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My Farm is a humming, buzzing, and vibrating vortex of lust
by Michael Ableman

I used to think that if I could just tell folks why it was important to consider another way, if I could be more eloquent in my expression, if I could just convince them, beat them into submission, that things would change. Now I think if I could just grow the best tomato.

I’ve realized that pleasure is a much greater motivator for change than guilt.

Think about it; how successful has the last 30 years of the environmental movement really been? There has been some really good work done by many of my friends and colleagues: battles won, pristine places preserved, a greater awareness of the awesome threats to our biosphere instilled in the minds of many.

But most of the messaging has been all doom and gloom, and while folks have come to understand the problems, they too often feel helpless when it comes to the solutions, paralyzed in the face of the enormity of our modern dilemma. Clearly all the well planned environmental campaigns, all the creative strategies, all the books and organizations have only succeeded in preserving and protecting and restoring a few bits and pieces and specks, isolated victories, all while the world’s natural systems unravel at a staggering rate.

So how do we provide an invitation rather than a harangue?

Well I got it standing on my farm in B.C. a few weeks ago. I was out there with the deafening sound of thousands of frogs fucking in my ponds, earthworms doing it beneath my feet, mason and bumble and honey bees fighting to stuff themselves into every flower in sight and I suddenly realized that I’m not farming, I’m presiding over one big giant orgy.

I realized that every form of life on my farm is absolutely immersed in this incredible humming, buzzing, and vibrating vortex of lust.

All this time I’ve had it wrong. I’ve been trying to entice young people back into agriculture with all the wrong messages when all they really need to know is that there is all this sex happening on farms.

It’s not just like the bumper sticker that says, “organic farmers are more fertile.” It’s more than that. You can’t possibly live and work in the midst of all this uncontrollable lust each and every day and night of your farm life and not become a part of it, not begin to embody it, attract it. I’m not suggesting that we’re all jumping on everyone who walks past, although that may happen for some, I am suggesting that it may be that the real reason this movement is gaining so much popularity is not because the food tastes so good or that it is good for you or for the world, but that people want some of what we’ve got, they want to be around it, but they don’t always know what it is.

Look at the farmers’ markets. I’ve been selling at them and observing them for 30 years. I have witnessed the most incredible expressions of passion and erotic possibility as folks are faced with choosing a Charenntais or Petit Gris melon, or while hand selecting haricot vert beans or a tomato or tree ripe peach. I wish that I could have had a continuous recording over the years of the sounds, the comments, the expressions that folks have when you feed them a pineapple guava or a ripe peach, or pass a sprig of cinnamon basil under their noses. I am convinced that there is far more uninhibited joy at the farmers’ market than in all of the nation’s bedrooms.

After all, virtually everything we eat is the result of some form of sexual union.

And since humans don’t normally have erotic feelings for a peach or a tomato, that energy is sometimes directed towards the farmers, the ones who came from the land and bring forth all this bounty. Like midwives, farmers have begun to take on an almost mythical ambiance, they hold this deep knowledge of natural cycles that is disappearing, and sometimes they become the object of desire. We need to give this message to our youth, and they’ll come running to this profession as fast as they have been running away from it over the last 50 years.


Michael Ableman is the author of From the Good Earth and Fields of Plenty. He is aslo the featured farmer in John DeGraaf’s award-winning documentary Beyond Organic. He has been a contributor to HopeDance. A new film will be coming out soon that will feature him as well as other pioneering farmers. Keep in touch.


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