The First Peasantry School Offering

A four-day Gratitude Feast Immersion

Greetings Neighbors and Strangers,

Rain falls as a benediction—a well-wish, or a spoken blessing—upon a landscape gripped by deep green thirst.  Rain comes hard enough that her playful chatter fills the air and passes through the open house windows.  She sings by making contact with metal roof panels and plastic buckets, with bare garden soil and seed stalks of meadow Grass, bent and bowing, combed Westward by night Wind.  She gathers in puddles where Ground sips more slowly, and there, upon meeting herself again, she sings by splashing.  Children seem to know how to converse in this way.  Speech and song do not begin with words.  Words seem to come later, opening a distance between humans and the many-voiced terrain.  An old proverb warns: name the color, blind the eye.  Name her rain, and our ears struggle to hear this specific bent-Grass and bucket-tapping Rain, this warm-Rain-upon-open-house-windows and parched Ground Rain.  Name him “conservative” or “liberal” and our eyes and hearts begin to falter, harden, close.  When rain becomes a universal, she stops inviting us into conversation, stops singing to us.  The danger: that we lose track of the benediction song.  That we forget the words altogether.  That we fall out of love with the landscapes that sustain us. 

Many have been rattled by the wind-borne arrival of choking smoke last week.  Fear and anger seem to come in waves, betraying an understandable sense of powerlessness in the face of something so awe-full.  The consequence of generations of un-careful behavior settles upon us as a reddish haze of uncertainty.  Some will respond by hardening their political convictions, or pushing for new, industrial technologies.  Others will take personal measures to shrink their ecological footprint.  Others may weep quietly, or simply go numb.  It might seem odd, then, to propose practicing courtship with our surroundings at the very moment when so much seems to be slipping, urgently, away.  That is what you will find in this week’s letter, after the invitations:

The Peasantry School’s first official offering: Gratitude Feast Immersion at the Farm, 6/28-7/2.  See details below. 

The July Gratitude Feast will be Sunday 7/2 at 4pm.  The food is offered as a gift to anyone who is hungry for any reason.  After singing and giving thanks, we will share a hearty meal of Farm food, served family-style.  Look for ways to join in the Feast preparations in next week’s Newsletter.

Farm Frolic every Sunday at 3pm.  We are aiming to feed people in town every month through the Winter, and so we are planting gardens with winter storage in mind.  This week we will trellis Tomatoes, pull and preserve Garlic scapes, mulch Potatoes, and more.  Stay for dinner at 6pm.  A main dish from the Farm will be served and we welcome your additions of sides or desserts.

Feast Supplies: We are still looking for a few more 10” cast iron pans and large oval serving platters. 

Gratitude Feast Immersion: A four-day practice in radical hospitality and home-making.

Imagine you are standing outside in warm Summer Rain, head tilted back, mouth open.  After a few big gulps of that generous gift, your belly fills and your mouth begins to overflow in songful, grateful speech.  This is the longing that animates this Newsletter: to remember how to speak with a belly-, and mouth-full of the ongoing benediction we call life.  The work at the Farm tracks a similar longing, but asks labor to underwrite words, imagining that we might learn to push and pull on the landscape with the honed attention of a courtship dance.  The risk: we fall hopelessly in love with the place we call home. 

As a participant in the Gratitude Feast Immersion, you will spend four days introducing yourself to the neighbors, nonhuman and human both.  Labors will include grazing, slaughtering and butchering Lambs, gardening and harvesting vegetables, herb and greens, as well as washing, chopping, roasting and seasoning all of the food for Sunday’s Feast.  You will be invited to learn songs and practice spoken gratitude and table fellowship at each of our group meals, and to find a few words to share at Sunday’s Gratitude Feast, where you will serve as a host.  All meals will be provided by the Farm during your stay.  Accommodations include a guest cabin and tent sites.  The Immersion is offered at no charge.  Please write to Adam at peasantryschool@gmail.com with interest or questions.  The Immersion will be offered each month during the warm season, with 2-3 places available each time.  Dates include: 6/28-7/2, 8/2-8/6, 8/30-9/3, 9/27-10/1. 

Four fine folks—Matthew, Petra, Rene and Benji—walked alongside me through the days leading up to the June Feast.  Their generous companionship allowed this invitation to come into view; their generous reflections cast the Farm’s easy-to-overlook into high relief.  They have offered to describe their time here, so that you might catch a glimpse.  Hats off to them. 

With great care, Adam

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From Petra:

The gift of sweet company on sweet land! The gift of stepping back so we can step in more fully! The Peasantry School welcomed us in with the lushness of June, waving grasses and beaming buttercups each encouraging us to find, follow and share the deep joys and curiosity that attends deep love and service unfolding. The generosity of this place begets a generosity of spirit so profoundly, deliciously resilient. I look so forward to returning, season after season, to the practice of braiding stories, song and abundance shared across species as we revel in the river and return to the soil together.

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From Matthew:

Why did I travel 200+ miles to and for whom?  Is that question any different from why I rise in the morning and for whom? Between the ages of 8-12 I went to a summer camp in Keeseville.  Some of the foundational gifts from that time were integrated play, collective being, learning from and love of place and the land.  Returning to Keeseville the other week was a remembering and affirmation of my vocation. It was a vocation, a calling, a willing in of work, a study, a practice of how to move and be in this body.  There are many moments of my day, of my mind, my compliance that forget to center what I learned all those years ago in Keeseville.  And there are constant threads that continually pull me back into practice.  The days leading up to the June Feast offered space to play and practice learning together from one another and from many of the beings invited to that land and home. It was a vocation of care, of creative giving and receiving. I am left with great appreciation for the space and time to be present with what is unfolding for all of us on that land and in the gathering for feasts. I feel held and nourished in my vocation and the creative exploration of how to rise tomorrow and keep playing and praying in ways to be with, be for, be in connectedness.  

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From René:

I was quiet, but only on the outside. Internally, I wrestled loudly with awkwardness, embarrassment at my modern distance from the relationships and skills and practices of the place. Of any place at all. Do I belong here? What could I possibly offer to a place like this?

                My name is René and I am a clinical mental health intern residing in a city called Seattle on the unceded lands stewarded by the Duwamish [dxʷdəwʔabš] people. Growing up in a military family, I come from a culture of homeless empire and war machines. Through art, community organizing, and deep listening, I am engaged in the slow, uncertain, wondering work of translating village-mindedness and some far-off semblance of animism into my daily urban life and community. Adam and I met at the Orphan Wisdom School last year in Deacon, Ontario, where this work of translation has been fed, challenged, and wildly encouraged in the rich soil of the teachings of Stephen Jenkinson.

At dinner the night before we slaughtered the lambs, we could hear a cow bellowing from a long way off. After some speculation, we figured it was Africa, a Jersey cow up at North Country Creamery, who had recently lost her calf. No longer able to offer her baby milk, company, or protection, she wailed her song for him into the air. Beautiful in its earnestness, in its persistence, in its offering. Earlier in the evening, we could hear the newest lambs bleating, agitated. Adam speculated this was likely because the ewes had gone to the other side of a hedgerow in the paddock, just out of view, and that the lambs were crying, not yet used to having their mothers out of sight. I reflected to myself in that moment that soon it would be the last time that some of the yearlings saw their mothers, ever. Here they were, offering their voice to close the gap between them and their unseen beloveds.

The next morning, the sun hovered red, rising through a haze of hot summer dust and pollen, an echo of the wildfire smoke to come. The air was thick with all of this and the texture of rising dew. I was the first one to the kitchen, where Adam, Benji, and I were to meet before making our way to the pasture. In the privacy of the early light, I quietly sang a morning song to a cairn atop the gravel heap and made my way down to Adam’s cabin. He invited me to join him in his morning prayer, an elegant and simple address to Them. I accepted, but stood by dumbly, silent in my self-consciousness. Do I join in? I don’t want to intrude. We proceeded to the field where he made song, ritual, offering, and such tenderness offered as we killed and eviscerated them. Adam graciously invited me to participate in ways I’m certain he could have done faster on his own, but the invitation was important. Sacred. A call to belong to this dance that I was already part of, have already been part of since my first meal of umbilical blood. Still, I am quiet. What could I say that belongs in a moment so sacred as this? I pray silently, hesitantly, embarrassed at my spiritual poverty in the face of all my taking. As though hushed piety might be the best I could offer as I stood starkly, fumbling amidst the holy.

We reflected later in the day about what might be stirring following our time with the lambs. I shared about my internal conflict of having felt moved by the experience, but paralyzed into silence by my uncertainty: Do I let these prayers and songs find voice? Do they belong here? Do I belong here?

Less than a week before, that teacher of ours delivered a lecture on belonging. The prefix be- indicates an intensification of whatever should follow, in this case, longing. A tug in the heart that intensifies rather than diminishes when nearing the desideratum. In my modern alienation, I have developed the passive habit of waiting for a place, person, or group to do my belonging for me, to grab me by the wrist and insist “No! We really, really want YOU!” Outsourcing all of the psychic effort of belonging, resulting in my seldom truly feeling it. Forever the outsider, the interloper, waiting to be made one who belongs. Unwilling to do my own belonging. Recalling my earlier silence, “I don’t want to intrude,” but ever intruding nonetheless.

“It is still awkward for me,” Adam replies “It is always awkward for me in the presence of other humans. But They [gesturing to the non-humans] are not mind readers.” Our praise, songs, prayers, our voices are an offering and Adam reveals his practice of leaning into the discomfort and lifting his voice rather than risk Them taking our silence as indifference. What then, can I offer to this place? These beings who have held, fed, watered, and housed me? At the very least, I can offer some of my comfort. The comfort I was keeping to myself in silence so as to avoid feeling awkward singing out of tune to a sunrise or orchard grass or a dark-eyed Jersey cow. Or a lamb, struggling under my hands as we took its life. I can afford to offer my comfort, to sacrifice a sliver of my vanity in a love song to Them. We were joined later that day by friends who knew a song for every occasion. With new resolve, I sang along, tenuous at first. With practice, tenderness bent my cowering into a bow -- a ragged elegance leaning forward into my embarrassment, a genuflect toward Them. When Sunday’s gratitude feast came and it was time for group song, I helped to lead and sang solo (even if only for a verse at a time) in front of a group for the first time in years. And I know They heard me in all my ramshackled, wavering be-longing.