We Can’t Go Back
Thoughts on What We’ve Lost
by Gowan Batist
Gathering around the table with the whole farm crew and associated family is the mitochondria–the power generation organelle of the cell that is Fortunate Farm. We used to gather at least once per week in jostling, steamy, convivial chaos that felt disorganized in the moment. But seen from a distance of two years of pandemic, it was actually a beautiful balance, the way any patch of stars look randomly strewn, but when seen far enough back, the whole galaxy has a graceful and balanced spiral.
I miss the shuffle–grabbing extra chairs from the barn, keeping track of five different food allergies and diets, windows steaming over from pots on the stove, damp boots at the door, and everyone's laughter. I knew all our laughs so well that I could place each crew member at the table with my eyes closed.
I miss being able to hover quietly on the edge of the big mob, part of but not engaged in it. I have hearing loss and lose track of conversations in a crowded room, and had a tendency to leave my own sentences trailing off into the auditory static. I experienced the collective as one general hum.
I miss how anyone who showed up got swept in, how some people had a knack for picking just the right time, how immediately people became family–both by being handed dishes full of food and dishes they could wash.
I miss commiserating with everyone bravely laboring under the exquisite burden that is my mom's Very Nourishing Cooking.
I miss our dinners after farmers market, when we would put on the Iron & Wine radio station and cook a bit from all our friends’ market stalls, and it was like the energy of the whole long day on our feet lasted long enough to culminate in a sense of camaraderie with the larger farming community, rendered visible in our bowls.
I miss having a physical language for inexpressible bonds. Just come in, we don't need to say a thing, enough is already said in the jostle and gesture.
To be honest, on our farm those dinners had already slipped away before the pandemic, because as much as he loved them, my dad couldn't handle the noise and stimulation as his illness got worse. The dinners mellowed, thinned, and eventually halted entirely before the announcement of social distancing.
I thought at first that moving into the old farm house my parents used to live in would be like a passing of the torch, that I would become the host of the party, and my folks would visit when my dad felt well enough but would be able to slip away gracefully. That they would preside as honored elders but hand off the responsibility to our generation to keep the table going. I was proud of the transition.
Well, I moved into their house, and they moved into a smaller cottage down the farm lane, but my stewardship of this community turned out to be quite different. Instead of hosting the groaning dinner table and the weekend breakfasts, I took their big epic party table down, because I couldn’t live with it sitting there empty. When my mom and I tugged on opposite ends of the old table and took out the leaves, moving its diminished form into in her new place, there was an air of solemn ceremony about it. Like folding up a flag.
This house feels too big for me alone, but too small to hold the echoes of everyone who should be here.
It's already too late for us to comfort our sadness about our long time apart by saying we are sacrificing time together now so that we'll all be there when we gather next. We won't all be. We lost loved ones these last two years. Those losses will always be there, there will always be a void in their shape.
Now that it’s been two years of pandemic, we are faced with adjustment beyond emergency, short-term measures. We have been able to pull together massive support for food aid and recovery, but we have also lost farms and farmers to the economic consequences of this pandemic. On our farm, the recovery measures actually became weaponized against us when someone fraudulently applied for and received government aid in our business name, forcing us to fight with the IRS and file identity theft reports–all while burying my dad.
We are trying to build a new paradigm, while still recovering from the fatigue and loneliness and anxiety of what came before. To me, COVID has felt like a series of constantly shifting goalposts that prevent me from adequately measuring and conserving my energy. While I am still panting and gasping at the finish line, I realize the finish line of the sprint has become the starting line for a marathon. It’s unclear how many shifts still lie ahead. The biggest outbreak of the pandemic in my home on the Mendocino Coast is happening right now.
Our new generation of interns and young farmers are having a very different experience from my own at their age, and, though it was a short time ago, the way things were feels like a different era. The centrality of communal meals on our farm was echoed in the larger farm community. I learned and grew so much as a young farmer in Guild meetings at the Grange in Willits in my early twenties, eating potluck dishes and talking shop, and at gatherings at Ridgewood Ranch with huge dinners in the kitchen and farmers from all over the county and beyond, crowded together sharing a communal meal and building a community. I’ve seen business and romantic partnerships bloom at those events, as well as successful political actions and deep understanding between people with different perspectives and approaches.
The Good Farm Fund picnic held at Barra on October 12, 2021, shows how nimble this community is. It wasn’t like the mob scenes of the past, but I looked around and saw the usual suspects, and some new faces. I saw the alchemy of our farms coming together in a to-go box instead of a plate, but the magic was still there.
We can't put the lightning back in the bottle. It will never be what it was again. There is no going back to normal, because we are not all here, and even those of us who are still here are not who we were before. I have faith in our farming community to regenerate, to be resilient, to do what we always have done and grow flowers out of compost.
The future of the farming community will be different after this is over, but it will still be us. I don’t know when we will gather freely and easily as a farm crew, let alone a farming community, again. Whatever the world looks like when that day comes, there will be a table with a place at it, or just a corner to perch wherever you fit.
Until then, stay safe.
Gowan Batist is a Post-Industrial Pastoralist working towards regeneration on landscapes her ancestors devastated. She is seldom seen, but sometimes glimpsed out in the fog or the oak savanna propagating native plants, spinning wool, hand shearing sheep, or sprawling on the ground with dogs. Her writing can be found at https://www.patreon.com/GowanBatist