| Prairie Prophets or Dressers of Lettuces |
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| Written by Jim and Diane Hunter | |||
| Friday, 25 April 2008 14:01 | |||
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A couple of years ago, as Jim was feeling the writing bug, and was making connections between his faith roots and his activist vocation, he got the notion in his head that he might be a prophet. Now he wasn't having experiences like God talking to him out of burning bushes or anything, but he began to appreciate that he understood things in ways that not everyone seemed to. Now when Jim gets a crazy idea, one of his first impulses is to run it by some of his family. As an idea with religious underpinnings, Jim took the prophet notion to his retired Episcopal priest father, and his older brother, a Lutheran pastor's spouse. Now Father/Daddy replied with his usual cryptic aphorism, "The best prophets have denied the title and the station." Over the years, Jim has learned that these aphorisms are designed to elicit further questions, so he asked Chuck what he meant. Chuck explained that the prophet Amos, when asked if he was a prophet, replied that he was neither a prophet nor the son of a prophet, but a herder of sheep and a dresser of sycamores, but that he had been sent to prophesy to the House of Israel. From this Jim discerned that Chuck was saying that it's o.k. to be a prophet, but you may not be particularly effective if you go around tooting your horn about it. So Jim took this bit of wisdom and went to Big Brother John. John replied that he thought that the farming that Jim and Diane were doing was a prophetic act, which seemed to imply that farming was enough, and did Jim really need to go off delivering prophecies. He also gave Jim a book called, A DRESSER OF SYCAMORES by Garrett Keiser, which wasn't really about prophecy or farming, but spoke to filling a role without donning the professional mantle that was ordinarily expected. For various reasons, Jim gave up his ambitions of pursuing the mantle of "published author" and set his shoulder back to the plow. But sometimes he would ask himself, "If a prophet cries in Brush Prairie and there is no one there to hear him, has he fulfilled his calling?" But this year, we are feeling the satisfaction of prophets who have persevered and lived to see their prophecies fulfilled. For our first five years as CSA farmers in Clark County, there were only two CSA, ours and Davie Maxwell's Our Hidden Oasis. A few started up and fizzled out. Every year we struggled to get the word out and to fill our membership. Over the last couple years the number has begun to swell, and a savvy group of "chick farmers" took on the task of getting the word out. Anne Lawrence of Story Tree Farm contributed her networking and public relations skills; Brenda Stanton of Rosemattel's CSA provided drive and energy; Sunrise O'Mahoney of the Vancouver Food Co-op and Erin Harwood of Clark County Cooperative Extension provided institutional support, and Kate Rae of Red Basket Farm and Luisa De Paiva of Purple Rain Vinyard became the faces of CSA farming in the local media. Acting as a group was hard for such a collection of independent, pioneering minds. For a while Jim and Diane tried to shepherd the group from our senior position of experience, until we realized that each farmer brought her own wealth of experience and skills to the table. This year we just sat back and watched them do their thing. And oh what a thing. The number of CSAs in Clark County has risen to 15 and counting, and while our fearful side always worries that we will lose members to other CSAs, the reality is that this year we have filled our roster at least six weeks earlier than years past and with a fraction of the effort and anxiety. Now if Brother John is correct that Hunters' Greens is a prophetic act, then the future toward which Jim and Diane have been pointing for lo these twelve years is one in which the kind of farming we do will thrive and grow. A few weeks ago, as Jim sat amidst a panel of ten Clark County CSA farmers he realized that we have succeeded, and although we will remain "dressers of lettuces," and should be denying the title and the station, we truly are prophets.
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| Last Updated on Friday, 25 April 2008 14:32 |