Southwest View

My desk still  not quite the space I want it to be, but this view? Oh this view is so distracting, beautiful, heartbreaking.

It is a conventional field we don't own. When we first moved here it was used for hay, all of it as far I I could see was green and gold grass. Every year that hay field shrinks in favour of soybean crop and with it the crop duster issues, last year the plane flew so close to our house that the tops of the maple trees crackled. That can't be good for the plane either. For almost a week, the plane buzzed our house and the woods right over the beehives over and over again. I had to blast NPR podcasts to drown out the noise, which to me is the sound of death and poison.

This is tragic for me in so many other ways too. I am the daughter of a pilot. I grew up around planes. I wanted to be Amelia Earhart when I was little, getting a pilot license was high on my list and I absolutely LOVED when planes flew low enough for me to read their numbers. The crop dusters here have ruined that joy for me.

I need to find a way to make peace with them. Send a letter, post more no spray signs. One of the things we have tried really hard to do here is respect the conventional farmers that are our neighbours, respect their land and their farming and foster relationship. Maybe they just don't understand what we are trying to do here? That we are trying to develop new methods of agriculture that can undo the damage of the last century of farming and move forward with better, healthier soil and water? According to the fliers and rhetoric I have heard at the co-op- our goals are the same.

This is what I thought as I gazed out this window. Also, that if I ever finish that novel and it makes enough $$, maybe I can buy the view and everything that flows into our watershed and make this land and this water better. One handful of dirt, one drop of water at a time. That's what everybody dreams of right? Healing the earth? I think perhaps I am more of a tree hugging hippie than I have ever admitted before. My dream is to own the 3000 original acres that went with this homestead and create regenerative agriculture systems that folks can learn from and that can provide for my community, healthy affordable food and nutritional medicines.

Those of you who have read here for a while, you all know, when I have a dream and set a goal? It gets done. Eventually. You have to have a destination to make a map, then you have to take the first step. We are leagues into our journey already. Even if we don't get all of the things done, we will have made progress and the world a better place if even just for a moment.