Perhaps I’ll start at the end of the story that I want to tell and work backwards. Mid-afternoon yesterday, 46 people stood in a circle on the driveway of the farm. I asked each person to reflect on their day and to offer a maximum of five words to describe their experience of it. There were a range of answers, but many repeated words: “connection,” “food,” “growing,” “community,” “horsepower,” “enchanting,” “possibilities,” “work.” The smiles and the words themselves seemed evidence of a day well spent. Four hours earlier, that same group of people stood in a circle in that same spot, but we were strangers then: the tone was a bit more formal, and the groups we’d arrived with more evident. What changed, and who were all these folks? And what, ultimately, made the transition happen?
Five organizations that work within the intersection of youth and agriculture gathered at Chewonki yesterday: the Cultivating Community Youth Growers from Portland, the Wolfe’s Neck Farm Teen Ag crew from Freeport, the summer farm crew here at Chewonki, the Medomak Valley High School Heirloom Seed Project crew from Waldoboro, and the Erickson Fields Preserve Teen Ag crew from Rockport. In the midst of a culture that undervalues young people’s capacity to do good work, these five organizations are set on doing that good work, and yesterday’s gathering held space for our diverse participants to give voice to their experiences. The adults in the circle, too, wanted our youth to see different systems in action: some of our organizations raise food for a food shelter, some for a CSA, some for local learning communities. We each engage in community service, livestock management, and vegetable production to varying degrees.
We started our day with a group game to break the ice and moved into small groups to tour the Chewonki farm, led by the four valiant semester alum who are working on our farm this summer. One of the best things about being a part of a farming community is the food at such gatherings, and yesterday was no exception: we ate a hearty and delicious potluck that featured many ingredients grown (or milked) by the youth. While eating, all sat in small groups and chatted amiably about our highs and lows of the summer, our unique work communities, and our motivation to do this kind of work. The after lunch time was an opportunity to do work around the farm: one group moved empty chicken tractors back to their winter resting place and learned about Chewonki’s meat production, another group weeded Pondside garden, and a third group had a hands-on opportunity to drive Sal.
We came to our first 46-person circle in pods, chatting quietly with the crews we each work alongside daily. Looking around at our final gather – mere hours later – the groups were all mixed up, the exchanges and faces more open. It had been my hope that we might each walk away with some seed of a meaningful connection outside of ourselves: either to this piece of land or these farm systems or each other. It is a powerful thing to do the work that we each do daily on farms, but involves a lot of looking down, an attention to the details at hand. Yesterday was all about looking up and at each other, recognizing – feeling – a part of a community of people trying to make the same change in the world. And hopefully it’s only a beginning.
For more on the event, please see this article published in the Boothbay Register today.
