Patricia Damery's Blog, page 11

When People and Land Lose Each Other

When People and Land Lose Each Other

These days we in the Napa Valley are spending a great deal of time on the politics of land use. I am running some previous blogs on the relationship of people and land and what happens when they are separated. Migration has torn our relationship to land, leaving deep wounds in the unconscious and in the collective unconscious, making it much easier to objectify land, seeing it as a commodity. If we are going to navigate the territory that climate change has defined, this wound that exists in us all will have to be made more conscious. Nature has life and rights. This blog is from a Spain 2013 trip. 

“Wild is what happened when white man arrived,” I once heard Native American scholar Greg Sarris say. Today as I walk these ancient Spanish paths that interlace several remote, abandoned villages throughout the southern Pyrenees of the Sobarbre area, I broaden the statement: wild is what too often happens when a people who have loved and lived on a land for centuries, leave.

The paths I walk are along stone-walled terraces, work done over centuries by mountain people who lived here since perhaps the 12th century. For centuries these terraces were used to graze livestock and grow cereal grains, but now pines are planted in rows, usually two rows to a terrace, and thorny bushes fill in between.

There is a convergence of reasons the mountain people left. In the 1950’s there were no jobs for the young women, so after the women went to the cities to become maids, for village people lacked education and these were the jobs open to them, the young men followed, becoming taxi cab drivers. This left the older people with the rigors of mountain farming. When the government offered to buy their villages, they took them up on it and within two or three years 14 villages in this area alone were abandoned, 400 villages in all of Spain.

But another story tells of how a threatened hydroelectric project which never came to fruition also pushed these people’s decisions to leave. One story tells how in preparation, the government planted small pine trees on the terraces to control erosion should the hydroelectric project go through, which made it impossible to use the terraces to graze cattle. Another story tells how the people feared even more isolation if the project did happen. There were no roads into these small villages. After they were abandoned, roads were made, mainly for firebreaks. Some say these independent people also wisely feared political reprisals.

A terrace with a stone retaining wall. Now the terrace

is the path and scrubby plants and pines grow.

The land is quiet today, the pine trees insuring that mountain way of life to be over. I would never suggest returning to that life. It is clear that the remoteness made for hardship and lack of what we consider essential: education, medical care, modern conveniences.

But there were positives: the rigors of the environment and harshness of the climate demanded that these people know the land in all its moods, as well as work with each other and with other villages for the welfare of all. They cooperated, at least enough of the time, so every one got his or her fair share. The elements forced it.

Church in Puyuelo and Memorial to a Native.

In the silence of the village I cannot help but wonder: Where are your people now? How did they recover from leaving land their families had farmed for centuries?

Walking between these pines, I wonder: what about land that has lost its people who knew it best? Those terraces so important for farming and erosion control crumble in places the road nicked the stone walls or changed drainage.

And why pines? Although they are native, I am told that this side of the mountain is drier, making pines a fire hazard. Oaks are the trees that grow naturally on this side.  In what way was that decision made? Probably not by consulting the mountain people! If humans are going to make such huge changes, may we also realize we need to know the land intimately, and the people as well,  to anticipate unintended consequences. In the words of forester Aldo Leopold, “…man-made changes are of a different order than evolutionary changes, and have effects more comprehensive than is intended or foreseen (A Sand County Almanac, 255).”

Today in entering the village of Puyuelo, I came upon a memorial stone at the ransacked church, a stone I assumed was for a man born and raised there. He died in 2010, born in 1924. His name and birth and death dates were followed by “D.E.P.”, rest in peace. Only in death could he return home.

I felt a wave a grief as I continued down the village path to a large flowering pear tree next to a crumbling home, and then the stone-walled path leading on to another abandoned village below.

This village knew care from its people and its people were a people who knew their place in the whole of the area, both in its environmental needs and in the social benefits of cooperation with other neighbors. I can only wonder what this sudden evacuation and abandonment can mean both to those who were compelled to leave and to the beloved land from which they departed.

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The Serpent Mound Revisited

Three years ago a group of us visited The Serpent Mound in Adams County, southern Ohio, and a series of blogs came from this visit. This last week Carol McRae and I returned to work with Ross Hamilton, author and researcher of this and other “star” mounds. Below is a reprint of a blog from the 2012 visit. It explains my own deep connection to the earth, and particularly the earth upon which I live.

What is it that we do when we “awaken” a sacred site? What, exactly, are we awakening? This is a question whose answer grows within the cells of my body as I live it, a question reawakened after visiting the Serpent Mound in Ohio.

While it is true that all land is sacred, some land has been used in sacred ways over centuries, making it especially attuned to humans and to experiencing spirit in matter and matter as spirit. There are many ways to speak of these places. Some would call these spots portals, or places in which it is easier to access other dimensions—or frequencies— of existence. The Serpent Mound is one of many sacred sites that suggests that humans were once more aware of this energetic interaction with spirit and matter, using this knowledge and awareness to the benefit of all: improving fertility, mitigating the impact of weather and climate, and healing mind and body.

My own first experience of this attunement to earth energy was as a child. My midwestern farming father was what we called a waterwitcher. He dowsed for broken or stopped-up tiles that drained the fields. We had a family friend who was also a waterwitcher. My father used a coat hanger; Bill used a forked willow branch or peach branch and he located wells. Once he had me hold the end of the stick as he dowsed. I felt a sharp, powerful tug on the stick as he walked over the vein of water. He told me that the stick would pull the skin off his hands if he tried to keep it from moving, and after feeling the strength of the tug, I believed him.

A couple of years ago a friend, Jean Bolen, and I visited a grouping of trees on a knoll of a meadow that abuts our property. From all indications the trees are on a site that was used ceremonially for centuries. The meadow itself is a portal. When you enter, time becomes relative. Everything is only The Present, and you become disoriented as to how long you have been there, a sure sign of a portal!



The day Jean visited, she rang a Tibetan bell attuned to the heart chakra to awaken heart energy. I was most aware of my own heart awakening. My fear about the preservation of the site lessened as my love of the site increased.

Sites like the Serpent Mound and the meadow and tree circles where I live are crucial in remembering our place in the whole. Awakening to the power of our energetic connection to earth is key to finding a balance that can sustain us all into the future.

Other blogs on The Great Serpent and Sacred Sites:

Sacred Sites: The Great Serpent Mound, Part Three

Listening to the Cosmos: Crystallization Period

Quest for Manitou

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Labyrinth: Age Old Path of Wholeness

Labyrinth: Age Old Path of Wholeness

One of the first things Donald and I did when we moved to our current home was to plant a seven-circuit labyrinth. We laid out the pattern with a string and some stakes, swinging arcs in prescribed ways. We then laid irrigation line in the beds, and planted lavender every three feet along these lines. There is an energetic center which is the heart of it. In later years we planted medicinal plants, including a large white sage plant which sends up great spires of tiny white flowers. The morning after we laid out the pattern, I returned to find a snake skin in this most energetic area upon which you do not walk. A visitation!

The labyrinth is not an easy path, being on a steep hillside. When you walk it, you have to pay attention, or you can slip. People often bring a rock to carry, or  carry one of the sweat lodge rocks from the days a Lakota medicine woman led sweat lodges here, rocks which have already been prayed over. They leave these rocks along the path on the way out. I think of the oil that we distill from the labyrinth as liquid prayer. It is never sold, only gifted (click here for more of the story).

This pattern is called the Cretan labyrinth because it was found on Crete and  was the labyrinth of the minotaur, but the pattern is found worldwide. The most rigorous seven-circuit labyrinth I have walked is that of the Tor in Glastonbury, which takes all day.

I worked several days with Sig Lonegren, geomancer, dowsing sacred sites in Glastonbury. Sig is particularly interested in the seven-circuit labyrinth and the dialogue between earth and human energies which occurs in walking this pattern. He dowsed my aura before walking the pattern, and when I was in the center. Before, my aura was the standard three feet, but in the center of the labyrinth, it extended 30 feet.

Walking this age-old pattern makes us energetically larger, and I felt it! Perhaps it is why the labyrinth is used as a meditation tool. This is how it is done: on the way in, You meditate on an issue which may be a problem for you. Each of the circuits is said to correspond with the energies of each chakra. You enter on the third circuit, or 3rd chakra, which is the solar plexus, which winds into the second circuit, or 2nd chakra, and then to the large outer ring, the first, or root chakra. From here the path curves inward to the fourth, or heart chakra, and then the inner circuits and higher spiritual centers. Coming out is a reversal, as one returns to the world, and hopefully with a larger perspective on the problem.

Does our wholeness depend of developing sensitivities to these subtle energies of ourselves and of the earth? I suspect so. Perhaps awareness of these sensitivities returns us to wholeness, but in a conscious way.

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Essential Oils and the Golden Mean

Essential Oils and the Golden Mean

Are there scents that return us to wholeness?  I suspect so—and one of those scents for me is that of lavender essential oil. Not just any lavender essential oil, either! In fact, until we started growing lavender, I wasn’t particularly drawn to lavender’s scent. But when the mounds around our home started blooming and the bees arrived, when the still revealed a scent that dropped me into the present, I realized I was hooked on this plant. Then, recently I read a statement about the quantities of constituents in lavender essential oil being in proportion to the golden mean, and I began to reflect on my own experience with our oil.

At the suggestion of our viticulturist, we originally planted the lavender to replace some grapevines that were not thriving and to diversify. We sold dried flowers and took the excess to a local distillery. It wasn’t until we purchased a small 15 gallon still and started distilling the lavender in small batches that we discovered that the five different places that we planted the lavender actually produced five different scents of lavender essential oil. This means that lavender has a terroir— that its scent reflects the environment in which it grew. This was amazing to us, but not as amazing as lavender’s impact upon us.

There is a scene in Wind in the Willows in which Mole smells home. Author Kenneth Grahamme writes:

We others, who have long lost the more subtle of the physical senses have not even proper terms to express an animal’s inter- communications with his surroundings, living or otherwise, and have only the word ‘smell,’ …  to include the whole range of delicate thrills which murmur in the nose of the animal night and day… . It was one of these mysterious fairy calls from out the void that suddenly reached Mole in the darkness, making him tingle through and through with its very familiar appeal… . He stopped dead in his tracks, his nose searching hither and thither in its efforts to recapture the fine filament, the telegraphic current, that had so strongly moved him. A moment, and he had caught it again; and with it this time came recollection in fullest flood… Home! (Chapter 5, Grahamme)

This is the “fairy call” I experience when I smell this oil. It returns me to home.   Of course, this lavender comes from where I live. It shared the same sun, the same water, and is rooted in the earth I too live on.

But it is also grown Biodynamically and organically. These processes are a kind of individuating process for a plant and a farmer, a dialogue in which the farmer supports conditions that help the plant thrive. When a plant is grown in this way, it is a well-organized plant that fits in with the whole. Fractional crystallization shows crystals that are beautiful and symmetrical, an indication of the order of the golden mean. Wholeness is present.

Does the experience of wholeness have a resonance, a similar experience to that which the alchemists termed  multiplicatio? The resonance experienced, whether that be by form or by scent, is like a fairy call, or a call home, and we experience the totality that we are.

Also see:

Distillation and Death

Distillation and Donald (Excerpt from Farming Soul)

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The Fibonacci Sequence and the Built Environment

The Fibonacci Sequence and the Built Environment

When my husband architect Donald designed our home, he used a proportioning system which he has always used, that of a series of dimensions derived from the Fibonacci sequence. This sequence is formed by starting with 1+1 and then determining each successive number from the sum of two numbers before it— forming the sequence of 1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34… . The ratio of these numbers is particularly interesting in that it rapidly approximates the golden mean, or 1.618… (3:2; 5:3; 8:5, 13:8…). Our home has this implied proportioning system of what is also considered of a pattern of wholeness.

I was in high school when I first learned of this ratio. Our chemistry teacher suggested we read Anthony Standen’s Science is a Sacred Cow,  and toward the end was a chapter on “True Science, Mathematics”. In this essay, Standen discusses Plato’s Myth of the Divided Line (The Republic). A line divided in such a way that the smaller part is in the same ratio to the larger part, as the larger part is to the whole. This ratio is the golden mean.

A page from Science is a Sacred Cow, Copyright 1950.

Standen postulated that the best scientific use of mathematics is to bring the divine into the realm of the mystery of the material world through this proportion. He said science had missed the mark in not exploring the divinity of nature through the implications of this proportion.

Yes, my high school chemistry teacher is one of the big reasons I majored in chemistry as an undergraduate in college. The philosophy he introduced me to belied the actual practice of chemistry and proved Standen right in this separation of spirit and nature. It was not long before alchemy drew me along the path of analytical psychology, which turns out to be very similar to that Standen suggested in his 1950 book.

Sometime during my training to be an analyst, I read Jungian analyst Ed Edinger’s book Anatomy of the Psyche: Alchemical Symbolism of Psychotherapy in which Edinger addressed the golden mean as the ego’s proper relationship to the larger energies of the Self and of wholeness. He wrote:

The golden section a very interesting separatio symbol. It expresses the idea that there is a particular way to separate the opposites that will create a third thing (the proportion or meaning between them ) of great value. The value is indicated by the term golden and by the presumed beauty of the proportion. (p. 197-198)

Vocatus atqua non vocatus deus aderit. Called or not called, God is present. When we are in an environment that has these dimensions, there is a feeling of rightness and peace. The beauty of the present is always there, and we are at once in touch with something larger than ourselves.

I feel this way in our home. It is like living in a poem of form, something that is at once beautiful and functional. I think of the hospitals Donald has built, as well as the other public and private spaces he has designed.

Do those people recognize the peace and even awe that comes in such a structure designed with this pattern of wholeness? Do they understand that the form of such a space impacts them, whether they are conscious of it or not? Called or not called…

Once Donald and I were invited to a home Donald designed years before. They wanted to add a deck and they wanted Donald to do the design of it. When the owner opened the door, he greeted us,”Welcome to my cathedral—for that is how I think of this!”

May all of our homes be  conduits of the divine into our everyday lives.

Boris bringing spirit to our living room during construction.

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Healing, the Archetypes, and Patterns of Wholeness

Healing, the Archetypes, and Patterns of Wholeness

Carl Jung said healing happens when one is put in right relationship to the archetypes—or patterns of wholeness. All true healing systems incorporate the process of putting the patient back in touch with these patterns.

My spiritual teacher, Norma T., whose teachings I discuss much more fully in Farming Soul, taught me a number of things which may seem apparent to many, but weren’t to me. One of these teachings had to do with energetics of the patterns of wholeness. She said that our job here on earth is to make ourselves as big as possible. By this she meant we need to learn to expand our auras.

Certainly this is not something I learned in my training to be an analyst, although it was implied. Many of us drawn to Jung and analytical psychology are drawn to this expansion which comes when we listen to the unconscious through dreams or imaginings and incorporate what is missing into our conscious acceptance of our whole selves. We are larger. Larger energies of the Self are accessible.

Norma T. took this a step further. She said this is reflected in the human aura. Constriction of the aura (reflecting dis-ease) results from suppression of unacceptable qualities or feelings, or from too much criticism from self or other. Expansion happens when we are joyful, grateful, and loving life.

She carried this further: when we enlarge our auras, this impacts others. I have learned that if the energies are truly from the Self and in right relationship to the ego, this expansion doesn’t eclipse the other, but provides stimulus for the expansion of his or her own aura.

This is the alchemical operation of multiplicatio, an extension of the one to the many. The student learns by transmission, or resonance, from the higher resonances of the Self stimulated by the teacher’s own personal work. My most important learnings have come from certain teachers in this way. Although these unique teachers—including Norma T.—were ahead of me, I never have felt lesser-than. Rather, I knew just a little more than I could have on my own. My growing edge expanded!

I grow increasingly aware of how important these patterns of wholeness are. Called or not called, they are here, and impact us profoundly. In these next blogs I will explore how some of these patterns have come into my own life, some of them unexpected: the proportions of our home, the scent of the essential oils we grow, walking the age-old pattern of a labyrinth, or simply, like Sabien emerging from the laundry basket, through enjoying life!

 

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Tourism and the Environment

I am copying in my letter to the editor of the Napa Valley Register from yesterday, September 20, 2015. It is accompanied today by several letters arguing that tourism is essential to the economy of our state. When profit and money become the guiding star, we lose track of wholeness. I am not against tourism, and, in fact, I love to travel. But I am learning there is the dark side to travel and tourism, and we are confronting that in Napa County. What are the ethics of travel? and of tourism? Here are some important things that you can do in contacting our county governing officials.

The Cultivation and Farming of Tourists

One of the most environmentally and socially destructive trends in agriculture in the Napa Valley is the recent expansion of the definition of agriculture to include direct marketing.

Since revision of the Winery Definition Ordinance in 2010 to include the activities of direct marketing as “accessory uses” to agriculture in our protected Ag Preserve and Ag Watershed lands, these “protected” lands are now open to such activities as “event centers” with commercial kitchens, visitation, and the selling of tickets for food and wine pairings— effectively including the cultivation and farming of tourists as an accessory use in these once-protected Ag lands.

The unintended consequences are severe: increased traffic choking our main artery roadways, deforestation and destruction of oak woodlands on our hillsides for more vineyards and wineries, decreased ground water due to watershed degradation and irrigation and winery use — which depletes neighboring wells — not to mention the increase of second homes and proliferation of short-term rentals for tourism.

Our county no longer includes tourism as an revenue source but is becoming increasingly dependent on tourists — a tourism economy. New wineries and vineyard owners are often not farmers of crops, but entrepreneurs having no idea of the local ecology and little or no experience in farming or grape growing. Many are most interested in the investment and lifestyle.

A study of the recent votes in the Agricultural Protection Advisory Committee shows some of the problems. Seventeen committee members were appointed by the Board of Supervisors from various citizen groups: two from environmental groups, two from the community, two from municipalities, two from business, two from the wine industry, two from agriculture, and one from each of the five districts. The effective result weighed in favor of business, hospitality, and the wine industry. Community, environmental, and agriculture members (six of them) often voted for preservation of agricultural lands and watersheds; the other 11 members often voted to support the business of wineries and business economies.

Any vote passing had to have a super majority, or 12 votes. Most of the time, votes did not pass, often dividing on the above lines. Recommendations by supermajority included avoiding the use of variances for achieving compliance with land use regulations (all agreed), establishing guidelines for future winery use permits based on a recommendation of the director of planning (again, all agreed) — and accepting the 2010 WDO working definition of agriculture — which includes the commercial activities of commercial kitchens, visitation, and events (12-4). The four dissenters, of course, were the representative of agriculture, the environment, and the community.

 It is critically important that the informed public stay on board and demand that this ill-thought-out provision of including marketing as an accessory use to agriculture be removed from the WDO. The preservation of our agricultural and environmentally sensitive lands is key in making the Napa Valley the beautiful valley it is, but it is also an environment at risk.

Please contact our elected and appointed officials (Board of Supervisors and Planning Commission) who serve the larger public and the commons to ask them to correct this error in the WDO.

Patricia Damery

Napa

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Peaches and Memories

I didn’t expect for us both to end up in tears. I only meant for him to sign his broadsides that I had just bought for my brother, sisters, and me, a gift to commemorate the sale of our four generation family farm. The broadside, entitled We Farm Memories,  hit a particularly poignant note.

David Mas Masumoto is a peach farming poet who read his work at a Geography of Hope conference held in Point Reyes some years ago. Most memorable was a poem story of his father bringing his grandparents to the land upon which his family now farms organic heritage peaches. His grandparents were reluctant to reconnect to land after being removed to the Japanese internment camps during the Second World War, causing them to lose everything. As Masumoto read, his daughter punctuated his words with the reverberating, deep beats of a Taiku drum.

His broadside is about peaches, memory, and stories. “A great peach can transport us to someplace else” it reads, ” the memory of a tree in a backyard, thoughts of family in summer kitchens canning or making jams…”

I was transported to the white peach tree just north of the summer kitchen in my multi-generational family’s backyard. Each summer my father waited to pick them until the fruit had just the right firm softness. The flavor ruined you on any other peach in the world. My father picked them carefully, as white peaches bruise easily, and carried them to his mother—in my early childhood—and then his wife, my mother, when my grandmother passed. The tree was old, and the quantity of fruit, scant, but for all of us, the fact of the aging tree only made these white peaches more precious. Eating them was a sacrament.

I had stood in line to get Masumoto’s signatures on all four broadsides that I had just purchased. I started to tell him, “I bought these for my sisters and brother. We just had to sell our family farm, and there was a white peach tree…” and then I could say no more, and I surprised myself by crying. He too… it was one of the moments in life when grief swells into the space of an unexpected encounter with a stranger. It was as if the pure spring of the archetypal process of loss of beloved land sudden flowed. Was this Grace? Tears ran down his cheeks as he took the pen and signed each broadside in silence. We exchanged a sad, knowing smile, and I left.

The end of the broadside reads, “These stories join our meals and create a social connection between places, people and food. With stories, we never eat alone.”

The memory of the white peach tree in what was once my family’s backyard binds us to each other and now, in a larger way, to others who have lost land loved.

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The Maturing of a Vineyard

The maturing of a vineyard is not unlike the maturing of a human being. We are of a culture that idealizes youthful image and behavior. Perhaps that is why so many people enter analysis in their early 40’s: youthful pursuits no longer make sense or work. Dreams reflect unexplored, ignored territory. So much of my work as a Jungian analyst involves this transition.

But, for whatever reason, I didn’t expect this same process with the vineyard as well!

On Saturday our son Jesse, Donald, and I met with a new Biodynamic consultant, Daphne Amory. The fourth year of drought has stressed the vines and we were worried that their twenty-some years were catching up with them. Some of the vines appear to be in decline. Common standard practice often replants when vines reach 20-25 years.

But we were favorably surprised when Daphne stated that she hated to see a vineyard pulled just as it was reaching maturity! — and that she saw little evidence of disease. She reflected how the vines were holding their shape, a good sign, the leaves spaced as they should be, although not as vigorous as we might want— the drought was affecting them. She also stated that with vines, the condition now is the result of conditions two years before. This may be reflective of our viticulture practices, changes in climate, or disease. When you are working with vines, you are working with the past and with the future. Not unlike thinking of our seven generations in our actions!

The process with Daphne is similar to Jungian analysis. Biodynamic agriculture tends to be much more what we Jungians call “feminine” in approach, meaning receptive— and in the case of farming, receptive to the beings of the plant and the soil. This means learning to listen to the earth in ways that have been lost these last 200-300 years.  Donald and I have been farming biodynamically 16 years now, and we are at a new learning curve. If we replant, we will hit this spot again, Daphne assured us. Yes, we could follow the popular vines-on steroids-approach—push the vines, get as much crop as possible out of them, wear them out, rip them out, and start over. Profit is the guiding star in this scenario, and you hope to get maximum profit, but at what cost to the soul? (And this extractive mentality, unmitigated, does cost the soul! including the Soul of the Earth.)

I was struck with the analogy of where Donald and I are. We are aging, and what we did before is not going to work this next period of time. Perhaps the vines are helping mature our attitude toward ourselves as well as the earth.

Again we were reminded of how important building the soil is. A little compost goes a long way in retaining moisture and in providing a conduit for the plant to the minerals the plant needs to flourish. So Daphne’s first recommendation in this next phase of our relationship to these vines is to heavily fertilize with compost this fall— up to 10 tons to acre. Quite a contrast to ripping out old vines in favor of youthful ones!  Again, I am reminded of analytic work, how the beginning is always a kind of composting of what has happened, a breaking down, what alchemists call nigredo. This is the beginning of transformation, and without it, nothing happens. The old way prevails.

This fall and winter we will be working with the earth, listening to the vines, students of what mature vision might entail.

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The Definition of Agriculture in Napa County

Monday, August 24, 2015, was the last meeting of APAC, the Agricultural Protection Adversary Committee, a committee composed of 17 citizens from various environmental, government, wine industry, and citizen groups, appointed by the Napa County Board of Supervisors. The object was to make recommendations on proposed changes to the Winery Definition Ordinance (WDO) about  visitation and events centers and the inclusion in the WDO of these activities as being agricultural activities in the definition of agriculture, the abundant usage of variances by the Planning Department, and the permitting of more wineries.

Many were disappointed with the results. The committee was diverse and heavily weighted on the side of winery and business interests. In fact my comment (below) about the definition of agriculture needing to first mention “stewardship of the earth” was dismissed as “cute” by a winery owner in his own public comment a few minutes later. Let’s just say, the larger issues of the sovereignty of Nature are not guiding stars for some of these people!

The good news is that the issues of Nature, and the consequences to community when we put her last, were at least raised by a number of us over and over and over. We are relentless and we are not through! Napa Vision 2050 has formed from various citizen and environmental groups who want to see balance that considers the Earth, the oak woodlands, the watersheds, and the community and related issues, like traffic, people being able to live where they work. We aren’t against wineries and vineyards; many of us own them. We just want to see the balance of business, tourism being only one aspect of that business. Please consider making even a small donation to our cause to help cover legal and expert expense for our continued work for the balanced health of Napa County. This link will take you to the site:http://www.gofundme.com/7z2qhm2s

Below is a rendition of my comments. I talk about stewardship, but I really mean sovereignty of Nature. Stewardship is an old idea that I grew up with in the Midwest that still implies dominion over nature. Each year in June we had a Stewardship Sunday which blessed the work of the farmers and reminded them of their place in the scheme of things. In those days the farmers had a humble and grateful feeling toward the land in their care. We so desperately need to remember our place, or Nature will do so!

 I am Patricia Damery from Dry Creek Road. My husband and I grow grapes and other things as well. The definition of agriculture is not the topic today and that’s appropriate given there’s so little time left in the agenda.

But I want to say that I find it alarming that there is no mention of stewardship in our definition of agriculture. We hit all of the extractive notes, making sure of profit. Yes, that is a part of farming!

Having grown up in a small farm in the Midwest at another time before agribusiness subsumed small farms with Ag chemicals and mono-cropping, I am particularly aware this is missing. Stewardship was an understood. It was top of the list. When profit trumped stewardship, people got sick.  Communities deteriorated. The topsoils if the old prairie are so deep they can be abused for a long time, and they are. But even abuse of rich soils has a limit.

In many ways the issue of stewardship is implied in many of the arguments that we are discussing here, but it needs to be the very first thing in the definition of agriculture and agriculture activities: that our purpose is to protect this land, much of the Ag Watershed (AW) lands characterized as “brittle” due to water and thin soils. This is so different from just viewing these  AW soils as “a great place for a great Cab”.

In the end, may our great great grandchildren look back to the decisions that will be suggested by you today, grateful for your foresight into the future.

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