Feeling It All

Well. February has, indeed, been a month. Truth is, when farming in the North Country, February is usually a month. Typically, it’s our coldest, with little precipitation but plenty of hardened, icy ground and winds sweeping across fields and under jacket edges. Climate change has shifted what the weather decides to do, though, and I type this while contemplating the three feet of snow in which the farm is blanketed. February is when everyone’s most apt to struggle, and March, with icy mud and unpredictable temperature fluctuations, can be just as trying. Every day as I feed the sheep, I’m so, so grateful that I’ve switched lambing season from late Winter to early Autumn. I look at the rams, living separate from the ewes, and I think about that day in August when Carly proved herself to be an expert sheep-wrangler, and I feel buoyed with pride.

A lack of newborn lambs has not, however, stopped our flock of St Croix-Barbados hair sheep from becoming the center of my attention for the past two weeks. We’ve been dealing with a slew of health issues centered around selenium deficiency in our yearlings and parasite overload in our adults. Those whose selenium deficiencies proved deadly were slaughtered, their meat now respectfully wrapped in the freezer. Survivors are being given daily triple supplements of selenium yeast and vitamin E and I’m keeping a close eye on them, as their weakened hearts could still give out. The parasite overload is a result of a decade of mismanagement on the part of my parents, and while I acknowledge they did their best, it’s exhausting to now be dealing with the consequences. I’ll be meeting with the vets in March to develop a proper grazing and preventative health plan, sticking to organic methods and improving our practices. I welcome advice from experienced shepherds and graziers.

I wish that at this point, I could switch gears in this newsletter, tell you “And that was tough, but now things are looking up!!”. Dickinson famously wrote “Tell all the truth but tell it slant/Success in Circuit lies” and I can see the value in steering one’s tale towards a specific angle. After all, each experience and event is multifaceted. Every story involves more than any one person could describe, and the teller gets to direct the narrative. As the storyteller of these newsletters, I write, in large part, to tear my heart out and hold it up to you, still beating, in the hopes that you will meet me with yours. I believe that to consistently turn away from our most difficult moments is to deny opportunities for healing, reconciliation and reconnection. I think we must, as an essay I once read instructed, “gaze even here”. Whatever is causing the problems must be exposed, so that we may see clearly how to mend the broken parts. As readers, witnesses, and as humans, we can decide that we are ready to “gaze even here”. To fully devote ourselves to that which shocks us into being. I wonder – what wakes you in the night to find you scribbling down the images in your dreams? What stops you in your tracks as you cross the kitchen floor each morning? What draws your eyes, even as your body turns away? What makes you feel?

My own emotions the past two weeks have been haywire. Talk about feeling – I lovingly carried a dying ewe into the kitchen for nursing. I screamed in anger and fear the day I realized I didn’t have clue what was happening to the flock. I held back tears as a farmer downstate talked me through his experiences during an 8 pm phone call. I watched with grim satisfaction as the blood ran from the throat of a yearling after Brian sliced his jugular. I was relieved, determined and frazzled when I reached into that yearling’s chest cavity and discovered his heart had the consistency of Flubber, a clear sign of selenium deficiency. By the time Emily made it northward to help with both the pre-arranged and the unexpected sheep butchering, I was ready to sob on her shoulder while having a nervous breakdown.

And then came the emails.

You may recall that we were accepted into the Climate Smart Commodities Project through RAFI and the Climate Smart Program through PASA – two opportunities to receive funding for specific climate-mitigation projects. Both programs were funded through the Inflation Reduction Act. We were on track to receive $56,500. It was an opportunity for me, a queer, young farmer, to cover costs, follow my passion, feed my community and rejuvenate my ecosystem. All projects needed to be screened by the USDA, who hold the purse strings and whose finances are largely determined by the current administration. When the federal spending freeze went into place, many organizations kept truckin’, anticipating a potential lift. Now, however, they’ve begun to contact participants. The gist is that while everyone’s doing their best, we should all prepare to receive limited to no financial support from any USDA-backed initiatives.

Here’s the thing. I've never trusted the government or the USDA to support small, regenerative farms. Historically, we're the antithesis of a capitalistic economy, and we stand against everything Big Ag loves. I'm not shocked. I’m angry, worried and discouraged, but utterly unsurprised. I’m also responsible for navigating a way forward on the farm without said funds.

All of this finds me contemplating a discussion led by my friends Adam and Sam at the Whallonsburg Grange in October of 2024. The talk centered around stepping outside a capitalistic mindset, practicing reckless generosity and building relationships based on basic humanity, not monetary exchange. I was able to talk about our financial instability, even as we move towards true security through neighborly giving and gratitude. Afterwards, a man walked up to me and asked if I had thought to apply for any grants.

Well.

With fervor shaking in my voice, I told him the truth – I apply for grants every year. I’ve received 75% of them. Yeah, it would be great if the American Farmland Trust (or the USDA, or PASA, or RAFI, or freakin’ Beyonce) swooped in and just paid for small farmers to farm. But – and this is key – that wasn’t the point. The man, however well-intentioned, had just sat through an entire discussion about neighborly sharing, and he still felt the best solution was to turn to large, outside organizations and desperately apply to what is essentially a lottery based on one’s ability to articulate a budget.

The point, which I’m unsure I was able to get across, is that once food – once any basic need – became a commodity kept under lock and key that you had to “earn”, community structures divided into the haves and the have-nots. Society ranked (ranks) your value based on your “possessions,” usually currency. Such a system deliberately destroys attempts at communal care, insisting we compete for things (like grants) to prove our worth. In order to grow rare potatoes, live in a warm, safe home, and be in healthy relationship with my human and non-human friends, I have to decide the foods I produce are “worth” $3 a pound, and that because “you” can’t afford them, you simply don’t get to eat.

The point is that even as grants, non-profits and similar institutions do enormous good on an individual basis, they’re intentional pieces of capitalism, designed to provide just enough slivers of hope to keep the masses in check. If I’ve hope I can apply for a $5,000 grant, maybe I’ll focus on that, rather than question why I need to in the first place. (Please note that I’ll never fault anyone for applying to grants – I know firsthand how hard basic survival can be. I’m not telling you not to ask for whatever you can get within a system that only takes.) But the point, described far more clearly by Adam and Sam, is that when we turn away from that system and towards one another, we might not need those grants after all.

The man I spoke to that night was issued a challenge, one that asked him to imagine a life where survival isn’t reliant on a 200-word paragraph addressing “How you will use these funds,” but rather, this exchange:

“But who’s gonna take care of you?”

“Well, I kinda figured that you’d help me out if I got in a bad way.”

“Of course we would.”

“Well, what if there were 60 of you, and why can’t we live in that world?”

At this point, is there truly a different choice?

February has been excruciating for so many, for so many reasons, and now it’s time to gaze at those difficulties. To really question the roots of our reliance on a system that strings us along until it decides we’re not worth the effort. To turn away from a mindset of taking and towards one of giving, of saying to your neighbor, “We’ll take care of one another.”

We know how this began – someone, somewhere, decided to exert control by denying others their basic needs, and it snowballed. These days, instead of being able to freely share and accept resources and love, folks are caught in a stressful cycle of high costs and little income, using our would-be sleeping hours to scrape together funding from unreliable agencies.

But we don’t know how this ends. We can steer the narrative. I know this all takes time. It’s hard, scary and can feel like stepping into a different kind of struggle. But once we start the most important work – taking care of each other in whatever form necessary, for the long run – we can weather any storm. When the waves hit, we won’t even feel them. We’ll have built a strong enough network of that none of us fall through gaps.

Here at the farm we’re recovering, regrouping, and ready for another round. We plan to be here for as long as we’re needed. So don’t hesitate to reach out, whether you have a request or would like to give. We can all take of each other.

Godspeed,

Kia-Beth

Pronouns: zi/zir and they/them (Read more about personal pronouns here.)

P.S. I hate disrupting the flow of these musings, so I’ll put this request here. On Thursday, February 27, I will be gone from the farm all day, presenting at our local Food Justice Summit. This means that Brian will be managing the farm on his own. Any folks who can lend a hand for even an hour or two will be greatly appreciated.