads but now is a good time to start figuring it out.



http://wagingnonviolence.org/2011/10/can-we-be-the-100-percent/

http://occupywallst.org/article/today-liberty-plaza-had-visit-slavoj-zizek/

Harvest Season

This harvest Friday, we pulled in our fruits from the yard; watermelons, cantaloupe, honeydew, sweet potato, zucchini, leeks, cucumber, basil, parsley, tomato, squash, hot peppers, sweet peppers, eggplant, swiss chard, onions, pumpkins, ground cherries, cabbage, garlic, kale, beans, sweet corn, beets, carrots, potatoes, wild flowers and there was still more out there we didn't have time to bring in when the sun set at 8pm (lettuce, turnips,kohlrabi, dandelion greens). We're still not used to the sun setting a little earlier every day now. I go to bed at 10pm, wake to my cell phone alarm at 4:30 in the foggy dark morning, peculiarly warm and rainy after all the recent cold mornings lately. We pack up the trucks to bring to market and drive 40 mins westward to Fredericton Farmers Market. The drizzly weather at market doesn't put a damper on sales as a steady stream of people come between 7am and noon. The sales team smiles big and displays the vegetables to look their best, cracking little jokes, asking if they want anything else with their order (a Second Cup habit), trying to make them buy something more by flirting and making them like me and asking "Have you tried our melons?" The flavour of our melons astound people.

For lunch, I buy market samosas from the right-hand side of the ongoing samosa rivalry then shower at Michelle's house in Fredericton. I lay down on my back and close my eyes for twenty minutes before we drive out to help at an afternoon wedding, the dear friends of dear friends of the owner of the farmer, Mike. The 58 year old bride talks about how being single for so long made her reach out to the surrounding community for support and enabled her to build a loving community around her in Fredericton. We rush around serving our farm produce in different forms, roasted vegetables, homemade pasta and real Italian sauce, chicken and parsley with lemon, served family style, passing food around the table. The rainy day clears in the afternoon into a grey and glowing evening as we light the candles and the food keeps going out and dishes come back in. Oh my god the dishes that 48 people use for a fancy meal. It's dark by the time we pile in the truck to leave, stop in Fredericton en route on our drive back to see a few friends but too tired to make a night out of it, the stimulation of espressos after dinner getting crushed by the anvil of a seriously long day, elongating until we get home at midnight. I sleep like a rock until I can't sleep anymore and wake to the sound of bacon in a pan.

Mike's cooking breakfast and after a meandering conversation about the current debt crises ("Oh, they're just circling the drain,") and economic matters introduces me to the idea of potlatch. It's a Native Indian custom of communal gift giving, reinforcing ideas that the accumulation of wealth is not about numbers in a bank account but a show of status and a blanket of security. Potlatch means your status is determined by how generous you are. A beautiful idea.

I come back to the cabin, sit down and type this up. The sun breaks the fog and is pouring in right this minute, now, noon on Sunday, day of rest and refreshment, and I will now hit publish and go play outside.

Oooh a Rainbow!

The day starts late, I've slept in and Eric tells me the oatmeal is ready. I have ten minutes to eat it and be ready for work at 7am. I always wake up from vivid dreams when I sleep in and this time I dreamt of being in a sunny classroom and having to do supplementary studying at home because I didn't take Grade 12 Biology. I groggily crawl down the ladder and 20 minutes later I'm digging carrots. The foggy morning feels like a dream too, a flock of fat geese make a racket and fly directly overhead, close enough that I can hear the beating wings. As the day gets older, the sun burns off the fog and by the time I'm picking cucumbers, it's hot and sunny, beautiful like a beach movie.

The cucumbers are huge and I accidentally pull a melon from the neighbouring row, the vines of the plants running wild across the beds. I walk over the the truck where Eric's loading tomatoes , the truck radio blaring some sunny pop tune to ask him if he wants a bite of the first melon of the year. I peel the skin with a knife, slice off a chunk and take a bite and slice off another chunk for Eric. "Still a little unripe yet but pretty darn good" he says as we crunch down and the sweet perfume of the melon fills my mouth.

The cadence of Eric's speech belies the fact that he is a nice and simple prairie boy and he says "It's moments like these that make life worth living, eh?" smiling wide. And I feel it in my heart, the heat of the day, the sweet cool of the melon, the hard work compressed in my lower back and hamstrings and this brief moment of respite standing there looking at each other enjoying some of the fruit of our labour. I feel it all and I smile back and then I feel the knife in my hand and say "Haaiii-yaa!!" and feint a stabbing motion at his stomache and say "How about now?" He laughs but I've killed the moment.

A lot of people won't let a good moment be a good moment. David Foster Wallace says and I agree, that my generation has a problem accepting cheesy but genuine moments, a product of being constantly marketed to and emotionally manipulated by media. It feels vulnerable and naive to feel good about something true and my gut reaction is often self-defense in the form of a caustic joke. Sometimes you need to learn, sometimes you need to un-learn.

Anxiety Breeds Celebration

The solstice is always strikes a weird combination of emotion in the heart of Canadians when they day's significance. The long awaited summer has officially arrived, yet at the same time, the day preludes the shortening of days and descent back into the interminable winter. There are the first hints of a wasted summer, even before summer has begun, because the days are already shortening. Yet June 22nd comes, the sun sets at 10pm again and the worry is forgotten because we know there are still many days left. Then before you know it, September is into October, school's back in and the soft pang of regret strikes the heart with the beauty of the changing color of the tree canopy and a crisp night.

Holidays are meant to help us deal with things, though they get bound up in many different trappings. Thanksgiving and the harvest bounty are surely related. Christmas coincides with the darkest time of year and has an ability, if you let it, to warm the spirit. New Years is a convenient break for resolutions. Chinese New Year is time for family. So I'm proposing we get back to celebrating the solstice, though I'm probably thousands of years late to inventing this one.

At first I thought, "Next year!! I'll have the best celebration." But I'd like to see my personal tradition reach it's 25th, 50th, or 75th year and those numbers imply starting right away. So today, the first day of summer, coincidentally the first harvest day for Jemseg River farm, I got to the highest point I could, 20 feet up in an ash tree on the south west ridge of the farm and watched the sunset. I didn't take a picture because there will be many more long lazy sunsets before autumn comes, but I did enjoy it because it was unbelievably stunning, clouds and water dancing with fire over this hilly New Brunswick hobbit-land, and also because who knows how many more chances I will get to watch the setting of the summer sun.

The Moon River Club

The smell of wet earth announced springtime in Southern Ontario. Not far from the shore of Lake Erie, there's a beautiful trail through the property of a native plant nursery and in late March through to April, a half hour leisurely walk will bring you through fields of prairie grass ringing with a chorus of frog and bird song, below the hushed canopy of majestic hemlock and maple trees and along the banks of a gurgling stream. It feels in the right moment like you're on stolen time.

I set out one day after work with an aim to wind down and seriously enjoy nature and invited River, the owner's 8-year-old son who immediately dropped his kid-size bow and arrow to join me and then ran and picked it back up when I told him I had seen some wild turkey roosting in the trees and that who knows what might happen.

We zig zagged our way towards the forest and river and I noted with relish that this is the first time I get to say the sentence I'm heading to the river with River though I bet he hears that all the time. I told him that my name in Chinese, Liang, means the brightness of the moon and he could maybe say I'm heading to the brightness of the moon with the brightness of the moon. Our attention turned to the sights, sounds and smells as we neared the water, looking for a trace of the turkeys that roost in the trees along the river's edge. We crossed the river on the boardwalk and I fabricated a turkey call to see if I could frighten them out, a loud Mexican-like "ARRRRRRRIIIIII." A startled group of deer across the river scattered and the sound of their hooves crashing through the bush incited us to set chase upon foot, up the other river bank and along the trail, leaves flying underfoot. I stopped running after a minute, knowing well that the fleet-footed deer would be far beyond the reach of our human slug-pace but River kept going. I watched as he continued with optimism, bow and arrow held outright, as if at any moment the deer might jump out from behind a tree and ambush us. He was sure that we were on the right course when he inspected an overturned leaf and a hoof print that I tried hard to imagine I could see as well. He took off again and I found my patience a little worn. I had come out here to seriously contemplate nature, not entertain my make believe. I knew that he knew that he was making stuff up, like a kid play-fighting pirates knows he's not really fighting pirates.

I followed River through the bush, listening with skeptical bemusement to his in situ story of one of the baby deer getting separated and lost at the waterhole over the hill. But as we continued, my impatience turned to amusement. We followed the tracks over the hills and through the mud as the baby deer was led astray by something wily and vaguely leprechaun-like. The skunk cabbage showed signs of deer grazing and my enthusiasm grew as we named ourselves founders and establishers of the Moon River Club, a club with the Mission Objective of relying solely on tracking animals for survival. Through the trees we went now with double the purpose as the baby deer was dismissed and the Club grew in scope, structure, and ambition.

The light grew dim in the forest as we turned around and headed back, making plans to build a forest shelter, a draw bridge and pioneer skunk cabbage recipes. We would make full use of our survival techniques, and be exclusive, allowing into our fort and planned soirees of storytelling only an approved member list of people with names pertaining to Moon or River and also special guests River's dad, brother and sister. We crossed back over the river in great sprits, tracking the footprints of a 25 year old young male and an 8 year old boy carrying a bow and arrow who seemed to have been hunting turkeys.

Big Love

I work with some real bonafide mothers here at at Acorus Restoration, a native plant nursery and ecological restoration in Walsingham, Ontario. When my big city friends ask, I says these ladies are small-town and live in a little bubble like and that they sure as hell can tell great stories and boy do they love to talk all day and gossip. My friends think I'm talking bad about them but I'm not. These women here, they pour all their love and energy, and there's a lot of it let me tell ya, into them bubbles, their family and their community and their homes and it's nice to be around. They know their plants and the conservation areas and concession roads, and they recognise all the bird calls and love their dogs, they know who's dating who and who's marriage is having problems and who's got high blood pressure now and who they just seen the other day working at the pizza place and who's doing drugs. I ain't saying they're perfect, they've got their prejudices too like everyone else but they're fussy about living right. And they care a plenty. City folk like to look down on country folk, call them rednecks and hicks, but there's a lot to be said for loving where you're from and taking care of it.

Don't Talk About the Year As If It's Over

So I'm settled back in Montreal with an absurd head of hair. Snow's on the ground, hockey season's here, farming season is certainly over. I went back for a quick visit to the Ontario farms yesterday. The fields were white with snow, the farmers unhurried. There’s time to take it easier until the weather starts to turn. A full season under the belt is not enough experience to speak about farming with authority but it counts for something. Here's my take.

P.S. In the picture below, that big puffball mushroom was edible and unbelievably delicious.

Old farm houses act as a reservoir of many things, collecting things as years and people pass through; old couches, old books and old record and cassette collections, old and new ideas, old and young people. I dusted off and read a book from Les' bookshelf, published in 1976 called The Promise of the Coming Dark Age. It talks about how the breakdown of the Roman Empire was followed by the Dark Ages, a period normally associated with chaos and lawlessness. Yet this was an important period because it was during this time that our modern day institutions of democracy, fraternity and equality were built. I see a similarity on these farms, an incubator for energy and action combined with varying degrees of disdain for the New Empire. It's a lively space away from the monopolizing effects of the city and a place to build a way out.

You find all types of people on the farm and you see the uniqueness of each one because you have the time to really feel them out. You see the way they act when under-slept, how they eat oatmeal to what makes them tighten up and what makes them beam inside. Initially everyone's new and you put your best face forward as you feel thrilled to meet all these independent and intelligent people. Then as usual, familiarity doesn't always breed contempt but it diminishes courtesy and admiration. After all, everyone is human and not everyone is always happy or at peace all the time and there’s more interaction, less isolation. More frustration and laughs and friction, less apathy and boredom. Make-up is a ludicrous idea for a day on the farm, laundry and showers are suggestions, there's more examination of inner qualities, less on outward appearances. The cooking and cleaning and working together is a big laughy chatty Kathy pow-wow or a pet peeve, depending on the day. There's less screen time, certainly less noise but more music and radio. More talk and more action.

I met three young boys on the farms, Elliot, Luke and Nate who are between three and five years old. They are just explosions of questions and energy. We theorized that it must be because everyone that they meet is a friend that comes to the farm and it makes them unabashed, carefree, energetic crowd pleasers with scuffed knees and elbows. There's a real purity to them, distillations of the farm life.

________________

At the end of the season, I got into a slightly heated argument with David, the owner of the farm in Nova Scotia, as I haggled to get paid $250 for the work of two months of 11 hour days. He told me I wasn’t cut out for farming and that I don’t have the energy, that I should consider practicing the traditional kind of Tai-chi where your hips stay facing forward to straighten out my spine. I was taken aback but I respect his opinion. His perspective is often sharp and clear, a product of experience and wisdom. Maybe farming isn't for me. It's not that I doubt my ability to work hard, nor my endurance. I can work but I analyse and think a lot too. What David saw in me was a waning motivation towards the end of the season as I began to question certain practices and their efficacy. I think in his view, to be a farmer you need the work ethic that never quits. Every day is a long day and the work is repetitive but needs doing. I’m an abstract thinker, mentally strong but a dreamer added the farm manager when I asked her opinion.

When I told Les this yesterday during my one-day return trip to the Ontario farms, he said that the idea of not being cut out for something is contingent on the idea that there is a set way to do things, that things don't change, that times don't change.

Well we all know how it goes. "You better start swimmin' or you'll sink like a stone" sang Dylan. There are movements rising and receding everywhere. There's a real groundswell of urban youths seeing what it's like to try and grow food, temporary buoying the profitability of organic farms with enthusiastic, idealistic and cheap labour, just eager to learn and willing to sacrifice pay for education. There's a trickle of people starting to see the worth in paying two dollars for a bulb of garlic. Meanwhile, technology has reached a deafening pitch. There's a whole generation simultaneously drowned by and trying to stay abreast of cellphones that Facebook. What is considered absurd is a fluid notion, changing by the day. Every new generation is a wave of the most book-educated, mentally-stimulated, self-conscious and self-critical groupthinkers crashing onto the uncharted shores of the 21st century, bumping up against the truths held to be self evident by an old guard that did the same thing. The movement of Shambhala Buddhism to Nova Scotia decades ago is still quietly rolling off eddies.

I'm not convinced my generalisations are necessarily accurate. I don't know what's going on in other parts of the world, in the financial and political circles, in the Middle East or California or Europe, in the newest developments in nuclear energy or computer technology, in the tracking of planets in our solar system and beyond, in the oceans and the skies and the heavens, in the efforts of corporate social responsibility. But it's all moving and I've got faith that what I'm doing will work out.