September on the farm: oh, there's plenty to do, what with digging potatoes, and harvesting winter squash, and weeding the cabbage and broccoli, and cleaning up the garden messes we've made all season in our rush. But September also means breathing room for a farmer. Instead of Run, Farmer, Run! as in May, June, July, and August, September is time for Breathe, Farmer, Breathe.
Here are some of our deep farming breaths:
Planting: at this point, if we haven't gotten it sown or transplanted, it's pretty much too late. Ahh.
Weeding: the weeds have slowed down considerably, and we have only three garden sections in production, instead of five, as in the high season. Ahh.
Greenhouses: we still have four greenhouses going, with no empty beds, but the flush of early tomatoes and cukes and squash and basil and peppers is past, and now we have more of a steady flow, which will pretty soon be a trickle. Ahh.
Haying: we have finished it, as of September 1st. Hooray for The End of Hay! There is not much sweeter than having a barn full of hay ready for the winter, especially considering that the later it gets in the year, the harder it is to get the hay dry. Some years we're done in June, some in July, some in August, and this year we just squeaked it in at the beginning of September and breathing time. Ahh.
Harvesting: there's an end in sight here too. It is not the relentless six full or partial days of harvesting of the high season. Why, we can even pick the summer squash and zucchini and cukes every third day now instead of every other day. The plants are getting tired, and the weather's getting cooler. Ahh.
Horsework: gee, it's easier on everybody, humans and horses alike, when it's not blazing hot. Discing under the spring sections, planting cover crops, clipping pastures: all important work, but not with the desperate summer urgency of getting the hay up before it rains. Ahh.
As I say, we've got some breathing room now on the farm. We can afford to turn our minds from the garden and the fields for a moment or two, and to consider our own breathing, and the breathing of others as well. By this I mean, specifically: George Floyd. You might wonder what the murder of George Floyd has to do with farming, and with a column on small-scale sustainable agriculture?
Well, quite a lot, as it turns out, as racism is just as insidious and pervasive in agriculture as it is in every other arena of our human lives. Currently I'm reading Leah Penniman's Farming While Black, which is both a practical guide to farming and the story of Soulfire Farm in Grafton, NY, near Albany. Soulfire Farm is a Black, Indigenous and People of Color farm that both grows food and offers numerous educational programs for farmers of color on its 80 acres.
Pennimans' book is eye-opening, and I have also been researching on the Internet. It is painful to discover how little I know about racism in agriculture. Consider the twin issues of land control and USDA farm programs, for instance: “White landowners currently control between 95 and 98% of farmland in the U.S. and nearly 100% in the Northeast, and receive over 97% of ag-related financial assistance (“The Land.” Soulfire Farm, soulfirefarm.org, 2020).
Again, “though 14% of U.S. farmland was black-owned a hundred years ago; decades of systemic discrimination and the abuse of legal loopholes has left black farmers with .52 % of the nation's arable land” (“NFU Calls for National Effort to Address Racism.” National Farmers Union E-News, nfu.org, Issue 465, June 4, 2020).
A third way of seeing the same land issue: “Black farmers lost around 90 percent of the land they owned between 1910 and 1997, while white farmers lost only about 2 percent over the same period.” Additionally, the USDA “was more than six times likely to foreclose on a black farm as it was on a white one,” and “a 2016 report from USDA shows that 86 percent of all micro loans issued between 2013 and 2015 went to white farmers, and demonstrates that at least two-thirds went to white men (Rosenberg, Nathan, and Bryce Wilson Stucki, “How USDA Distorted Data to Conceal Decades of Discrimination against Black Farmers,” The Counter, thecounter.org, Oct 26, 2019).
If that's not enough, here's another deep layer: “Between 1176 and 1187, 1.5 billion acres of land was stolen from indigenous nations in the U.S., either by executive order or treaty signed under duress. The northeast was settled prior to 1776 and is primarily unceded (a lack of treaty) territory stolen from indigenous peoples and settled without consent” (“Who We Are.” Northeast Farmers of Color, nefoclandtrust.org, 2020).
I also didn't know about Pifgford vs Glickman, a class action suit against the USDA in 1997 concerning discrimination against black farmers in the allocation of farm loans and assistance programs between 1981 and 1986. Named after North Carolina farmer Timothy Pigford (such a perfect farmer name!), this suit prompted a second case, known as Pigford II, in 2010, which provided for additional compensation to black farmers (Melvin, Jasmin. “Black farmers Win 1.25 billion in Discrimination Suit.” Reuters, reuters.com, Feb 18 2010). The Pigford cases constituted the largest civil rights settlement in history in this country.
It would be easy to get discouraged, but then I read about the Northeast Farmers of Color's land trust program, which is associated with Soulfire Farm of NY State. The Northeast Farmers of Color's land trust program claims for its vision: “to advance land sovereignty in the northeast through permanent and secure land tenure for indigenous Black, Latinx, and Asian farmers and land stewards who will use the land in a sacred manner that honors our ancestors' dreams for sustainable farming, human habitat, ceremony, native ecosystem restoration, and cultural preservation (“Who We Are.” Northeast Farmers of Color, nefoclandtrust.org, 2020).
Now this is exciting, especially since I understand that my breathing room as a farmer and a person stems in large part from the resources of my background, from my white relatives/ancestors (as well as from partaking in conservation programs with the Natural Resources Conservation Service, part of the USDA). Maybe movements like this, supporting both small-scale sustainable agriculture and people of color, is where we farmers can help each other breathe.
Originally published in the Monadnock Shopper News, Sept 23-29, 2020