Somewhere Between Knowing and Sight • 7" x 5" x .875" • 2024
An Alternate Course • 5" x 7" x .75" • 2023-24
Graphite, Acrylic, Wood Pickling, Urethane on Red Oak • Nik Burkhart
Empowerment through Food Knowledge: Strawbale Gardening with Darylin Berryman
You don’t have enough time—do you have a role to play? Is growing food off the table if you don’t have enough space or you’re stuck with sub-par soil? What can you do if you’re “just” an average person?
In this video, past microloan recipient and Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians member Darylin Berryman shares her experience with a fitting method of small-scale, diversified food production. Her example offers “yeses’ to the first few quandaries and a look at one of the many paths available. Maybe it’s a method worth pursuing for you as well.
The Warp — Ideas and Inspiration
|| 1 || Darylin’s story has me thinking about “small” things with outsized impacts.
Here’s a Vermont-based news clip on what appears to be a poor business model for a farm. Adam Wilson’s gift and relationship-based farming at Brush Brook Community Farm might be a bit difficult to understand, seems to have a tenuous future, and requires consistent maintenance to work. It sounds like the opposite of something finely tuned for automation. Does it work?
As the ag economist professor in the video points out, it depends on your goals. Are you aiming to amass resources? Then no. Are you pushing to develop resilience through relationships and care? Then yes. Brush Brook largely functions as a catalyst for emergent community, which is to say, things start to happen.
In the recorded conversation (which took place in 2020), Adam points out that the work will continue at the farm as long as it should. The dynamic nature of what they’re trying to do means he doesn’t know the endgame, but they’re presently keeping at it all the same.
Sure enough, since that time, things have shifted. Brush Brook is no more, but the vision continues at Sand River Community Farm in New York state. There’s something curious going on there now: consider listening to or reading Timbered Barley House, a short post from Adam’s ongoing Peasantry School newsletter, for more.
|| 2 || “Hooray for a really inefficient way to reduce people’s energy use.”
Here’s a quick selection from the Northern New England community-built window insert article linked above:
“Efficiency-minded geeks will not be impressed. Gathering volunteers to do something is no way to “scale” an operation, to use business terminology. Better would be to build the inserts entirely in one location and ship them out.
But the modern world is making me think that we’ve got to stop thinking that efficiency is always a good thing. More often than not it results in some sort of dehumanizing change that takes the fun out of life, increases the gap between haves and have-nots, and generates a world with “more” but not “better.”
That’s because efficiency is based only on things we can quantify, which is usually physical output per time. Pleasure, satisfaction, long-term stability – those are hard to measure and put on a sliding scale, so efficiency pretends they don’t matter.
Creating window inserts through a community build is deemed inefficient because the total number produced is small, but only if you don’t factor in the benefits of getting people together and giving them a shared goal. And our fractured society, the land of bowling alone, needs all the shared goals we can get.”
|| 3 || The Colorado-based Black Forest Institute’s campus consists of a rough-cut timber woodshed, a bench, and a fireplace. It’s all outdoors, and each piece embodies elements of BFI’s work. As you take a seat during a gathering, you might catch a whiff of charred wood used to build the infrastructure while your mind teases out the resemblance of the tiny model for learning to a spark from which much else spreads.
“The Black Forest Institute is an outdoor public artwork that operates as an experimental art and forestry school. The institute is conceived as an active knowledge-sharing platform of fireside dialogues and skill sharing events around topics as diverse as: forest fire prevention, personal stories, revegetating in the forest, axe sharpening, the forest as pantry, and skills such as tree felling, tree planting and two-person saw techniques.”
|| 4 || If these different examples have you thinking about engagement with small spaces for meaningful efforts, and those efforts might include some form of land management or farming, consider Crosshatch’s Carbon Farming Cohort. The program offers dedicated time and space for relationship-building, knowledge, and resource-sharing, and growing towards implementable visions.
The Weft — News and Events
We’re heartened by a wide-range of expressions of resilient communities and gatherings. Here’s a smattering of regional events and happenings that reflect that diversity, collected for your consideration. Choose your own adventure!
|| 1 || The Eighth Annual Tip of the Mitt Fiber Fair. June 1st-2nd, Emmet County Fairgrounds in Petoskey. A celebration of Michigan’s natural fiber, farmers, processors and skilled artisans. Find more information here.
|| 2 || Agricultura at Crooked Tree (Traverse City). Step into the heart of Northern Michigan's rich agricultural landscape with our latest visual arts exhibit, "Agricultura." Delve into the creativity of 40 talented regional artists as they capture the essence, beauty, and intricacies of agricultural life through various mediums. Exhibition closes May 25th. More info here.
|| 3 || Natural Building & Healthy Home Symposium. Saturday, May 11th, 8:30am-6pm at 414 E. Eighth Street in Traverse City. Early bird tickets are available until April 26th, and information on speakers, topics, and demonstrations are available here.
|| 4 || Alluvion Arts @ 414 presents Botanic, an exhibition that takes a collective look at our intimate relationship to the plant kingdom. Plants create and regulate the air we breathe, they provide us with food, medicine, textiles and building materials. Through thought provoking conceptual work, installations, botanical paintings and prints, sculptures, wood work and a freshly installed seed library, Botanic attempts to examine and honor the gifts of our botanical friends. Free and open to the public. Find more information here.
|| 5 || Marqueetown Road Tour—the 100% Made in Michigan independent film hits the road. Portraying the fascinating history of motion pictures through one iconic screen - and featuring dozens of Michigan locations and characters—Marqueetown is a true story of chasing your dreams, redefining failure and success, and reembracing the enduring magic of cinema. Find upcoming dates and venues here, or check out the trailer here.
|| 6 || Sacred Grounds Northern Michigan—Mancelona’s Au Sable Institute partners with the National Wildlife Foundation to offer free native plants and technical support for native plant gardens for houses and communities of worship (all faiths.) Applications for the program are due May 20th. Find more information and apply here.
|| 7 || The Antrim Writers Series presents: Write Here, Write Now—Reading and Book Discussion of A Study in Charlotte and Fiction Writing Workshop with Brittany Cavallaro. Elk Rapids, May 7th and 8th. Find more information at the links above.
|| 8 || Happenings at The Alluvion Between Now and the Next Whole Field include: The Jeff Haas Trio featuring Laurie Sears and Lisa Flahive, the Interlochen Piano Trio featuring Tina Chang Qu, TJ Lymenstull, and Patrick Owen, The Greg Wahl Quintet featuring Julia Minkin, Funky Uncle, Mindful + Musical with Miriam Pico: MINI BIRD, Joel Fluent Greene, Peace Bell, and Evening Star, Luke Winslow King with full band featuring Roberto Luti, and Big Fun.
Find more information at www.thealluvion.org.
|| 9 || MSU Extension’s Sustainability Speakers Series Spring 2024. Bicycle trailer food scrap collection, household food waste, effective recycling practices, and more. The last workshop in the series will be on Sustainable Tourism Strategies, with Andy Northrop, on May 14th, from 12-1pm. Find more information on the virtual” lunch-and-learn” here.
|| 10 || National Writers Series: Workshops and Classes for Students in Northern Michigan and beyond. Find information and register for offerings like Teen Improv and Sketch with Nicole Hastings and Poetry with Sam Collier here. Classes are free, but space is limited.
sponsored by:
Desmond Liggett Wealth Advisors is a mission-driven, fee-only wealth management company with a simple purpose: to generate exceptional value for the individuals, families, small business owners, and non-profit organizations they serve. Desmond Liggett Wealth Advisors believe in and adhere to triple-bottom-line analysis for portfolio investments, ensuring that they review how a company’s environmental and social values impact its long-term resilience and, consequently, value.
Many thanks to the Michigan Arts & Culture Council and the National Endowment for the Arts for their support of this work.
Crosshatch’s The Whole Field is a biweekly (meaning roughly every other week) human-written newsletter. We aim to provide engaging, thought-provoking content that’s worth your time. If you’ve been forwarded this email and want to receive future editions, click here to subscribe to our mailing list or view past newsletters.
We also envision this best as a collaborative work. If you have any suggestions, leads, questions or feedback, we appreciate your reply directly to this email.
Copyright (C) 2023 Crosshatch. All rights reserved.