Reflections from our farmers.
This post was adapted from a recent CSA newsletter sent out by Zenger Farm’s wonderful farm crew.
Our annual “Hell Week” was different this year.Every year, your farm crew works a 50-hour week, which we affectionately call Hell Week. The idea is to give our apprentices a taste of what farming will be like when they start working on their own farm, or another farm, and also give them the confidence that they can do it. Hell Week also helps us catch up on our work in the fields. And to bond through hard work. And enjoy lots of treats.
But this week took on a much different feel than past years as so many protest the violence, disparites and injustice that Black folks confront in America. Some days this week, some of your farmers arrived at Zenger at 6 AM, left at 5 PM, and joined the protests at 6 PM, only to return to work at 6 AM the next day.
It can be a challenge to find purpose in taking the time to weed a bed of carrots when now it is so important to spend time raising up the voices of those who have been systematically oppressed, so that change continues to happen, because white America has so far to go.
Your farmers wanted to share some of their thoughts with you after this intense week.
– Farmer Bryan
Farmer Serena
For me, there hasn’t been much shocking or new about the events this last week. Even still the pain of having Black bodies under attack through a pandemic and through policing is real and a cause of a lot of grief and continued fear. Even through that grief and anger, Black and Brown communities have had to and still have to show up and live every day life. That’s how it felt Monday as we started our 50 hour work week endearingly titled “Hell Week”.
For me, this week has been physically exhausting while at the same time emotionally turbulent. I continue to feel grateful for the choice I have made to learn about providing fuel for my community and I hope to strengthen these skills so that communities of color and their allies are self-sufficient. The system of policing has not served Black communities. Nor has the system of food access. I want self-reliant communities that can rely on each other and restore justice. It’s a big task and the work is never ending.
Farmer Andrea
Farming while the rest of the country protests feels like both a burden and a service I am grateful to be a part of. I’ve been spending the nights that I am able to out in the streets, and my days thinking about how we get ‘from here to there’, meaning abolition, while weeding and harvesting. Its been difficult to grapple with getting myself to bed after 10-hour days when the rest of the country is out protesting, when black folks are being murdered, when I know I need to be there. It’s been scary to be out in the violence. But how do we invest in something new without dismantling? I’ve been thinking about how we could defund police and use community services as models to invest in to protect and care for each other. I feel anger, and heartbreak and know that there is another way. Trying to get from here to there. Latinx for Black lives.
This week I’m thinking about how to continue to disrupt the current systems of policing through direct action. I’m also trying to practice patience for myself knowing that change is way overdue but will continue to come slowly.
To be honest, it’s hard to have all the words to express what I have seen this week, and how to process it all. I just ask that movements continue to bring restorative justice and more than just police reform.
There are varying levels of privilege and, as a mixed woman of color, I experience the world differently than my dark-skinned mother. Those with privilege, let’s keep each other accountable and in check. I want to acknowledge the disparities that Black Trans lives have faced in this country and if you have any level of privilege, now is the time to invest in and physically protect the bodies of Black and Brown folks, especially Black Trans folks.
A Small Needful Fact
by Ross Gay
Is that Eric Garner worked
for some time for the Parks and Rec.
Horticultural Department, which means,
perhaps, that with his very large hands,
perhaps, in all likelihood,
he put gently into the earth
some plants which, most likely,
some of them, in all likelihood,
continue to grow, continue
to do what such plants do, like house
and feed small and necessary creatures,
like being pleasant to touch and smell,
like converting sunlight
into food, like making it easier
for us to breathe.
Farmer Gonzalo
I wanted to share a poem by Alan Palaez Lopez, an Afro-Indigenous writer and multimedia artist whose words have kept me grounded these past few days. As difficult as it may be to not be jaded about the prospect of radical change, I hope this poem may remind us of the significance of envisioning more just worlds, free of violence against Black Folks. And may those visions of the future guide and energize us all, particularly non-Black folks, to engage in the work (every single day) to materialize those more just worlds.
Farmer Kristie
For the past few months starting this apprenticeship that began in tandem with the stay at home orders, I have lived in a fairly comfortable isolated bubble occupied by Zenger Farm and my fellow farmers. We’ve done hard and rewarding work while attempting to build community between us during strange and stressful times. This past week, with the murder of George Floyd and the protests and actions that have followed, I have realized that as a white person I’ve lived my life in a series of safe and comfortable bubbles created by hundreds of years of systemic racism designed to keep people that look like me safe without regard for and at the expense of people who don’t, particularly Black folks.
Farmer David
The institutions of our society that define agriculture–predetermining the patterns of land ownership, providing education and technical support, and financing agriculture from coast to coast– were designed with the express intent of creating material benefit for white people, at the expense of Native and Black people.
The fragile dream of a sustainable agriculture in Oregon, or anywhere, is only a lifeless and silly fantasy, or a nightmare, if we remain silent to the ongoing and pervasive reality of colonialism, racism, capitalism, and militarism.
This most recent tragedy is not surprising, even through the bubbles created by white supremacy, we’ve all heard about murders such as this one too, too often. What surprises me this week is how I ever could have thought I was doing enough.
The same is true of many other social institutions we live in today, including the police force.
On the question of so-called “looting,” and the inconvenient disruption that it brings the quotidian lives of white people, we white folks must remember that we enjoy material and psychological benefits privileges every day because we live in a society that was built to loot from others, namely Black and Indigenous peoples, and other people of color. We see a few nights of looting in the news, but our society has been looting for us, day in and day out, for over 500 years.