Life – Words for the Weary

The best investment we ever made was a share in a little organic farm. The primary value is not in the land. The real treasure is the one-of-a-kind couple who own and run the farm.

30 years ago I sat in the living room of their farmhouse interviewing with them for a job as a summer farmhand. I had visited other farms. I had interviewed with other farm couples. But this was the one. Somehow, I just knew it. What I learned during my summer on their farm would shape me for a lifetime.

The first lesson was one of overwhelming commitment. This couple pours all of themselves into this piece of land. And they do so without a safety net. There is no romance in trying to live off the land. Often the farm does not reciprocate their love – drought, weeds, pests, prices can all beat them down. But they always rally, and forge on to somehow move forward.

Ingenuity was another big lesson. How do you make the margins on a hard piece of land? By building a wind turbine out of the rear brake drum of a car. By designing and welding your own custom farm implements. By building everything out of recycled freezer lids. This couple are masters at walking gently on the land, finding a thousand ways to use less while giving more. I expect they could teach more about “sustainability” than any college professor. For me, living with them was no end of a lesson.

Perhaps the most enduring lesson is simply how they face reality. As they forge a path back to the land, the rest of the industry goes for factory scale farms with huge petrochemical inputs. Where they plant trees, others farm within an inch of the waterways, washing topsoil away. The hard choices they have made are not recognized or rewarded by the market. Money is tight. The future is always unknown. Yet they are willing to live with constant uncertainty because of their commitment to making a different reality possible.

They have little in the way of family, but their land has been a haven for hundreds and hundreds of people over the years. They have no children, but their farm has been home to dozens, including my own two. As I write this, my son is driving the tractor in the field while my daughter finishes mucking out horse stalls.

This farm, and its impact on my family, is a lifetime dream come true. We are blessed to be a small part of it and to learn from two such unique souls. 30 years ago I sensed something special sitting in their living room. But who could have known then how this would all turn out.

This story is dedicated to the B’s. Thank you for everything.

[If you know someone else who might enjoy a lighthearted story to begin their week, kindly forward them the link to WordsfortheWeary. The more the merrier.]

Each week here in Switzerland, we go down the road to the local Déchetterie (dump) to dispose of our week’s garbage. The “sorting of the garbage” ritual is more than just a weekly chore. It is a window unto the Swiss soul.

To begin, it makes practical Swiss sense to dedicate as little space as possible to landfill in a country with so little arable land. The Swiss can’t just truck their garbage to Michigan, like so many other places do. So instead they enlist their citizenry to gather weekly at each town’s pre-determined site to sort things down to the last wrapper. This level of practicality and precision is very Swiss.

Just how precise? Taxonomically speaking, the family garbage is divided into glass, paper, metal, plastic, compost. This is pretty standard for any progressive city. But in Switzerland there is further subdivision of the garbage right down to sub-species. Plastic is sorted into clear plastic, wrapper plastic, colored bottle plastic, and green plastic. Glass is similarly separated into bins designated by color. Any container with a metal cap must have it removed, with the cap sorted into yet another container. The strict separation of paper products borders on OCD.

For the privilege of doing this hauling and sorting ourselves, citizens in our town pay a 55% municipal tax rate, considered one of the most attractively low in the country. And while it is not strictly mandatory to go to the Déchette, it is nonetheless highly incentivized. The alternative curbside pickup requires the use of garbage bags specially stamped with the name of our town. A roll of 20 stamped garbage bags costs $30. It doesn’t take a math genius to deduce that it is far more affordable to join the Déchetterie ritual.

And the ritual is surprisingly community-building. The Déchetterie is only open for 5 hours a week (2 hours Tuesday afternoon, 3 hours Saturday afternoon), also very Swiss. So there is a very good chance of meeting some or all of our neighbors there. There is a sense of pride is doing our civic duty, and witnessing everyone else doing the same. Friendly greetings are exchanged over armloads of tin cans. Discretion is widely practiced in the face of vast volumes of empty liquor bottles coming from neighbor’s cars. There are understanding nods as each empty bottle is meticulously recycled according to its color.

The town retirees are drawn to the Déchetterie for its social aspects. They mill about as gossips and gatekeepers, helpfully instructing newcomers on the finer points of acid vs. lithium battery separation. And they invariably have bottles of wine on the go, even the paid municipal worker who is theoretically in charge. The other week, with the mountains framing her in the background, we saw a lady in a full fur coat sipping champagne from a fluted glass near the compost bins. To add to the ambience, the local militia unit was taking rifle practice at the range just behind the Déchetterie, their gunfire adding a finishing Swiss touch to this caricaturish Swiss scene.

[If you know someone else who might enjoy a lighthearted story to begin their week, kindly forward them the link to WordsfortheWeary. The more the merrier.]

[Image Credit to Montreal Gazette]