Farm Friday, December 9th, 2022
Frosty mornings
When it is foggy on a winter’s night I know that frost will find a way to sit on any outdoor surface. Yesterday I took a hike with students looking for fresh fisher tracks. We didn’t find any on the hike, but the world was still and beautiful and I took a few photos of the frost.
I have been thinking about privilege and how the farm offers middle/owning-class kids a chance to do unpleasant jobs. This week we had to clean some rotten squash that had been eaten by mice out of the barn and also put up a fence in the cold and the wind. In both cases, there was some understandable resistance to the work. During one of our meetings, I talked about how I personally want to avoid unpleasant work, but part of being in this community is that each of us does our part. If I sit down and shirk the work, it just makes other people do more work and it recreates the privilege dynamics present in the larger society, where people who have the option to do it avoid unpleasant jobs. I don’t know how much sunk in, but it helped me see for myself why this school has a farm. Dirty work.
In writing news, we have a #RaWBC book club book selected for December. It is Derrick Bell’s Faces at the Bottom of the Well. I started reading it yesterday and I think it links well with Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste. Both books look at the intractability of race relations in the United States and offer insights.
