Jack’s voice!
Greetings CSA Members!
Well here we are; in this season of “lasts” for me as full time owner and operator of Featherstone Farm, we have come to my last ever regular summer CSA newsletter. Sure, I will be around the place off and on for at least another season, and it might take a couple of years to finalize an actual sale (more on this in future newsletters this winter). But in my head and heart, this feels like the end of an era. Time for reflection.
Two nights ago I was working late on a small construction project, all alone at what we call the Anderson Camp. As dusk fell I happened to put John Prine on the JBL speaker at the site, and within moments I was rewarded with this immortal imperative, sung in that jaunty, wide smiling tone of 1970:
Blow up your TV/ Throw away your paper/ Go to the country/ Build you a home
Plant a little garden/ Eat a lotta peaches/ Try and find Jesus/ On your own
Well, there it is in its essential form. This is the sentiment that inspired me and Jenni in our early days together, as we experimented with lives in organic agriculture. It’s all there: the disillusionment with pop culture driven by money and celebrity, the nuts and bolts preoccupations of going “back to the land” and the rock bottom faith we had in the redemptive value of a simpler, more humble way of life. Idealistic yes, for sure. But Jenni and I acted on that idealism, jumped in with both feet!! Voila, Featherstone Farm!!
For many years our young family really lived this way of life, first as adopted members of the Full Belly Farm family near Sacramento CA (where we really learned to love John Prine, singing with farm community members on Sunday evenings), then as founding members of the Zephyr Valley Community Land Coop, exactly 30 years ago. It was a wonderful, wonderful time, those foundation years of Featherstone Farm, before we started “picking up the papers” and re-entering
the mainstream. As my time here nears an end, I find myself very nostalgic indeed.
And now to see how far we’ve come, together with you, our Minnesota farm family! Honestly, in the first year or two Jenni, my brother Ed (early farm partner) and I could never have imagined the Featherstone Farm of 2024. If we had, it might have seemed too much at some level… more than we would ever aspire to(?). On the other hand, had we foreseen how many people we would be able to feed with good organic vegetables, how many jobs and opportunities of all kinds we could create for the community… perhaps we would have charted a course for the sort of growth we saw, particularly after the flood of 2007. Impossible to say. No regrets!
What matters is that we did succeed in keeping the farm going through so much over the years, all of us, together. The weather events, the constant crises, the growing pains as we learned how to manage a growing crew and balance sheet, how to re-purpose some of that Spanish Pipedream idealism into a functioning business, with purpose. What a roller coaster. We succeeded way beyond our ability to imagine…together.
Quite honestly, now feels like a good time to return to that original impulse, for me anyway. Less pressure at the farm business, planting perineal flowers and trees rather than vegetables, hopefully eating better in the summer (more peaches!) with more time on my hands. I will definitely miss Featherstone Farm and all the truly life affirming, joyful things that happen here. But it feels to me like just about the right time to “go [back] to the country” and start anew.
To be clear; you have not heard the last of me! This may be my last regular summer CSA newsletter, but its not the last writing I will do on behalf of Featherstone Farm. There will be winter newsletters for sure, and lots of updates on the transition of FF into the very capable hands of the employees.
I spent last night at Anderson’s again, preparing for an early morning delivery run with the new Isuzu. As I emerged from the sleeping porch at 3:30, the sky was animated by wildly sweeping lights of the aroura borealis, dim but dazzling nevertheless. I may be leaving Featherstone Farm, eventually, but the simple pleasures and inspirations of the life Prine sings about… these
are going nowhere- for any of us- thank goodness!
Most Gratefully, for 30 wonderful years- xx