What's happened over the past month? I channeled my anxiety over the lack of rain and yellowing grains into furious weeding. If I can't give these youngin's a boost in moisture, at least I can reduce their competition for what little water remains. Each day I swept through the field picking mustard and, having finished that, shifted my attention to the returning blackberries. I also noticed that morning glory shoots are sending out arms lately. At the same time, the grains are tillering, with an average of 4 tillers for each variety. Thanks to my buddy, Fox Face, I have a neat notebook to keep track of everything.
In addition to field work, I'm using this time to attend workshops and conferences on small scale farming in general and grains in specific. The small scale farming convergences bring together farmers to learn from each other, along with farming advocates who provide potentially helpful media, technical, and financial resources. A recent workshop on small grains held by UC Cooperative Extension provided helpful information about how to calculate water stress on grains, ideal planting depths for heritage grains, and other useful and infrequently available tid bits. Needless to say, there's much to learn and to do, and each session reveals another realm to explore.
I am disappointed to see that none of these burgeoning farm support resources to increase land access, funding, and new farm ventures do not reach out to farm workers who've been farming their whole lives. At the Farmers' Convergence, people framed the lack of diversity and inclusion as a problem with the language used by locavores, such as talking about marginalized people as needing help, education, and awareness. Without going into post-structural cognitive science linguistics, I said that language isn't what deters integration but the interactions that perpetuate segregation and oppression. How do we address that? I'm seeking out organizations and organizers in the Latino community to talk with farmworkers and see what resources they need. Union organizing? Here goes!
In addition to field work, I'm using this time to attend workshops and conferences on small scale farming in general and grains in specific. The small scale farming convergences bring together farmers to learn from each other, along with farming advocates who provide potentially helpful media, technical, and financial resources. A recent workshop on small grains held by UC Cooperative Extension provided helpful information about how to calculate water stress on grains, ideal planting depths for heritage grains, and other useful and infrequently available tid bits. Needless to say, there's much to learn and to do, and each session reveals another realm to explore.
I am disappointed to see that none of these burgeoning farm support resources to increase land access, funding, and new farm ventures do not reach out to farm workers who've been farming their whole lives. At the Farmers' Convergence, people framed the lack of diversity and inclusion as a problem with the language used by locavores, such as talking about marginalized people as needing help, education, and awareness. Without going into post-structural cognitive science linguistics, I said that language isn't what deters integration but the interactions that perpetuate segregation and oppression. How do we address that? I'm seeking out organizations and organizers in the Latino community to talk with farmworkers and see what resources they need. Union organizing? Here goes!
