Planting Seeds

This is the second part of a series examining Quillisascut, a farm near Kettle Falls,Wash., which offers workshops in sustainable living. For Part 1 visit here While food is at the top of the list of globalization experts’, climate change wonks’ and diversity proponents’ strategic plans, one might not see the seeds of community in a conference designed largely for educators and students presenting studies on what it means to be global in an educational framework. The 7th annual Globalization, Diversity and Education conference was held in Spokane earlier this year. Mike Meyers, conference coordinator, invited me as a member of the press and a peer discussing my outlook and experience with globalization. Meyers remains pumped about how well the presenters engaged the audience. “Filmmaker and activist Jen Marlowe tapped into the emotion of Palestinian struggles in ‘One Family in Gaza’ and ‘Peaceful Thoughts.’ Denise Taliafero Baszile had the audience dancing to Bob Marley’s ‘Get Up Stand Up’ as a reminder of our commitment to social justice. Not your usual academic conference fare, but what we have come to expect at this conference,” he said. Prior to the workshop, I talked with Meyers on my radio show, “Tipping Points: Voices from the Edge. I insisted that we in education are jaded, how silo-ed academia has become, and how a conference like this should be publicly engaged, with more from the community taking part, including high school students. He agreed that not enough money and backing from colleges help create this lack of marketing, and reaching out to a broader, more engaging community. Globalization is the linchpin to many of our regional, national and local problems, like jobs, food, energy, and the faltering economy. The solutions to problems we face in the sustainability community come from peasant farmers, civil society, people on the ground. While the conference hopefully encouraged a broader educational experience at the college level for understanding the international experience, and to encourage international students and those in their midst from the U.S., there were certainly furrows cut into earth where seeds were planted. The theme was “From here to everywhere: Placing local and global practices in dialogue.” I enjoyed listening to EWU students talk about medicine women, or curanderas, in Mexico, where they went to conduct ethnographic interviews in many of my old stomping grounds. I enjoyed the University of British Columbia –Vancouver folk trying to tie international students and their education to a sustainability model. But the especially fertile seeds came from land-based thinking, creativity, poetry and a trust in the gift of sunlight, water, soil and seed. The Land-Learner Connection was a presentation given by participants who in the summer of 2010 participated in workshop “on the farm,” also known as the place of goats, or Quillisascut (see story here). The Land-Learner Connection was a five-day workshop for teachers and administrators who are training primary and secondary school teachers. According to Quillisascut, gardens are a perfect way to connect teachers and students, and offer “limitless opportunities for environmental learning.” The presentation at the globalization workshop was a wrap-up and analysis of the earlier Quillisascut visit, where participants, funded in part by the DeVlieg Family Foundation, hit these main educational and learning goals: • Research and practice in learning gardens with Dr. Veronica Gaylie • Curriculum development to intertwine current instruction with garden experiences • Basic information on organic farm production. • Simple ways to tap into and learn from your local food system • Essential Learning Requirements and hands-on environmental learning • Biodiversity and our food environment Participants learned a new respect for community, for land, and for those who not only shepherd the concept of sustainability to outsiders, which have included cooks, writers, teachers, students, and others, but they also live the life of goat tending, cheese making and holistic farming. Rick and Lora Lea Misterly have been at Quilisascut for 30-plus years, and have turned what might have been a ideal rural home into a learning experience for themselves, those in the Rice-Kettle Falls, Wash., community, and those coming to the farm to learn what high-level sustainability thinking looks like on 35 acres of farmland near Lake Roosevelt. The 2010 ‘farmers in training’ came from colleges and school districts throughout the Northwest. They all have learned from the Misterlys and Karen Jurgenson, Quillisascut Farm School/Seattle Culinary Academy chef, that they themselves hold the seeds of change firmly in their hands and their students’ hearts. Laurie Morley from Eastern said the workshop brought her to a new place after 24 years as an educator in nutrition and health, and she has been been spurred to help shepherd the EWU sustainable food project – www.sustainable-ewu.org. A former Spokane Falls Community College English student, Nathan Calene, is now working with other students on EWU’s food and dining elements, including, as an undergraduate planning student, planning the university’s organic garden. Justin Hougham helped start the Palouse Pollinators in Pullman, and sees firsthand how youth have been almost bred to be afraid of nature, something called “ecophobia.” Planting seeds is just one step to a garden, Francene Watson said. It’s about place-based education, getting youth to see how the world works one stomach and one garden at a time. For Veronica Gaylie, UBC - Okanagan poet and sustainability proponent, gardens and sustainability allow for a better conversation in colleges, because she sees unnecessary and unsustainable compartmentalization and battle lines over deep ecology and how community has to be defined as the people, the garden and the food. She is also pushing an anti-prestige movement to make gardens and sustainability simple, not huge multi-layered, administration-driven projects. As part of a later presentation, Gaylie and Michael Marchand, of UBC- Okanagan, showed native wisdom and sustainability through a cool process titled: “The Learning Garden and the Firepit: An Exploration of Land as the Basis for an Interdisciplinary Pedagogy.” They built an Okanagan First Nation fire-pit to get students and others to think of “alternative ways of knowing.” “The development of local and global knowledge around environment has evolved in a way that is inclusive of both academic and community involvement. Any meaningful knowledge around environment now requires a re-visioning of research, and the place of the university, as an equal partner with community,” they both wrote for their presentation preface. Seeds carry collective DNA from tens of thousands of years of nature’s trial and error. The seeds of education change the course of individuals’ intellectual growth. They can pass on the learning, and thereby change each generation. The key to this germination, this growth, is knowledge and practice. Gardens are the microcosm of life, and the roots in each variety hold the potential for resiliency and sustainability. One farm can change much, and Quillisascut is humble in its origins and humble in its design, but the practice of a community-based farm ethos and deep knowledge of how to know oneself in the field are what blossom on that farm. Quillisascut is like an endless garden of ideas, a global classroom, where the art of growing and the tools of planting fertilize the mind for a time of endless possibilities.