14 ~ Amish arc

Early this week, in a respite of fair weather between damp cold of last week and a forecast of warmer yet rainy days, I put in a big push and planted early, cool season vegetables – beets, carrots and snap peas by seed (Update: a few of the peas I planted on March  25, https://www.birdinthebush.net/blog/7-full-circles, came up; just three, but anytime something emerges from a seed it seems like a miracle), and starter plants of broccoli, brussels sprout, cabbage, cauliflower, kale, leek and onion.  The hens and I garden together, as they love scratching in freshly turned soil for worms and other invertebrate snacks (we’ve worked out a system of shared labor – I plant the seeds and vegetables, and they follow me, digging them up).  

I began this year with the best, wise intention to reduce the scale of my gardens.  But with the genesis of this blog’s theme, and the extra time gifted by the pandemic lock-down, I thought, what the hell. This spring I’m planting more food than ever (it seems to be a general trend this corona spring – the three seed companies I buy from, High Mowing, Johnny’s and Seed Savers Exchange, had to suspend seed sales to home gardeners, due to overwhelming demand; the first two just for April, but Seed Savers for the rest of 2020).

Most of the vegetable starts I put in are Amish-born.  I recently spent a day (on my birthday, carving out a solo celebration in corona time) driving through Wisconsin’s Amish country, in the Driftless hills between Viroqua and Cashton, visiting Amish greenhouses.  This is becoming a treasured April ritual for me (I just hope my mask won’t always be part of the tradition).  At one stop, from the front parlor of the farmhouse, a grandmother sold soft, buttery, salted pretzels, fresh from the oven.  Sublime.  At another greenhouse, the ‘added value’ item was homemade caramel corn.  Driving up and down the hills, fumbling caramel corn as I followed a roughhewn, Amish map of the greenhouse locations, I felt deep gratitude for this part of Wisconsin.

I also felt envy for the Amish.  My brother, Tom, has noted a similar thing in himself.  Apparently, we’re not alone.  In fact, there’s a term for outsiders attracted to the Amish way of life: ‘seekers’.  A writer on the Amish, Stephen Scott, identified four types of seekers:

• Checklist seekers wish to embrace a few specifics of the Amish lifestyle.

• Cultural seekers feel more attraction to the Amish way of life than to their religion.

• Spiritual utopian seekers are looking for genuine New Testament Christianity.

• Stability seekers are often from dysfunctional families, and seek solace and relief from the impacts.  

I see myself mainly in the second category.  After a life of quest, and some contented arrival, I’m no longer looking for someone else’s religion. It’s other things that hold resonance and attract me to the Amish – community, predictability, connection to nature, non-violence, spirit as a centerpiece of life, and simplicity – including tepid feelings for technology (this winter, after procrastinating for two months, I finally replaced my broken phone, and I haven’t owned a television for decades). 

It would be interesting to hear in the Comments section if you, dear readers, also find resonance with any of the four on this list (I’ll lead with some full disclosure - the last one also has some resonance for me, or would have at one time).

Granted, I have only an outsider’s idealized, sketchpad view of Amish life. Certainly there are personal choice/independence issues around which I might not align with them (although as a mentor of mine once noted, sometimes lack of choice is its own kind of freedom).  I might also miss some familiar tangibles if I actually became Amish (although if born Amish, and never knew them, probably not).  Yet the reality is, the more my life curves along an arc that parallels the Amish – nature, community, simplicity (such as a more direct link to my food, as in this blog) – the more that serenity and well-being appear at my doorstep.

There is something else.  During a time I was based for several years in Laos, working on conservation projects, one of my siblings challenged me by asking “What you running away from, living over there?”  I thought about the question a lot, over a period of years in fact. I finally realized it wasn’t something in the US I was running from, but something I was running toward.  And that something is approximated by the word culture.

First, a note on semantics.  English, despite having by far the largest vocabulary of any known language, uses the one noun ‘culture’ for two concepts in the human sphere.  One is simply the arts (e.g., ‘popular culture’).  The second, according to my dictionary, is the “customs, arts, social institutions, and achievements of a particular nation, people, or other social group” (e.g., ‘indigenous culture’).  Paradoxically, for more than a century America has led the world in adding to culture in its first meaning (think jazz, blues, rock n’ roll, pop art, the Beats, Broadway, Hollywood, rap, hip-hop), yet aren’t we a bit anemic in the latter sense?  What are the hallmarks of American culture in the word’s second meaning?  Fast food? It’s not clear (and if not clear, can they be ‘hallmarks’?).  It was in search of this second meaning of culture that drew me in part to Laos - and one of my brothers to living in Nigeria, and my sister in Italy. 

My late brother Jack in Nigeria, ca. 1985, at a ceremony and celebration marking the induction of one of his business clients as a tribal chief.

It is also the root of my Amish envy.  From culture springs community, and a sense of belonging, and predictability; being part of, and contributing to, something deeper and greater than yourself.  Something that is fed by your participation, feeds you in return, and survives your death.  In doing so, it carries something of you with it.  Without culture, there is no memory.   

In the end I came home from Laos in part because, as satisfying as being immersed in that culture was, I could never be Lao. I would always be an outsider, an observer of Lao culture, but not a member.  Better to come home, and see what I can find in this place – and the only place – I can call my own. 

I am grateful that part of Midwestern American culture includes the Amish, and their greenhouses.  Perhaps what marks the culture of America above all, or can if we have the courage to allow it, is its diversity.

Irish Ridge Road, Cashton, April 2020 

Spring wind snaps

a dark muslin dress,

the white shirts of boys,

and the rainbow tails of a box kite;

They hold fast to its string,

tethered,

to its dance of exuberant color.

What I’m reading and can recommend:

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life, by Barbara Kingsolver (2007)

Kingsolver was here before me, when for a year she and her family fed themselves as locally as possible. Her book is a chronicle of that year.  I wasn’t aware of it before I started my endeavor in January, and I recently picked it up as homework (with thanks to Liz, a discerning reader and Kingsolver devotee, for putting it on my radar, and then also Carolyn).

I’d tried Kingsolver before, but put down her novel The Bean Trees after about 30 pages, unhooked.  This second try is better.  The opening chapter, on the state of America’s food system and culture of food, is excellent – and also inspiring and reassuring for me, that I’m on a good track here.  After this introduction, I’m into the first part of their food year, which started in spring with asparagus - just as yesterday I found the first tips of my asparagus nudging from the soil!  Welcome back, friend.  It will be fun to read and glean from her book in seasonal step with my own effort.