To Remain peaceful inside and remain connected, That keeps bringing me back outside.
Heavy D currently works at a garden center in Oregon. They moved to Oregon with the intention of finding a farm to work on, but the fires and pandemic have made that difficult.
They spent last season apprenticing at a farm in Washington State.
It all keeps me up at night.
Farming is bigger than the word farming.
I don’t necessarily want to be a farmer. I know that I want to hold space to help other people, including me, to learn and grow and figure out how to respect mother nature in general. How to harvest and feed ourselves and not be greedy.
How do we keep coming closer to the edge, and there’s still no accountability and we aren’t changing anything? It’s crazy to watch the train keep rolling.
I worked in the restaurant industry for a long time and my last job was in downtown LA at this very giant, very fancy restaurant. I was starting to get really tired of watching so much food thrown out and the waste and lack of appreciation for where things come from.
I realized I didn’t have that appreciation either.
I happened across an internship for a student education farm, that was a partnership with several local colleges. You could apply for it if not in the college, so I did.
The trajectory for me looks like I won’t have a farm for quite a long while – 5 and 10 years. my trajectory is to buy a house with land on it.
To afford a house i have to have other jobs to stash away money which means a whole different career or more restaurant work.
My partner is currently going to school so that is another deficit for someone trying to buy land – we are going into debt for something else.
I’m doing the best i can right now – the current home I live in is owned by my grandmother.
we have a large backyard, and I’m turning every available square inch into gardens.
The Plan in front is to start with 3 beds and have them be a community garden – I want it to blossom and grow into moving it to the backyard. everyone is welcome to come and peruse through and pick what they want.
My time on the farm was really lovely and most of it passed without too much trouble.
I do know the owner who owned the actual farm probably couldn’t have cared less about what was happening on the farm or how much people were or were not learning.
It often felt like the needs of the farm were second to the way it looked from the outside. I thought that was a real shame since farming and food are essential to the way our society works right now.
The focus never seems to be how can we get the food to the people who need it the most. It’s always about how many pretty pictures can we take while we are growing, who is most palatable to be seen for commercials or for the volunteers coming in.
Farming there was more about the grants we could get over the impact in the community.
The farm only done for the sake of looking good, not the sake of doing good.
without being outside, without active movement of my body, digging in the dirt, without eating things that I’ve grown – I tend to have really bad depression.
and working in customer service – I’ve been in restaurants my whole youth – I’ve been a bartender and served and worked in the kitchen, every aspect of a restaurant…I find myself at the end of the day really angry at people
and
Not Our Farm 