Why Love Farm?
When I acquired my father's farm in 2020, I felt a name change would be auspicious. My dad had swiped the name White O Morn Farms from his all time favorite movie, John Ford's The Quiet Man, in which prize fighter Sean Thorton (played by John Wayne) returns to his ancestral home in Ireland to start a new life. Though we never spoke in depth about his name choice, I believe my father was appropriating the entire premise of The Quiet Man to rehabilitate his own life story. But that's another tale for another time.
I'm also a fan of The Quiet Man, but our family farm was about to get radically wilds resonant, a narrative quite unprecedented in the history of cinema. I started the new name quest by tinkering with exotic TLDs or top level domains on the www. I had already deployed scads of WordPress sites with virtuosic domain names, (desire.movie, artist.house), so when I found "love.farm", (for around $200), I knew the cosmos and perhaps my dead dad had sent me a sign. Ultimately, The Quiet Man is about love - fierce love that frees a man and makes him whole by the most direct path possible. So Love Farm echos my father's choice while amping up the adventure with intense clarity. And cliches notwithstanding, love is fundamental after all, the ultimate choice that empowers and frees us.
If I've lived many life times I can't say, maybe so. Seems likely that over the last 300,000 years of human-ish adventure, advanced civilizations have risen and then imploded or been erased by cosmic impacts. Contemporary shenanigans by "elites" could but be the latest iteration of an ancient pattern, we may have bumped our collective heads against global tyranny many times before. Maybe now we can decide to duck and slip on by.
In this chapter of planetary history, the choice between capitulation and regeneration is crispy, crystal clear to some of us. Not everyone enjoys this clarity, to be sure. That's ok, even optimal. Some seeds don't sprout after the first rain, but need a second or third rain. Other seeds might wait through a year of rains before popping out roots and leaflets. There's always sprouting going on regardless of surprises or setbacks. Some of us have definitely sprouted, many are stirring, yearning, ready.
In the twenty teens, (back before it was cool), my buddy Joe Cissell and I played a great game of World Conspiracy. Joe was the first really curious person I met after the decade of occlusion following 9/11. We enjoyed a mutual discovery of how whacked the so called dominant paradigm was and realized that our received history was, in Graham Hancock's words, built on foundations of sand. We reveled in the unfolding epiphany that pretty much everything we had been told growing up, encouraged to believe and defend, was just wrong, inaccurate, dare I say... lies. There weren't many other kids willing to play in our sandbox... until 2020.
Love Farm became our get out of jail free card. After the pandemic was declared, Michigan farms were considered essential businesses and farm workers were not subject to travel restrictions. Friends started showing up to help plan the first garden. James and Maia occupied the farm's Airstream and then returned for a visit in the early summer of 2021 with a converted bus, joining Ariel in her own Airstream. Sarah Kate showed up in late summer with Bear the dog and has co-stewarded the farm ever since, expanding the garden and hosting farm play dates and Curiosity Fairs for families.
Our little tribe is focused on solutions rather than complaints. There was a time for research and fully grasping the implications. That was fun for sure, but what's more exciting is the opportunity unfolding for those who can shake of the miasma of despair, let go of anger, transform fear into inspiration. Take some time to mourn if you must, but eventually bury your dead and let them push up daisies. We can create whatever world we want, starting right now.
Learn more about our wild schemes in beautiful Beulah, Benzie County, Michigan and how to collaborate with us at http://www/love.farm.