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the seeds we didn’t know the soil held

The title of this piece was included in an end of year TomDispatch commentary, written by one of my favorite writers, Rebecca Solnit:
…Many seeds stay dormant far longer than that before some disturbance makes them germinate. Some trees bear fruit long after the people who have planted them have died, and one Massachusetts pear tree, planted by a Puritan in 1630, is still bearing fruit far sweeter than most of what those fundamentalists brought to this continent. Sometimes cause and effect are centuries apart; sometimes Martin Luther King’s arc of the moral universe that bends toward justice is so long few see its curve; sometimes hope lies not in looking forward but backward to study the line of that arc.
and near the end of her piece, this:
I don’t know what’s coming. I do know that, whatever it is, some of it will be terrible, but some of it will be miraculous, that term we reserve for the utterly unanticipated, the seeds we didn’t know the soil held….

I am going to adopt this as my new mantra (my friends and colleagues should get ready to hear it often) for the work that we are all doing in food, in recalibrating what health and wealth means in our communities and in demanding a civic (public) life that breeds empathy and justice.
Writer/activist/teacher Michael Harrington who used the metaphor of being a “long-distance runner” for community organizing and movement work would also say this in lectures:
“…you must recognize that the social vision to which you are committing yourself will never be fulfilled in your lifetime.”

Some of Harrington’s writing and the majority of Solnit’s is about how successful movements-when pulled apart and examined-are made up from a series of direct action moments and negotiations finally coming to fruition around a shared narrative of big or even scary ideas that will lead to societal transformation.
Yet Solnit’s content is most often written about the individual or about small groups using meandering/karmic ways to create this change, outside of the broken or simply too large formal structures that stopped responding to individual plights a long time ago. And that when it happens the right way, collectively and with heart-thumping goals attached (let’s say during the American Revolution or with the 18th and 19th century abolitionists or with the woman’s suffrage movement) it starts slowly with small groups of citizens and spreads to those governing us, not the other way around. And that it takes a while.

All of that is all very nice I hear some of you say. But what does this matter to my never-ending project list and non-stop funding crunch?

What I ask is while you take the time to read this, do examine your own way of working and ask yourself now (and later on too) if you are also caring for the seeds yet unseen. If you have the maturity to manage your or your organization’s relationships in your work like a long-distance runner does with his/her energy and time.

I don’t expect you to remember this post every time that you sit at your desk or head out to the community to work on food and justice. Just remember the title of this piece and remember my teacher Michael Harrington, pacing himself as best he could. He died long before he saw what he defined as success but I believe that he was genuinely glad the work outlived him. Not the injustice certainly but the connections and the ideas.
How could any of us expect to get it all done in our lifetime? My god, I hope many of the seeds and saplings that I have planted bear fruit 300 years after my passing, just like that long ago pear planter.

However you find your pace, I hope we can all find the energy and patience to stay on for the long seasons ahead, some with cloudy dusks with fallow ground and others with sunny days full of trees bearing fruit as far as the eye can see. If not, if you only want a win, to bring in a single crop, then throw it all in now by all means. We need those too. I suspect you will find more work to stick around, but if not, I will still salute your effort and your time. And I’ll come get you when the green shoots takes hold.

Solnit gets the last word:
A decade ago I began writing about hope, an orientation that has nothing to do with optimism. Optimism says that everything will be fine no matter what, just as pessimism says that it will be dismal no matter what. Hope is a sense of the grand mystery of it all, the knowledge that we don’t know how it will turn out, that anything is possible.

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12/31/2013
D.W.
civic engagement, fair trade, Farm To School, farmers markets, farmers/farming information, fishers, global organizing, governments, national food system work, other sectors, public health, public markets, racial equity, social cohesion
food and farming, Harrington, movements, Solnit

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Helping Public Markets Grow 2011-2021

Independent Researcher and Analyst list of contracts (In November 2019 began full-time role as FMC’s Program Director)

•AMS TA project: Mentor for national technical assistance project for current FMLFPP grantees led by the Northeast Regional Center for Rural Development at Penn State University.
•Brooklyn NYC: Assisted BDPHO with developing farmers market technical assistance programs.
•Report on BDPHO’s 5-year market capacity project.
•Farmers Market Coalition Senior Research Associate for Farmers Market Metrics project creation (2015-)

• Farmers Market Coalition’s Senior Advisor, focusing on technical assistance for markets and networks (2015-)
•Illinois: Worked with ILFMA on evaluation plan for integration and upgrade of statewide fms and DTC information on integrated platforms.
•Louisiana: Assisted students at Southeastern University in Hammond with food system research and farmers market strategy.
•Louisiana: Assisted ReFresh Market and Garden with evaluation plan (2017)
•Louisiana: Working with Ruston Farmers Market on outreach strategy for new location

• Helping to craft resources and training for 2019 Fresh Central Certified Institute for Central Louisiana markets and producers with CLEDA.

•Louisiana: Organized first statewide farmers market conference for LSU Ag Center archives found at: lafarmersmarkets dot blogspot dot com

•Maine: Researched farmers market job descriptions found at www.helpingpublicmarketsgrow.com

• Mississippi: Providing research and analysis for City of Hernando MS 3-year project to grow flagship market

•Mississippi: Assisted Gulf Coast markets with FMPP project on analyzing access to markets for Gulfport resident and farmers. 2014 Local Food Awareness Report for Gulfport MS, found at www.helpingpublicmarketsgrow.com

•Vermont: Providing analysis and resource development for NOFA-VT’s annual data on farmers markets.

•Supporting markets creating their Legacy Binders
•Vermont: Researched and wrote report on SNAP, FMNP technology and policy answers for VT farmers markets in collaboration with NOFA-VT and VAAFM, 2013 Vermont Market Currency Feasibility Report found at www.helpingpublicmarketsgrow.com
•Vermont: Working with Vermont Law School on legal resources for farmers and market organizations.

•Vermont: Assisting with 3 year project to build capacity for direct marketing farmers and outlets through DIY data collection and use.

Wallace Center: Moderator of FSLN, advisory to the 2020 NGFN Conference to be held in New Orleans in March of 2020

•Why Hunger: Created online toolkit for grassroots communities.

Feel free to contact me at my name at gmail dot com if I might be able to help your market or business.
Thanks
Dar Wolnik

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