Saint Francis Farm March 2012 Our mission is to live a sustainable life based on the Gospels as an alternative to consumer culture. Sometimes that is frustrating to people who want to volunteer, to come and serve the poor and go away feeling better about themselves. Sometimes it is confusing to people who are more familiar with missions that involve moving stories about the needy and appeals for money to meet the needs. Our mission seems to work best when it is most hidden, and I am thankful for those who recognize and support it and for those who have put into words what I am trying to understand and articulate. What the farm has to offer--meaningful work, wholesome food, natural beauty, quiet places, someone to listen--are things often missing on both sides of the growing class divide. Students from private schools and affluent communities can learn some basic skills while they help grow the food that will feed them and whoever comes next. Local kids (whom some would define as the poor) also are pleased to help with the work and take home fresh vegetables and herbs. Both groups are often equally ignorant about the natural world but able to enjoy its beauty with the help of a guide. When fees for groups were eliminated a few years ago, the line between the rich who pay to come and the poor they serve disappeared. Anyone is welcome to help with the work. Anyone is welcome to walk the paths or sit by the pond. Food isn’t sold but is eaten at the farm or given away without the stigma of being needy attached to it. Effort is required to make the farm accessible to those who sometimes lack access. Joanna has learned some sign language and we’ve all had to learn some Spanish. Visitors who drop in or call ahead may be very young or very old. Physical or mental disabilities may need to be accommodated. People who can’t walk very far need places to sit and rest. Visitors may need someone to listen, or they may not be really verbal and so need to experience the smells and tastes and sights of the farm without words. Volunteers may need firm guidelines or reassurance that their help is welcome whether they come with a church group or by order of the court. We need to see clearly the different people who come, to learn practical things about how to respond to special needs, and to take time to make necessary plans and adjustments. We are still seeking to discern ways to do this work more faithfully, still have many questions. But as we live with the questions we become clearer that with the land and the will to work much can be done. The way different parts fit together is very satisfying. The goats we got to provide milk and cheese give urban visitors a chance to try milking and give migrant workers a reminder of home. The sawmill provides lumber for our building projects, sawdust for mulch, income from sale of lumber and connections to the local economy. Toys we make for the refugees also intrigue visitors and draw children to our display at the school on Family Night. I planted lavender because I missed the fragrance so much our first summer here, but it has also been popular with the children in the summer programs and the refugees who receive sachets. In this giving there isn’t a division between rich and poor. We rely on others for financial support, encouragement and counsel, and help with manual labor. Anyone is welcome to what we have in abundance and anyone interested can help make or grow it, can learn to make or grow it themselves, can take seeds or plant divisions that will then grow to be used and shared again. (by Lorraine) Being poor is . . . much harder than serving the poor. The unnoticed, unspectacular, unpraised life in solidarity with people who cannot give anything that makes us feel important is far from attractive. It is the way to poverty. Not an easy way, but God’s way, the way of the cross.-- The Road to Daybreak by Henri Nouwen “Self-righteous service puts others into our debt and becomes one of the most subtle and destructive forms of manipulation. . . True service quietly goes about caring for the needs of others. . . It draws, binds, heals, and builds.” (from Celebration of Discipline by Richard J. Foster) . . . it isn’t so much what we do for those curious others in our lives, the strange, the needy, the unscrubbed, as it is the way we do it. We can give people charity or we can give them attention. We can give them the necessities of life or we can give them its joys. . . hospitality is not simply bed and bath; it is home and family.--Joan Chittister The Rule of Benedict [Herein lies] the difference between competent poverty and abject poverty. A home landscape enables personal subsistence but also generosity. It enables a community to exist and function.--from What Matters by Wendell Berry Sean’s Story I am a 23-year-old recent graduate of McGill University in Montreal. Having washed up last June on the rocky shore of the real world without much of a plan, I began to look for a WWOOF farm. I chose to come to St. Francis Farm over the thousands of other WWOOF options because I suspected that I would learn important things there. It was a good guess. Seeing the Hoyts’ humble home, their hard work on the farm, their spirituality, and their commitment to social justice forced me to ask myself what my own values were and how well I was living up to them. It was challenging, because I was uncertain about almost everything. In today’s world, it is often very easy to evade taking a real position on things. At St. Francis Farm, with such profoundly principled people, it is not.  I got my hands on all sorts of things in my two weeks: the apple peeler, the mower, the sawmill, the goats’ udders. I loved most of my work because it was all so gloriously simple – tough, sometimes - but simple. Compared to “What am I going to do with my life?”, “Which tomato should I bring in for dinner?” is an easy question to answer. I also felt that in doing farm work I was having a fundamental human experience that had hitherto been missing from my life. Farming puts you face-to-face with the origins of things on a daily basis; seeing the way that a tiny seed becomes a big food-bearing plant never really gets old. I was not good at a lot of my jobs, but the Hoyts were eminently patient with me. I was pleased to discover that a willingness to learn is as important to them as dazzling manual skill. This was another reason I chose the farm: I don’t know where else I would have had a chance to try these things. And I loved how in the evenings, we all sat around and watched hours and hours of TV – no, just kidding. We did what every family in America should do instead of watching TV: played music. I was nothing short of amazed at Joanna and Zachary’s encyclopedic knowledge of folk music, undoubtedly acquired in hundreds of evenings spent not watching TV. I thought I knew a lot of songs when I got there, but they introduced me to dozens of great new ones that I still play. That’s what the time at the farm was about for me – learning new things, new things about living in a community, about working with my hands, about justice, about eating farm-fresh food, and about American folk music. I will never regret coming for a second. Sean Wood spent 2 weeks with us through WorldWide Opportunities on Organic Farms in September 2011. Maintenance by Zachary This has been a very strange winter, I have only had to plow the driveway three times so far. The absence of snow has made some jobs easier, especially around the sawmill, and has allowed me to get out to the woods to bring in more logs when needed. I have been sawing lumber from the trees I cut in November in the white pine plantation on the north side of Trout Brook. The pile has dwindled considerably, but there is still enough there to keep me busy for a while. Lumber sales have been a growing part of our income over the past few years, and I still am catching up on the trees that need to be cut in different parts of the woods according to the management plan made by the state forester in 2002. I bought a 2’x4’ home made syrup evaporator for $60 at an outdoor auction on a rainy Saturday last October and brought it home with the tractor since it was only 5 miles away but far too heavy to try to put in the car. It was set up to burn either kerosene or propane, but I got advice from an online maple forum and have been able to convert it back to burning wood. I have not yet had an opportunity to test how well it works, but from what I have been told it should be a great improvement over our previous method of boiling over an open fire with a pan. If it works well I will look at building a small sugar house to keep it out of the rain for next year. I am planning to increase from 15 to 25 taps this year now that we have the added boiling capacity. Because of the unusual weather this winter I am not sure when I should tap the trees, but I think the taps will be set by the time this reaches you. I have been making slow progress on the kitchen cabinet project. I did build a cabinet in December to replace one in the dining area that was deteriorating, and now I am in the process of building a new kitchen island. This will be a large job, but I plan to get it done over the next few weeks. The process is somewhat inefficient since I have to plane the lumber in the sawmill building where it is stored, bring it over to the main barn where we live to be sanded and assembled, take it to the house for finishing and then bring it back to the barn to be put in place. We looked at the options for the countertop of the new island and decided to try an ash wood countertop for now and see how it works. My main concern is that it may warp or crack with seasonal moisture and temperature changes, but if we decide it isn’t working we can always replace it with a different surface later. This winter I have taken time to clean up more thoroughly in the sawmill building and the workshop in the main barn and now both are much more convenient to use. I spent several hours sorting through several buckets and cans of mixed bolts and organizing them by diameter and thread pitch, and now when I need a bolt I know much more quickly what I have and where to find it. The sawmill building is an extra challenge to keep neat because the sawdust from the lumber in the loft drops through the cracks in the floor and piles up all over things, but if I keep up with sweeping it up it does not get too deep. I have sold the old hand cranked winch that I bought at auction a few years ago because I realized that it would require one person to crank the handle backward and one to pull the cable out, and I have finally gotten back to work on the PTO winch that I bought a couple of years ago with the intent of using it in the woods. I got it all mounted on the tractor and then realized that I had put the winch on upside down. I don’t know why I did, it just never occurred to me that it might go the other way up. Now I need to get the bracket welded back on in a different place, and I hope to get it done shortly. I hope to learn to weld soon--it would be very useful. The new wing on the sawmill building has been a big help in doing some of these projects--I have been storing and working on the evaporator in there and it has also been helpful when I rewired the Farmall H tractor. I was able to find a wiring diagram online and also was advised that it is quite easy to rebuild the type of alternator that it uses, so now I have rebuilt the one that was on it and one to have for a spare. Because the winter has been so comparatively warm we have burned less firewood than usual, so I will likely end up moving some of last year’s firewood up to the front of the shed so I can stack the new wood in the back part. I prefer to cut firewood early in the spring before the birds are nesting and the black flies come out, and this year we have very little snow to melt before I can get out to the woods. Be Still And Know by Joanna Simplicity doesn’t mean meagerness, but rather a certain kind of richness, the fullness that appears when we stop stuffing the world with things. --Thomas Moore, The Re-Enchantment of Everyday Life Our mission is to live an alternative to the consumer culture.  We do this partly by slowing down, refraining from stuffing the world with things, letting the fullness of life become manifest.  I try to encourage our neighbors to do this. I still struggle to do it myself. This is my fourth year coordinating community groups to celebrate Screen-Free Week (formerly TV Turnoff Week). Local churches and nonprofits organize craft projects, classes, walks, and volunteer opportunities for local families,  While many people participate,  I don’t know if any accept the challenge to forgo recreational screen-time (TV, computer and video games, social networking, email...) for a week.  Many people seem to find this suggestion extreme and say they can’t imagine what they’d do with all that time.  Studies estimate that Americans spend 7-8 hours each day staring at screens (while parents spend 8-11 minutes each day talking with their children).  Our screens can bring us valuable information and connections, but they displace many things of at least equal importance--quiet reflection, exercise, connection with our neighbors and with the natural world. As William Powers writes in Hamlet’s BlackBerry, “The point isn’t that the screen is bad...The point is lack of proportion, the abandonment of all else, and the strange absent-present state of mind this compulsion produces.” Last time I visited the high school with my Stop and Think sign and counter-recruiting/critical thinking resources a student stopped to ask what I was selling. “Nothing,” I told her, explaining that I was offering free questions and suggestions to help people evaluate sales pitches and make their own choices.  She merged back into the crowd in the hall, where I heard her telling another girl in dubious tones, “She says she isn’t selling anything.” Her agemates have grown up in a world saturated with ads; wherever they go there is something flashy trying to grab their attention and convince them that they will be happier, cooler, more attractive or acceptable if they buy something.  Such distractions make it difficult to preserve an inner space for reflection, questioning, prayer or refreshment.  It’s not only the kids who suffer from this.  On one of my first Stop and Think visits an adult read my sign aloud, grimaced and said, “If we had to do that we’d never get anything done.” I find this frustrating in other people.  I find it even more disturbing in myself. The people who live and work with me are often annoyed by my tendency to leave tasks incomplete--to write the letter and forget to post it, to proofread most of the document and leave the last bit for later, to leave the tools in the garden or wherever I happened to drop them. I have apologized but also protested that I have all kinds of work to do and I can’t possibly remember everything. This winter I realized that isn’t the whole story. I tend to work with about three-quarters of my attention while the rest is occupied with worries, daydreams, word games, variations on stories...  I resist quieting this noise in my mind, and I resist pausing between tasks to make sure everything is completed, even when I have plenty of time. When I first slowed down and looked at what lay behind that resistance I told myself it was just the enthusiastic wish to do and enjoy many things. But that didn’t explain my feeling of desperation at the thought of slowing down. I realized that I rush between tasks to reassure myself that I really am busy, which somehow translates in my mind into the assurance that my work is worthwhile, that I am OK.  I fill my mind with distractions so there’s no empty space into which the awareness of loneliness or regret might enter.  I take time for quiet, reflection, prayer, at the beginning and end of the day.  In between I often ward them off, fearing that reality--myself as I really am or the world around me as it really is--is not good enough. Once I recognize that fear, I know it isn’t true. When I stop running and face my fears I grow stronger and become aware of the goodness around me. I was distressed when I first realized the human and ecological harm caused by my consumption. Running from this distress made it worse.  Facing it started me on the path that led me to St. Francis Farm.  I’ve learned to do less harm here. I’ve also been blessed with varied and satisfying work, with a beautiful and productive place, with a diverse and sustaining network of relationships.  At various times I’ve tried to avoid noticing tensions or growing distances in relationships that I valued. Avoidance exacerbated the tensions.  Facing the difficulty sometimes led to healing, sometimes to a clear recognition of growing distances. Either way, I begin to relate to my neighbors in a way that is clear, open, ungrasping. This allows me to help other people, and also to receive and be blessed by their perspective and love. I come back to Thomas Merton’s words: “In prayer we discover what we already have. You start where are, you deepen what you already have, and you realize that you are already there. We already have everything, but we don’t know it, and we don’t experience it. Everything has been given to us in Christ. All we need is to experience what we already possess. In Brief The website has been updated and a new page, Stop & Think, added. A new farm brochure was printed at the same time as this newsletter. Margaret Clerkin and Andrew Nelson will be joining our Board of Directors for the annual meeting May 12. Margaret is active in Christ Our Light parish; we first met her as a volunteer at Rural & Migrant Ministry. Andy first visited in 2006 and has spent time with us while compiling a guide to the flora of the farm. Family Days will be held at the farm 10:30 to 2:30 on March 10 and April 14. More on these events in the last newsletter or on our website. Call to sign up or to get more information. We’re hosting sunset nature walks daily from 6:30 pm to 8 pm, weather permitting, during the local Screen-Free Week, April 2-7. Community Service Task Force meetings continue to be lively and well attended. Other local groups are starting to grow community gardens and teach people how to grow and preserve food. Some are looking for canning jars. People have offered us canning jars before and we’ve said we have all we need. Now we’d pass them on to folks who can use them. We’ve continued making toys for refugees this winter--trucks, doll sets, acrobats, and rainbow arches. In December Zach cut ~700 wooden blanks for making dominoes and Hope used them with a class of adults learning basic number skills.