Hello Friends,
We want to start this update with a note of gratitude. The gratitude is for the remarkable outpouring of support for the farm. It has been deeply moving and equally humbling. Honestly, it has made it materially possible to rebuild and continue to farm. Moreover, the outpouring of notes and support has reminded us of what we already knew, but often forget: that dealing with dark times requires a genuine collective, really being there for each other. We have felt this from all of you and it has inspired us to double down on making the farm a place for building and enriching open-hearted relations, and sharing the farm’s bounty in the same generous spirit.
Conditions
It has been a month since we have written you about the fire. As of this writing, there are still a few doggedly persistent hot spots burning at the farm, but the damage the fire itself has wrought has passed and, with most of the farm burned, the fire cannot easily return. The CZU fire which hit us seemed catastrophically large, but as the month has progressed, wildfires in California have burned some 3.5 million acres and throughout the west over 7,000 square miles. Thousands have been evacuated; 36 people have died. Moreover, a secondary effect is that 15 of the worst-recorded air quality days in California’s history have happen in the last 30 days, all of which were ‘spare the air’ days. Smoke from the fires has shown up as far away as northern Europe. We found ourselves disturbingly celebrating red level unhealthy smoke the other day because it was a step down from the dark purple hazardous designation. Yikes.
Moreover, there is much dark in the world beyond the smoke filled skies. In fact, it is hard to find the words to describe what seems to be the emerging state of things, but something is shifting and it feels tectonic. Our world and our farm are a very small part of something much bigger but the significance of the change for us and our community only makes the daily news and statistics seem at once more tangible and intensely intimate. It also makes the support we felt from you even more precious. Thank you again.
People
From our small corner of the world there are many good things to report. Our brother Peter’s hand, badly burned while fighting the fire, is doing much better. He will have to wear a compression glove for the next 6 months but is expected to have close to full mobility in his hand when that comes off. His bandages have not stopped him from working hard at the farm where he has been, against his doctor’s orders, felling burnt trees and driving the bulldozer to move burnt slash into piles. Moreover, the GoFundMe campaign that Michael, Mary Beth, Sue and Dave started was incredibly successful, reaching its $50,000 goal in less than two weeks. This is a huge relief to us. It has made possible the timely rebuilding of some of the essential infrastructure of the farm. Part of that was replacing much melted water pipe (some of it underground) and with the return of water, the garden has breathed a huge sigh of relief. The support from the GoFundMe campaign has also been central to getting the electrical panels and irrigation pumps back together and we hope to have those running in the next week or two. In short, the campaign has made possible re-establishing the basic material conditions of continuing farm operations. We cannot begin to express how grateful we are for your love and support. Again, thank you.
The work that has been done and the work that remains is not pretty. It is hard, and sometimes very emotional. The air is filled with smoke and it is at times grueling. Moreover, after the fire when it felt like the landscape could not get worse, we worked felling trees and sorting through remains and it only became messier. The landscape is a mix of burnt-over hillsides, construction site, and scrap yards with huge debris bins, buckets of damaged tools, pipe parts, and pile after pile of slash and logs all over. It is clear that there are some jobs some of us just cannot do. Some of us cannot stomach sorting through the remains of the sheds. Others cannot slow down and focus enough to weed and harvest for the food bank. Some embrace the chainsaw with gusto; others not so much. Luckily, there is a community/family/neighbors/dogs who have showed up over and over again, in the smoke, heat, and ash to do this immediately important work.
There are mistakes, setbacks, frustrations. But mostly as this is going on, often late into the evening, things are steadily getting done. Water reconnected, backboard for electric panel replaced, steel cabinets, melted pipe, and the remains of saws and other detritus hauled to recycling bins, tomatoes harvested, Christmas trees trimmed, etc. As Sisyphean as it can feel, there is a great deal of comradery around this too, which brightens the shadows of an otherwise dreary and unending process. What is perhaps most remarkable about the fire is that while it has made many of us feel quite blue individually, the collective is stronger and more vibrant than it has ever been. Someone makes a special farm-raised tomato sauce to share, others make sandwiches, someone pulls up a salacious and blush-inducing interlaced deformed carrot and shares it, along with belly laughter, with others, someone else discovers a wee bit of rye whiskey in the trunk of their car, for a magnificent smoke-infused end of the day sunset sip. Lots of good in those moments, as with the joy that goes with weekly unabated food pantry deliveries of tomatoes, beets, cucumbers, green beans, basil, lettuce, chard, kale, corn, zucchini, apples, pears along with buckets of sunflowers, which have brought surprised gasps of pleasure for their unexpected arrival among patrons. So, while much has been achieved in the last month perhaps the most meaningful resides in the deepening and strengthening of the ever-widening community of people who, in their commitment to the farm’s renewal, remake the farm, the farm.
Place
There is still a deep daily sadness about the profound and precipitous transformation of the farm. It feels like decades of shared work and love were lost in an instant. Much was in fact lost. The quality of the sun-bleached boards that made up the sheds, the handle of a tool that has been forged and reworked through use and adaption, the vice or pully that were our dad’s dad’s, the wrenches that were gifted by our parents some 40 years ago, which in turn held the pipe firm, or leveraged the weight of a beam. And the dibble bar (planting bar) that our parents used to plant the trees that had grown to over 120 feet tall, that held the swings, and offered the shade, etc. that, now charred by fire, we have been unceremoniously felling back to earth.
The farm is a beautiful manifestation of the lived histories and connections between people and materials. They are what gave the farm its warmth, its sense of place, and made the landscape feel welcoming and rich in the way that many have noted. It is clear that landscape, or much of it, will not return, because the relations, tools, material lives are not the same.
But what the time since the fire has made clear is that the fire is a new part of the story that continues unabated. Those who have fought the fire, those who have supported its rebuilding, those who have cleared the rubble are already part of a new infusion of energy, the making of new forms and a new sense of place. The work and love that are being poured into it, the relationships that are being made through it and that your support has made possible—in whatever form—are forging a different material place, one with new love and renewed possibilities. My parents, who started the farm, are profoundly present in this new landscape, because they are present in all who knew and loved them. Though we are not sure what will come of it or exactly what it will look like, the collective love and intense effort is certain to forge a rich and welcoming place, anew.