I hope everyone’s having a great solstice – it only gets brighter from now on! Me, I’m loving this ‘real winter’ thing, so I’m not at all ready to see it take leave, but we’ve got a bit more to go yet. The snow on the island is over a foot deep, not quite as much as in the city, but still pretty darn magical. The birds seem quite desperate, so I gave them my moulding bread…mostly as an apology for the bird our kitty killed this morning.
I recently saw The Real Dirt on Farmer John, a doc that traces the life of an eccentric farmer in Illinois from his days as a boy on the traditional farm his dad inherited from his grandfather, to his early days as a farmer, through the ’60s and his clashes with his conservative community, to the eventual founding of one of the Chicago area’s first CSAs. The film manages to both tell the classic story of the decline and rise of the American family farm, and tell the story of one farmer who does not fit the mold. It’s a bit long-winded, but the epic tendencies are in part because the film was shot over more than 25 years, which makes for an unusual sense of intimacy. It’s a quirky little film.
My shutterbug friend Fabrice Grover did a shoot recently for an article on BC’s pioneers in organic farming. Sneak preview of his fantastic photos here.
The Aunt Farm 