Thanks for sharing this experience. There is also a vibrant resurgence of biodynamic farming which is another fully integrated approach to a reciprocal relationship of healing and growth for us to have with the land. Clarissa Pinkola Estes wrote: “Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world within our reach.” You, Charles do that consistently, with great love and I deeply appreciate your contribution.
Yes, biodynamics is having a big influence. One of the threads that brought me to the Field School goes back through the Biodynamic Conference I spoke at in 2012 in Wisconsin. It left a deep impression on me. I referenced biodynamics in my talk at the Field School. A gift to the world.
Linda, I remember reading this quote by Clarissa Pinkola Estes years ago and loving it so much. Thank you for sharing it here...going to copy it down this time!
I sob as I read this. You write so beautifully, soulfully about your experience with these farmers and I really can't stop sobbing because your message, your experience and perception, it's so hopeful. This is the most hopeful thing I have read in months. It feeds my own soul with a visionary aspect so necessary. Thank you beyond words. Thank you Kansas farmers for your tender hearts and vulnerable courageousness.
I fled the UK in late 2021 and came back to Indiana, not far from where my mother grew up in Southern Illinois. I think of myself as a displaced liberal these days. I live in a larger town in west central Indiana. My experience so far is that the conservative people are often the kindest ones I meet. I tend to keep to myself, but when I do speak to people, they are gentler than what I'm used to. I'm very much conditioned to be a loner, but the people and the place may slowly work their way into me.
When I work in my garden, I look up and am amazed at how blue the skies are. There are so many birds and insects around me, perhaps because the people here aren't houseproud enough to dose their yards with Roundup. Perhaps the "yokels" aren't as evil as I was taught they were.
One thing I mentioned in my speech there was the low status of farmers and how many pejorative terms there are to describe them. If you use a pejorative term in a racial, ethnic, disabled, etc. you'll get quickly scolded, and with good reason. But words like yokel, rube, bumpkin, peasant, redneck, etc. are more or less accepted. "Villain" originally meant a country person. "Jay" as in jay-walking also meant a country person -- someone who was therefore ignorant of traffic signs. And of course, farmers are still pretty near the bottom of the economic hierarchy, not just the social hierarchy.
I live and work in the ag industry in South Dakota; another 'fly over' state. That awakening you had the opportunity to experience is happening here too. Many of my colleagues, friends, and neighbors are implementing cover crops, rotational grazing, no-till, grass water ways, and including crp/wildlife habitats on their land. South Dakota is a beautiful state but we aren't taking it for granted. We are doing everything we can to insure we have land for our next generations of South Dakota ranchers and farmers.
Thank you for venturing into fly over country and so eloquently sharing our story. I appreciate now having words for what I have been witnessing for the last two years. Morphic Resonance.
Hi Charles, I grew up in Kansas, but fled to the mountains after high school. My dad was a soil conservationist, and I remember when the first "green revolution" hit: green the world with chemicals. He fell for it hook line and sinker. We would have conversations in which I would listen to him and say "You're the farmer, dad, but I don't think this is going to work." I had a bad feeling in my belly about it. It is such a huge relief to my heart to read about the Fuller Field School and the farmers you met there. If Kansas is ripe for a revolution, we are at the cusp of a new greening of the world. Thank you so much for this post!
What a profoundly hopeful post, Charles, and your spreading the news is greatly increasing the momentum and power of this revolution. Thank you so much! I feel so "heartened" by this.
Oh Charles, this is so beautiful -- thank you! I am completely enthralled with your wonderful story telling about the possibilities that seem so ripe to unfold since (as you tell us): "even the most degraded land carries miraculous potential to heal." I believe we can say this about our degraded trauma fields of culture as well, yes? Magic is happening in the most broken places...
A fascinating synchronicity, old friend, is that I have been called to regenerative agriculture as well -- who would have guessed?! My dear friends Sarah McCrum and Tim Bennett have been working on a briliant and heart-opening project in Australia over the last 5 years that is ready to move into the world in a big way, called Love To Be Bright Green. https://go.loveto.group/c/s/uC1/jt5/s/6ea/6B/6Vq2eX/sHDvASoif6/P/P/6y Its main goal is to support all these dear farmers (as well as indigenous land stewards) doing the regenerative work largely because of love and their belief that caring for the land is sacred. And they have a beautiful way to find funding for this so that regeneration and protection of land can be fully appreciated! They have similar stories recorded from the farmers they have been working with that bring folks to tears. The more beautiful world emerging...
Thank you for being on the forefront once again Charles... xoxo Susan
So good to share those who are crafting a different path to a more luminous future! If you know of other organizations or groups who are making paths and maps to a new paradigm future, please let me know at ginger@giniel.com. I am collecting them and hope to create a new kind of network of the dreamers and visionaries. Thanks!
I am going to call the individuals who are working towards the new future, the Society of Dreamers. Like the ancient people, we have to dream a new world into being. I'll put you on the list if you can give me your email address. I wouldn't know how to include you in any networking if I don't have that as I don't do it via text of social media.
thanks, I will do. Yes, we dreamers are emerging and setting up the frequency track to the luminous new world. I am so grateful to Charles as the awesome trigger for planetary awakening and opening to the love and light - that beautiful world he speaks of.
This is one of the most uplifting and heartbreaking posts, Charles. Thank you so much - for experiencing it and then sharing. It awakened in my soul the place of believing in the magic and power of changing the ways we think about and do things. So appreciative...
Dear Charles. I often read your essays and feel like you can read my mind, or express what is there more eloquently than I. But after reading The Heartland, I feel we have met somewhere much deeper than mere "mind." After spending more than 20 years away, around 14 years of it in the Bay area, in fits and starts I moved back home to Tulsa Oklahoma for good (so far as I know). After I arrived back here, I began exploring the changes since I'd left and one of the things that hit me right away came from touring the beautiful John Hope Franklin Reconciliation Park, where both the 1921 Greenwood Race Massacre and the end of the Trail of Tears are commemorated. Although I knew that history, the power of them both being situated here, on this land where I was born, really shook me. In that recognition an equally powerful feeling arose within me, one not unlike something you said in your essay - This is the Heartland. If we can Heal Here, we can Heal Anywhere. In fact, to Heal Anywhere, we must Heal Here.
I've been back now about 12 years. In that timeframe Joy Harjo, a local Indigenous artist and poet, became the Poet Laureate of the United States; the Tulsa Race Massacre met its 100th anniversary and the country met Tulsa through that commemoration. All eyes were on us for a moment, shining a light on a time in our history that we aren't proud of, much like the farmers in your essay. Now, the survivors are on the cusp of securing reparations for the devastating loss of their entire community, and the City-sponsored search for the remains of those lost in that terrible event continues so that they can be properly laid to rest. Healing this history is by no means complete, but at least it's now being taught in the schools and many very old, and gangrenous secrets have been revealed.
But even more fundamental change is occurring, as you point out. I buy my beef from a rancher in Enid, OK who is also a part of the soil regeneration movement and I get my produce (during season) from a CSA that practices organic and regenerative farming. My chicken and pork, as well as eggs, come from an 80 acre farm a mere 25 minute drive from my house. Even in the Bay area, being this close to one's food sources would be out of reach for most people.
Thank you, Charles, for venturing to the heartland and for telling a story of the deeply rooted sort of healing taking place here. Having carried an intuition for some years now that healing the heart of this land might lead to a rekindled vitality that can spread outward from coast-to-coast, it made me weep with joy to read your words.
Hey Marcia, I live in Norman. I just wanted to draw your attention to REP Provisions (https://repprovisions.com/) which is where I get all of my meat from -- they are located near Tulsa and are an awesome regenerative ag ranch! Check 'em out :)
i am brought to tears hearing of the old farmer apologizing to his son. best parenting i've done is often found in an apology and i find my apologizing to the land now too...
I understand your apologizing to the land. I've been apologizing for years, to all the plants and creatures who inhabit my yard while living in suburbs, cities, and now countryside. The apologies go on and on, especially keenly when I have to mow the yard. What I do is tell the yard a day or two in advance that I will mow, and it seems like nature removes the little creatures for that day so that there is no trauma to the yard. Otherwise, I get sad, morose, and feel the trauma of all the unnecessary deaths of the insects and grubs.
i have let so much land go fallow for when i think of brush hogging, i never do it as i am concerned for the rabbits and all the other creatures that are living in that area. now trees are growing in the fallow land and i am grateful for their grace upon my land. regrets. just gratitude.
As someone who feels privileged to be able to count farmers as my friends, I am not surprised at all by this. Far from the urban left’s generalizations of being racists, sexists and evangelicals, the farmers I know are exactly as open-minded and -hearted as you describe. Also, wouldn’t it be amazing to see this truth on the big screen? Why does Hollywood cling to the stereotypes?
I consistently agree with everything he has brought to the table so far….. everything from as far back as I can find. I am not too familiar with his personal life facts, as we all have them; it is the wisdom that comes through him, and the way it is delivered, astounds me the most. I had always hoped to share a lifespan with a leader such as he. Charles, I lift you up in spirit, as you walk thru these storms, that your head is held high and you aren’t afraid of the dark. You’re the end of the storm, as a gold colored sky, for many people. I am sure when they hear your voice speak for them, it is no doubt like a drop of water on a parched tongue. You are a gift. Thank you for offering yourself as a gift of courage to hope and courage to change.
Beautiful post, Charles! Lots of hope in here - for all of Nature, humans and the land alike. My dream is to one day be able to drink from a river. Thank you for sharing your story and your kind heart.
Thank you for writing this. Brought me to tears with hope and gratitude to nature, to life, to Earth. Such a beautiful reminder that nature is amazing, resilient, and waiting for us to be co-creators with her. May we heed her call and steward life in whatever ways we are called to do so for that is one of the purposes of humanity: to steward this planet and to co-create beauty with Mother Earth.
Not far from you, in Salina, Kansas, this weekend The Land Institute is holding their splendid annual conference, the Prairie Festival, to celebrate the land and regenerative agriculture. The first year I attended, Wendell Berry was the keynote. So much encouragement coming from the heartland!
Hi Melinda, The Prairie Festival started in 1979 and the most recent one just concluded. (with a couple years off because of covid.) I've been twice--it's indeed a delightful experience.
Thanks for sharing this experience. There is also a vibrant resurgence of biodynamic farming which is another fully integrated approach to a reciprocal relationship of healing and growth for us to have with the land. Clarissa Pinkola Estes wrote: “Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world within our reach.” You, Charles do that consistently, with great love and I deeply appreciate your contribution.
Yes, biodynamics is having a big influence. One of the threads that brought me to the Field School goes back through the Biodynamic Conference I spoke at in 2012 in Wisconsin. It left a deep impression on me. I referenced biodynamics in my talk at the Field School. A gift to the world.
Linda, I remember reading this quote by Clarissa Pinkola Estes years ago and loving it so much. Thank you for sharing it here...going to copy it down this time!
Women who run with the wolves. Charissa pinkola Estes.l'll have to see what she's up to. Great book by the way
Clarissa
I sob as I read this. You write so beautifully, soulfully about your experience with these farmers and I really can't stop sobbing because your message, your experience and perception, it's so hopeful. This is the most hopeful thing I have read in months. It feeds my own soul with a visionary aspect so necessary. Thank you beyond words. Thank you Kansas farmers for your tender hearts and vulnerable courageousness.
Exactly. Me too!
🙌 Amen! I totally agree!
I fled the UK in late 2021 and came back to Indiana, not far from where my mother grew up in Southern Illinois. I think of myself as a displaced liberal these days. I live in a larger town in west central Indiana. My experience so far is that the conservative people are often the kindest ones I meet. I tend to keep to myself, but when I do speak to people, they are gentler than what I'm used to. I'm very much conditioned to be a loner, but the people and the place may slowly work their way into me.
When I work in my garden, I look up and am amazed at how blue the skies are. There are so many birds and insects around me, perhaps because the people here aren't houseproud enough to dose their yards with Roundup. Perhaps the "yokels" aren't as evil as I was taught they were.
One thing I mentioned in my speech there was the low status of farmers and how many pejorative terms there are to describe them. If you use a pejorative term in a racial, ethnic, disabled, etc. you'll get quickly scolded, and with good reason. But words like yokel, rube, bumpkin, peasant, redneck, etc. are more or less accepted. "Villain" originally meant a country person. "Jay" as in jay-walking also meant a country person -- someone who was therefore ignorant of traffic signs. And of course, farmers are still pretty near the bottom of the economic hierarchy, not just the social hierarchy.
Thank-you for the compliments.
I live and work in the ag industry in South Dakota; another 'fly over' state. That awakening you had the opportunity to experience is happening here too. Many of my colleagues, friends, and neighbors are implementing cover crops, rotational grazing, no-till, grass water ways, and including crp/wildlife habitats on their land. South Dakota is a beautiful state but we aren't taking it for granted. We are doing everything we can to insure we have land for our next generations of South Dakota ranchers and farmers.
People were saying that the Dakotas are way ahead of Kansas, Nebraska, and Illinois in regenerative practice.
I hadn't heard that. Thank you!
Thank you for venturing into fly over country and so eloquently sharing our story. I appreciate now having words for what I have been witnessing for the last two years. Morphic Resonance.
I want to second that, Heather. I LOVED this testimony. It really transcends barriers.
Hi Charles, I grew up in Kansas, but fled to the mountains after high school. My dad was a soil conservationist, and I remember when the first "green revolution" hit: green the world with chemicals. He fell for it hook line and sinker. We would have conversations in which I would listen to him and say "You're the farmer, dad, but I don't think this is going to work." I had a bad feeling in my belly about it. It is such a huge relief to my heart to read about the Fuller Field School and the farmers you met there. If Kansas is ripe for a revolution, we are at the cusp of a new greening of the world. Thank you so much for this post!
What a profoundly hopeful post, Charles, and your spreading the news is greatly increasing the momentum and power of this revolution. Thank you so much! I feel so "heartened" by this.
Oh Charles, this is so beautiful -- thank you! I am completely enthralled with your wonderful story telling about the possibilities that seem so ripe to unfold since (as you tell us): "even the most degraded land carries miraculous potential to heal." I believe we can say this about our degraded trauma fields of culture as well, yes? Magic is happening in the most broken places...
A fascinating synchronicity, old friend, is that I have been called to regenerative agriculture as well -- who would have guessed?! My dear friends Sarah McCrum and Tim Bennett have been working on a briliant and heart-opening project in Australia over the last 5 years that is ready to move into the world in a big way, called Love To Be Bright Green. https://go.loveto.group/c/s/uC1/jt5/s/6ea/6B/6Vq2eX/sHDvASoif6/P/P/6y Its main goal is to support all these dear farmers (as well as indigenous land stewards) doing the regenerative work largely because of love and their belief that caring for the land is sacred. And they have a beautiful way to find funding for this so that regeneration and protection of land can be fully appreciated! They have similar stories recorded from the farmers they have been working with that bring folks to tears. The more beautiful world emerging...
Thank you for being on the forefront once again Charles... xoxo Susan
So good to share those who are crafting a different path to a more luminous future! If you know of other organizations or groups who are making paths and maps to a new paradigm future, please let me know at ginger@giniel.com. I am collecting them and hope to create a new kind of network of the dreamers and visionaries. Thanks!
count me in. put me on your list
I am going to call the individuals who are working towards the new future, the Society of Dreamers. Like the ancient people, we have to dream a new world into being. I'll put you on the list if you can give me your email address. I wouldn't know how to include you in any networking if I don't have that as I don't do it via text of social media.
ah. a woman of my heart. i do not text either or do any social media except naas.
Please add me as well to your list of dreamers vivienne_mae@yahoo.com
thanks, I will do. Yes, we dreamers are emerging and setting up the frequency track to the luminous new world. I am so grateful to Charles as the awesome trigger for planetary awakening and opening to the love and light - that beautiful world he speaks of.
thanks. lois.dribin@gmail.com
FoodForestAbundance.com
Thank you Ginger - sbelchamber@ymail.com
ps) I believe this could play a big role in supporting Tamera and Findhorn, etc as well!
This is one of the most uplifting and heartbreaking posts, Charles. Thank you so much - for experiencing it and then sharing. It awakened in my soul the place of believing in the magic and power of changing the ways we think about and do things. So appreciative...
Dear Charles. I often read your essays and feel like you can read my mind, or express what is there more eloquently than I. But after reading The Heartland, I feel we have met somewhere much deeper than mere "mind." After spending more than 20 years away, around 14 years of it in the Bay area, in fits and starts I moved back home to Tulsa Oklahoma for good (so far as I know). After I arrived back here, I began exploring the changes since I'd left and one of the things that hit me right away came from touring the beautiful John Hope Franklin Reconciliation Park, where both the 1921 Greenwood Race Massacre and the end of the Trail of Tears are commemorated. Although I knew that history, the power of them both being situated here, on this land where I was born, really shook me. In that recognition an equally powerful feeling arose within me, one not unlike something you said in your essay - This is the Heartland. If we can Heal Here, we can Heal Anywhere. In fact, to Heal Anywhere, we must Heal Here.
I've been back now about 12 years. In that timeframe Joy Harjo, a local Indigenous artist and poet, became the Poet Laureate of the United States; the Tulsa Race Massacre met its 100th anniversary and the country met Tulsa through that commemoration. All eyes were on us for a moment, shining a light on a time in our history that we aren't proud of, much like the farmers in your essay. Now, the survivors are on the cusp of securing reparations for the devastating loss of their entire community, and the City-sponsored search for the remains of those lost in that terrible event continues so that they can be properly laid to rest. Healing this history is by no means complete, but at least it's now being taught in the schools and many very old, and gangrenous secrets have been revealed.
But even more fundamental change is occurring, as you point out. I buy my beef from a rancher in Enid, OK who is also a part of the soil regeneration movement and I get my produce (during season) from a CSA that practices organic and regenerative farming. My chicken and pork, as well as eggs, come from an 80 acre farm a mere 25 minute drive from my house. Even in the Bay area, being this close to one's food sources would be out of reach for most people.
Thank you, Charles, for venturing to the heartland and for telling a story of the deeply rooted sort of healing taking place here. Having carried an intuition for some years now that healing the heart of this land might lead to a rekindled vitality that can spread outward from coast-to-coast, it made me weep with joy to read your words.
Hey Marcia, I live in Norman. I just wanted to draw your attention to REP Provisions (https://repprovisions.com/) which is where I get all of my meat from -- they are located near Tulsa and are an awesome regenerative ag ranch! Check 'em out :)
Thanks Riley!! I definitely will. 🙏🏼
i am brought to tears hearing of the old farmer apologizing to his son. best parenting i've done is often found in an apology and i find my apologizing to the land now too...
I understand your apologizing to the land. I've been apologizing for years, to all the plants and creatures who inhabit my yard while living in suburbs, cities, and now countryside. The apologies go on and on, especially keenly when I have to mow the yard. What I do is tell the yard a day or two in advance that I will mow, and it seems like nature removes the little creatures for that day so that there is no trauma to the yard. Otherwise, I get sad, morose, and feel the trauma of all the unnecessary deaths of the insects and grubs.
i have let so much land go fallow for when i think of brush hogging, i never do it as i am concerned for the rabbits and all the other creatures that are living in that area. now trees are growing in the fallow land and i am grateful for their grace upon my land. regrets. just gratitude.
As someone who feels privileged to be able to count farmers as my friends, I am not surprised at all by this. Far from the urban left’s generalizations of being racists, sexists and evangelicals, the farmers I know are exactly as open-minded and -hearted as you describe. Also, wouldn’t it be amazing to see this truth on the big screen? Why does Hollywood cling to the stereotypes?
I consistently agree with everything he has brought to the table so far….. everything from as far back as I can find. I am not too familiar with his personal life facts, as we all have them; it is the wisdom that comes through him, and the way it is delivered, astounds me the most. I had always hoped to share a lifespan with a leader such as he. Charles, I lift you up in spirit, as you walk thru these storms, that your head is held high and you aren’t afraid of the dark. You’re the end of the storm, as a gold colored sky, for many people. I am sure when they hear your voice speak for them, it is no doubt like a drop of water on a parched tongue. You are a gift. Thank you for offering yourself as a gift of courage to hope and courage to change.
Thank you for these generous words
Beautiful post, Charles! Lots of hope in here - for all of Nature, humans and the land alike. My dream is to one day be able to drink from a river. Thank you for sharing your story and your kind heart.
Thank you for writing this. Brought me to tears with hope and gratitude to nature, to life, to Earth. Such a beautiful reminder that nature is amazing, resilient, and waiting for us to be co-creators with her. May we heed her call and steward life in whatever ways we are called to do so for that is one of the purposes of humanity: to steward this planet and to co-create beauty with Mother Earth.
Not far from you, in Salina, Kansas, this weekend The Land Institute is holding their splendid annual conference, the Prairie Festival, to celebrate the land and regenerative agriculture. The first year I attended, Wendell Berry was the keynote. So much encouragement coming from the heartland!
Do you remember what year that was? I attended a Prairie Fest in the late 90s when I lived in Iowa and have fond memories.
Hi Melinda, The Prairie Festival started in 1979 and the most recent one just concluded. (with a couple years off because of covid.) I've been twice--it's indeed a delightful experience.