Casey O’Neill is a farmer and owner of Happy Day Farms in Laytonville, Calif. The opinions expressed in this column do not necessarily reflect the views of The Mendocino Voice. If you’d like to write your own column for The Mendocino Voice, send your idea to info@mendovoice.com.
Fall comes early this year with the first moisture and a string of cool nights, with temps dipping well below what the hot crops really like for production. I know the heat will return through the long months of harvest to come, but for now I revel in the change, relishing the soft, moist earth and the fattening buds that are starting to reek of dank fuel and fruit. Pumpkins and butternuts swell on their vines and will soon be ready for harvest. Cannabis harvest will start in earnest in a few short weeks, the final sprint into the finish of the season.
We sing the seasons in rounds, each one beginning with the crops of its time weeks or months before it arrives. As our summer song begins to wane, fall is full in our throats as we continue planting successions of cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli and all the tender root crops and salad mixes we love so much. Spring’s song has dropped to a whisper, audible only in the results of early plantings and the beginnings of planning for next year. Winter grows stronger, singing of soup, woodstoves, books and all the cool, crunchy crops of the season.
I love the song of each season as an individual, but it is the compendium of voices that makes the magic of the farm. Each note finds a place in the harmony, a beautiful melody woven through time and space to sing a multidimensional chorus that results in food and herb to share from the bounty of our harvests. Love is the metronome, the ticking of the beat that moves us forward in our work with joy and steady effort.
My thoughts this week have been often on the passing of Wendel Berry, literary scion and farmer who has meant so much to the community of small farms that stretches across the continent. I first read his work while I was in jail for growing a plant; his words opened fertile earth in my soul and sowed seeds of future abundance even as I lay in my bunk caged by four walls in the bowels of the system.
Mr. Berry spoke to my being, changing the way I would think about the care and husbandry of land and the livestock and crops that I would come to raise upon it. His words fertilized the roots I had sunk in the earth of our homestead, bringing forth a flourishing that is in no small part responsible for what our farm has become. Though I feel deep sadness at his loss, it has also been a beautiful reminder to reconnect with his work, with his loving care for the pieces that make up a farm in a sum-is-greater-than-the-parts alchemy that changes all involved.
Looking back over the last 20 years of agriculture, first as a cannabis grower and then as a diversified farmer working with cannabis, vegetables and livestock, I think about how much deeper my experience has become. How much the land has changed under our husbandry, and how changed we are by that relationship. Wendell Berry’s words have often bolstered my spirits and served as guideposts for right work and the depth of relationship that develops between farmer and that which is farmed, husband and that which is husbanded.
In his passing, I am reminded and reconnected with my own goals for stewardship, for right work, for loving care and joyful presence. Walking the garden in the dawn light this morning, feeling the softness of the earth after the rains, I am struck by the beauty of this life, and I am grateful to throw myself into the work with vigor and hope.
Yesterday we moved sheep and pigs to fresh pasture with access to the north side of the barn. It was a bittersweet movement containing sadness because that space was reserved for Trap, our horse who died in August. Our management strategies will change in the months to come, and though I would prefer to still have Trap in his customary place, I am also leaning into the transition for better pasture management with more space for the other livestock.
Change is constant, and it is how I adapt and respond that shapes the life I live. In the beauty of an early September morning, I listen for the song of the seasons, playing my part in the rhythm just as I do with my box drum when we gather to play music in community. A core part of the practice of music, and of farming, is to listen, hearing the notes and catching the beat. As the song of fall rises, I gather in the melody as though greeting an old friend, come back around again.
Each time the season shifts, there is a sense of deep familiarity, a recognizance of the same place moved forward in the dimension of time. Each year overlays the previous ones in a tapestry of reminders of how things were, colored with the hope of how things will be through the experience of how things are. Each day is a new opportunity to sing the song, and for that I am grateful. As always, much love and great success to you on your journey!