Sandhill Farm

As a professional facilitator and conflict worker, a lot of what I do is build bridges between two or more folks having trouble hearing each other. While my life in community didn't start out with this focus it has decidedly become a central part of what I do.

After 36 years of living at Sandhill Farm, my role has gradually evolved from homesteader (there was no end to what things we didn't know how to do when we bravely moved onto the land in the spring of 1974) to community networker (I became my community's delegate to the Federation of Egalitarian Communities in 1979) to nonprofit administrator (I've been the Secretary of the Fellowship for Intentional Community since the late '80s) to facilitation trainer (mainly through a two-year program I pioneered in 2003, where I teach others how to build bridges).

Over the decades, my life has shifted more toward meetings and report writing, and away from milking cows and swinging hammers. While I know why this has happened and don't regret my choices, I haven't lost my enjoyment of more physical tasks, and I've been looking forward for some time to this past week, where I set aside my laptop to honcho building a cistern next to my wife's house at Dancing Rabbit.

HISTORY

The vision behind the founding of Sandhill Farm was to move toward self sufficiency – a key component was to grow our own food. Keeping bees was an easy fit and so a year after taking over the farm (1974), Ann & Ed ordered bees and equipment from Sears. The hive did fine until the milk cow accidentally knocked over the hive. Eventually, the bees died. In the meantime, a beekeeper in the area asked to locate one of his apiaries (25 hives) on our land – we were thrilled to have bees in our environment.

1980

I get stung a few times driving by the hives with our farm equipment – I get the community to agree to request Desi to move his hives somewhere else. When I ask Desi (Cuban), he responds: “Oh no, can’t move bees in summer – zere are zousands & zousands of baby bees – they get lost. I make you good deal – you buy them.” Huh? interesting proposition: but wait, I’m getting stung – maybe it will be different if they are our bees? We decide to buy them and as Desi predicted, we make half of our investment back with the first year’s honey harvest.

One of the impulses to buy bees is that we were trying to find ways to support ourselves – to make a living off the land. We began making sorghum syrup in 1977 and were selling it at local fairs and on the farm. We soon note that when we’re at a table and have only one product to sell, – it limits the customers. With 2 products, we can potentially double our sales! (Since then, we have continued to increase the number of products we sell at our booth – sometimes, 10 different products).

Honey sales are good – it’s a profitable venture for us; having Desi as a mentor and consultant helps. He also supplies us with equipment and queens when we need them. In 1986, we purchase another 27 hives from him – this apiary is at a neighbor’s farm about 5 miles from us. Two years later, we purchase another 25 hives from Desi at another neighbor. We are rockin-n-rollin.

Friday afternoon I got a surprise phone call from Xanthia, a woman I met five years ago at an FIC organizational meeting in Los Angeles. She’s been interested in community for years and gives me a call every now and then to catch me up on her journey toward a more cooperative life. It’s been a sweet connection in the outer orbit of my life as a community networker.

In addition to telling me that she'll be retiring soon and moving to northwest Tennessee to live with her sister, she inquired about how my partner, Ma’ikwe, was doing with her challenges with fibromyalgia (see my Dec 14 blog Adventures in Hydrotherapy) and having a section of the roof blown off her house (see my April 7 blog The Roof Is Risen, Indeed). It turned out that Xanthia has been reading my blog and was sympathetically tracking some of the struggles that Ma’ikwe has faced in recent months. I was touched by her caring and surprised that she was following my writing so closely.

In the spectrum of intentional communities, Sandhill Farm is more of an intentional family than an intentional village (such as our neighbors, Dancing Rabbit, who have a population of 50 going on 500). That said, we nonetheless have been serious about growing—just not as much or as fast.

Sandhill has 12 bedrooms, yet we only have five adults living here as members now, with a couple and their two-year-old son slated to join us in June. That will still leave us with immediate openings, and begs the question about how selective we should be in choosing among prospectives. Because we'll never be large, each member has a decided impact on the group's flavor, and the nuance we wrestle with is how important it is that we're excited about a candidate, as opposed to there being no red flags. It's the difference between insisting on being positive, versus settling for the absence of dissonance.

While my group is not of the same mind about this, I lean toward a minimum that at least one other member really wants the person to join. Absent that, I'm worried about the dynamic where the new person holds a strong view on some issue that no one else agrees with. While a person could live here for 10 years and never be in that position, if it does occur, what will sustain us through the awkwardness? Knowing that the relationship with that person is genuinely valued by someone I already have a commitment with to work through tough issues, will help me respond with compassion—instead of with irritation—when there's tough sledding. While I don't expect to be best friends with all community members, I want to feel optimistic about our prospects for being allies in the creation and sustenance of cooperative culture.

I reckon it’s traditional wisdom that  farmers/gardeners combine art and science in making decisions of what, how, and when to plant. I don’t usually think about it but that is certainly my experience. Now, I will try to articulate some of the underlying ways of how I experience it.

Art – a better word for what I mean in this context is intuition  (it seems cumbersome) and by science I mean facts and observable conditions at hand. Many of my decisions are based to some extent on intuition/a gut feeling. I’ve  noted that when I’m asked about our crop rotation or how I make daily farming decisions, I often find it difficult to articulate. It is easier to poin to a book or website (science) – but there are always other factors that are involved (art). My conclusion: picture a decision making process that has art/intuition and science/facts on opposite ends of the continuum (most of our decisions fall somewhere in between). To illustrate how I experience this dynamic, I will use the example of planting oats this spring – on March 31.

Oats is usually the first field crop we plant in the spring. In our part of the country (northern MO), traditional wisdom is to plant oats in March – if possible. Many years it is too wet at this time and so it is delayed. However, my experience is that the oats do better when I plant them in April. So why did we plant in March this year?

The last two years have been very wet here – planting at the appropriate time has been a challenge. Last winter was wet as well so I prepared myself for delayed planting. Then, in late March, the weather turned warm and dry and the soil in some fields was actually dry enough to plant; further, the forecast was for rain in a few days. We tilled the ground on 2 consecutive days (to destroy and incorporate the cover crop) and planted the next day. It rained that night and the next day. Perfect timing!

It's that time again. When the enticement of balmy April weather must be firmly resisted in favor of wrestling at the dining room table with the thicket of schedules and forms that stand between me and the avoidance IRS penalties. All of which is to say, taxes must be postmarked by Thursday. Thus, I went into total immersion yesterday morning (pausing only to send up this flare to my blog constituency).

I do the taxes for the whole community. That means that I start by preparing Sandhill's corporate return, parlay that into completing every member's 1040, and conclude by doing returns for the state of Missouri. (For nuances about the favorable tax options available to us as an income-sharing community, see my blog of last year, Mining the Tax Code. For more about how I relate personally to being the Designated Tax Matters Partner, see my blog of two years ago, The Tax Man Cometh.)

Every year there's a sequence to this treasure hunt:

a) Pore over the electronic accounting to see that things have been entered properly (Hint: they're never completely right). It's kind of like an Easter egg hunt, where you're looking for anomalies, trying to discover as many as you can before you hand in your basket to the judges.

b) Pull together the oddments of accounting that are needed to create a complete financial statement and balance sheet (accounts receivables as of Dec 31; market value of all our bank accounts, loans, and investments; how many days of last year each person was a member—fun stuff like that).

c) Calculate depreciation and complete Form 4562. (For this I need the odometer readings on all our vehicles when the clock struck midnight Dec 31.)

I'm in Kalamazoo this weekend, doing a series of training workshops for students at Western Michigan University (they've asked for power, delegation, facilitation, membership, and conflict—pretty much a full smörgåsbord).

When I left home in the pre-dawn hours of Thursday (to catch the 6:12 choo choo out of Quincy IL), the sky was clear and spring was raging ahead after being delayed by winter's reluctant departure from the Midwest. You could almost watch tree buds and flowers open up as warmth surged back into the soil. I debated whether to bring my fleece vest on this trip or not. Temperatures the past two weeks had been steadily pleasant, even flirting with the low 80s on occasion (which is showing off this early in the season), and who needs to schlep extra clothing? Given that it was only 40 degrees at dawn in Quincy, I decided at the last moment to bring the vest, and I was plenty glad I did when I arrived in Kalamazoo.

While the trees here are in early leaf (offering smudges of chartreuse to contrast jauntily with the browns and grays that had dominated the winter palette), the temperatures were retro—a throwback to late February. In town, the Bradford pears and cherries were decked out in dress whites and the grape hyacinth was out in numbers (just like in Missouri), yet spring was in a state of suspended animation. There was a weak sun trying to poke out of scudding clouds and remnants of two days of steady rain occasionally shifted back into wet snow flurries. Yuck.

In the north, spring just takes a little longer and its progress is more sketchy. Though Kalamazoo is located smack in the middle of southwestern Michigan—the garden spot for the wolverine state—Michigan is still a northern state, and Mother Nature was just sending a reminder.

This morning I answered a questionnaire about voluntary simplicity that a student in France sent to Sandhill asking for volunteers to respond (even though the questions were not simple to answer). I liked the questions, and thought I'd share my answers, making the work I did composing responses do double duty by serving as today's blog entry as well.

1. One can define "voluntary simplicity" as follows: a preference for country life; a desire for maximum personal self-reliance and creative leisure; a certain hostility toward luxury; a belief that the primary reward of work should be well-being rather than money; and a taste for the plain and the functional. To what extent do you identify with this? And to what extent do you live a simple life?

I don’t think voluntary simplicity implies an agrarian life, though it may well imply a slower, more deliberate one, and that, of course, is typically associated more with rural lifestyles. I don’t link voluntary simplicity with self-reliance or hostility toward luxury, either. I am drawn to the association with creative leisure though, in the sense that one who espouses voluntary simplicity needs to find happiness independent of the accumulation of money or possessions. Better for me though, would be a creative way to find joy and inspiration in everyday things; I prefer the approach of blurring the distinction between work and play. I am drawn, in part, to living in intentional community because of the leveraging possible around accessing resources (through sharing) instead of accumulating the money needed to buy them.

I live a life of voluntary simplicity in that I have little money or possessions in my name, yet believe I lead a life rich in opportunities and experiences. One of the secrets to leading a happy life is to be able to find joy in many things.

Three days ago, on Easter Sunday, Ma'ikwe lost the northwest quadrant of her roof in a thunderstorm. It was pretty wild.

The storm came up suddenly from the west (which is always where they come from) and when the rain hit, it blew open the door on that side of the house, because the strike plate was mounted a little high and the bolt doesn't quite catch. In the fierce wind, it took both Ma'ikwe and Kay (her mother visiting from Jackson MI) to push the door shut against the driving sheets of horizontal rain. In the chaotic moment, amidst the freight train howl of the wind, the two women were wholly focused on protecting the kitchen and Ma'ikwe's bed from getting soaked and no one realized for a time that the wind had been working on the roof as well as the door... that is, until Duncan (a neighbor boy visiting Ma'ikwe's son Jibran) said he thought he heard a noise up above while the women were wrestling with Zephyrus on the ground level. When Ma'ikwe glanced out her south window to investigate, she was gobsmacked by the vision of several of her roof panels roosting in a tree 75 yards downwind.

A Good Place to Be in a Storm
By the time Ma'ikwe got through to me by phone (I was at Sandhill, three miles away, when the storm hit and our phone was tied up with a community member on a conference call) and I was able to get over to Dancing Rabbit (not knowing how bad the damage was or how many buildings had been affected), it was immediately relieving and heart warming to see at least 15 neighbors swarming around the house removing stray screws and nails, placing temporary tarps over the hole in the roof (which saved the ceiling drywall), gathering up the errant roofing, and giving Ma'ikwe consoling hugs in unlimited quantities.

Today is my stepson 13th birthday. While Jibran grew up detesting that his April Fools birthday provided everyone with a ready-made joke at his expense, he nonetheless woke up this morning officially a teenager. While I'm not sure this is much a deal to him, my wife, Ma'ikwe, has been leaking traces of anxiety about what the teenage years will bring.

Both of my kids—Ceilee (29) and Jo (22) went through this particular gate long ago, and while there was a certain amount of distancing from Dad's eyes and Mom's skirts (not that Ma'ikwe ever wears them, but you know what I mean) in and around this milepost, I don't look for Jibran to be rebellious in the Lord-of-the-Flies manner that is the heart of a mother's nightmares. He's a thoughtful, creative kid who's taste for autonomy matches well with Ma'ikwe's laissez faire parental style. (What's to rebel against?)

Jibran has been homeschooled most of his life (there were brief stints in a series of charter schools in Albuquerque, but none of them seemed to hold his interest), and it wasn't until this year that he's really gotten into the self-discipline of learning. Under the tutelage of Sharon Bagatell at Dancing Rabbit (his and Ma'ikwe's home) he and two other peers are thriving. Some of the other kids at DR go to public school; still others are going free lance, or "unschooled" in loose association with their parents. DR is nothing if not a poster child for educational eclecticism. The trick, of course, is finding what degree of structure and peer association works best for each kid.

Part of my work as a process consultant is out-of-town firefighting. In the small but intense world of intentional communities, if a group catches on fire and can't put it out on their own, I'm one the people who might get a call. It's a specialty that requires both that you understand the fluid dynamics of group conflagration, and the ability to not wilt in the heat of the moment. It takes a certain combination of savvy, groundedness, and improvisational chutzpah which I'm crazy enough to embrace.

While it's only a piece of my work as a consultant, some of my most precious memories are the work I've done with groups in crisis. While you're never happy that people are in struggle, you're glad for the chance to ease the pain, and offer a helping hand.

After being in this line of work for more than two decades, there's a steady stream of inquiries that reach my ears concerning hot issues (as opposed to requests for trainings or for non-crisis facilitating—both of which I also do), and they tend to fall into one of three categories, all of which occur in roughly equal proportions:

A) Groups who have recognized that they need help, have hired me, and have subsequently gotten their fire under control (whew!).

B) Groups who have recognized that they need help, but could not agreed to hire me—either because the prior work I've done with that group drew mixed reviews, or because they've never seen me before and are having trouble imagining how someone from rural Missouri could possibly be worth the $1200/day I tell clients I'm worth.

C) Groups that have not yet recognized that they need help (despite the fact the people in and around the group have already pulled the fire alarm).

There were 44 of us at the Third Organic Beekeeping Conference in Oracle AZ March 5-7, 2010. These conferences were begun and organized by Dee Lusby, an organic beekeeper, a researcher (www.beesource.com) and an early proponent of organic = no treatment beekeeping. I’d discovered this movement 8 years ago, was fascinated, and implemented some of the management techniques; I quickly discovered it was more complicated than I’d expected. I had also wanted to attend one of the earlier conferences but AZ was far away. This time I was already in AZ for an advanced organic inspector training; further, I contacted Arthur Harvey of Maine to see if he was going. Arthur is an organic inspector and has one of the very few certified organic bee/honey operations in the country. Arthur informed that he’d been to the first 2 conferences and was not planning to go; however, if I went, he would come as well. He had been trying to get folks at the conference to enter discussions on establishing standards for organic beekeeping in the US.

March 5

Arthur & I attend the morning session at the Advanced Organic Inspector Training – it’s about Organic Apiculture, the first time it’s offered here (partially due to the USDA’s National Organic Program now in the process of formulating organic apiculture standards). After the session, we drive 2 hours north to the Organic Beekeeping Conference at a YMCA camp way out in the desert near Oracle AZ. I’m looking forward to meeting the legendary Dee Lusby.

Eating locally grown food is now popular – at Sandhill, we’ve been doing it for 35 plus years. One of the challenges is not having fresh salad greens during the long winter months. This is the first winter our green house has been fully operational and we have been having fresh salads through the winter.

A few days ago we were comparing our favorite greens. We realized that we usually mix all the greens together and then add a dressing – making it difficult  to distinguish the individual tastes. We decide to do it differently: Emily harvested the greens, kept them separate, and labeled each group (the little pieces of paper in photo): arugula, sanposai, tatsoi, mizuna, spinach, perpetual spinach, golden chard, beet greens, winter cress, chinese savoy, and romaine lettuce. We stood around the table and tasted each separately – what a feast! (Immediately behind the greens are jars of alfalfa sprouts, pickled peppers, fermented carrots & garlic, and salsa.

I discussed soil fertility in the past – see the entry on growing green manure crops.

As I indicated earlier, the basis of our fertility program is growing green manure crops and recycling nutrients – compost, crop residues, etc. We grow a lot of green manure crops and I feel like it should be enough to maintain fertility to grow our crops; however, I see signs that our efforts fall short. The most obvious sign is that whenever I spread manure on fields, the crops respond dramatically – ie. they grow taller and are much greener, and in short, much more robust. This indicates to me that our crops would like/appreciate more soil fertility.

We do not have animals on the farm – other than our laying chickens, turkeys, and pets, which produce little manure. Organic certification standards prohibit us using humanure.  Sometimes, we purchase some fertility amendments – mostly trace minerals such as zinc, boron, sulfates, and very occasionally, potassium and calcium.

We are fortunate in that a friend of mine who works for the town, which is our county seat – Memphis MO, makes compost from the city’s leaves, grass (lawn) clippings,  dirt, and a little cattle manure. He also maintains huge wood chip piles: both fresh (great for paths and mulching berry plants) and aged, which look like compost and I spread on fields for organic matter. Roy began making compost several decades ago – mostly because he wanted to keep all the leaves and grass clippings from being land filled.

Almost half of our 135 acre farm is in woods – we like it that way. A few benefits of having our own woods/forest:

* they provide us with firewood

* we harvest logs to be sawed into lumber for our construction needs

* they are good habitat for wildlife (including deer – currently, our primary source of meat)

* they are a carbon sink – offsetting global warming

* they nurture the spirit/soul – winter time is my favorite time to be in the woods: walking, skiing, cutting firewood. The woods feel like a sanctuary (comparable to church/temple for some) to me – it’s where I feel connected to nature, the universe – my spirit feels nurtured.

It feels appropriate for us to heat with wood: currently, we heat two residences, a common house/kitchen, and a green house. That’s a lot of fires to keep feeding; on these sub zero nights, we burn a lot of wood; additionally, we use wood to cook down our sorghum and maple syrup. How much wood? I don’t know – I’m not in the mindset of thinking in terms of cords, etc. Of course, there is the old adage: firewood warms you twice: when you cut & split it and when you burn it. We like the cozyness of wood stoves – coming in from the outside, it feels so good to toast myself in front of the wood stove.

Our farm is a commune: ie, we own everything together and share all our income and expenses. We are a small group: 5 adults and a 13 year old – she spends a lot of time at school. Over our 35 year history, we have generally had 3-12 members; however, we are usually a larger group – we have friends/family as well as community visitors, and during the growing season, have 3-6 interns. Having interns here and being open to visitors, including group tours, is part of our vision/mission of teaching people about how to live more sustainably and grow & preserve our own food. We strive to demonstrate how to accomplish this on a small scale and believe that growing your own food and eating locally is a political/economic statement – to foster communities having control of their own food supply and economic security in the face of multi-national corporations controlling all aspects of our lives.

We are often asked “how do you few you get all this work done?” The answer is that we have a lot of help – our sorghum harvest/operation is an excellent example:  3 weeks ago, there were 20-25 of us harvesting and processing our sorghum crop – there was a labor exchange group from Twin Oaks, a friend from East Wind (both communities are in the Federation of Egalitarian Communities), interns, ex-interns, and visitors. It truly feels like a harvest celebration – many hands make light work. There is an amazing feeling that comes with a group of people working on a common project. It reinforces our commitment to working together and living in community.

Contrast: today, I am on the farm by myself. Interns and visitors have left, 2 members are off on a hiking trip, 2 others are off on business – different directions – leaving me, 3 dogs, 5 cats, twenty some chickens and 4 turkeys. This seems such a contrast to the traditional/average family farm – where the human population does not vary much.

OUCH! that’s a downer – who wants to know or talk about crop failures? well, ok, I can hear about them – as long as they are someone’s else’s failures. It’s hard for me to admit to failure. Some time back, I wrote about our problems/failure with tempeh production – it was interesting that several folks responded with suggestions – it appeared inconceivable to them that this “problem” could not be solved. We were there too – but after 9 months, we conceded defeat (in the short term – we still believe that we will figger it out eventually!).

So what am I talking about? what crop failure?

1. first & foremost: honey. In the last 25 years we have not harvested less than 100 gallons of honey in any year – the record was 410 gallons, the last few years, average 110 gal; this year – 22 gallons. THAT SUCKS – big time.

why the poor year? once again, i’m mystified. Sure, I can point to various factors:

swarming – seems like our bees just would not quit swarming this year; in fact, we had another swarm this week.

weather – cool & rainy; bees do best with the opposite – hot & dry.

But, somehow, it does not add up, because both of the above factors were also present last year, and we harvested 100 gallons.

2. dried beans – for our own eating: black beans, pinto beans, & red beans. At this time of year, they are usually 3? tall and/or sprawling in between the rows and covering the ground. This year – some are 8? tall, appear puny & stunted; others are 15? now. The deer have been browsing on them freely and keeping them short – but this looks stunted, not just short. So why? too much rain, not enough sun, always theories – but it seems there were other years when we had similar conditions, and still had a good crop….?

I do note that the beans I replanted (the pintos and red beans) are doing much better; this year, later planting are more vigorous.

It’s swarming season again! I wrote about why and how bees swarm a year ago. This year – it’s in the photos:

Photo #1:  a small swarm perfectly positioned:  perfect for the beekeeper/swarm catcher – it’s close to the ground – no having to balance a box on a ladder, etc.  Here I am admiring the bees with my lovely assistants and assuring the bees that I have honorable intentions – to provide a furnished home for them. What is inside the mass of bees? more bees – some hang on to the branch, others hang on to them, and others hang ….. etc. somewhere in the center is the queen.

Photo 2: the bee box is in position to receive the swarm – a quick vigorous shake of the branch to dislodge the bees – they gradually crawl inside on   the frames of beeswax foundation. what? you didn’t see the shake? “the hand is quicker than the eye.”

Photo 3:  ah! the satisfied look on the beekeeper’s face (me).

thanks to neighbors, Pete & Staci,  for calling us and offering us the swarm and thanks to Staci for the photos.

Wow! it’s been 6 weeks since my last post – many things have changed, some not.

It looks like a different world out my window: spring has matured into the abundance  of summer – it’s amazing how much plants grow with plenty of moisture. Our cool weather crops, especially the greens and brassicas are loving it. What has not changed is that we continue to have lots of rain – so much that it is challenging to get garden and farm work done.

In the gardens, we can keep up. We have raised beds and/or heavily mulched paths so that we can plant, weed, and harvest – unless the soil is really wet. We are harvesting leafy greens, asparagus, and now, strawberries. With 4 interns, visitors, and members, we get a lot done and the place is looking quite spiffy.

It’s a different story in our fields. In the last six weeks, we have had about 6 days when we could work the fields – this is the season to plant our annual spring crops. We’ve been in a pattern where it almost dries out – just before it rains again. About 10 days ago, we had about 3 days in the fields, in which we worked down green manure crops and also managed to transplant about 1.5 acres of sorghum. We had another 3 days in the fields a few days ago and transplanted the other 1.5 acres of sorghum, and planted popcorn, field corn (for cornmeal), pinto beans, black beans, yellow & brown mustard, and tillage radishes (to harvest the seed). Whew!

We had 2? of rain yesterday – I feel lucky we got our field crops planted. We had less to plant this year:  less sorghum because we have not been selling as much, and we have not had access to about a third of our fields due to the creek washing out a bridge. The county has been working on replacing it but have been hampered by the weather as well. Hopefully, they will get it done before wheat harvest in early July.

Spring is an enchanting time of year: a time of beginnings & awakening, verdant shoots of green grass, sprightly wild flowers,  multi-colored flowering fruit trees, sap is rising, people falling in love, and so many beauteous things. For me, it is all of those – and also one of the most stressful times of the year. How so?

Spring: “sap is rising” is a common expression – my energy is up too: I wake up at 5:30, coffee, yogurt & toast, some quiet time, and then I’m ready to GO! Except that it’s cold & rainy out – not fair! Nature is geared up & my motor is revved up – with no place to go! I guess I could go fishing, repair farm equipment – but, in the rain?

THIS IS THE HARD PART – WAITING. Many think that the challenging part of farming & gardening is the work – well yes, it is a lot of work – but at least, when I am working, I feel good/productive. I can work long hours and my body aches – and it feels so good compared to “chomping at the bit” (a reference to bygone days when we worked with horses: they were ready to go and we held them back with the bit in the bridle…).

Rain – there is nothing as comforting as the sound & smell of rain when we really need it – I wake up in the night and hear the pitter-patter on the rood and ah! all is right with the world. BUT -  it is equally discouraging when we have too much. Folklore around here says you should always welcome rain – if you don’t, you’ll be looking for it soon. I know I should be thankful for the rain but by the 4th week of it – I’m ready to scream & do an anti-rain dance.