Netflix

I admit to not living mindfully when I do some chores, like laundry, so I make it pass a little quicker watching Netflix. Netflix is weak on some subjects, but not on documentaries. If you're looking to watch anything about farming, saving the land, living more simply, there are dozens of options. My "Instant Queue" is full of these things, if only because I like my TV to look green and not grey.

I watched Radically Simple, about an engineer who is trying to engineer his simple life. One of his big pushes is, of course, gardening, and my favorite scene is when he chops up tomatoes in his garden, puts them in a pot and sets it up on a solar slow cooker, then cans the food. It's a remarkably quiet DVD, where there are community discussions interspersed with work, splitting wood or gardening. You forget how personal doing work can be, without music running or constant chatter. (I'm sure it would be the better way to do my laundry.) It stars Jim Merkel, Dartmouth College's Sustainability Coordinator. The general idea is that with current population, we each get about 4.5 acres of ecological footprint, an ever-shrinking number.

Last night I attempted to watch Dirt, narrated by Jamie Lee Curtis. I felt kind of like I was watching Sesame Street, with sound effects and cutting from one specialist to another. Interesting as everyone was, I felt kind of overwhelmed by connecting the details myself, by the speed and the noise. It didn't feel like nature, and I stopped watching it.

The one I've enjoyed most is only a half hour, called Save Our Farm. It's about a 14-acre plot in LA that was a free project run on donated land by the city. 14 acres is about 16 football fields. And in Southern California, you can be growing food all the time. The place was a mix of permaculture and annuals, and their "farmer's market" let folks walk around on the property for gardeners to sell crops still growing in the ground. It looked like a fantastic project. The city then made a quiet deal to sell the land back to the developer they bought it from, in order to build warehouses. The trouble here is that of course the land isn't owned by the farmers. These farmers used the land to cut out half of their food budget and could hardly afford their own land. And perhaps it's the city and developer's right to make their deals.

When I look at my land ownership options in Boston, even with a good salary it is going to be difficult to afford one acre for my future family. If you are in a situation where you are making near minimum wage, you just can't do it. And a couple amazing things happen in the documentary, but the outcome was still disappointing.

I think that it's very difficult to monetize the impact of growing food. I see folks getting sued for growing vegetables (and that reminds me of why my  parents were sued because my neighbor wanted to cut back the branches of our trees growing over into his yard. We lost. It made sense, but I was still sad for the trees.) When folks are skeptical about the health benefits of sustainable organic, it's not just what you put in your mouth. It's also about keeping green spaces and healthy living land, the physical work of gardening (I probably do several hundred squats when I'm in my garden on any given day), the community effort of any big farming project, the joy of ownership of your own work.

At Chestnut Farms, their recent newsletter discussed legislation introduced that would prevent any farm from having their own kids work on the farm. You understand why this might be, but at the same time, it lets a child fairly young see the fruits of labor and run their own finances if they have a business. You appreciate the work going into what sustains you.

The legislation didn't pass, due to massive outcry by small farmers.

This month's Edible Boston features a multi-generational farm in Belmont. The too were pressured to develop the land, to build a train station and parking lot and make a whole lot of money. But they chose to farm. The generally feeling is that it pays off now, for the family.

I wonder how farming is going to look over the next decade. In MA, there are more small farms now than at the millenium, and urban farming is taking off all over the place.