By ROB PETERSON
For The Beachcomber
When I first became interested in agriculture in the 1980s, I heard this joke: A farmer wins the lottery. When a reporter asks him what he will do with all the money, he replies, “Well, I’ll just keep farming till it’s gone.” The joke made it clear that farming was low-status work — the farmer was making a foolish choice because he didn’t have enough sense to do better.
Later on, reading to my young daughters, I was surprised to learn that 150 years ago farming was a career with status. In her novel “Farmer Boy,” Laura Ingalls Wilder tells the story of Almanzo Wilder, whom she would later marry. The Wilders had a successful farm in New York where they raised and made everything they ate, wore, burned and sold. When Almanzo was 12, in the 1860s, local wheel builder Mr. Paddock offered to take him on as an apprentice. It was a good offer: “You wouldn’t be out in all kinds of weather,” the novel reads. “Cold winter nights you could be snug in bed and not worry about young stock freezing. Rain or shine, wind or snow, you’d be under shelter. You’d be shut up in walls. Likely you’d always have plenty to eat and wear and money in the bank.”
Almanzo’s mother was incensed. “She was all ruffled, like an angry hen. ‘A pretty pass the world’s coming to, if any man thinks it’s a step up in the world to leave a good farm and go to town! How does Mr. Paddock make his money, if it isn’t catering to us? … I won’t have Almanzo going [that] way.’”
When I started farming, my parents worried about me. They thought I wouldn’t be able to make a living or be fulfilled. The parents of our farm apprentices worry about them, too. Our Beachcomber editor recently posed the question: “Why do you keep farming?” I join Almazo’s mother in submitting that the farmer has more sense than the joke implies. I will go so far as to suggest that the farmer might even be happy.
In a TED Talk, psychologist Martin Seligman describes three “happy lives,” which I think illuminate why a person might farm. The first way people experience a happy life is through positive emotion. This pleasure of the moment is real, but it is the least durable of the three. The second, engagement, describes the ability to find one’s strengths, to become absorbed in acting on them and to experience flow, where you are so engrossed in what you are doing that you lose track of time. The third meaning is the most lasting of the three happy lives. Meaning comes from using one’s strengths in the service of something larger. You don’t have to have a smile on your face to be happy when you engage in a meaningful life.
As a grower of organic vegetables, fruits, eggs and meat, I experience all three types of happy life. The food on my plate everyday is so good that I imagine kings and queens couldn’t possibly eat as well. So many bites of food in our house are followed with exclamations of pleasure that flavor alone earns the first happy life of positive emotion. I also get to be outside most of the time, surrounded by weather and birds and plants. I’m pretty sure that seasonal affective disorder is reserved for those who spend their days indoors in the winter.
Sustainable farming is fascinating — there’s so much to it. It requires resourcefulness and a broad range of skills and intelligence. It is a place where our human world connects strongly to the natural world. In the early days of environmentalism, we realized we were damaging nature and set out to preserve some of it, but now farming reminds us that we are a species integral to our environment, making our living within it. The challenge is to do so without wrecking that environment. Every day we Vashon farmers strive to creatively solve the puzzles of running an ecological business in our community. Many days I look at my watch and am shocked to see that another day has sailed by. Farming is flow, wherein lies the second happy life.
In recent decades, people who care about the environmental impacts of their food choices and passionate farmers have built an inspiring food movement that is changing the world. This organic and local food movement is everywhere. People are aware of and care about food at least a little more than they used to. I believe this awareness will continue to grow. I imagine soon Thriftway will have a small section of produce with stickers that say “Warning grown with pesticides” and the normal organic stuff won’t need a label. Instead of organic growers paying fees to be certified, non-organic growers will have to get expensive permits with complex labeling requirements to be allowed to use pesticides.
I like to think of the good food environmental movement as the rudder that can turn the ship of humanity in a better direction. It makes me happy to think that I am a tiny part of that movement. And, thanks to the support of this community, farming produces enough income for it to be my full-time work.
— Rob Peterson owns Plum Forest Farm with his family. This column is part of a series by members of the Vashon Island Growers Association (VIGA). This week islanders will be receiving a brochure from VIGA that makes it easy to join.
