A presently-unimaginable present moment.

Events and Invitations.

A set of hinges left by the old man who last lived here, with screws in the Bayer bottle, all twist tied. A presently-unimaginable degree of effortful care for the close-at-hand. Akin to the neighboring practices described in this piece. This image arrived in my inbox this morning from Steven Engelhart, who used them in a wire cage he built yesterday to protect root veggies from rodents.

Greetings Neighbors and Strangers,

The neighbors are driving me crazy.  Getting under my skin.  Or, rather: the neighbors are driving me mad by crawling across my skin.  These neighbors carry diseases, but I don’t mean belief-systems or political stances.  These neighbors have eight legs, expandable stomachs, and a taste for blood.  I pick at least six of them off the dog every evening, and a couple from myself.  I drop these neighbors into a collection jar with a bit of vinegar in the bottom.  The jar is filling fast. 

I often begin these newsletters with a report on the nonhuman doings in the neighborhood.  Songbirds and geese, sheep and cattle, sugar maples and ruddy oaks.  Scolding Crow.  South Wind.  Old Sun.  Sand River.  Often, I transition from there into stories from the work of nonmarket farming and feeding.  Human stories.  Human neighboring stories.  Those stories often shine a light on the cultural poverty of our time by persistently suggesting that it could, and has been, otherwise.  Even for people with pale complexions.  If asked, elderly European American folks might tell you about the nearly-extinct neighborhoods that raised them.  Those stories can set loose a degree of longing that isn’t easy to contain within the normal parameters of polite conversation. 

Last winter my friend Sam and I gave a talk on some of these themes at an organic farming conference.  In the discussion that ensued a young man said, “I run a small organic vegetable CSA operation.  On my better days I feel like I’m doing something useful for a hurting world.  On most of the other days I feel like I’m breaking my body and my land to subsidize the lifestyles of rich people.” 

He wasn’t looking to hurt anyone’s feelings or find someone to blame.  He had simply been given permission to feel and describe the fallout from the collective un-neighboring practice we call the consumer marketplace.  This heartbroken farmer could triple the price of his CSA shares, which would allow him to scale back his production, trade his tractor for a team of draft horses, put a third of his land into cover crop and another third back into forest.  But that move would be a hard sell, and would do little to heal the whole in his heart caused by the lack of social access to the food he grows. 

I tell you about the terrifying prevalence of ticks around the Farm in an effort to disrupt an easy slide into a nature-good/humans-bad binary.  It’s as much a reminder for myself as for anyone else. 

You could argue that the epidemic of ticks and tickborne illnesses stem from human-caused ecological disruption, and you might be right.  But here we are, living together in a time of consequences.  A time of fractured relational webs.  Increasingly, I find it difficult to distinguish between the loneliness epidemic and the ecological crisis.  Between our difficulty talking with people who vote differently and our willingness to wage war against invasive species.  Between the intractability of social class divisions, racism, gun violence and the specter of climate change. 

At the very same time we are realizing that we need a robust capacity to turn enemies back into neighbors, we seem to have fewer and fewer opportunities to exercise those atrophied muscles. 

On Saturday we will be hosting our first Sand River Community Farm event in downtown Keeseville—a gift stand.  From noon to 3pm we will have tables set up at the community garden, right between the bank and the hardware store on Front Street, distributing packages of grass-fed beef and bowls of hot tomato squash soup.  The food will be offered as a gift to anyone who is hungry for any reason.  We won’t be trying to solve the intractable troubles described above, but we might get to meet some of our neighbors and have some conversations that don’t usually fit within the parameters of polite society.  Plus, we might get to have some fun while we’re at it. 

We have a whole lot of beef—at least four hundred pounds—that we will be picking up from the butcher this week and very little room in the freezers at the Farm, so we actually need your help distributing this food—into the bellies of your children, or your neighbor’s children, or, preferably, both.  If cheap and free food set the conditions for hoarding, a single package of gifted ground beef might inspire a pot of chili and a dinner invitation to the strangers who live next door.  I’ve heard stories of such an outcome with my own ears.  In fact, I find myself on the receiving end of such unreasonable acts of neighborly generosity every day.  Some of those neighbors are human and others nonhuman.  In the case of the beef, this summer’s abundant rain and sunshine brought lush, sweet grass and healthy, growing cattle.  The weather had the same generous effect upon the Farm’s tomato and squash patches, which spilled over into the soup pot. 

I recently heard someone suggest that we are headed for “presently-unimaginable futures.”¹  Well-arranged words can shine a light on experiences we knew in our bodies but had no language for.  This morning, I am reaching for language to describe a presently-unimaginable present moment—at once treacherous, terrible and chock full of goodwill.  That’s the unimaginable moment we will try to inhabit together, faithfully, for three hours at the gift stand.   

Tomorrow evening at 7pm, I will sit with my friend Sam Bliss and anyone who decides to join us in conversation at the final event in the Fall Lyceum Series at the Whallonsburg Grange Hall.  The title for the event will be: In Search of a Remedy for Ingratitude.  The organizers have been courageous enough to entertain our request to waive the normal $5 suggested donation, so the event will have no barrier to access.  Thankfully, the organizers never offered to pay us.  The only cost of attendance: you might leave feeling more grateful than when you arrived.  I find myself caught in that uncomfortable scenario all the darn time—nearly every time I sit down to a meal.    

Yesterday, at our weekly Farm Frolic, twenty folks from age four to seventy-four joined hands to plant garlic, rake leaves, sing songs, build a compost pile and haul rocks from and old stone wall to secure tarps for next summer’s corn patch.  Neighboring could be understood as the way humans have always relieved themselves of excessive gratitude buildup.  Once you give a gift or do a favor, someone else has to carry that gratitude around for a while.  It might start to look like a town-wide game of hot potato.  I’ve heard stories of such neighborhoods with my own ears.  I’ve caught glimpses of them with my own eyes.  I’ll try to tell a couple of their stories tomorrow evening.

In all seriousness, it would mean the world to me to see some of you at one of our events this week.  Keep an eye on Annie’s Friday Sand River News for event details, updates and invitations:

A Gathering of Gatherings

 Thank you for entertaining these gift shenanigans. 

With love,

Adam

1.

Dougald Hine

quoting Vanessa Machado de Oliviera, author of Hospicing Modernity.