MLT Newsletter
February 1985
Sometimes In my dreams
I still see
my Kentucky grandmother
thin, strong and hungry
holding her egg money
out to me
saying
buy land, Mary,
buy land,
buy land while it lasts
they stopped making it.
- from Country Women
Jeanne Tetrault &
Sherry Thomas
WOMEN IN AGRICULTURE
An Agricultural Worker's Perspective
- Juliet Minard
A few words of background and introduction ... I live in Berrien
Springs, MI with my husband, Scott, on 1 acre of land with apple trees
and a large vegetable garden. I went to college in the early
'70's and got involved in the ecology movement, recycling, food
co-ops and the like. A few years back we lived on the School of
Homesteading farm where I began to find out what farming is all
about. Since then, I've worked part-time for the Van Buren Soil
Conservation District and am currently employed by Buchanan Co-ops,
Inc. as Crop Management Program Co-ordinator.
My value system is one of respect for life - people, plants, animals,
soil, Nature; and includes a deep love of life. Land is an
integral part of this value system. Land supports life.
Without the earth there would be no life as we know it. This can
also be said of Nature's other elements such as sunlight, air and
water. Our physical existence depends on their availability. So,
too, does our spiritural existence to a large extent. It is so
stirring to see wheat fields begin to turn green in the spring, to
plant peas and wait and watch as the growing point begins to break
ground, to smell the fresh hay from a rolling field just cut, and
then to watch the sun set behind the new bales on the hill. The
sense of joy and peace that can be found by becoming attuned to Nature
is more than I have ever experienced in any church. Though other
cultures have understood this since time immemorial, American
mainstream culture does not give much priority to this aspect of
spirituality.
My work for Buchanan Co-op revolves around "good" management of
farmland. The backbone of the program is the Integrated Pest Management
(IPM) scouting activities throughout the growing season. Fields
of corn, alfalfa, soybeans, oats, or wheat are inspected each week for
insects, weeds, diseases, nutrient deficiencies, and other items of
interest to the grower. For insects, the universitites have
developed "economic threshold levels" which indicate what populations
of a given insect can be tolerated by a crop before economic damage is
done. Monitoring the beneficial insects present is also very
important. In some cases, even if the pest populations are high,
the beneficiais can reduce their numbers significantly. Weather
conditions, too, can reduce pest populations. I like to stress
crop rotation as an excellent practice to keep down insect and disease
problems.
Since the growers I work with do use herbicides, knowing exactly what
weeds are in their fields helps them to decide what herbicides to
use. It has been interesting to see how these farmers react to
weeds in their fields. Some farmers cannot tolerate even low numbers of
weeds in their fields. To many it seems to be a matter of pride
to have as "clean" a field as possible. Some attitude adjusting
is necessary here, but it is not easy. Often the pocketbook is
the only way to get through. If they can be convinced that it
won't pay to control those few weeds, they may concede.
Working with farmers and walking fields and being outdoors much of the
time make my job an enjoyable one. Being a woman working
primarily with men is not always my preference, but, most of the time,
there is mutual respect.
As far as my views about land as they are influenced by my being a
woman, that is a hard question for me. I don't often think of my
values toward land as being molded by the fact that I am female.
I feel more like they came from a deep-rooted tradition of stewardship
once practiced by many who worked and loved the land. Today, that
intimate relationship is rare. It is too often obscured by
competition and profit motive. Many, if not most, farmers still
love farming, preferring it to other occupations/lifestyles, but
farming has changed since the days of their parents and grandparents.
There seems to be more of a factory-like approach to farming these
days. Long-term soil health is often sacrificed for short-term
profit. Women as farmers may be more sensitive to the importance
of a healthy earth for longterm survival. Perhaps we would
give this more priority . . . it's hard to say. Among the
back-to-the-landers, though, it seems the theme of stewardship of the
land is shared by both women and men.
Land is an essential ingredient for life. It deserves respect and
care. Civilizations of the past have been virtually destroyed by poor
land management. Many areas of the world today are suffering from
dramatic loss of topsoil and gradual desertification, "Now the
current U.S. Administration is threatening to withdraw funding for the
U.S.D.A. Soil Conservation Service. Let us all take a lesson from
history and listen to our hearts as we develop our values toward land
and pass them on to others.
A Student's Perspective
- Catherine Gauthier
The land is too often viewed as a commodity which is purchased,
owned, and exploited for profits. Fields are often planted in
single crops to the extreme boundaries, forgetting conservation
practices or chemical run-off problems. However, the land is more than
a commodity. It nourishes and supports every human being on
earth. The land sustains life. We cannot survive without
it, but it can thrive without us.
We have been given the ability to manipulate the land to satisfy our
human needs and desires. In doing so, it is our responsibility to
be stewards rather than exploiters. Stewardship involves putting
back into the land what we take out, or returning the land to its
natural state. Erosion control, soil nutrient replenishment, and
the encouragement of nature's own balance are just as important or even
more inportant, than profits. Good stewardship requires the
realization that although people can manipulate nature, they cannot
dominate it.
This idea is well expressed by a poem:
Push nature by force and she'll turn and rout the false
refinements that would keep her out. - Chaucer
Thus a good steward must work with the land rather than on the
land. If we nurture the land it produces for us and will continue
to produce for us, but when we abuse it, it will cease to
produce. The land is alive—if it dies, we die.
I feel a strong sense of responsibility and commitment to prepare
myself for a personal role as a steward of the land. As a junior
in genera1 agriculture at the University of Illinois, I look for new
ways to develop the skills and attitudes of a good steward.
Belonging to the local food co-op helps me to enrich my outlook by
integrating social, moral, political, and ecological aspects of food
production, distribution, marketing, and consumption (stewardship goes
beyond the act of growing food-it reaches to our everyday lives).
Co-op members participate in the selection of foods to be
purchased. Nutritional value, political implication,
environmental impact of growing methods, as well as economics are
considered before a product is purchased. We do not patronize
suppliers who abuse pesticides. workers, or the environment.
Emphasis is placed on opening markets with local growers who are
concerned about ttie qualitv of their products and sustaining their
land. At the co-op people socially involve themselves with
agricultura1 stewardship rather than simply going to the grocery store
and pulling the packaged goods off the shelf. The land is a very
elaborate quilt. Each patch has a place and all the patches are
sown together to form a wholistic design.
At the university, though, the patches of the quilt themselves are very
elaborate, but they are not connected. Instead, they sit in a
random heap. The University of Illinois is agribusiness oriented
which steers research in the direction of exploitation rather than
stewardship. Emphasis is placed on production, so social,
political, moral, and ecological implications are pushed aside. I
have worked at the university dairy where the animals are treated like
machines rather than living, breathing creatures. They spend
their lives on concrete feedlots and stalls. Their legs are worn
and scabby, and many limp from infected or worn down hooves. They
are frequently beaten for upsetting workers. The only thing important
about a cow is how much she can produce. I am presently working
for a horticulture professor who knows nothing about the value of
manure, composting, integrated pest management, or the reasons why
people do not want pesticide residues on their food. To him,
doing research for Libby's is a way to make money, period.
Although I am learning a great deal about plants, animals, and soil in
work and in my classes, I am learning virtually nothing about
stewardship at the Big U. Therefore, I must arrange the patches
by myself and learn how to stitch them together.
I do not think that being a woman affects the way I value the
land. Values come from more than one's sex—they evolve from
one's personality, hopes, desires, dreams, despairs, spirituality,
environment, and from other people. Anyone can learn how to sow.
A Homesteader's Perspective
- Wendy Price
As a child, my family moved quite frequently. Until my
31st year, I had never lived in any place longer than four years and
the average was close to a year and a half. This gave me a strong
feeling of instability, impermanence, and restlessness. I felt
this restlessness, also, after I had left my parents' house and started
living and working on my own. My life and my "job had no
goals, no direction, no focus. After much wondering and soul
searching I realized that what I needed most in my life were strong
roots in one place and a set of goals that would take a lifetime to
work toward. The best way to do this seemed to be to own and work
on a farm and homestead. I have been very fortunate. I was
able to learn many basic skills of homesteading at the School of
Homesteading in Bangor, Michigan. While there I met a man with
ideals and goals very similar to mine and together we have bought and
paid for 75 acres in a small community in Kentucky.
Living on this farm has finally given my soul a permanence for which it
has been searching for years. As I hope to still be here in 50
years, I try to look at this land and plan for this farm in years and
decades instead of days and months. 1 have to live with the
consequences of my decisions. I can no longer move on when times
are. tough, but must face up to my own actions. I am learning to
plan ahead, to care for my soil, my livestock, myself in ways to
enchance our future existence. The seasonal changes of chores and
work keep me from getting restless or bored. The livestock and
the garden fulfill my need to tend, to look after, to heal. My
neighbors and aquaintances reinforce my feeling that this is my home
with their sharing, caring, and recognition of my place in this
community. And my homesteading friends and family give me the
support and sympathy 1 need to continue on in this lifestyle. I
might have been able to find these things if I hadn't come here to
live. But 1 know that this land, this farm., this place, these
people have given me the strength to live my convictions. I would
choose no other.
The following passage of poetry is from Susan Griffin's Woman and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her,
and began four years earlier when Ms. Griffin was asked by the
Agriculture Department at the University of California, Berkley, to
deliver a lecture on women and ecology. The book takes the form
of a dialogue, distinguishing the feminine voice(s) of thought and
emotion, a totality, from ''Civilized man's" objective thought,
separate from emotion. It is worth noting that the objective male
point of view gives way as the feminist identity is evolved in the
course of the book. ---Editor
A Feminist Perspective
- Susan Griffin
He breaks the wilderness. He clears the land of trees,
brush, weed. The land is brought under his control; he has turned
waste into a garden. Into her soil he places his plow. He
labors. He plants. He sows. By the sweat of his brow,
he makes her yield. She opens her broad lap to him. She smiles on
him. She prepares him a feast. She gives up her treasures to
him. She makes him grow rich. She yields. She
conceives. Her lap is fertile. Out of her dark interior,
life arises. What she does to his seed is a mystery to him.
He counts her yielding as a miracle. he sees her workings as
effortless. Whatever she brings fourth he calls his own. He
has made her conceive. His land is a mother. She smiles on the
joys of her children. She feeds him generously. Again and
again, in his hunger, he returns to her. Again and again
she gives to him. She is his mother. Her powers are a mystery to
him. Silently she works miracles for him. Yet, just
as silently, she withholds from him. Without reason, she refuses
to yield. She is fickle. She dries up. She is bitter.
She scorns him. He is determined he will master her. He
will make her produce at will. He will devise ways to plant what he
wants in her, to make her yield more to him.
He deciphers the secrets of the soil. (He knows why she brings
forth.) He recites the story of the carbon cycle. (He masters the
properties of chlorophyll. ) He recites the story of the nitrogen
cycle. (He brings nitrogen out of the air.) He determines
the composition of the soil. (Over and over he can plant the same
plot of land with the same crop.) He says that the soil is a
lifeless place of storage, he says that the soil is what is tilled by
farmers. He says that the land need no longer lie fallow. That
what went on in her quietude is no longer a secret, that the ways of
the land can be managed. That the farmer can ask whatever he
wishes of the land. (He replaces the fungi, bacteria, earthworms,
insects, decay.) He names all that is necessary, nitrogen,
phosphorus, potassium, and these he says he can make. He
increases the weight of kernels of barley with potash; he makes a more
mealy potato with muriate of potash, he makes the color of cabbage
bright green with nitrate, he makes onions which live longer with
phosphates, he makes the cauliflower head early by withholding
nitrogen. His powers continue to grow.
Phosphoric acid, nitrogen fertilizers, ammonium sulfate, white
phosphate, potash, iron sulfate, nitrate of soda, superphosphate,
calcium cynnamide, calcium oxide, calcium magnesium, zinc sulfate,
phenobarbital, amphetamine, magnesium estrogen, copper sulfate,
meprobamate, thalidomide, benzethonium chloride, Valium,
hexachlorphene, diethystibestrol.
What device can she use to continue she does. She says that the pain is unbearable. Give me something,
she says. What he gives her she takes into herself without asking
why. She says now that the edges of what she sees are blurred. Give me something,
she says. What he gives her she takes without asking. She
says that the first pain is gone, or that she cannot remember it, or
that she cannot remember why this began or what she was like before, or
it she will survive without what he gives her to take, but that she
does not know, or cannot remember, why she continues.
He says she cannot continue without him. He says she must have
what he gives her. He says also that he protects her from
predators. That he gives her diclorodiphenyltrichloroethane,
dieldrin, chlorinated naphtalenes, chlordan, parathion, Malathion,
selenium, pentachlorophenol, arsenic, sodium arsenite, amitrole.
That he has rid her of pests, he says.
And he has devised ways to separate himself from her. He sends
machines to do his labor. His working has become as effortless as
hers. He accomplishes days of labor with a small motion of his
hands. His efforts are more astonishing than hers. No
longer praying, no longer imploring, he pronounces words from a
distance and his orders are carried out. Even with his back
turned to her she yields to him. And in his mind, he imagines
that he can conceive without her. In his mind he develops the means to
supplant her miracles with his own. In his mind, he no longer
relies on her. What he possesses, he says is his to use and to
abandon.
And finally, excerpts from two letters: one from Wendy:
Lambing season has just started. The twice-a-night check on the
ewes, the cold barn, the babies who refuse to nurse, the mothers who
refuse to let them nurse, ah—then on a bright sunny day six or
seven or twelve lambs go running and frolicking through the
field—back and forth, up and down and I know it's worth it.
What a life.
and one from Susan Rainsford:
I must be crazy! How can I possibly sit down at 10 a.m. and
write you a letter? Christina is waking from her nap, I
signed up for the mid-morning feeding of our latest batch of kids ( bom
yesterday, they haven't got the hang of nursing yet) , one load of wash
done—two yet to be hung out in the sun to dry, breakfast not yet
completely cleared away, milking equipment on the counter to clean,
have to leave at 11:30 for a meeting of the Vestry and HATE going to
town with goat-shit on my shoes (or worse). This only represents
pre-maintenance stuff, then there's maintenance work (like bread baking
and what do we do for dinner???), and extras (typing on Guy's project,
billpaying, etc.). . . This may be presumptuous of me, BUT....
I think I'm beginning to get a glimmer of what [the homesteader's] life is like.
In setting-up and going-with this lifestyle—what's the name for
it again?? I think most of my friends think that I'm vacationing here
in the country-- there are cherished dreams. It's good to work
with the earth, to work alongside your husband, to have space and
quiet, to do "hands-on" nurturance of life.
But in reality...
"We" cleaned the barn last week. Everybody came ... I set it up because
I cherish working alongside others—getting sweaty and dirty
together. So where was I? In the kitchen with the tea
kettle!! It's the times of our lives; they just don't seem to go
together. I love feeding people, I enjoy tending children; I
don't seem to be able to manage to do those things while cleaning out
the barn—which I also enjoy doing. It is possible to have
too much of a good thing. . .
"Farm life" continues. I'm pleased with the quiet and manual work
which allows me to reflect on the state-of-things. . . I sense that
some basic re-structuring of innards is going on. By that I think
I mean that my attitude and approach to life are being defined or
refined, and for that I am grateful.
From Rosemary Radford Ruether's Liberation Theology:
Our model. . . expresses itself in a new command to learn to
cultivate the garden, for the cultivation of the garden is where the
powers of rational consciousness come together with the harmonies of
nature in partnership.
THE PERMACULTURE WORKSHOP:
Enclosed is a brochure on the Permaculture Workshop planned for
August. The workshop is not limited to residents of Michigan and
the surrounding state, but is open to anyone in the country. You
can help us make a success of the Workshop by showing it or sending the
brochure to anyone you think might be interested in attending.
Additional copies for yourself or others can be obtained by writing:
Jonathan Towne and Bobbi Martindale
24760 CR 681
Bangor, Ml 49013
Sally Kaufman, Editor
March 16th - workday at the MLT Farm - a barn razing
April 14th - MLT Board Meeting (at the MLT Farm). 5:30 Potluck, 6:30 meeting.
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