Agri/Culture

Geoff and I are artists. We live on a farm. I am a dancer and philosopher, writing about weaning bull calves. Geoff is a musician, who fixes cattle fences. Art and farming. Culture and Agriculture. Are they at all related? What are we doing here?

I am asking these questions again, as I do from time to time, trying to make sense of it all. The impetus at the moment is our upcoming performance. Next weekend, February 27 & 28, Geoff and I are reviving Genesis, an original music and dance production that we first performed in 2001. Then I was six months pregnant with my third child, Kyra. Now I am pregnant with our fifth child, “who?" There is a lot going on.

Meanwhile, as I read the papers and look around, the scene is daunting. The economy is in various degrees of crumble, corrosion, and collapse. Anxieties run high; bank accounts run low. How can we ask people to come and see a music and dance performance? Why would I want to spend my precious time creating one? Why dance?

There is no better time than now. When change is afoot and uncertainty abounds, it is more important than ever to stay in touch with our freedom and nourish our capacity to respond to whatever befalls. The performing arts can help.

Take the case of Genesis. These ideas about art and life lie at its heart.

In the Hebrew Bible, “Genesis” is a story of creation. “Genesis” is one story of how it all began, told with metaphors and images that came long after. Reading, we imagine words over the water, the separation of light from dark, the forming and falling and farming of female and male, as they learn to give birth to themselves, each other, and their progeny. As the stories suggest, we have a lot to learn. Creation is an ongoing event, and we are participants in it.

The implications are huge: if we are participating in the ongoing act of creation, then how we move in every instant of every day matters. What are we creating? What other possibilities for movement exist?

Here is where art proves its worth. What we know as possible is what appears to us within the ranges of what we are able to sense; and art brings our senses to life. Practicing art and appreciating art can offer us experiences that help us grasp possibilities for thinking, feeling, and acting that were previously unknown to us. We can imagine possibilities for moving—seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and feeling—that we didn’t before. Our range of experiences shifts. We find ourselves with new resources for making sense of the way things are and can be, and for participating in the ongoing act of creation.

So too in our dance, Genesis. Genesis is a lone woman on stage, whose rounded belly is full of new life. Emerging into time and space, she embarks on a journey through familiar shapes of human experience. With her, we discover, enjoy, lose, pursue, mourn, despair, heal, and begin again. She reminds us: we too can move. We too are always moving. And when we can see it, sense it, and affirm it, we are inspired to do it--to make new movements, create new shapes of experience, and find our freedom. When engaged in our work, we can shuffle or hop, skip, run or dance. Which will it be?

Isn't this what farming is all about too--learning to participate fruitfully in the ongoing act of creation? Farming, like the arts, also brings our senses to life--and in particular, our sense of interdependence with the natural world. In order to farm, we must learn to notice and negotiate differences that would baffle an urban dweller; and we do so to align our energies with the creative work of earth becoming. Our lives depend upon it.

I remember. Geoff and I are here on the farm because we believe that art is vital in this way—humans need to do it and appreciate it in order to bring sense to life. Geoff and I are here to create arts and ideas that remain faithful to the earth and our bodies of earth.

One particularly cold, gray day last week, a local farmer handed me a couple of bags of the greens that he and his wife are now growing in their greenhouses. Each bag was a distinct mixture of shades and shapes, light to dark, round to oval, curly and branched. When he handed me the bag, I nearly gasped. I was struck by the enormity of the gift. Such vibrant living color on such a dull day! It was alive. It was a blessing.

I thanked him profusely for the lettuces. “There is no lettuce in there,” he replied. “Lettuces don’t go in until next week.” I have much to learn.

Genesis reminds us: we can learn. We can because we are all bodies moving, constantly learning to sense and respond and give birth to ourselves. We are all blooming with new life. We all participate in the ongoing work of creation.

Our hope is that people will leave the concert inspired and encouraged to do whatever they are doing in their lives with greater awareness of why it matters.

What am I creating? There is no better time to ask than now.

A Fierce Gratitude

It has been over a week since I wrote about “The Blanket Business.” Little did I know we had more to learn. When the temperatures plunged, the animals were fine—blanketed and not. There was one beast, however, whose blanket was not enough: the well house pump.

I should have guessed. Ever since we moved here, the pump has had a mind of its own. Located 200 yards up the hill behind our house in a cockeyed shack, eight feet down a rickety loose-runged ladder, at the base of a looming pressure tank, is a metal casket, the size of a basketball: our vital link to the bountiful waters below. When it froze once before, we developed our current practice of light bulb and blanket. But last weekend the light bulb had died, and the blanket alone was not enough.

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We wake up on a frigid morning to a tell-tale sign: a limp stream falling from the kitchen faucet. Minutes later, Geoff is trudging up the hill with a new light bulb and a hair dryer, while I, having contracted the stomach bug, writhe on the couch. We stay connected with walkie-talkies. Two hours later, he is down again. The pump seems warm, but still no water. We decide to wait to see if the sun’s rise will change anything. He goes to play the piano. Why not? We have a concert coming up. Might as well make something beautiful amidst the uncertainty. I take a nap. The kids are playing.

When I wake up, Geoff is on his way back up the hill. Lo and behold, the pump is working! We have water--what a delight! We drink and wash and flush and hoard... until dinner time. Suddenly the flow slows to a trickle again. We stack our dishes next to the sink and go to bed. The temperature is below zero. Even if we thaw out the pump again, it will freeze overnight. We will deal tomorrow. Time to sleep.

The next morning’s light does a world of good for our spirits, but the water is not running. Geoff spends more time at the bottom of our well house. This time, nothing. We realize that we are over our heads and decide to call in the experts. Then there is nothing to do but wait—and melt icicles on the wood stove for our thirsty animals.

While waiting, I decide to dance. Why not? We have a concert coming up. Might as well create some beauty amidst the chaos. Between exercises, I pop out to gather more icicles.

After lunch, just as we are beginning to wonder whether we will be facing another waterless night, the cavalry arrive. Thirty seconds with a blow torch and our pump and tank are frost free. Amazing. Still the water won’t flow. Maybe there is ice in the pipe to the house?

The only problem is that there are two pipes leading out from the pump. One goes to the house and the other to some underground location where water to the barn once flowed. We don’t know which one is which! Our experts cut one. Thaw it. Snake it. Put water through it. No water in the house. They cut the other, thaw it, snake it, and pour water through. No water in the house.

Maybe the ice cube is where the main enters the house? Geoff musters his resolve to investigate. We don’t have a basement under our kitchen where the main is located. He will have to crawl ten feet through a space no more than two or three feet tall, past ancient beams, deserted spider webs, and recent rat poop. He does. Nope, the main is not frozen. So what?

We try some other faucets. Wait a minute! We do have water after all—in the bathroom and laundry room and upstairs—just not in the kitchen sink! Our experts identify the pipe leading from well house to house and turn off the other one. Our water pressure surges as never before—though still not through the kitchen tap.

Finally, at the end of our rope, we open the cabinet below the kitchen sink. There, are our new blue and red PEX pipes leading down into the crawl space. We touch them. They crackle. Frozen stiff. When the pump succumbed, so did they in a cascade of failures. Mystery solved, but not resolved.

We do chores and make dinner with water from the bathroom. Eat first. After the kids go to bed, Geoff goes back into the crawl space with the hairdryer. For fifteen minutes he massages those PEX pipes. Then, miracle of miracles: WATER! From the hot tap, from the cold tap, and into the dishwasher!

We spend the next forty-five minutes washing dishes, joyfully. Never before has it ever been this fun to wash dishes. What a luxury.

Between rinses, we think back over the two-day ordeal. Simply knowing that there was no water streaming into the house made it so difficult to do anything. Even having all the water we needed to drink, just knowing that we had no flow was so unsettling. It was hard to focus on anything else.

Yet, at the same time, the disorientation forced our attention on what was most vital to do. Suddenly, it seemed as if there was no time to waste. Nothing to waste. Everything was precious. We could only do something that was most vital—art.

We set out to make beauty—to transform the situation into a catalyst for creating something new. It wasn’t that we were trying to compensate for loss or fill in the gaps. Rather, we were responding to the urgency we felt to make something more out of the moment than it seemed to be giving. What we ended up making was a fierce gratitude—for water, for our abundance, and for life on the farm. For our dish-washing ability. Vital arts indeed.