Our Agreement with the Cranes

"We made an agreement with the cranes, with the land, with the animals in our care. It’s part of what makes our food different.” - Jill

There is a deeper meaning to why we farm the way we do that is hard to put into words, but we know you understand it too. 

It involves a way of being in the world, instinctively knowing not just our connection to nature but knowing our kinship to the land, the animals, the living systems … without any notion of separation. 

When domesticated agriculture began 10,000 years ago, the once interconnected mindset of earlier humans with nature began slowly shifting toward separation.  However, many indigenous cultures around the world continued to cultivate the land in a way that regenerated, conserved, and recycled within the systems of nature. 

These cultures honoured not just the land but the sacred reciprocity inherent in the living connection we share with all life… as when we allow soil life to thrive, it allows us to thrive through the food it grows.  When we care for and nourish animals, they care for and nourish us. True ecological wisdom says "the web of life is also a food web".  Our earth’s ancestors understood this.  

The varied levels of disconnect from this wisdom over recent decades have given rise to a forgetfulness creating dire consequences for our health and planet alike.  

But this doesn’t seem to be a time in history to dwell on the devastation. Rather, it is the time to use it as a teacher and motivator to begin remembering again, re-learning and embracing the wisdom of sacred reciprocity, which so many are doing… and which the regenerating of our food systems and future depend on and will be built upon.

When we came across this podcast teaching by Rowen White (an indigenous farmer, seed steward, author and orator), it spoke to the deeper meaning of our farm, to the agreement of caring for one another we made with the cranes, land, and animals at the very beginning. We hope it inspires you as it does us:

" … a long-long time ago our ancestors came into an agreement with our plant relatives – the wild and the cultivated ones – and there were particular plants - corn, beans and squash - that gave up a little of their wildness and we gave up a little of our wildness as humans. And we came into this beautiful covenant and this agreement that we would care for each other...  

And there were some plants I’ve been told that decided they didn’t want to be cultivated and that we were going to have a different relationship to them, but those agreements, that covenant, those sacred relationships, we carry those in our blood, in our bones – like wild rivers they run in our blood and in our bones."

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