Since I excitedly took the director position at Tamarack Farm, people have been asking me, “why?”. Some were genuinely curious and others critically looked at me as if I might be at least partly losing my mind. I’ve outlined the top ten (in no particular order) reasons I’m super excited about joining the Farm community this summer.
REASON 10: Meaning Work
I truly believe that meaningful work is one of the greatest gifts you can give any person. At its best, work connects us to others, the earth and ourselves. A farmer has noble work to be done as a farm holds a good amount of resources for the community. To care for the land and bring its fruit (whether tomatoes or wood for building or heat, or wool) to meet the needs of local folks is honorable work. I’m excited to spend time at Tamarack Farm, because it’s a place that offers young people (and adults) an authentic experience of meaningful work. Adults and youth work together to provide the basic needs of their community.
Taking a step back…maybe it’s important to look at what makes work meaningful?
There’s all kinds of meaningful work. At a very basic level work feels significant when it provides for the basic needs (of a very local community): Food, shelter, warmth.
Another important piece of the meaningful work equations is a consideration of the impact of what we do and how we do it: On people, the earth, and the economy. Being involved in food production from seed to harvest to plate, turning milk to butter to spread on hand-made bread, using wood from our forest to build a new cabin and heat our water…and along the way reflecting on impact of this work vs. the work needed to support the way so many of us live in and ever-consuming culture. All of this excites me…this experience is a gift for anyone, but especially a youth with their whole life open before them.
Through building projects and creating value-added products – from art to cheese-fermented veggies – our youth also are gaining skills in problem solving from their experiences. Product development (from what we produce on our land—cultivated and wild) and design (for next year’s new cabins) offer young people arenas to develop these much-needed skills for the 21st century.
I’ve spent a good portion of my life exploring the best ways for people to learn (I mean really grow/ change their perspectives on themselves and the world—not just memorize facts and spit them out for a test). The input/ output methods utilized in most schools today was designed to prepare learners to work in the industrial era. Today we need youth who can solve our ever-increasing list of problems—identifying needs and taking steps to meet them (without fear of failure—and measuring impact), and what better place to do that than on a farm.
A popular way for teens to spend their summers has become traveling outside the U.S. to complete a service project for a community in another country. I see great value in sharing resources and perhaps learning from other cultures foreign to us.
However, work becomes more meaningful when it’s generated very locally; whether it’s figuring out how to entertain yourself together with community members or solving the genuine basic needs/ desires of local folks. Work for YOUR community, not only decreases negative impact (as most of us know through the locavore movement); but it offers a connection which has been lost in the current way most North Americans work and learn. When we work on the land we live on, we develop a deep relationship of respect and care with our forests and fields (which I would contend adds to spiritual health). In a very local work system, we connect deeply with others in our community as we continually look for ways to use our land+ideas+work+skills to meet their needs. Our work is not arbitrary when we see (for a made-up example) that folks in our community enjoy knitting and would like to purchase wool to create hats for residents of a local women’s shelter for needed winter warmth. Being able to see the value of work, is a big and exciting piece of Tamarack Farm.