Articles and News Archive

Dear Friends,

Thank you for the lovely party yesterday at Mary and Tom's! It was both an honor and a great pleasure to be the recipient of so much loving attention. I am still blushing with delight and embarrassment. I will treasure the memory the rest of my days. The community in our CSA has meant more to me than I can easily express in words. Producing clean, healthy food for so many good friends has given richness and satisfaction to my life. This part of the world was not on my map, and when I moved to Rose Valley in 1988, it was a foreign place. The people who joined and helped build the GVOCSA gave me a home and a wonderful community of supportive friends and comrades in change.

You should understand that my first retirement happened in 1980 when I left academia to settle at Unadilla Farm in Gill. There I began my new life in summer camp that has continued to this day. Yes, there was plenty of hard physical labor, but no one forced me to do it. I was there because I chose to be. Learning to do organic farming has been an enormous challenge and an incredible opportunity to contribute to the creative collective work of millennia of unsung people. In doing this, I have enjoyed a freedom that few people get to experience. Walking round and round a farm, one learns as much as traveling by foot around the world.

As Phil Schaefer says, "If you want to die at an old age, you have to live a long time." I hope to do that. I am not moving away, or crawling into a hole. It was time to pass the farm on and I feel fortunate that Ammie and Greg are there, willing to use their skills and pour their good energies into Peacework. For the three of us, it has been an honor to grow food on land that belongs to the community. Private property is really a myth. No one gets to be here very long. A few people have the good fortune to be stewards for a stretch and your support has made that possible for us.

Thanks to Jack, you will see me around Rochester more often, riding my bicycle, shopping at Abundance and enjoying the cultural and ethnic riches of the city. I am still trying to figure out exactly what I am up to. I have been contributing to an effort to create public guidance and policy to make the City of Rochester as garden and urban farming friendly as possible. I continue on the Board of NOFA-NY and with the Agricultural Justice Project's efforts to bring fair trade and social justice to US farms and food. I still chair the Agricultural Development Board in Wayne County. With Joel Helfrich, I hope to write A People's History of US Food and Agriculture.

I am considering turning the downstairs of my house at the farm into an apartment that GVOCSA members can use. Instead of driving out early Thursday and Sunday mornings, a few people could come a day or two earlier and enjoy being in the country. Please let me know if you like that idea and would like to help.

Once again, with all my heart, I thank you!

For Peace in Our Lifetimes!

Elizabeth