So Here’s a Little Controversy Talk

I’m not sure I wanna be a farmer.  Oh I love working in the soil, correcting imbalances, seeing things grow, planning, planting, weeding, nurturing.  And I love people, I want the best for folks, I wish all folks knew with confidence their future, their eternal future, short of that I want other folks to live well.  And for my part, I want them to eat well and find things that bring them beauty and refuge.

But I’m not sure I wanna be a farmer for others.  Just sayin’, not sure I wanna put myself out there. 

Not that I would be growing cantaloupes for people all across the country, but there is a very dedicated team of brothers farming in Colorado who love to grow cantaloupes, lots of them.  Some go to their close neighbors in Colorado and some travel across the country. These fellows, who love cantaloupes and the land and people and people who love cantaloupes, they put themselves out there, year after year and grow cantaloupes, until this year.  The Jensen brothers started off their twentieth year growing their popular cantaloupes and then they got the call, the call that tells them there is a problem with cantaloupes from their region. 

Now their cantaloupe crop is done, not because the frost of fall arrived, but well before the season was ended their cantaloupes were done, they shut off the irrigation, sent the harvesters away and watched this year’s crops die, prematurely, in the field.  And when the brothers go back to their  homes or office, they get to watch the news that blames them for death and sickness and they get to deal with the lawyer who is dealing with a lawsuit against them. 

Listeria.  Listeria is a soil borne bacteria that can be, but isn’t always, carried by animals, oh and by humans in their “you know” tract.  The little buggers can hang out in all sorts of places, like factories, for a really stinking long time, even in your fridge.  They can actually grow in your fridge when you have it set around 40 degrees.  Basically, I’m not sure why we haven’t all died from listeria poisoning, or any other sort of food poisoning or just from the stuff that floats in the air, just in case you breathairians were getting all uppity there for a minute.  When Dirt and I were gifted a book on sheep diseases we almost threw in the towel, after quickly perusing the book it looked as if sheep would just keel over at a moment’s notice because lots and lots of stuff croaks ‘em and the lots of stuff is everywhere. 

I remember as a student nurse thinking I was gonna die from a zillion different things, there is a lot of stuff out there that is gonna kill ya.  Lotsa stuff.   I get it.

I would just prefer not to have my stuff be the stuff that carries the stuff that knocks the stuffin’ outta somebody.

Hands down, the best way to make great soil for growing things, poop.  And the fresher the better.  I like to make great dirt.  I have animals on my farm.  So I would be crazy not to use their various poops.  But sometimes poops are the things that have the things that kill us or make some of us sick, especially when our immune systems are bogged down with life.  But even just dirt does that sometimes, like the cantaloupe farmer who doesn’t have animals. 

So I’d really like to not be a farmer. 

But I can’t help it.  I feel compelled to feed people.  I believe that hunger is a politically and culturally caused problem, not because God’s earth can’t feed all the people ten times over.  We can control and humiliate people through the release and use of food stuffs, so we do.  I can’t prove it and I can’t solve it, but food shouldn’t cost so much and it shouldn’t be scarce, any where.  But all I can do is to feed a few families as good a food as I can raise and for a decent, and when I mean decent I mean non-oppressive, price, in non-oppressive manners.

Ahh but culture and politics step in again.  The culture of fear.  Mine and yours.  Mine at being blamed for making someone sick and the fears of others that my farming practices will make them sick.  And the politicals stir the fear.  Mine.  And yours. 

Dirt, my husband not the soil, says, “Then just grow stuff folks have to cook”  But nothing guarantees that folks will cook it enough.  And how many vegetable do I grow that I don’t eat raw out in the field?  Winter squash is the only one I can think of.  So what would prevent folks who buy my “cook-only” vegetables from “raw snacking” on their way home.  Dead at the wheel by 176th and Waller, put down by a baby zucchini.  Details at eleven. 

Not funny when it is your zucchini, or green bean or snow pea. 

Yet I’ll do it because I can’t help it.  I have to.  Not because we’re not bright enough to make a living other ways.  More because in all my years of living I’ve spent far fewer of them not growing an abundance of things than growing things.  And I cannot see not growing food for others as an option any more.  This year.  This is it.  In spite of previous e-coli in spinach, salmonella in eggs, and now listeria inside cantaloupe, this year we go public.  No more just giving away our spare veggies to friends, no more just growing enough to feed ourselves and a bit extra, no more experimenting and figuring out how to make the switch over from garden to Market Garden. 

Just don’t laugh when the greens are triple washed with a warning label.  And I might make people fill out adoption forms if they want to take home a squash.