Building and Impacting Community
On remembering why I chose farming in the first place.
We met Jim and Tracy at their farm in Utah, in a small town forty minutes outside of a bigger (still small) town called Kanab (the cutest town ever that, if I wasn’t so terrified of farming in the desert, I would definitely love to move to—who knew I would love Utah?) after someone in the local juice bar recommended them to us. After finding out we were travelling farmers, the juice bar owner told us they were the only local CSA nearby that she knew about. She said they weren’t hiring, but they could take volunteers. Right away, I looked them up; they had a farm stand, but one where they met you outside upon texting them. I was really looking for produce, which they said they didn’t have yet (I have yet to meet southwestern farmers that really do much winter vegetable growing), but they told me they had raw goat’s milk, raw cow’s milk, duck eggs, and rabbits that they had just butchered and put in their freezer.
We went to their farm, a ramshackle three acres set among the Utah hills with the backdrop of sandy mountains. Instantly, I was in love: their house was mostly off-grid, with the two of them living in a modest doublewide trailer. The farm had several rabbit tractors (moveable rabbit pens on grass), a few goats, two cows, a root cellar they were building, a quarter-acre garden, a hoop house, rainwater catchment barrels, and a cob oven they built to have pizza nights for customers. We learned they had a forty member CSA, and occasional customers who came and just bought from their home. They had always been homesteaders, but became small-scale farmers when they ended up feeding and selling food to some of their community.
We didn’t mean to be on the road this long. Our idea was to take our savings, retrofit an RV/bus/camper, travel for a year, heal from losing our farm, work on other farms to learn from them (about holistic livestock raising, especially), save money, not be in debt anymore, and then to start again: a phoenix from the ashes, a lotus from the mud.
After the year of travelling was over, our plan was to find it; the house, the land, the farm, the situation, whatever it was. I would never have imagined it would be two and a half years later, and we would still be living in this RV bus, that I would still be homeschooling on the road, that we would still be working on other farms, wondering where we would end up. Many times, it is exhausting. Other times, I have to breathe and remember patience, fortitude, resilience. We went to a vegan food truck in Moab, Utah—using our small “eating out” budget that we save up to eat at places we are excited about—where the owner, interested in our story, went on and on about what a great and unique life we had. “How amazing for your children!” she gushed, which I felt partly was nice of her to say, and partly true, I suppose. It is a different life for sure, and like all things, has its pluses and minuses. While we are hiking or when we are fishing for crawfish in a farm’s creek for dinner, or when our sons catch a trout or we make sheep’s milk cheese or we find a hidden hot springs in the mountains or go hiking in a canyon, then, of course, I think: we are lucky to have this life! But most of the time, I feel that homebody instinct take over, that feeling of wanting a real home, of wanting to be able to grow things again, give our kids stability, or at least to have hot water to wash our dishes, or not stress about where we are going to take a shower, or where to find a place to put our trash or recycling. I don’t want to sound ungrateful; at least we have an RV bus that we bought, and is ours, and we can park in a bunch of free camping spots.
This last week, we parked outside of Moab, Utah in a designated camping spot, a free one on public land. For several days, we were the only ones as far as the eye could see, surrounded by various colors of sandstone mountains, desert plants and some grazing cows. Then the weekend came, and other campers came, some with huge, expensive RVs, many with ATVs. One truck with a trailer and an ATV pulled up near us; though we were in one of the obvious camping spots, on rocky, barren ground that many people have parked on before us, this truck parked on red earth, crushing saltbush plants with its tires, mashing the living soil crust underneath its weight.
Biological soil crusts are very important in arid climates, almost like secret, hidden heroes of the earth. Though it might look like just inactive soil with a few plants scattered around, they play a crucial role in a desert ecosystem. Cyanobacteria dominate the life in these living soil crusts, along with microfungi, lichens, and algae. The cyanobacteria predominately hold the soil together, like an invisible sticky glue, preventing erosion and dust storms and nourishing desert plants. Thick mats of these organisms converted Earth's original carbon dioxide-heavy atmosphere into one rich in oxygen and capable of sustaining life and fixing nitrogen for plants, making it more important than ever in our planet’s current climate crisis. The delicate cyanobacteria threads that create such tensile strength for these crusts are, unfortunately, very damaged by human interaction: footprints, tire tracks, heavy machine compression. This living soil crust is why I am upset watching people go off-trail at the national parks we have been to in the southwest. (I am known to bark “Stay on the trail! Soil Erosion!” at one of my kids if I see one of their sneakered feet start to wander.) Watching this truck’s tires carelessly crush the soil crust was deeply depressing for me to see, as I noticed then that some of the other weekend campers had done the same thing. It made me feel alone. We left the next morning, just as our neighbor’s noise pollution of their outside speakers blaring extremely loud classic rock began.
We have met some great campers on this trip (other “fulltimers” or “fulltime families” as we are called: people or families that live full-time in their camper/RV/bus). But sometimes, I feel isolated. Sometimes it feels like it is hard to find camping families in general, and sometimes it is hard to find people we have things in common with, or sometimes we meet friendly people and then have to leave the next day. We don’t meet any travelling farming families. The farmers we do meet are all on farms, on their land, and not on the road. This has, at times, been hard for us and our kids to grasp; we left the farm, but farming didn’t seem to leave us.
To some, Jim and Tracey’s farm might not seem like the most pinterest-y farm, with its gritty innovativeness, using scraps of wood and old building materials for their animal housing, or their root cellar structure made of eco-friendly earthbags, but they are doing what they feel pulled to do: grow food for their tiny town, a town with a Family Dollar and a gas station and no grocery store.
While there, I was most interested in this farm’s rabbit tractors. I had worked with rabbits and learned about what a sustainable meat they were at my first farm job at World Hunger Relief farm, a farm in Waco, Texas. At World Hunger Relief, the idea was to train interns to farm the most low-maintenance, sustainable way, and then have them be able to teach farming in other communities. A teach-a-man-to-fish approach, their mission was to help communities get goats or rabbits to start a breeding stock, to allow a community to raise its own milk and meat and save its seeds.
Rabbits are a very sustainable livestock to raise, as they have a very low carbon footprint, and breed easily and quickly, making an almost never-ending supply of meat. They are very low-impact on the environment. Rabbits produce six pounds of meat to a cattle’s one pound, on the same amount of food and water. Also, rabbits don’t require much space, especially compared to other livestock, which means using less energy resources. They feed on greens, alfalfa, compost scraps and foraged grass, which is cheaper and more easily available. You don’t see rabbit meat at your regular grocery store because they are not part of the industrial meat complex in confined animal operations (yet—there are a few farms that are mass producing rabbits, both imported from China and some in the US. Just buy from a local farm or raise them yourself and you’ll be fine). They are low-maintenance, and great for backyard homesteaders. Also, their manure is terrific for a garden, farm, or worm bin. You also don’t see much rabbit here since North Americans generally do not eat rabbit, unlike many parts of Europe; in France, it is estimated that an average family eats rabbit about once a week. But with a rabbit’s meat’s nutrient density (higher in protein and minerals than most livestock, but lower in fat, so a fat is something you would need to add), maybe Americans might need to re-examine their meat choices. Jim and Tracey sell out of their rabbit. They have converted people to eat more rabbit instead of more chicken. They are building community instead of breaking it down, pulling people in, teaching about food and impact.
Minimizing “your impact” is something that national parks’ visitor centers have large, glossy plaques about. Don’t litter, try to minimize any disturbance, don’t feed wild animals. They are good sentiments, but I wish there was more focus on what we can do. What if everyone visiting the parks did something positive, volunteered for an hour, planted a tree or a native shrub? Of course, I am not innocent: we ourselves go to national parks and soak up the beauty of the canyons and mountains like thirsty darkling beetles. But I don’t go off the trail, I teach my kids about the importance of cyanobacteria, and we pick up trash when we see it. I want to try and minimize our environmental impact, but also think about how we can live entwined in this ecosystem. Just like homeschool is threaded into about everything we do (much to my kids’ groaning), I tell them: stay on trails, learn to grow food, feed a community. Nature is resilient, but also fragile. Damaging the surface sets it back years, decades, or more. Spraying a lawn with chemicals kills generations of fireflies. Stepping on desert soil or sand destroys precious microorganisms, killing the chance for plants to grow. We don’t always know how things will turn out or what the future holds, and things that are important or amazing might not always be obvious. Appreciating the invisible takes effort, and also what makes all the difference.
On the Road:
We are (when will I stop saying this) STILL having engine trouble, and after spending a lot of money at a mechanic only to have the same problem, are at a different mechanic. We changed states, and are now in Colorado, near Durango. We are staying at the new house of our close friends, Rob and Christina, who were organic CSA farmers in Illinois at the same time we were. It has been really nice staying with them, and really nice staying in a house. Currently, as I edit this, our two boys are taking a bubble bath, which they haven’t done in a long time. I figure they deserve it after all of the water conservation we have done!
From the Tiny Kitchen:
There is a good food co-op in Durango, so we stocked up on food. Rob and Christina are both vegan, so the past two nights I have put on my vegan cooking hat again and cooked two good vegan dinners: the night before last was vegan burritos, with local tempeh, frozen spinach, onions, butternut squash and lentils, with diced tomatoes and guacamole. Last night I made vegan Bolognase, made with canned tomatoes, frozen kale, herbs, spices, garlic, celery, carrot and onion, and using lentils as my ground beef. Both dishes heavy on the olive oil. Both had a side salad, heavy on the lemon and olive oil and pepper. Everything was eaten and approved by all of the children.
A new recipe coming to paid subscribers, along with other healing foods advice (and more of how I survive our tiny kitchen and what I am doing in there) this Thursday! Paid subscribers, thank you all so much for subscribing! Free subscribers, thank you for subscribing too! (If you are a free subscriber and wanting a paid subscription, but just can’t afford one right now, please email me.) Thank you all for your support!
Microorganisms bring me comfort when I'm feeling alone... They're so much bigger than me.
We bought a lot of t-stakes and coolers from Montalbano Farms which we are still using. I think Alex told us about them. At the time they were switching from CSA to seedling sales. Are they still farming? Sue & Kerry Mortensen