The Old Sally Moment

Receiving is hard work.

It looks like Kelsey and Tigger had a moment the other day, while I was off pounding the pavement on behalf of the book project.

Greetings Neighbors and Strangers,

Outside, the world lies beneath the hush of a spring eve snow so heavy and windless that you might find yourself overtaken by the dawn chatter falling from the swollen-twig treetops. Yesterday, a ruckus of red-winged blackbirds chortled with glee for the greening season, even as wet flakes rolled down their glossy black backs. Here in the pre-dawn house, the woodstove clucks with glee for the heating season, still upon us. The season wherein humans once lived from generous memories of stored summer sunlight: grass-fat on a cow’s back, the salt-sour of an autumn cabbage crock, flame-bright bones of forest, bucked, split and stacked to dry, now hot behind the stove glass. The sleeping puppy named Maizey puffs audibly on the warming air from the loft above my head. She must be dreaming up the perfect chipmunk chase.

I may be the only one who longs for more winter. For more darkness. For the simplicity of eating the same few foods on repeat. This winter it’s cornmeal pancakes, pan-fried hominy, white beets and purple sauerkraut, butternut-become-soup, slow-reduced tomato paste, dark green dandelion and parsley pesto. Plus beef and tallow and garlic for the pan. Rhubarb sauce on yogurt. Bread and cookies arrive as gifts now and then.

If it weren’t for winter, where would one find the time to write a book that bears the mark of a human soul? That’s what I’ve been up to for the past few months: living from corn and cabbage and cordwood and working to finish a book manuscript before those redwing blackbirds have their greening way with the weather-Gods and the whole thing explodes into sun showers and river swimming and the wild dance of provisioning for the next chance to hole up by the stove and live inside a memory-dream for a few blessed dark months.

The now-completed manuscript carries the provisional title: This Food is a Gift: Practical Experiments in Non-Market, Neighborly Farming and Feeding.

But a manuscript must eventually leave the temporary home it makes inside the womb of a Google Doc and chart a course into the bright light of the marketplace. This may be where you come in, dear reader. It looks like it’s going to take a village to raise a book about the abandoned village.

A week and a half ago, the second publisher into whose open hands I’d decided to place these precious story-seeds wrote to say ‘Sorry, not now and not here.’ This Food is a Gift finally had his Old Sally moment. That’s right, the manuscript uses male pronouns. I can’t tell you why exactly, but he’s definitely not an ‘it’.

You may have heard the story of Old Sally before. She was a marvel. As were Old Hank, Bob, Gertrude and Bess. What was so remarkable about them? They knew how to take a knee each spring at the foot of Old Maple and drink from a clear, sweet stream whose forgiveness they had done nothing to deserve and would not be allowed to pay. They had to receive the gift of Life from the landscape that was their Earthly home at every single meal. And then figure out how to live.

One day, on her way out to the barn, Old Sally fell and broke her leg. By the time the ruckus of redwing blackbirds quieted for the night, Old Sally’s neighbors had already figured out how to keep her cows milked and mucked and fed without spending even one minute on the phone with her insurance agent—she didn’t have one. And Old Sally knew that the dollars stashed beneath her mattress would be staying right there for the six long weeks she would have to sit on the porch and watch her neighbors entrust her with continued life. Once her leg healed, she would have to figure out how to proceed as if they hadn’t been wrong about her. That’s the verb form of gratitude.

The remarkable thing about Old Sally and her ilk, who lived in these very parts just a few generations ago: they still remembered that it was their fundamental responsibility as an Earthling to need help and ask for help—to bear the indignity of receiving grace. Otherwise, no gratitude, no neighborhood and no village. I’m not saying that it was comfortable for them to receive, but how else would they maintain the fabric of a shared Life? Human worthiness, and the Earthly belonging to which it gives rise, appear to be going extinct in our time. That’s why I’ve written the book.

Six years ago, almost to the day, I stopped defending myself against my fellow humans in the form of price tags. Not because I was a visionary. Rather, I was experiencing a degree of heartbreak that will prematurely put you in the grave if you don’t allow it break you open. On the first day of the pandemic, I stopped selling anything. I asked the humans within earshot to sustain me rather than pay me. It wasn’t a plan. It was a plea. Old Sally and Old Maple were urging, even egging me on. They seemed resolutely unwilling to give up on me. They might be whispering something similar to you, even now, through the cracks.

If you believe the story of our time, I should be dead by now. Like a late-winter deer carcass, picked clean by a kettle of hungry vultures. But that’s not what happened. Other things happened. Miraculous things. Neighborly things. This Food is a Gift tells the story about what I learned along the way.

But how can a book about gifts be bought and sold? That dilemma gave rise to the non-market distribution proposal I’ve come up with. I have offered to create a website called thisbookisagift.org, home to a Gift Fund, a collection plate of digital tick marks voluntarily given to allow the book to move through the world in this undefended way. Each time someone requests a gift copy, the website will send an order plus the associated number of dollars to the publisher’s shipping warehouse. Any time the Gift Fund goes to zero, gift copies will become temporarily unavailable. At thisbookisagift.org, one person could request a gift copy and then put $5K into the Gift Fund. Another person could request a copy and then go check on their elderly neighbor. Another person could request a gift copy and then organize a study group with the book’s ‘gift practices’. Here’s one of those practices, from Chapter 6:

Befriend an Old Person: As a practice, this one is fairly self-explanatory. Old people can act as memory-gateways to a world that hasn’t always looked as it does today. Plus, old people invite us to slow down and listen. Once they die, they will become ancestors. We can practice listening to the stories of our ancestors by slowing down long enough to listen to the stories of the ones who haven’t quite died yet.

The book will also be available for order at Bookshop.org, Amazon and everywhere in between, but on the first page the reader will receive the following good news:

If you’ve already purchased the book through the standard market channels, don’t worry. You are still invited to the gratitude practice party, because the price you paid did not include an author payment. That’s right. I, Adam, am asking to be sustained rather than paid. I am inviting you to consider keeping me, my family, the Farm, and my neighbors in mind. At thisbookisagift.org you can learn how to go about doing that.

The marketing team at one of the publishers I courted scratched their heads as they considered my refusal to receive payment for writing the manuscript. Publishers rely heavily on their authors to help with book promotion. How would I find the motivation to say yes to yet another podcast interview or in-person event if I wasn’t getting a cut of every book sold? Perhaps Old Sally and her neighbors have something to say about that—even from the grave. Perhaps Old Maple has something to say about that—even from the hedgerow. It will feel more than a bit odd to place my name on the cover of the finished book, given their persistent and forgiving tutelage.

Two weeks ago, on his way out to the marketplace, This Food is a Gift fell and broke his leg in the form an email saying ‘Not here, not now’. I woke up the next morning expecting utter dejection. Instead, as I worked through second-draft edits on the final chapter, I began to see the book flowering before my eyes. Then it hit me: this book is meant to be a marvel in the way Old Sally was—by needing help and then summoning the culture-making courage to ask for help. Over the past two weeks, I’ve already had at least a dozen vulnerable conversations with people who would like to help usher these stories into the world. Perhaps you’re one of those people. If so, I invite you to send a note by replying to this email.

Everyone involved in the project will be invited to consider asking to be sustained. Given the way the world is, that will include money. In fact, returning dollars to a gift status is one of the central threads of the story.

Here are a few specific questions for you to consider:

1. Do you have connections in the publishing industry—especially in Europe, Canada, Australia or New Zealand?

2. Do you know a skilled editor who might be a good match with the writing style you’ve encountered here at The Peasantry School Newsletter?

3. Do you know people with technical skills to help build out an online gifting platform that might end up serving other authors/artists/publishers/readers in the future?

4. Do you have a friend with a podcast or other platform who might be interested in amplifying the project?

5. Do you have dollars that might serve as water for the germinating seed of this experiment?

One thing I noticed as I attempted to navigate the standard publishing channels was the remarkable degree of guardedness involved. It seemed like everyone was supposed to hold their cards close, including me. Which felt utterly antithetical to the manuscript in question. Transparency and trustworthiness are kissing cousins. Good-hearted gossip may have been one of the essential ingredients in the glue that held the village together.

With a nod to transparency, I can say that writing a book manuscript has proven one of the most humbling and terrifying endeavors I’ve ever undertaken. I have gained an awestruck appreciation for authors and artists of all kinds. With that said, the book project is just now approaching his moment of curtain-parting exposure. It would be a whole lot less scary to close the Google Doc and open it back up next winter, as I have for three years now.

But Old Sally and Old Maple are persistent in their gentle nudges and protestations. They need living humans with hands and tongues to write and speak on behalf of this greening Earth and the possibility that even those of us who have traveled furthest into the coal mine of modernity have what it takes—the requisite qualities of heart and mind—to turn toward one another, join hands, and then begin walking back out.

With love and appreciation,

Adam