The Farmers in the Dell

The Organic Farming Conference is held annually in La Crosse, Wisconsin, during the last week of February. A hopeful sign of the times is that attendance has grown from 90 attendees 21 years ago to a resounding 2,600 this year!

One of the fixtures of the conference is the appearance and irreverent folk songs of Sinister Dane and the Kickapoo Disco Cosmonauts. (Don't look for them online. They don't have time to put up a website. They're busy farming and playing music.) They write their own lyrics to popular songs. You can probably guess the tune to "Help me, Round-up, Help, help me Round-up". Or, how about the tribute to Patsy Cline, "Cra-zy, for feeding sheep's brains to cattle...".

All of the food at the conference was organic, of course. All that could be recycled, was. Each attendee was given a glass mug to use for the duration of the conference. (No paper or styrofoam cups.) It took some years, but there were even compost buckets for things like banana peels and apple cores. Bravo! There was more tea than coffee doled out. The conference organizers didn't even bother with vegetarians. They jumped straight to vegans and gluten-free folks.

There were farmers of all kinds -- Amish, Mennonite, Sikhs, certified organic farmers, Birkenstock-wearing students, crusty old guys in seed company caps, university researchers, even a smattering of conventional farmers (they'll be converted soon). An encouraging note was that there were many young, beginning farmers.

I've worn many hats in my life (teacher, traveler, designer, artist, spy) but I must say that that of a farmer has been the most interesting by far. If you are anything like I was before venturing into this vocation, you may have assumed that farmers were dull, unintelligent hicks. That is what society has shown us about them. And the image is further degraded by conglomerates like Monsanto which have turned farmers into little more than hired hands, caught in the genetically-engineered seed/Round-up pesticide cycle.

But the average family farmer is nothing like that.

There is an authenticity to farmers. There is a common bond among us, borne of the feeling of comrades-in-arms as we all work with, or fight with, Mother Nature. There is a true grounding, literally and figuratively, to those who work on the land. There is a leanness to life. There is an innate intelligence in figuring out any number of measurements. There is a keen sense of community, helping each other, joining forces. There is immeasurable respect among the ranks of farmers.

I am honored to be one of them.