On Listening
Failure to hear will matter to those who do not listen and those who are not heard, not only because stories without an audience do not survive but also because being heard or ignored impacts how the past resonates in the present.
-Jill Stauffer, Ethical Loneliness: The Injustice of Not Being Heard
(This quote opens Billy-Ray Belcourt’s book A History of My Brief Body. At the end of the year we’ll share our 2023 farm reading list).
There is a constant cacophony on the land we farm, if we pay attention long enough to hear it.
In just a few acres we care for some 30+ different types of fruit trees—from avocados to Caribbean apples—and way too many types of vegetables to count. We must pay constant attention to what the plants and trees are telling us. Making sure we are planting, cleaning, and harvesting within nature’s narrow windows. An upcoming storm may force us to harvest every single starfruit we can, but also plant collards.
The excess—more starfruit than we can possibly eat—and the work can become overwhelming noise. Or we can we listen—make some jam and vinegar, dehydrate some, share some fresh fruit with the neighbors, give even more fresh away to our friends at the coffee shop—and the noise can become a symphony. Es bueno compartir.
This bright pink scene is actually a scene of death and renewal; and a communication about where to find food. For a fleeting moment, before the pomarosa fruit makes an appearance, everything near a mature tree gets a pink blanket.
But you’ll miss it if you’re not listening.
We live on the farm full time and don’t have access to electricity, internet, or running water. This summer, temperatures regularly neared 100 degrees in the shade. We’ve been wondering, shouldn’t folks listen to the heat we’re experiencing across the globe, and treat it like the canary in the sacrificial metaphor?
But these are not the only affects we see day-to-day. Our community elders tell us that the oranges are ripening two months early. They say the wet season is too dry and the dry season is too wet. Puerto Rico and other small island nations are on the front lines, the sacrificial zones, facing rising and warming oceans.
The time has come to abandon slogans and think on our own.
-Jean Laplanche
(The quote above opens Gender Without Identity by Avgi Saketopoulou & Ann Pelegrini)
Today is our 3rd wedding anniversary. Please google “grito de lares” if you don’t know the significance of the date.
All of the images in this newsletter were made with a 35mm camera. They were developed and scanned by Lone Star Photo Lab, we send our film there in support of their growing community darkroom.