A Letter to My Hero, Greta Thunberg

Dear Greta: 

You don’t know me and I have known you only for a short while and from a long distance. One day, however, I hope to shake your hand and thank you for the courageous sacrifices you are making.

The day you set sail from Plymouth, I, too, was leaving England for the United States. My mode of transportation was a Boeing 767 Dreamliner. My destination was Texas, the nation’s top carbon emitter. Your celebrated voyage added a new passenger to my flight — flygskam (shame of flying). As with flugangst (fear of flying), I would have done my best to ignore this stranger were it not for that other unsettling companion at my side — your newly published book, “No One is Too Small To Make a Difference.”

I found your collection of speeches completely by accident at the legendary Shakespeare and Company bookstore in Paris. I was admiring the first editions of dead authors when the hot pink cover of “This is Not A Drill” grabbed my attention. On display beside the Extinction Rebellion handbook was your collection with its unadorned cover, its understated title, its earth-shattering/earth-saving content. I like to think that both books had found me, a writer and organic farmer who has been grieving the losses of our natural world for too many years.

How fitting then that our paths should cross once again. While you were texting progress aboard Maliza II, I was 38,000 feet directly above you, reading your “Our House Is On Fire” speech. Awed by your courage, inspired by your conviction, angered by the ignorance and hatred of the powers-that-be who cannot accept the difficult truth you speak, I vowed that I would not land back in the my country without giving my utmost to seeking solutions to the climate crisis. 

Five years ago, my oldest daughter Alex made a journey similar to yours. She sailed from Spain to the Caribbean in a 46-foot sailboat. She was the only female in a crew of eight and had never sailed before. Yet this was her boyfriend’s dream and she wanted to support him after he had supported her dream of working on organic farms across Europe. Instead of flying back, they would sail. And sail they did, through calm doldrums and violent storms. It took her 26 days. The first 13 she spent throwing up. She lost 10 pounds and at one point the captain considered an emergency airlift. She was that sea-sick, that alone, that far removed from her element that her survival depended on going deep inside herself, a strange place of fear and darkness but also strength and resolve. Alex pulled through. The moment she sighted land a gray whale breached the surface, as if to welcome her back. Never had walking on a beach felt so good and solid as the morning they dropped anchor off the Barbados coast. She has no interest in sailing again but she does have an epic story she can share with her children — if, that is, she decides to have them.

The world has changed so fast and furiously in such a short time that I never could have anticipated my children would consider not flying, much less not having a family. Nor could I imagine that the surest and loudest voice of science and action would come from the mouth of a 16-year-old, no less one who has been labeled with a disability.  I guess this is what a tipping point really looks and feels like — compass and maps and things we assumed were secure forever suddenly sliding off the deck and sinking below the foamy surface of our wake. As you sail this week, the world is reeling from the unthinkable. Greenland is melting. The Amazon is on fire. Our House is burning and flooding — at the same time!

The day I read “Too Small” and “This is Not a Drill”, I wandered aimlessly through the tense and crowded streets of the Marais District. This was not the romantic Paris I had explored with my wife 23 years ago. Nor was I the idealistic journalist who believed social justice was a linear progression. Graffiti-covered streets hummed with loud Harley Davidsons, annoyed Parisians, angry refugees, and overheated tourists. Two weeks earlier, the city was boiling under an unprecedented heat wave. The day we landed in England, that country’s hottest temperature was recorded in Cambridge.

I found refuge from my malaise in the famed Pere Lachaise cemetery, where lovers strolled through those hallowed grounds as blithely as they have since Abelard and Heloise were interred there 200 years ago. The ancient trees that tower above are even more majestic than the ornate crypts set like chess pieces along cobblestone boulevards. Yet even here I could not escape the unease of our times.

Pere Lachaise Cemetery in Paris

A nature lover who has had to overcome a lifelong affliction of attention deficit, I am highly attuned to changes in my surroundings. It is my gift and my curse. You say your gift is seeing in black or white at a time when most of us are lost or hiding in the gray. Mine is less extreme, but I see mostly in green or brown these days. It started in 2011 when the worst one-year drought in Texas history scorched our farms, seared our forests, burned a hole in our hearts. This was, for me, the death of “normal” and the birth of extreme. It has made me hyper-vigilant, for how terribly fast and frequent now does greening turn to flooding and browning turn to drought. Had those lovers in Lachaise looked up at the chestnut trees, they would have noticed their scorched leaves. The browning of those ragged edges was yet one more warning sign that all is not right in the world. 

Greta, I am not yet retired but I am tired, for sure. Here in my home of Austin, the relentless pursuit of “progress” keeps accelerating — more and more farmland and forest devoured by the concrete kingdoms of over-consumption. Working with extreme nature has worn me down. This afternoon will make the 33rd day over 100 degrees this summer. Like the browning of those chestnut leaves, my spirit is losing its green to the desertification of hope. That is why your journey to our country has given me a rare sense of optimism, as does the flock of young people who come to our farm and ask questions about our work and the nature of nature that too many of us have never learned to love and respect.

Now, much sooner than expected, the tipping point is arriving. I can feel it and hear it. And I can see it, through your eyes, more clearly, too — in the black and white extremes we unwittingly have brought upon us.

Daughter Avery in awe of ancient beech in Hampstead Heath.

You are my inspiration, Greta. I am following your every move. I am cheering you on at every mile. I won’t be in New York next month for the Global Climate Strike but I will be marching that day, wherever I am, telling the world where I stand. Which is at your side and the brave young activists, such as my 18-year-old daughter Avery, whose sacrifices, compared to mine, will be not unlike the difference between sailing home and flying home. Your trip will be longer and harder and more dangerous, but you will have the wind of millions of supporters at your back. 

My sailing days may be over but I can promise you this: I will take the small hard steps toward creating a smarter, kinder, less self-serving way of living in these perilous times. This letter to you is that first step.

Mozambique Desperately Needs Our Help

Last year, our friend Antonio made the long voyage from Mozambique to visit our farm in Austin. This was not his first trip to the United States yet he still struggled to comprehend the astonishing wealth we enjoy and often take for granted. After treating him to dinner at Gueros for authentic Mexican food, we stopped next door at Allen Boots to show him authentic Texan footwear.


Antonio finds Santa on South Congress

I hadn’t been to Allen Boots in more than a decade. Like so many Austin establishments, it was now catering almost exclusively to well-heeled clientele. The working boots I had bought for $100 were no longer stocked. In their place were row after row of stylish, elaborately tooled footwear, some with price tags 10 times what I had paid.

Antonio stared at those prices in disbelief and in that awkward silence I felt ashamed. We had no business being here. I had only rubbed in his face the appalling lifestyle gap between our two countries, only one of which would consider flip flops a luxury. I relearned an old lesson that day: Africa doesn’t need our fancy boots any more than it needs our pity; what it needs is our hands, our hearts, and our dollars. 

It needs them now more than ever. Suffering is universal yet I can’t imagine a place of more universal suffering right now than Mozambique, the country hit hardest by Cyclone Idai.

Antonio and his family live in Beira, the country’s second largest port city, and home to 600,000. Last week’s hurricane destroyed 90% of the city’s homes and infrastructure before it obliterated countless villages on its rampage into Zimbabwe. Rescue workers are calling it Africa’s worst catastrophe in recent history and yet another harrowing replay of how storms over warmer waters are intensifying around the world.

In the fall of 2017, Erin and I spent nearly three weeks volunteering in Mozambique. We were invited there by Cultivating New Frontiers in Agriculture (CNFA) whose US-funded farmer-to-farmer program introduces sustainable farming practices to growers in some of the most remote villages in East Africa. This was not our first time to the continent. Like Antonio, who is CNFA’s country manager for Mozambique, we likewise struggled with incomprehension — widespread poverty such as we had never seen before. Antonio didn’t have to make a special effort to show us why this war-ravaged country is the fourth poorest in the world. Its need for what we consider the bare essentials of living were everywhere, from city to village, coast to mountain. 

Now, as I write, a storm-made ocean extends inland from Beira for several hundred of miles.  The thousands of ramshackle huts we drove past on the only paved highway from Beira to Harare were ripped apart — sheets of tin cutting flesh as they became airborne air by hurricane-force winds. A week after the storm struck, the flooding is only now starting to subside. Thousands of villagers await rescue on rooftops and in trees; an eyewitness reported of seeing a stranded mother giving birth in a tree, only to have her newborn slip into the raging water below. 

Village in Manica Province where Cyclone Idai hit two weeks ago

Following a decade of civil war that ended in 1992 with a million casualties, nearly half of Mozambique’s population is now under age 20. We saw babies everywhere, carried in slings as their young mothers walked and worked in fields. More than 85% of the population are farmers, most working one or two acre plots that barely sustain their families. 

Short-term, the food and health crisis unfolding there will be hard to imagine. Long-term, the damage from floodwaters may be unprecedented. 

For the past decade, the country has seen a foreign invasion of a different sort — China’s feverish, highly unregulated extraction of minerals and timber that has turned mountains and river bottoms into vast stretches of excavation sites and holding ponds. Adding to the run-off problem are countless illegal mines desperate young men dig by hand in hopes of supplementing their meager incomes. All that topsoil and polluted water is now flowing in a raging torrent toward the Indian Ocean. 

The degradation and exploitation of this beautiful land was matched only by the enduring spirit and gratitude of the people we encountered on our trip, especially the tight-knit villages in the mountains around Manica, where we felt as if we had traveled back to a pre-industrial age. Here in these fertile hills we saw no vehicles, planes, utility lines. An immense silence embraced us as we worked in the fields with these resilient farmers. To the harried westerner, life seemed to unfold in slow motion —cows pulling plows through the red clay soil; boys herding goats into the hillsides; young women washing clothes in the river; entire families making bricks to repair their neatly swept huts.

Gold Mining near Manica

We Americans, too, once lived like this. We had time to sit and talk and engage with strangers. Here, thousands of miles from home, I suddenly comprehended the deep connections we have lost despite all we have gained. What Erin and I received from Mozambique was greater than what we gave — a newfound appreciation not so much for the things we had but for the rich relationship with nature and each other we had left behind with our ancestors.

Our trip was not an easy one; it required sacrifices from family and staff to keep Green Gate going in our absence. Yet we came back inspired and renewed. One source of inspiration was a chance meeting with an unsung hero who started a tree farm outside Beira. Before leaving, we had heard about the amazing work Allan Schwarz had done with agroforestry. Employing more than a 100 local villagers, Mezimbite Forest Center makes beautiful art objects, heirloom furniture and jewelry from the hardwood trees cultivated there. On a whim, we called him and he drove an hour over bumpy roads to pick us up so we could tour his modest yet innovative operation. Intercropping legume trees with vegetables is the future of regenerative farming around the world and he was showing us its amazing results. One would never know that his father had been Nelson Mandela’s lawyer and ambassador to the United States, that he gave up a life of South African privilege to adopt Mozambique as his new home and dedicate his life to regenerating a tortured landscape.  

Allen Schwarz giving us a tour of an agroforestry demonstration plot

Now we can only imagine how the river not far from that farm has swallowed up a life’s work and fret whether his employees and the countless trees they planted will survive this crushing force of nature.

CNFA reports that all its staff are accounted for, but it will be weeks, months even, before those remote farms we visited will be reconnected by road and phone. CNFA’s interpreter for our trip was a tall, soft-spoken high school student named Gabriel. He had graduated that summer top in his class yet could not afford the admission “fee” to the local college. Both his parents worked at the rustic lodge where we lived for two weeks. His father, 60-years-old, walked a mile to get there at 6 am. and often left 14 hours later. His mother washed our clothes by hand. Our donation, modest by US standards, allowed Gabriel to enroll in a community college in Chimoio, a larger town to the east that has been completely cut off and inaccessible by rescue workers. 

Gabriel interpreting for village farmers in Manica Province

By accident of birth and geography, I stand today in dry boots on our tamed Colorado River rather than wading in flip flops through miles of flooded homelands, nowhere to turn, no means to feed my family. My other regret from our time hosting Antonio is that I didn’t take the time to follow up on our training efforts and ask whether the seeds and ideas we planted in those fields came to fruition. Now, our volunteer work seems rather pointless.

Time and the gift of sharing are, ultimately, all we have in life. It is Africa — poor rich beautiful suffering Africa — that is teaching me to make better use of them.

How to Help:

Here is what CNFA recently wrote us: “As information about the devastation caused by the storm is increasingly becoming available, and the impacts of worsening floods are reaching catastrophic proportions, I am sure you would agree that it a fundraising event to support the relief efforts in the affected areas is warranted.

To facilitate this fundraising event, we will use CNFA Cares Charity as the mechanism to provide funds to the Red Cross earmarked specifically to support the relief efforts.  Should you like to partake in this initiative please mail checks to Tony L. Butler-Sims, Cultivating New Frontiers in Agriculture 1828 L Street NW, Suite 710, Washington D.C. 20036 and make checks payable to CNFA.

For those who choose to participate, we thank you in advance for your generous donation to this worthy initiative.   Please note that your donation is tax-deductible and CNFA will provide you with an itemized annual end-of-year giving statement.”

Here’s another way to donate: 

https://www.facebook.com/WorldFoodProgramme/posts/please-join-our-emergency-fundraiser-to-help-those-hit-by-the-devastating-cyclon/10155909217650178/

Riding Together Through the Night

White Socks, a 13-year-old American Paint, was Green Gate Farms’ first and only horse. That fact alone made her special. Pigs, sheep, goats and other barnyard livestock come and go without much fanfare or remorse, if only because they are legion and get lost in the maw of farming: you raise them, sell or eat them, and try not to get too attached.

Horses are delegated a higher purpose, a more celebrated history; from battlefield to hayfield, from cattle drives to carriage rides, they give all they’ve got without demanding much in return beyond a caring master and a good field of grass.

I grew up with horses. My father started a fox hunting club. My mother taught dressage to beginning riders, her most remarkable student being Mike Matz, a fellow Pony Clubber who went on to become an olympic equestrian. My first — and only horse — was Popcorn, a fast and slightly crazed Appaloosa whose marbled eyes kept searching for low-hanging branches to knock me off.  I still remember the day my mother opened the gate and let me ride cross country on my own. Just me and my horse and the wide open fields. We flew over freshly cut alfalfa, sailed over jumps in the pine-scented woods, galloped through a walnut orchard that today is a subdivision. I stayed on and came home a few inches taller.

Horse life ended abruptly at age 13 after my parents split up and sold our farm. My father had moved to another state so it was left to our mother to decide which horses were sold and which were boarded at a rundown stable near the ranch house we had moved to. Our backyard had diminished from a hundred acres to a hundred feet, from hayfields and barbed wire to turf and chainlink fence. I didn’t feel much like riding in a tight crowded ring with strangers.

Eventually, the horses were sold, including Popcorn. Our well-worn riding tack — saddles, bridles, boots and caps — collected mildew in the basement, never touched again until we sold the house after my mother died at age 65.

Buying White Sox for our daughter Avery was a second chance, a long-awaited opportunity to rewrite the script. She would learn to ride and I would be her teacher. Heck, I might even get back on a horse myself. The big difference this time was I didn’t have my mother’s knowledge and patience. And White Socks was not the calm, older gelding my mother had relied on to teach young children. White Socks had been trained as a draft horse, pulling carts and wagons for special events. She loved to trot down an asphalt road, but put a saddle on her and she became a trickster with a twitching tail and pinned back ears. I lost count of the ambitious, confident riders who took up our offer to exercise her for free, only to quit after too many times biting the Texas dust.

In recent years, our sassy mare became more of a barnyard attraction, the centerpiece of city folk’s fantasies about farm life. And that, in and of itself, was enough to earn her keep. She nipped if you weren’t careful but she never kicked. She was coy and sneaky but never mean. Her most alarming stunt was leaning over the paddock fence, clamping down on a the scruff of a two-year-old’s dress and lifting her a foot off the ground. She dangled there, calmly unawares, before her distracted father turned around just in time.

With no other horses to bond with, White Socks eventually convinced herself she was a goat and mother to various kids who shared the barn. Let them out of her sight and she would prance and whinny as if her brood had been kidnapped.

That whinny is what I miss most. Each morning I opened the farmhouse door I was greeted with that persistent yet gentle call for food and attention. Annoyed as I often was to be reminded of my farmer duties so early in the morning, I was welcomed in the evening with her soft pleading, that one constant recognition for the caretaking that is a farmer’s burden and blessing. 

Our caretaking slipped several notches when we were forced to shut down our city farm last month and moved to the country. Amid the shuffle of pigs, goats, ducks, rabbits and cats, she must have felt as disoriented as the rest of us as we adjusted to our new home. Nevertheless, we were delighted that she finally had acres of pasture and looked forward to trail rides and cart rides around the farm.

On Sunday, as night was falling, Erin noticed that White Socks was not herself and was rolling more than usual. Nothing fills a horse owner with more dread than a horse that wont won’t stop rolling or won’t get up.

“No, not this. Not now,” I said to myself.

David Hebel is a cowboy’s vet and a cowboy, too. He knows horses inside and out, from the ER suite to the high-stakes rodeo arenas of Las Vegas. We leaned on every word as he turned on his flashlight and examined our fallen horse. After checking her gums and heartbeat, Hebel recommended we load her up and drive her to the Elgin animal hospital, but first he would try to dislodge the obstruction she had been trying to roll away.

Treating colic includes pumping mineral oil up the nose and down the esophagus, injecting pain medication, and, most importantly, forced walking. That last task fell to Avery. She walked her horse alone, in the dark, late into the early morning hour. Reluctantly, she went to bed, knowing we had done our best and could only wait and pray that the blockage would pass and White Socks would be up and eating with the morning sun.

Hebel returned to the farm in the morning to a field still shrouded in fog and a horse that had not improved. I’ve made many decisions in my farming life over the fate of sick or injured animals. None prepared me for the difficulty of this one. It was still possible we could load White Socks and take her to the hospital for IV fluids or possible surgery, but the odds of recovery were not in her favor. And there was the no small matter of money. Sensing we were never going to get off the fence, Hebel reluctantly shared what he would do if this were his horse.

This was not his horse, of course. This was White Socks — Avery’s horse, the lifeblood of our farm for the past decade. I looked at my heartbroken daughter, my tired wife, our patient vet. I looked over at White Socks who was trying to stand but couldn’t. Expecting the worst, Hebel had brought what he needed to make this ending as painless as possible. 

We gave him that terrible nod, finally, unable to look at each other, numb and dumb, staring at our feet. And wouldn’t you know, just then, White Socks got back on hers.

“Oh, gal, you would have to do that,” Hebel whispered, hoping Avery wouldn’t hear. Opening his medicine chest, our overworked vet glanced at White Socks once more, adding: “Days like this I’m glad I don’t have children.”

Avery lay beside White Socks once she lay down again, stroking, whispering and hugging her there in the mud. The fog gave way to sun as if it, too, wanted to offer one last moment of comfort. Once more, White Socks struggled up on wobbly legs. I stood beside Hebel as he drew the deadly potion into two god-awful syringes — so big they stuck out of his jacket pocket as he approached my daughter and her horse. Like a handgun, I thought, only silent and more deadly.

Hebel knew, though I did not, that euthanizing a standing horse is something you won’t get out of your head for a long time.  So unnatural, so unhorse like, all four legs instantly cut out from under, a thousand pounds of muscle and bone and beauty toppling down like a tower of blocks. 

“She’s not suffering anymore,” he assured us. “Her heart has stopped.”

Dr. Hebel gathered his things and drove away. Avery reclined against White Sock’s warm belly, silently texting her boyfriend. Now we were left on our own with one last yet immense task. What most owners do with a deceased horse is call someone else to remove it. 

“Where?”Avery asked.

“Where what?”

“Where will they take her?”

Truth was, I wasn’t sure. The Alpo factory? The landfill?

“No!” Avery said firmly. “No!”

Her plea tore through my stupor, reminding me of who we were. We were farmers. We bury our own. And so we did.

White Socks was our farm’s first and last horse. She will be remembered by the countless visitors who stroked her mane, by the devoted campers who brushed her coat, by the busloads of thrilled students who stretched their heads out and waved to a living, breathing emblem of the freedom and spirit of the agrarian dream. 

White Socks was more than a horse.

The Cruelest Month — Good Riddance

April. Good riddance, you miserable El Nino-sucking record buster.

You came in like a lion and you left like one, too. You fooled us arriving and you made us look like fools leaving.

Go away and don’t come back.

Don’t you know when enough is enough? Didn’t anyone teach you that excess is a sin? Can’t you put yourself in a farmer’s boots for once and see what misery you are creating?

I can put up with mud. I can put up with rotting, bug-molested, weed-infested crops. I can even put up with smashed green houses and broken windows.

What I cannot stomach is your excessive force, your over-the-top ambition to get in the record books

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Listen, I agree that we humans need to be put in our place. So you beat us down and we were humbled. And thankful, too — that you didn’t make us hurt so bad we turned against you for good.

But why this destruction on top of destruction? In the dark, quiet hours before dawn, no less, scaring the living snot out of everything that breathes.

The dogs jumped into the bed. The horses and goats ran into the woods. And the pigs — even they are sick of you mudslinging messes. They hunkered down on the back side of that ancient Pecan, hid behind the massive girth of the mother tree, the reigning Queen of Wilbarger Bend.

And what did you do? You blew and you blew and you blew until the beautiful thing fell down.

The Queen is Dead
The Queen is Dead

The Queen of Wilbarger Bend in the evening
The Queen of Wilbarger Bend

There were so many other trees to choose from, some already maimed, some hollow to the core. But no, you set your sights on this most magnificent  specimen. Buffalo once grazed beneath it. Comanches rested in its shade. Generations of farmers reflected on its perfect symmetry, awed that something so grand could spring up from something so small.

The Queen gave this farmer strength and courage. She had endured  all, had withstood what other Aprils threw at her — freeze, drought, flood, wind. But not you with your El Nino excess. First you spilled a foot of water on the floor and then you body slammed her from behind, in the dark, while we slept.

The Queen fell at 5 a.m. on the last day of the cruelest month.

And you ran, like a coward, tearing up the rest of the farm on the way out.

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April, cruel April, you are gone.

And soon forgotten.

Not our Queen.

Long live the Queen.

queen copy

 

 

Rain or Shine

Of all the slings and arrows nature throws at the farmer, mud is what wears him down most. It as if soil, which he so loves much, turns against him,  a hostile medium that rots instead of nourishes.rain2

Mud defeats farmers the same way it defeats armies — one slippery step at a time. You can walk in wet boots for a day, even two. Then skin starts to blister, muscles cramp, things rust.

A soggy head yearns for the dusty days of summer.

Yet the rain keeps coming, pouring down other aggravations — mold in the air, leaks in the windows, pickups stranded in dirt roads that turn into little rivers. Every inch of bare ground — from the outhouse path to the livestock paddock — reverts to  a swamp. Wood become a threatening jungle, thick with reptiles, mosquitoes and thorny vines. Even his well-tended fields turn against him; underground armies of ants swarm at his feet; weeds stare at him eye to eye.

And the rain keeps coming, red waves on radar swooping out of the Four Corners like some ghostly war party, throwing down lightning and high winds and hail. A farmer in Sequin saw his entire 10 acres of vegetables torn to shreds by 2-inch balls of ice. In Lexington, a farmer watched her rain gauge overflow in an hour, a mind-blowing torrent that drown chickens and transplants alike. And in Brenham, where more than a foot of rain fell, a farmer friend watched his roads wash out — pave roads, that is!

Not only from above but the farmer is hit from below as well. He notices a yellowing in the leaves of his crops. They wave in the stiff wind, flags of surrender, but the rain is both blind and blinding. Potatoes, onions, carrots. The skin on their feet is starting to blister, too. A slow silent decay.

The farmer was warned, of course. “Monster El Nino” was in the weather headlines all winter. Instead of cold and wet, the first half of spring was hot and dry and the farmer scoffed at this Monster Misforecast. As spring turned cooler and wetter, he considered a terrifying possibility — this could actually be a normal season; he would have a bumper crop; he would have nothing to complain about.

Then he woke up. This is Texas. When its dry, it’s not just very dry, it’s a drought. And when it’s wet?

This morning yet another wave approached from the West. The farmer didn’t bother putting on a raincoat — all his clothes and boots were already soaked. Fumbling and cursing, he entered the mud pits once more to feed animals and close up hoop houses. The wave washed over him halfway there. Head down, eyes stuck in the mud, he suddenly looked up as four figures emerged from the misty river bottom below. They were outfitted in rain gear. Waterproof binoculars hung from their necks.

They were smiling.

These die-hard birders had come to scout the farm as a possible site for the Greater Texas Birding Classic this Saturday. The farmer had warned them about the mud but they came anyway, arriving before light to experience the “dawn chorus.”

“This is the time when they wake up and announce they are ready for business (or something like that),” explained their leader.

The dawn chorus — waiting to be heard, rain or shine.

How had the farmer forgotten to listen?

The bird lovers smiled and waved and walked in the rain back to their truck.

The farm stood in the mud.

He listened.

Patterns in green and brown

Took these two photographs after the big rains yesterday. Only later, seeing them side-by-side, did I notice the exact same shape of the flower buds atop the cactus and the sand castles formed by the torrents of rain eroding a pile of sand and gravel. Take closer look at the sand castles. Those are pebbles that cap the tops — sitting precarious up there after their base was washed away.

 

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Boonie, Back from the Brink

A Waldorf student taking a lunch break with her favorite farm animal
A Waldorf student taking a work break yesterday with her favorite farm animal

The vet said his chances weren’t good. The seizure had gone on for more than an hour. She administered valium and then we waited. He threw up something nasty and black. Poison, she guessed. It was late Saturday afternoon and the office was closing. Not a good time to get sick.

We carried him back to the truck in a stretcher. She handed me another dose, adding that his chances were even lower if he fell back into that stiffened, catatonic state that was so unnerving. Good luck, she said, locking the door behind her.

I drove back to the farm, thinking of the hundreds upon hundreds of visitors and friends who fell under Boonie’s spell. Here was our farm mascot, our kid magnet, our love machine, our loyal pet who could never get enough petting.

What was the farm without him?

I couldn’t begin to imagine.

I lay him on the warm grass in the sun beside the barn. And I did what everyone else did. I petted him. And petted him. He stood up, staggered like a drunk, fell down. The fall triggered another seizure. I saw it in his eyes first, that rigid, far-away stare. Then the legs shook, stiffened.

Do I give him the final dose now? And exactly how does one person alone administered a syringe from the rear end? And what was next if it didn’t work? Nothing. And no one to call. No one to help say goodbye to 10 years of pure dogginess.

So I did what everyone else did and I petted him, talked to him, maybe even prayed. Something worked. The demon beneath the fur let go.

I saw a tail wag. Never was a wag so wonderful.

The next day our resurrected Boonie was once again wooing newcomers to the farm. Getting his pets. Getting his love.  And giving it back — always giving it back.

 

 

 

 

A $2,500 Glass of Water — for Farmers!

Farm auctions are wideangledown-in-the-dirt affairs that stir up mixed emotions. You’re there to get a deal yet it comes at the expense of another farmer who is retiring or throwing in the pitchfork.

An auction FOR farmers is a horse of a different color. In fact, it may be unheard of; yet that’s what brought more than 150 guests to a night of good music, great food and some incredibly generous company.

The benefit was the brainchild of Talia Bryce and her brother Etan Sekons. These Austin musicians took it upon themselves to start a non-profit whose sole mission is to raise money for local farmers facing medical emergencies. Austin musicians have HAAM (Health Alliance for Austin Musicians). Now Austin farmers have Farmgrass.

Like musicians, farmers often must work second jobs to make ends meet. Our work is fraught with danger, yet many of us are uninsured or under-insured. Before Obama Care, our family went without insurance for years. As if farming wasn’t stressful enough.

When a group of farmers started the Growers Alliance of Central Texas, one of our main goals was to do what Farmgrass has accomplished. The problem is that farmers work so hard they don’t have the time or energy to put on fundraising events. And then there is the matter of pride. Farmers are notorious for avoiding outside help unless it’s their church – or other farmers.

As the first recipient of Farmgrass funds, I know how hard it is to accept money from others. I also know the fear of having an accident and stopping work for six months. Pride doesn’t pay the bills and a gift is not a gift until some one accepts it. Since then, several other farmers have received Farmgrass funds, including a husband and wife who were diagnosed with cancer the same year.

Through promoting Farmgrass and its annual fundraising events, I’ve gotten to know Talia a little better as reporters ask why she, a musician, decided to help me, a farmer. In addition to having a beautiful voice, she has deep appreciation for growing food. After earning a degree in environmental science, she worked on a small organic farm in Israel.

Talia welcoming guests
Talia welcoming guests

“I wanted to do something that would resonate with the organic farmers,” she told an interviewer. “In Austin everyone loves and supports local food growers. When we told people we were supporting the local farmers, they wanted in. And bluegrass and farms go well together.”

Farmgrass’ first fundraising auction was held at the Austonian. Talia admits it was ambitious and late-minute. She, Etan and handful of vounteers, including Red Fan Communications, did everything — making the food, playing the music, asking strangers to give money to other strangers.

Lucky for her – and us – she persuaded her friend, Andrew Bost, to run the live auction. Bost is a professional auctioneer who could sell a dime for a dollar; yet he, too, dedicated his time to the cause. He joined Talia on stage at Tillery Place last Thursday night as farmers mingled with guests over a dinner featuring barbecue goat – raised by Windy Hill Farm and prepared by the staff at Odd Duck.

The highlight of the event was the live auction. Green Gate Farm’s contribution was a $100 meat share – slim pickins’ compared to the exotic trips, handcrafted ukulele, and helicopter ride also on the table. But as Bost reminded us, this evening was about what was given, not received.bosh

To make his point, he started the auction by pouring a glass of water and holding it up to the crowd. Farmers can appreciate the value of water; they can’t grow without it. In the hands of Bost, that glass got more and more precious — $100, $200, $500, $1000. By the time he yelled “sold” to the anonymous bidder that glass was worth $2500.

The evening went on to raise $30,000 and to remind farmers that Austinites not only appreciate them but are at their side when the going gets tough.

Editor’s Note: On May 14-15, the Farmgrass Festival will hold its third annual fundraising at Simmons Farm. Shiny Ribs and Talia’s Lost Pines Band will be among those musicians playing at the festival. Find more at Farmgrass.org.