Why "Wintering" Is Essential

This morning I lay on my couch, wrapped in my favorite blanket, listening to one of my favorite radio programs. It comes on at 7:00 on Sundays -- a time which is only convenient in the winter, and completely inaccessible to me in the summer (I know, I know, there are podcasts but that is a whole different commitment to time management. I listen to things in real time or I just live in real time. Old fashioned.).

The show is On Being, hosted by Krista Tippett. My girlfriends and I are such fans of hers that we once went as a group and sat in the front row when one of her shows was being taped, and then afterwards we all rushed to the stage so we could get a picture with her.  This is notable because I have never done that with any other celebrity. I have actually seen her in person three times now. That's probably enough.

Anyway, the show was about Wintering. The guest, Katherine May, wrote a book about her revelations about the value of seasons and cycles, hibernating, reflecting, replenishing. The joys of snow, hitting the pause button, making space for sadness, and not feeling awkward about stopping, even though the rest of the world may be continuing to race along.

Of course you know what I am going to say here. This is something that farmers know. Or at least the farmers that actually have winter -- which is why I am so relieved that we live in a place with true seasons and also one reason I am scared about the steady march of climate change. Farmers do a lot of resting and replenishing during the dark months. This is what makes it possible for us to start the next season with true energy.

But "wintering" doesn't have to happen in January, according to this thinker. She says that it has happened in her life that she knew that she just had to stop and take a real break, one that allowed for all sorts of recuperation. This pandemic has been an occasion of wintering that no one asked for, but here it is.  And she says that our culture does not know how to do that.  

I think that those of us who expect things to change, expect there to be a winter followed by spring and summer and fall, we have the capacity to endure with less suffering.  I am not saying that farmers have exclusive insight, we are just lucky that our work has a natural stopping point.  Teachers have seasons too, and it would be really hard for them to keep up that pace all the way around the year. How do all the rest of you manage?

Related to this, my mind wandered to the question of resilience and longevity.  Who are the people who have managed to stay sane and keep going for a really long time, in spite of it all?  I think of my mother who epitomizes resilience. It's not only that she has continued to be healthy and strong, but she also has a steadiness that allows her to appreciate whatever season she is experiencing. She isn't someone who goes through extreme highs and deep lows -- she rides the train around and around, going up and down the hills. Wintering is part of the ride and she is good at it. 

As I consider this, I realize I don't have new thoughts to add to what I heard this morning. It just resonated with me that we are all part of the natural world and there are cycles that we all go through and we need to be better at it. We need to find the good in resting. Last summer we used "sleep" as a prompt for one of our CSA newsletters but I don't think we went far enough in our thinking. We were only talking about the power of rest at the end of the day, as opposed to a really big amount of rest. 

Because most people are used to keeping up their productivity and multi-tasking and making money all the time, it would be a big shift for all of us to find ways to winter, and not just take a vacation. It's not about taking a vacation.  That can be a lot of work (I can say this because every winter we usually do take a big trip, and that is another form of work, and it is wonderful, but it is not wintering). It's about resting.

And maybe that is why this conversation really struck me. We are resting here, but not perfectly. We are not experts at it but we are getting better.  By leaps and bounds, actually. This has been a winter of real wintering.

Pay As You Go: A Rant

Last night I was sitting at my computer, collecting up the requests from the six CSA customers who wanted a box packed for them instead of picking out their own vegetables. Some of these people are choosing not to come into the same space with other people and some just can't get here in time to feel like they will have good choices with the market style system. All the Brussels sprouts will be gone.  

Our Winter CSA is a mellow affair, with no bells and whistles. No fancy payment system (members bring their check on the first day, or the next one if they forget, and put it in the box on the table), no newsletter, no customization with a software package.  We, the farmers, decide what days the CSA will happen, based on our desire to have some time off and also on the way the weather is going.  Customers pay for eight weeks, up front.

This is a low-key and somewhat traditional version of the CSA model.  The traditional parts are that payment comes in a lump at the beginning and the farmer is responsible for the fairness of the system. We are trusted to make sure that people will get vegetables in a reliable and equitable manner. There are no prices. Everything is basically the same in value because we say it is -- a head of lettuce, a half pint of garlic, a quart of sweet potatoes. The transactional nature of the exchange is very different from going to the grocery store.

So there I was, doing my little handmade chart, saving some sweet potatoes and lettuce and spinach etc. for someone who sent me a pleasant note.  And then a message from Harvie pops up on my screen, full of enthusiasm and an ode to the joys of Pay As You Go.

Harvie is the business that manages our data for our full season CSA. When we first joined up with them, 12 years ago, it was called Small Farm Central. A perfect name for what they did -- they collected up the small farms and they did the hard work of keeping track of money and names and orders. It was a system that gave us what we really needed.  About five years ago, the founder decided that he could do more for farmers and he began to develop a platform that promoted farm businesses in new and innovative ways. He was devoted to finding ways for farms to make more money. 

Over time, he has come to the conclusion that the CSA is no longer the answer. The answer is an online marketplace where the customer gets what the customer wants, by choosing her vegetables and by paying in accessible increments. On the face of it, this makes perfect sense.  But it takes away the premise that people want to support their farm. It turns it right back into a trip to the store, but using your computer. Their new revelation is that customers don't want to pay up front, they want to pay as they go. They have figured out that people like to be able to quit. And that the farm would really do better with a steady stream of income than with the upfront infusion of cash in the middle of winter.

Oh, I was so mad. I totally understand their position. They have become a business that is excited about planning the routes for people who are doing home delivery. They have drunk the Koolaid and they are pushing us all down the Amazon chute. In fact, they said it outright -- they want to give farmers the same advantages so that we can compete with Amazon.

So of course I wrote a letter. Before I sent it, I read it to Rebecca who was coming into this whole conversation without much context. After I read it, she said, what do you think will change? Nothing. Then why are you writing it? To register my protest. Don't you think you should send it to someone who can create change instead of just your customer representative? Your rep can't do anything and doesn't care. I took her advice and rewrote the letter, with a little less snark and vitriol, and sent it to the founder of the company. We have been working with his company since he started. He knows who we are. He doesn't need us anymore and he doesn't truly care what we think anymore. But it did feel better to send it to the boss.  This is why it is good to have Rebecca, our business school grad, as my editor. 

I do know that the CSA model is a niche, it is not for everyone and it is probably fading away. But I still believe with all my heart that this is not a one-way street. The farmer does not have to provide every single thing, even though that is what people have come to expect. The CSA member still has a role, supporting the farm. It's not just a shopping trip, it's a relationship.  At the end of my letter I said that every long lasting business (and we are starting our 60th season) understands that its most valuable resource is its relationships.  I doubt that Simon, the Harvie mastermind, will actually internalize that because he is on the Amazon train already, but he should.  I told him that I hope there is still room for the pragmatic idealists who believe in CSA as a viable model for relationships.

In fact, I believe that this model could work for lots of different businesses, not just farmers.  The Vietnamese owners of the haircut place could have a community supported business that would make it possible for them to weather covid.  A haircut is something that can have a very flexible price. If a customer pays for a whole year, or six months, up front, the business owners can make their own choices about what is safe for themselves and their clients.  The clients are guaranteed a visit a month. If they don't go, they forfeit that month. It's their job to make the appointment. Loyalty would be rewarded as member-customers get their first choice of whatever services they require. 

Anyway, the idea that businesses should just make everything easy and painless and cheap is just so one-sided.  The customer has a role to play too, when it comes to supporting small high quality businesses (who are good to their employees, who care about the environment, who take the long view on relationships) that rely on mostly the same people. We don't all have to be like Amazon. 

Brigadoon

Two American tourists happen upon a Scottish village where there is dancing and music on a summer day. It feels magical because it is.  This town of Brigadoon only appears once every hundred years and life advances one day at a time, in one hundred year intervals.  I think of this (Lerner and Loewe musical) storyline often in this life we live.

Specifically this time, we are all comfortably squirreled away in our cozy houses, spending our hundred years quietly. And then on a designated Sunday, we appear again at the stand, dressed in our work costumes. The tourists who show up at the stand (living their own Brigadoon life, actually) never think that we have spent most of the last month sitting in front of the fire, reading books, doing crossword puzzles, knitting.  

At 8:00, we meet up and start pulling carts of vegetables out of the coolers. To be honest, we had to put those vegetables in the cooler on the good weather days that came before, but that is invisible work. No one saw us do it and so it is shrouded in the mists of non-time. We chat while we put leafy things into bags and carrots into boxes.  This routine has evolved over these hundreds of years, so effortlessly, that we barely need to speak about what we are doing.  At about 9:40 the early birds start to arrive because 10:00 is just too long to wait for. And the place fills up with happy, busy shoppers. The American tourists would be able to tell this is a specific time because now we are wearing masks. But when we appear out of the mists again next year, maybe we won't need masks.

The day goes on like this, with cheerful greetings and conversations that we have had since the beginning of humankind.  The tourists fade away and we retreat back into our timeless existence.

Brigadoon happens in other venues for us too -- like when we go to market in December and in February, where there isn't really any farming happening in between the market days. We arrive, looking like we always do, with crates of fresh and lovely food, wearing our heavy duty farmer clothes. We have those market conversations, we load up, we go back home and get back into our pajamas. When there is no other real work to do, picking is a breeze. We find the nicest part of the week and we make a plan and we get it done, but it feels like entertainment more than work.

At other times of year, I think about this appearing and disappearing trick, mostly when we do something that only happens once or is absolutely seasonal, like pressing cider.  That cider press sits there, unseen and unvisited, for 11 months of the year. Then Jon gets out the power washer and cleans everything up, makes cider once a week in October, and then leaves the stage for a year.

And when we go to Hawaii, that is the most Brigadoony experience of all. We visit our relatives and for the last 50+ years we have always gone to the same house in the same valley with the same aunt who lives there.  That era will end soon, as the aunt and uncle (sister and brother, long story) who have happily greeted us will undoubtedly be unable to manage living there forever. But when we land at the airport (serious Brigadoon experience, complete with the same breezy humid air on our skin every single time) and get a car and drive down that timeless highway that gets you to the comfortable suburbs in the valleys and you drive up those streets that have not changed, not changed at all, in 50 years, you really feel like you are in a play. The people who live there are stuck in time (from our vantage point) and when we arrive, the day starts again. Because the intervals are pretty long, I have distinct memories of my own developmental stages (third grade, sixth grade, eighth grade...) as we have walked through that front door for yet another lengthy visit. Magical in a different way -- the sound of the door closing is identical visit after visit because the house is constructed very lightly, so the wall and the door kind of shake together when the door clicks closed. And since the beginning of all time, you can hear through the walls every dog and voice of the neighbors around. It's not intrusive, it is the soundtrack of that life. We do think it is pretty funny that they lock their doors since the walls could be cut with a pocketknife, practically.

I also feel like workers who come back to visit after a lifetime away from here, they must feel like they are coming upon a mysterious place that doesn't change. Of course it really does change, but the essence has held steady since the beginning. The buildings are still constructed by on-farm folks, the fields look the same, the vegetables are utterly reliable, and so many of the people have just been aging gracefully and slowly while we wait for visitors.

There is really nothing better than aging gracefully and slowly, so if that is our version of Brigadoon, we are living the dream.