Q. You write about losing your first farm to development — what did that teach you that prepared you to fight the pipeline?
A. The development of the 120-acre farm [had] happened in sections over a period of five years. Then all life — the trees and grasses, the flowers and forbs, the fruit and bushes — was torn out, and burned or buried. Even the living topsoil was scrapped into a pile and sold off. The remaining subsoil was flattened and reshaped.
We continued to farm on the land that had not yet been developed, immediately adjacent to land that had been stripped of all life, but it was an ecological disaster. Rain could not soak into the adjoining land; there was no life to hold water, and it ran off into our fields. After a heavy summer storm our potato field was covered with 14 inches of silt and gravel. Pests and disease — previously a non-issue — became a losing battle.
After the development experience I was not willing to allow a pipeline through here. But it was pretty scary to think of taking on the largest privately owned company in the world, and everyone said, “You cannot move a pipeline.”
Shortly after receiving the letter informing us of the pipeline route I went online and found the Agricultural Impact Mitigation Plan [for the pipeline]. When I came to the part where it read: will not knowingly allow the amount of top cover to erode more than 12 inches from its original level — I no longer had any option.
Nature should have legal rights of its own, but it doesn’t. To protect nature in our courts of law it is required to show a loss to humans, so humans have to stand up and speak for it.
Q. I know you and your husband now do organic consulting and education. Are you still farming?
A. The farm is being managed by Wedge Community Co-op, who purchased our name in 2008. They have a farm manager. After this season they’ll be moving to a new plot of land and Martin and I will have our land back to farm again. We’ve had a five-year break. We’re going to move the farm into a more permaculture-type setting, with grasses, fruits, and perennial crops. It’ll be less demanding and less taxing — for us and the land.
Q. Do you want to talk about your process of writing the book?
A. It was one of the healthiest things I’ve ever done for myself. We had never really had time to go back and deal with the emotions around [losing our first farm to] development. At the time we had a new farm to start, and children to raise.
Before I started writing it I would have described myself as having anger management issues. Now it’s completely gone. I reevaluated everything while I was writing and most of the anger just disappeared.
A lot of writing romanticizes farming and a lot of writing is cynical about it. I think the truth is somewhere in the middle.
Seventy-five percent of Midwestern farmland is going to change hands in the next 15 years. And I heard someone say recently — when talking about beginning farmers — that we “have to romance them.” At the time I thought, “It’s not romantic. It’s hard work! Why trick them into thinking it’s romantic?” But then when I was writing the book I suddenly saw what was really romantic about farming. And I could see so clearly that there is really no other life I would have ever wanted to live. It’s incredibly romantic to be able to choose the life that you want.
