Thirty something year olds in America have been taught growing up that manual labor is beneath them. Yet, the white-collar cubicle office jobs, doesn’t create that much satisfaction either according to a “Crop Mob” participant on American Public Radio’s program Marketplace. In North Carolina and other parts of the country, many people are turning to work on farms without pay to build a sense of community, return to the land and perhaps even work with their hands to earn their next meal.
Throughout history, farmers welcomed people onto their land to learn about the land, food and how it is grown. A visit to a farm creates an authentic experience with nature often out of the daily consciousness of the modern citizen. In biblical times, many farmers would leave the edges of the field open so people without food could take what the farmers were unable to harvest. This act of “gleaning” was a common practice by the landless and is also alive today.
In Virginia, I worked on a farm and we would harvest what we could for the research project. Many times, crops left in the field are left to return to the land. But, we always had the option to call on the local food bank to organize a group of pickers to glean our fields. Nowadays, the Crop Mobs are a very similar phenomena. People visit a farm; help with farming for a day and the farmer gives back with work experience and the opportunity to earn their next meal.
These types of experiences are not always associated with agriculture from the view of the consumer and the marketplace. The very idea of having farms open to community is very alive today. Many farmers would welcome the interest, enthusiasm and motivation of a public to build community on the farm. My good friend, Sally Weaver, manages a farm outside Woodland, California and is looking for anyone who wants to start a farming project and build community.
What types of farm experience have you had that invoked a sense of community and connection to nature?
