LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

By Liza Gabriel

 

We are among the many thousands of farmers who were supposed to receive significant funding from the Climate Smart Agriculture program this year, but it’s frozen.  This, unfortunately, meant we had to renege on our offer of full-time employment to our farmworker this season, yet it doesn’t mean we won’t still implement most of the silvopasture efforts we had planned - we just won’t get paid to do them.  For a truly good farmer, “creating ties” (p. 46) and always trying to do better by the earth, the animals, and our community is in our blood.  For a truly good farmer, the economics are important, but not as important as our relationship with the earth and the generations to come.

 

These days, as I struggle to balance remaining informed about the deeply troubling happenings in our country with maintaining my mental health and with the desire to provide love and hope to my young children, compiling this issue on Draft Animal Power has been a calming and inspirational joy. 

 

Richard Robinson writes, “There are few images of rural life more iconic than a farmer driving his team of horses; few relationships on the farm are more intimate than a farmer and her team of oxen. The idea of draft power speaks to a central ideal of organic farming” (p. 36). 

 

Whether with intention or not, many farmers arrive at this work because we seek “refuge in wild places” (p. 22), “an “outside job…and food sovereignty” (p. 39) for ourselves and our community. Farming with draft power, David Fisher says, essentially supports an alternative economy outside of U.S. Capitalism where it is possible to live deeply, beautifully, and harmoniously with the earth and our communities and make a living while doing it (p. 22). 

 

The anecdotes in this issue remind me of our profound fortune as farmers to have a right relationship with the earth.  I didn’t forget this, but life's distracted “busyness” gets in the way sometimes.  To succeed with draft animals,  you can’t forget this, and you can’t be distracted.  Julia Ramsey shares, “The horses teach about awareness and the presence of mind and body…” Spending time with horses in quiet observation means we must slow down enough to be receptive to this information (p. 43).  This slower pace gives integrity to what we do; it offers space to honor the life of an animal we slaughter, to honor our bodies' strength to do repetitive labor, to honor nature - for she does not rush. Perhaps most importantly, the pace allows for reciprocity - something I think we all long for.  “My relationship with horses and mules has enhanced my relationships with other humans,” says Donn Hewes (p. 42).  “​​I must slow down, I must pay attention, I must be worthy… We deserve their respect and, in turn, respect them. It’s a relationship”, explains Becky Frye, who farms with Donn (p. 45).

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Whether farming with draft animals or not, the stories in this issue inspire us to connect more deeply with the way we farm.  While we all have a long to-do list, it’s only when we move fast enough to complete a task but slow enough to be present in the work that relationships emerge, that growth occurs, and that we belong.

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Thank you to Donn Hewes, Maggie Smith, and Michael Glos for helping with this issue.

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