Springtime Resilience
The past few weeks have been busy and they are only getting busier. It’s spring on the farm, we’ve felt the onslaught of seeding since March. Breaking open the earth after a winter’s slumber, amending soil that hadn’t evolved to grow my great french ancestors food, soil that is eager to have the roots of the native plants etching through its layers. And all throughout the normal hectic start of a season there is a pandemic. A medical emergency that has no rhyme or reason, the virus doesn't know, no more than the plants I am coaxing into growth know, that we have a timeline, schedules, graphs, I have holiday plans and people to see and things to do. No, the plants don’t know and they don’t care, neither does COVID. And that’s really okay with me, this is how I practice being patient and humble, this is my reminder to slow down and to trust that in due time all things will get accomplished when they need to be accomplished, no sooner, no later.
What’s not okay are the human creation, the results of this additional kink in our season. The inequalities we manufacture for our own species. I’m not okay with that. Bureaucracies.
It’s March and now April and in order to compete the best way I can in capitalism during a pandemic when customer needs, market forces, competitors all pivot and change almost overnight and our business plans and expectations of interaction with one another in this world has radically shifted.... My plans for a new website, electronic payment, online store? They weren’t dreams and ideas anymore. So NOW, I’ve spent countless hours on webinars, researching the best platforms and service providers, communicating with the most gracious volunteer farm office support team and rapidly creating something I thought I had the luxury of time, the upper hand in farming. It’s laughable I ever thought I could have that upper hand, I am a Farmer, I’ll never have the luxury of time again.
This sink or swim economy can’t last, it’s slowly crumbling. But dammit if years of resolve won’t let me sink now. Generations of resolve.
The National Young Farmers Coalition posed a question to meat producers on Instagram inquiring about the impacts of COVID. When this all started, I knew I’d keep farming, because those plants don’t know, don’t wanna know, don’t care, and people will always need to eat. But until a few friends pushed me to start to apply to grants and I mulled the questions over I realized just how much additional strain COVID put on me, all farmers, during an already strenuous time of year. Website, photos, text, research, additional payments not previously budgeted for, new infrastructure, logistics, the loss of markets to sell, hiring my first employee?!?! I responded to the NYFC prompt, I may only raise Rabbits which a lot of livestock folks give me the side eye and a smirk for, but here’s my point of view. They put me in touch with a Food & Wine Magazine writer.
I think a lot of farmers were like me, we all knew the farming must go on, so we don’t always consider ourselves deserving of support, we were still in business… we are essential after all. But I started to see the added stress and I started to think of who was going to be able to buy my food if everyone else was out of a job… if wholesale markets dried up overnight. The Food & Wine writer followed up with me a few days later. They wanted to know, how does my Sinixt heritage and identity inform my approach to resilience at this time? Oh, let me tell you.
I named one of the Rabbit Does Cogewea. Cogewea is the main character o fHum-Ishu-Ma (Mourning Dove), also known as Christine Quintasket, book. Mourning Dove is part Sinixit, from Okanagan territory like myself, she worked much of her life as a season field hand and a teacher, it took her almost 20 years to publish her book and so many sleepless nights to write it while she worked 7 days a week in the 1800’s. When she published the book, she was the first native women to publish a novel and furthermore to feature a female lead. Cogewea, she’s mixed blood, like myself, a mutt.
Long before the Mayflower ships from Europe landed on the shores of Turtle Island. And with them came disease, unintentionally and unknowingly, this disease spread across the continent and killed millions of Natives. When settlers finally started traveling into the interior what they encountered were the remnants of great governments and societies, the indigenous were still trying to pick up the pieces and recover when violence was waged against them, ⅓ or less of their tribes force was gone, buried under cities and towns today. Then during forced removal and relocation to reservations, many tribes were given blankets infected with smallpox, and many more natives died. Poverty, exhaustion, hunger, violence, disease, heart break.
Dear Food & Wine writer, Resilience is in my DNA. It’s a miracle that I am here today to tell you this story. To tell you, I am still alive, my history it lives on in this farm, on this website, in photos. COVID won’t kill us all, it’s scary but it isn’t the first nor will it be the last time that the Wolf of people takes a few of us down, we’ve been acting like Elk in Yellowstone candy store and harming each other and the world at our own greedy expense.
Don’t get my words twisted, I am not callous. Suffering is not what I want for any living thing, and loss of a loved one will always hurt. Both my identities as a Farmer and Sinixt woman inform my approach to this situation. As a Farmer, especially one who has a relationship with death and life, I am more familiar with the idea that I too might perish one day. I very much take on the Lion King idea (child of the 90’s), the antelope (or rabbits) eat the grass, I eat the rabbits, one day my body will feed the grass that the rabbits eat. Circle of life. I hesitate to say I am hardened against disease and death, but it's something I've learned to be familiar and a fact of my lineage history. I've learned to accommodate death. I'm not comfortable with it, it is never comforting to lose a whole veggie crop or to feel that I let down my livestock due to injury or disease, but I can accept it. The social economic factors, the systemic racism and its impacts on who this pandemic is affecting the most is not something I can accept.
We’ll survive, we are part of this web. The Earth does need us, Oregon White Oaks need us, Camas root needs us, sweet grass needs us. But they need us to be in balance, this has been a reminder to be humble, gracious, accepting. It’s been a busy Spring, but also one of the most on-time, productive, accomplished Springs in my farming career. Even amongst a pandemic. It’s a miracle you are all here too, disease and famine has struck all human communities around the world and you come from those that survived. We are all resilient. Thank you for ensuring the Farm is resilient too.
Lim̓lm̓t (Thank you in the Sinixt Language),
From your farmer,
Michelle Week
