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Not So Fast: The Argument for Slowing Down in Virtually Every Aspect of Life
Rev. John Gibb Millspaugh had big plans for his trip to Utah last month.
A group tours Waltham Fields Community Farm after a reading on alternatives to agribusiness, including such Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farms. (Photos By Jonathan Wiggs/Globe Staff) He was going to be in Salt Lake City to talk at a Unitarian conference about the importance of slowing down to examine the spiritual implications of food choices. Afterward, Millspaugh figured he and his wife, Sarah, would hit as many tourist sites as possible.
But at the last minute, he decided to take his own advice: The Millspaughs, who are co-ministers of the Winchester Unitarian Society, narrowed their vacation itinerary to a single bird sanctuary and a couple of national parks in Moab.
“When I spend more time in fewer places, and allow myself to have a deeper encounter rather than checking off a checklist of places I’ve visited,’’ said Millspaugh, 35, “I develop a profound awareness of why it was on my list in the first place.’’
While Millspaugh’s conference talk touched on, among other things, the principles of the “slow food’’ movement, when he scaled back his vacation, he was joining another fledgling movement: slow travel.
Slowing down, an idea that might have sounded downright un-American not that long ago, is - you should pardon the expression - gathering speed. Slow food and slow travel are part of a broader slow movement that has expanded to slow cities, slow parenting, slow homes, slow marketing, slow reading, slow transportation, slow craft, slow art, slow energy, slow math, slow science, even slow money.
“There’s no question that it’s got a foothold in the US,’’ said Carl Honoré, a Canadian journalist whose two books, “In Praise of Slowness: Challenging the Cult of Speed,’’ and “Under Pressure: Rescuing Our Children From the Culture of Hyper-Parenting,’’ have made him a quasi-spokesman for the whole idea. “It’s on the cultural radar.’’
The popularity of slowing down could stem from its implicit challenge to the assumptions that undergird the rat race. After all, when more than seven million Americans have lost their jobs since December 2007, bringing the total number of unemployed to 14 million, the idea of the rat race loses some status.
That doesn’t mean that for a nation that’s always been in a hurry, it will be easy to get the iPhone-tapping, Kobe-beef eating, SUV-driving, jet-setting, status-obsessed speedsters to hit the brakes. Americans have operated on the principle that faster is better from the Industrial Revolution to the assembly line to the Jet Age to the Internet to the BlackBerry.
Against such ingrained habits, the slow movement says, essentially: slow down and live better. Honoré calls it “a cultural revolution against the notion that faster is always better.’’ He emphasizes that does not mean shifting from the fast lane to the breakdown lane, but rather finding “the right speed’’ for life’s tasks, and “living life rather than rushing through it.’’ The slow movement urges changes in lifestyles and workplace habits that move away from multitasking, competition, and compulsive consumerism. The end result, advocates say, will be better physical and mental health, and more social interaction that can tighten bonds between individuals and their communities. The movement’s guiding precept is this: Savor experiences rather than marking them off your mental checklist before racing on to the next thing. “Once you get this simple idea in your head,’’ Honoré says, “it affects everything you do: sex, parenting, exercise, travel, design, food, medicine, you name it.’’
Slow food, for example, means taking the time to prepare meals with fresh food from local sources rather than gobbling fast-food or having rare sea bass shipped from halfway around the world, and then taking the time to appreciate both the taste of the food and the companionship with family and friends. Slow parenting means that mom and dad let their kids be kids rather than turn childhood into a pressurized competition on the fast track toward academic success. The design principle of slow cities can be summarized as more open space, fewer cars, more pedestrians. Slow money’s aim is to, in the words of the Brookline-based Slow Money Alliance, “reconnect investors to that in which they are investing and to the places in which they live.’’
“A year ago people would have just laughed, saying there is no such thing as money that is too fast,’’ said Woody Tasch, chairman and president of the alliance, a network of investors and entrepreneurs who support small, independent, local enterprises.
But now, Tasch said, investors are listening, not laughing. “I’ve been thinking about this for 30 years, but I’ve never had the opportunity to talk about it in public and have it so immediately understood,’’ he said.
The chastened national mood has some slow advocates hoping Americans will turn their backs on the culture of acceleration. “We have been living a very fast life, and it certainly has come back to bite us, with the economic blowup of the past year,’’ says Willow Blish, a leader of Slow Food Boston. “That has made people rethink their lives a little bit more.’’
“This is a crisis triggered by people going way too fast,’’ Honoré says. “Everyone was charging along in a stampede, in pursuit of fast profit. And look at the apocalyptic mess it’s landed us in.’’ The idea, he says, that “progress equals acceleration’’ was already under assault from many younger people who are seeking deeper meaning in their careers and questioning the old notion that he-who-dies-with-the-most-toys-wins.
But not everyone is eager to jettison the hare and emulate the tortoise. Wasn’t it the actress and author Carrie Fisher who wryly served up our de facto national motto? “The trouble with instant gratification is that it takes too long.’’
“The historical record shows that people have never opted for slower,’’ says Stephen Kern, author of “The Culture of Time and Space: 1880 to 1918’’ and a history professor at Ohio State University. “The logic of history is driven by speed. And when the economy gets bad, people are doing things as fast as possible because faster is cheaper.’’
Even some analysts sympathetic to the broader goals of the slow movement question whether it can ever fully take hold in the United States. “For some people it’s not going to feel good at all. It will be, where’s my BlackBerry? said Bella DePaulo, a visiting professor of psychology at the University of California Santa Barbara. “I think the slow movement folks will find each other and do their thing and mostly be ignored by everybody else.’’
Or maybe “everybody else’’ will see more people slowing down and feel tempted to join the crowd.
Blish, 37, a Pilates instructor and nutritional consultant, says a growing stream of people are tapping into the resources provided by Slow Food Boston, including sessions on how to preserve food from harvest, how to make jam, how to prepare Neapolitan cuisine from scratch, and how to make tomato sauce and salsa. Millspaugh, the minister, has found an eager audience in hundreds of congregations across the country for an “ethical eating’’ study guide that illustrates how changing to a “slow’’ approach to eating can align with their values by, for example, embracing organic food and cutting down on “resource-intensive’’ food types like meat. Tasch says a “slow money’’ approach that created investment strategies for valuable local institutions could benefit renewable energy projects, education programs, and even the struggling newspaper industry.
Internationally, the slowness movement is likewise gaining adherents. Geir Berthelsen, founder of the Norway-based World Institute of Slowness, said more corporations in Europe are asking his advice for ways to change how their workplaces function. “The financial crisis is a consequence of a fast society,’’ said Berthelsen. “Too much in the window, and nothing in the stockroom. The focus has been on the end product, not the process.
“In a fast company, they are in a firefighting mode. They are reactive; they don’t have time to think,’’ said Berthelsen. “You will have people being creative and inspired if you take away the short-term focus.’’
For all its emphasis on slowness, the institute is quick to spot an opportunity: It is branching out beyond its think-tank origins to launch “Slow Production,’’ whose stated aim is to “bring about change within the world of producing goods, foods, and services for people’’ and whose hallmarks are billed as “transparency, simplicity, consciousness.’’ This fall, Berthelsen said, the institute will introduce “Slow Coffee’’ in the United States.
As for Millspaugh, he says his go-slow approach deepened his vacation experience in Utah, and taught him this lesson: “I see more and experience more when I see less, in a way.’’
50 Comments so far
Show All"faster is cheaper" - as a quote in the article said?
it's pure NONSENSE.
look at what the "faster cheaper" results are:
POOR QUALITY ECONOMY. POOR QUALITY LIVING.
Financial implosion...everything else follows.
DRIVE THE PLANET FASTER - they say - look where it gets you - CRASH!
POOR QUALITY, Yes, but very fast, very high value financial rewards for 1% of the people at the expense of 99% of the people.
I don't think even one person on this thread has grasped this point. I think part of the problem is people like on this posting dream beautiful/ethical dreams about what should be, but rarely can figure out whats going on and why the world is working for the rich the way IT IS. jl
jl4069-We talk about "whats going on and why the world is working for the rich the way IT IS" all the time. They make us harried and overworked. They want our lives to be a brief as that of a rat.
"They make us harried and overworked. They want our lives to be a brief as that of a rat."
And they are doing a damn good job of it, with no major obstacles in sight. History teaches us that only very very dedicated and unified large groups of people working as one can move mountains. We have no such peoples anywhere in sight, and the first step is for us to acknowledge this; not continuing to think we are on our way towards equality. Something like I suggested above might be a start, a slow down among people with jobs that cannot be replaced. That would be something to behold. Poor people getting loud will have minimal effect. JL
A press release for a 2006 art exhibition:
"Slow Painting: The Deliberate Renaissance
The Oglethorpe University Museum of Art is proud to debut Slow Painting: A Deliberate Renaissance Sunday, September 17 through December 17. This groundbreaking exhibition explores a new art movement focused on highly skilled figure painting harkening back to the Old Masters of Europe
Slow Painting: A Deliberate Renaissance brings together over 40 contemporary paintings and drawings by 22 artists. These New Realism artists intend to lead contemporary art into the future. With its attention to detail and beauty, slow painting is very rapidly gaining recognition as a bold new movement and is being lauded as New York’s new "fast".
OUMA's Fall 2006 exhibition has been described as “ground breaking” by the director of a premiere NYC gallery and a national arts publication. About 40 contemporary paintings and drawings by artists who care about beauty and the history of fine art will be shown in this exhibition. According the OUMA Director, Lloyd Nick, “the exhibition will usher in a new Renaissance in art.”
Artists include: Richard Maury, Jeffrey Mims, Francisco Roa, Jacob Collins, Renée Foulks, Grayon Parrish, Olivera Pudar, Kamille Corey, Adrian Gottlieb, John Morra, Jimmy Darrell Sanders and Christopher Pugliese."
Source: http://museum.oglethorpe.edu/slowpainting/
I concur with this article. Many years ago, I "dropped out" of my high-flying job in Washington DC, and took up a part-time job in a sleepy college in the middle of nowhere, New Mexico. I earn only a fraction of what I once did, and make up some of the difference by consulting, growing our own vegetables, bartering goods and services, and after-school tuition of local American Indians. My wife and I both agree that it was the best move we ever made. My blood pressure dropped 20 points and I am back to my fighting weight. Anxiety is a thing of the past. Over the years I took our trailer off-grid. Our trees supply all the wood we could ever need for heat. In the canyon we receive no radio, TV or cell-phone signals. Our neighbors are deer, elk, coyotes, bear, mountain lion and we have seen one Mexican Gray wolf.
Sounds like Nirvana? Yes, it is, but not everyone can adapt. While isolation works for us, many have tried and failed. An agrarian lifestyle is not for everyone.
I also concur with the spirit of this article.
I, too, dropped out of the megacity and office work to live in the countryside (chickens, bees, sizeable vegetable garden, carpentry). I believe that small scale is the wave of the future (we have little choice, in fact, if we want to survive as a civilization and a species): small towns, villages, local food production, and such. In other words, no more giganticism, no more globalization, no more empire of military bases (that applies to the US, of course,) no more skyscrapers, no more space program, no more huge universities and huge schools (with classes of 100 students and up), no more huge museums of so-called contemporary art, no more gambling casinos, no more Las Vegas, no more Hollywood, no more huge rock concerts, and, eventually, no more cars altogether, etc.
Right On, WTF and Abendland!
While I agree with the general good-nature of this article I am skeptical of any "isms" e.g. that by placing the term "slow" in front of any recognized moderninity that, simply and suddenly, we will appreciate what the song of life has to teach us. It is, in essence, a form of branding, which is another form of control.
The article also forgets that slowness has the wonderful by-product of frugality; the "less" in our lives needs to be equally emphasised. It comes down to Quantity vs. Quality - One rises when the other diminishes, and both cannot exist simultaneously. You cannot have the Ford Motor Co. produce over 350,000 cars in a single quarter AND have them be quality automobiles.
A probable remedy will emerge when we challange our notion of "progress" - That we are always becoming better, bigger, faster, and more "evolved". This is not the way of a civilized society; it is the way of cancer.
good point about the 'branding' tendency.... i mean, look at the way 'organic' and 'local' and 'green' sometimes get coopted in truly orwellian fashion. and the quantity vs. quality thing is rarely looked at much.... more being so often equated with 'better'. so far, though, 'slow' for me has been a good word, meaning more deliberate or thoughtful or patient.... qualities we can certainly stand to have 'more' of in our lives these days.
You're right: I notice more often than not that the slogans read "Buy Organic" or "Buy Local". What? No disscussion? No "why" we need organic or "how" we got into this mess in the first place?
thanks for the slow-down reminder..........
the speed of typical (north american urban, at any rate) life contributes, often unwittingly, and certainly intentionally, to the violence in our times... both military (for grasping at resources to fuel more of that speed) and institutional/economic violence (the subtler, but no less devastating kind that goes on because we can't slow down enough to truly embody the decency we espouse in our everyday actions). thomas merton spoke to this in a couple good quotes i'll share here:
To allow yourself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything is itself to succumb to the violence of our times.
and
We live in a society whose whole policy is to excite every nerve in the human body and keep it at its hightest pitch of artificial tension, to strain every human desire to the limit and to create as many new desires and synthetic passions as possible.
---and that second quote was written in 1948!!!!!!
i think there's a 'recovery' (and a strengthening of a new kind of immune system) of sorts underway among those of us who have felt that fever pitch and couldn't help but notice.... couldn't help but connect the dots between the bombs for oil and the crashes of extreme sport enthusiasts ---the frenzy to sell our hyped-up 'conveniences' to the third world and their ever-growing toxic landfills populated with the desperately poor and the over-the-top excesses of our celebs. it's a sigh of great relief and the beginning of a true healing to discover, whether through a slowed-down meal of home-grown greens, an experiment with off-grid living or biking rather than driving to work, our human-ness and the largely missed-before sounds of birds, the kaliedescopic beauty of light through leaves and the conversations that widen their potential beyond the superficial or cynical or media-obsessed when we slow down to BE HERE NOW.
Thank you for bringing Thomas Merton into the disscussion; we need him now more than ever.
Beautiful and inspirational post...!
I live in the city and I bike to work, and work outdoors...
I take the windy forested streets and paths instead of the roman street grid when possible...
Even if it takes another fifteen minutes to do so...
I play music instead of watching tv... I own a sailboat instead of a car...
I have a kitchen garden and forage for food from the neighborhood's abundant fruit trees...
It is a matter of quality of experience, not quantity of things...
You Appear To Be A Visionary. Yet, Visionaries are in the Now, where everything that bothers You is non-present. Not the history of this Nation, the World, the Climate, nothing. Nothing can ever bother in the state of a Mind at Peace with its origin. The farther away people are from Being, the more they incessantly 'need to Have or Do'. Capitalism would not work without this little Human 'Glitch'. Transform complexes, guilt and lack of confidence in to cash. The Human Drama.
There is something like resourceful and renewable existence. IT starts in our Minds. CD has become My Mind's only contact or 'interactive' connection to the 'World Out There'. The 'News' here are mostly for people with dense painbodies. Negative 'news', frustrating 'news', disturbing 'news', outrageous 'news' and 'news' of hopelessness.
Back to the Mind, everything that occupies Our Minds will ultimately influence, effect and create Our Human Experience. Therfore, don't BE Shy! Envision a Planet in 'bearable' Harmony, filled with content Minds and the understanding that IT will give You back whatever You Put In.
Believe That You Can Change Your Beliefs.
This is great, now I can catch up!
"...in the first four months of 2009, more bicycles were sold in the US than cars and trucks put together (over 2.55 million bicycles were purchased, compared to fewer than 2.4 million cars and trucks)."
Source: "Look on the Bright Side," by Richard Heinberg (Museletter 206, June 2009), at http://www.richardheinberg.com/Museletter.html
that's good! funny...among a few other things - i used to tell friends in the 1990's , just one of those conversations over coffee about "things in the world", u know:
"watch...one of the businesses, if you are business-oriented, that will almost always be GOOD - and prosperous and profitable, is the BIKE selling business.." -
after 9/11 - i told friends: watch: the SECURITY business is going toe xplode, if you are interested in "investing" go there, whatever your moral squirms are...the USA will become more and more a police-security state...just watch...
DURING the campaign of george bush in 2000- i told them:
"this man is up to NO good..he wants WAR, no question, and is looking for an excuse, just watch...and there will be great lies told, people most of us are not even aware of will come out of the woodwork (neocons, it turned out)..and the economy will suffer greatly in accelerated fashion..."
i also told them - because a few were so proud about "capitalism" and wall street:
just watch...THAT wall street of yours? that's probably mostly phantom value wealth. all make-believe and these compound interest nonsense they claim? that's all going to crash down one day. just watch>
it makes me laugh despite the tragic truth of it all.
since the writing was ALWAYS on the wall..it never needed sophistication to see right through it.
same as Afghanistan of Mister Obama and all other so-called "benevolent" us policies...
I'm putting in a vote for "balance". Yes we need to move slower, and remind ourselves that that too is a part of experience, but it is with end goal of balance.
Life's short - Don't rush through it.
when a society forces its citizens to "hurry up" in order to "get things done" for the sake "of competition" this is not civilized.
it can have the trappings of "progress" and "modernity" but this is really just SLAVERY.
the western orientation for "speed in order to compete" which is imposed on the rest of the world as a "structure" is really barbaric - and merely destroys the human capacity to appreciate what the world gives us - at its own "glacial" pace.
and when that is done - we detach ourselves from our world -- and we eventually pay the price .
What about applying 'slow' to our mental life? Not jumping to conclusions. Getting more information before deciding. Waiting for insight rather than reacting immediately. Seeking alternative explanations. Figuring out how to express ideas forcefully, yet in a way that does not threaten others.
Some national problems come from not thinking problems through--Iraq being a prime example. How about our government delaying the decision-making process until various viewpoints (including all informed viewpoints) can be considered? We would be a lot better off if we would slow down our thinking as well as our actions.
VERY good point there.... very.
in that great Story in three books - made into a movie - by JRR TOLKIEN -- the fantasy "LORD OF THE RINGS".....
the very old "tree-creature" - the ENT - tells the little Hobbits - when they asked him why Ents take so LONG to say anything....
"hmmm...hoooo....haaaa...hooommmmm....we do not hurry....and say things quickly.....because we do not say something unless it takes a very loooooonggg, loooonnggg time to say....hooo,huuummmmm"....
but that goes with the description by one of the Hobbits to his hobbit friends much later about the Ents:
"waht can i say?.....welll.....it is like nothing we ever experienced...but of all - it was the eyes...it was like looking into a deep, deep well...of such knowledge and age....but those eyes were also eternally young....that considered you patiently with their look...i felt very naked ".....
and of course -- the ENTS - more than even the immortal , magically powerful elves -- "can feel the water, the earth , i feel the air, the sun, the wind, i can feel the grass grow..".....
and therefore have JOY in all that lives.
Aah! A Carlos Castaneda/Tolkien fan! May My Greetings reach You in a state of Bliss!
Tolkien knew a lot to say the least. Unable to convey It in any ordinary form, he decided to write a book about it. Lucky for Us that it became more than one book, even though it is for the only purpose of avoiding walking around with a 2000 page thick hardcover that contains the whole story available in one mean. alone for reasons of sleep depriviation s single 'Lord Of The Rings' version would Be too much to be exposed to.
The Human Mind is a beautiful Flower. It is already very prettt when it is still small. Because it is a flower. And we are not thinking about flowers that are not nice.
Our Minds are Converters. They convert Energy, the one that You can check out with a volt meter, into different stages thereof. Let's say I ask You to sit down in a rustic room in Somewhereland. It's a farm and its buildings look like cartoon dwellings. There is no table in the room, so I ask You to build one.
I forgot to tell You that in Somewhereland, everything You believe or focus on comes true. No Doubt.
You start to ponder about the table, 'a' table, 'the' table. You see it. You hone it, sand it, shave it, shape it and finally You put olive oil on the wood to preserve it. So it looks great and smells very nice.
Back in our so-called 'reality' Your mind was engaging in the absorption of something 'interesting', 'funny', 'silly', 'stupid',
or 'You name it'. Our Minds can be treated lovingly or strainously. But They Are by nature more like the 'Curious' Energyfield, always into something. As the Human Mind is constantly into something to an even larger degree, seemingly pre-dominantly calibrated for Negativity Minds will find it hard to feel joy about the struggle they call 'Life'. Like in Electricity the current travels from Minus to Plus. Out Of Mindlessness comes Mindfulness. The Lightning goes from the bottom to the top. Ect. Our Minds provide Us with infinite possibilities. A 'Slow Mind' will BE but Aligned with the Energy that has borne Itself into existance.
Tolkien and others knew, felt, that there is no way You can people tell 'how IT IS'. That's Why they call IT 'ineffable'. When You finally reach that moment of BEING IT, You will become inspired to 'do something'. Something created out of Inspiration has a different Energyfield than something created out of fear, greed or mere egotism. Inspiration can only arise out of silence. Not necessary physical silence but the 'Inner' One. People have spend their entire lives to develop 'new' 'Meditation' Techniques in order to BE closer to IT.
My favorite Alignment Program is called 'Feel The Earth Rotation'
Slow IS The Go!
Believe That You Can Change Your Beliefs.
drosera
Most amazing to see Your post popping up, when I was pondering about the question: What About Thinking?
You Got It Right There.
Thank You for bringing my thoughts on the screen, without typing them. That is amazing! On the other hand, when we all agree upon Energy Being Us, Thoughts will slow down. The whole Educational System is lethal.
Then the Mantra of 'By The Sweat You Shall Make It.' or 'You Too Can Become A Millionaire!'
As time is foremost a human invention and not really of any concern for all the other living Beings on this planet, its constant propaganda and subtle as the cutting speed of action sequences in 'Adrenalin' Movies, to the fetish of speed itself, they are the consequences of a mutual, collective 'Attention Deficit Hyper Activity Disorder'. Humankind has ADHD. The good news are there is no more need for 'news' as those would not be news anymore. They would be 'Olds'. Whithout news everything slows down considerably. Time utilized to think about the same things over and over again without producing improved results will be dissolved through the 'Now'.
To emphasize my point I recommend to watch the Motion Picture 'Spaceballs' and watch the scene with 'Instant Video Cassettes'.
When Is The Now?
The best side effect of overall slow down and noncareer is the ability of the cells to regenerate themselves. Hence the Health Benefits of the 'Slow Life'.
Aloha Now!
Believe That You Can Change Your Beliefs.
Speed kills
This years farmers markets have been particularly enjoyable. The slow movement is catching on. People insist on localism, quality, and uniqueness. It has become a social event where like minded people take the time to visit with one another. Fresh healthy breads and pastries, fair trade coffee, home grown fruits and vegetables, unique and appropriate locally crafted items, home made jellies and jams, canopies, unbrellas, and brightly colored table clothes all add to the slow and festive atmosphere. The markets are mostly in pleasant environments, along a river, lake, or park. The cool breezes of early morning and the soft light of dawn makes it all very enjoyable and healthy.
there was an article in new york times - for once a good one -
about how YOUNG americans are abandoning their potentials in the Wall street -= con games - and going back to farming -
many are so poor - and could only put together their little farms - 6 acres, usually - by banding together with a friend or two ...spend years looking for locations they can afford or rent.and close to farmers markets or highways to sell their produce..and have to live very frugally...
one mother - worried about why her daughter , after graduating from an ivy league school - with NO experience whatsoever in the hard life of farming - went for it...and upon one day visiting her daughter in the little farm - said:
"when I saw her there, picking and caring for the vegetables, all day under the sun - and heard the silence, the quiet, the birds, teh wind - the peace - I finally understood: THIS is why she chose this"
the grasping capitalist generation has messed up both america and the world.
some others tried a different tack: two young men formed a business - supporting peasants in south america (i think it is nicaragua) - who cultivate traditionally a certain plant - maybe it is a kind of tea or coffee or something beneficial -
that is very high energy content -
and they are committed to sharing their profits equitably with the peasants - saying that "we can not go on just thinking of profits - the people who grow these for us ARE our business..their welfare and their environment's is everyone else's". so - i hope i can remember that brand they will start to sell soon and be their customer too.
the young of america are TRULY its future for good.
may they keep on !!
Great!
It's nice to know some people are doing the right thing.
Thank you.
Leaving Behind the Trucker Hat
Chris Ramirez for The New York Times
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/03/16/fashion/16farm600.1.jpg
CITY SLICKERS? KayCee Wimbish, 32, a former teacher, moved to Tivoli, N.Y., to raise sheep and chickens with Owen O’Connor, 22.
Chris Ramirez for The New York Times
GOING ORGANIC Miriam Latzer and Danny Percich, a farmhand, at Hearty Roots farm.
THEIR Carhartts are no longer ironic. Now they have real dirt on them.
Until three years ago, Benjamin Shute was living in Williamsburg, where he kept Brooklyn Lager in his refrigerator and played darts in a league.
Raised on the Upper East Side by a father who is a foundation executive and a mother who writes about criminal justice, Mr. Shute graduated from Amherst and worked for an antihunger charity. But something nagged at him. To learn about food production, he had volunteered at a farm in Massachusetts. He liked the dirt, the work and the coaxing of land long fallow into producing eggplant and garlic.
He tried growing strawberries on his roof in Brooklyn, but it didn’t scratch his growing itch.
And so last week, Mr. Shute could be found here, elbow-deep in wet compost two hours north of New York City, filling greenhouse trays for onion seeds. Along with a partner, Miriam Latzer, he runs Hearty Roots, a 25-acre organic farm.
“I never thought I wanted to farm,” Mr. Shute said. “But it feels like an honest living.”
His partner, Ms. Latzer (the two are not a couple) is 33 and a former urban planner. Her parents, a professor and a librarian, “think its crazy that I’m a farmer,” she said. “They wonder what planet I came from.”
This one. Steeped in years of talk around college campuses and in stylish urban enclaves about the evils of factory farms (see the E. coli spinach outbreaks), the perils of relying on petroleum to deliver food over long distances (see global warming) and the beauty of greenmarkets (see the four-times-weekly locavore cornucopia in Union Square), some young urbanites are starting to put their muscles where their pro-environment, antiglobalization mouths are. They are creating small-scale farms near urban areas hungry for quality produce and willing to pay a premium.
“Young farmers are an emerging social movement,” said Severine von Tscharner Fleming, 26, who is making a documentary called “The Greenhorns” about the trend.
While this is hardly the first time that idealistic young people wanted to get back to the garden, the current crop have advantages over their forebears from the 1960s and 70s, many of whom, inspired by the Whole Earth Catalog or Wendell Berry’s books about agrarian values, headed to the country, only to find it impossible to make a living.
But the growing market for organic and locally grown produce is making it possible for well-run small farms to thrive, said Ken Meter, 58, who studies the economics of food as an analyst at the Crossroads Resource Center, a nonprofit advocacy group for local food initiatives that is based in Minnesota.
“A lot of people in our 20s went to the land and wanted to farm and had a lot of enthusiasm, but not many resources,” he said. “It has only been the last five years where the payment from working your fingers to the bone and supplying urban markets with high-quality produce has been enough where you could imagine making a living.”
Whether young, first-generation farmers constitute a flood or trickle is difficult to say. But many long-time observers of small farms say they have noticed an increase in recent years among college graduates who want to farm, even if they intern at established farms or rent tiny parcels.
“We’ve had a big spike in the last decade and especially in the last few years of people who are new to farming applying to sell at Greenmarket,” said Gabrielle Langholtz, manager of special projects for the Manhattan-based Greenmarket, which runs 46 farmers’ markets around the city. “Maybe they went to liberal arts schools and read Michael Pollan,” she said, referring to the author of “The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals,” (Penguin Press HC, 2006), “and shopped at farmers markets and said, ‘I’m going to buy a farm upstate and sell to Greenmarket.’ ” The typical size of farms that sell at Greenmarket is 50 to 100 acres, she said.
Nationally, there were 8,493 certified organic farms in 2005, using just over 4 million acres of land, more than double the acreage in 2000, according to the United States Department of Agriculture. (The federal government introduced a uniform standard for organic certification in 2002.) New York had more than twice as many certified organic farms, 735, in 2007 as it did in 2004, according to the state Department of Agriculture and Markets. The agency estimates there are three to five times that many organic farms in New York which, like Hearty Roots, choose not to spend the $500 to $1,000 it costs to become certified.
Put that together with research indicating organic farmers are on average 46 years old, compared with an average of 52 for all farmers, and the numbers seem to reflect what experts say they see in the field: the demand from consumers for food produced on a small scale, bought directly from farmers, has allowed a younger generation to enter farming, even as global markets drive many conventional farmers off the land.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/16/fashion/16farmer.html?scp=13&sq=young%20american%20farmers&st=cse
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March 14, 2008
Stewards of the Land
Some young urbanites are starting to put their muscles where their pro-environmental, anti-globalization mouths are. Benjamin Shute and Miriam Latzer run Hearty Roots farm in Tivoli, N.Y., selling food grown on the 25-acre organic farm.
That's wonderful, teddy. Thanks a lot for sharing that. Very inspiring and validating.
When I read Carlos Castaneda 30+ years ago, I was struck by the concept of "making oneself available".
This is only too apparent with cell-phone users. If any of you commute using public transport, look around you at the number of people nervously clutching their cell phone. They have a briefcase/handbag, plenty of pockets, but choose to hold the phone. When it rings, the owner jumps and immediately answers it. If it doesn't ring, they call someone, say 'Sup, Dude', and wait for the person on the other end of the call to provide the conversation.
It is almost as if the cell phone offers security, which of course, is THE major selling point used to great effect by cell phone manufacturers.
It is this nervous response to answering calls, the need to be always in contact with someone, the need to answer emails immediately, that Casteneda described as making oneself available.
While the cell phone is relatively new technology, insecurity is the reason why most people turn to technology as the Holy Grail. Insecurity, perhaps, is the driving force of accelerated life in the cities. And many people are making a good living out of making you feel even more insecure.
The reason why the birkenstock sandal crowd look so smug (and confident) is because they have renounced all these so-called security tools. Kill your phone, TV, and car; you'll find life is a whole lot more interesting.
Very observant post. Communication often takes place on very subtle levels. The only "vibe" people seem to pickup on these days is when the cellphone is on vibrate. In fact, I'm convinced that most verbal exchange I hear these days is devoid of any actual content -cell babble, workplace babble, not to mention the incessant spew from all "information" sources, even the web.
On another note, does anyone find the proliferation of cell towers a blight on the landscape?
hehe -- nice - i have a fellow Castaneda reader. hehe.
and you are right about the cell-phone example reflective of the times of "paranoia" that one isn't "good enough" for society. what nonsense, inspite of the fact that we are basically trapped into THAT kind of social demand.
that's one reason - besides not really being able to afford - or not seeing the logic of HAVING to afford it in my poor budget - that I don't own a cell-phone. and "backward" or "behind" as I must be ...i simply have the personal little "space" of at least wondering how SILLY it is that people are attached to their "necessary" "social group" - be it in the quest for getting ahead or being "at the right place at the right time" for opportunities - or simply having to "FILL" their daily moments with "chat" and "important" messages......
i mean - is the QUALITY of one's life BETTER for being ATTACHED to the WIRE at ALL times compared to a barebones existence of a tribe deep in the amazon jungle?. i've always found it so laughable looking at everyone on the streets or anywhere JUMPING at every little "ring"...
better that they read Carlos Castaneda -or SiouxRose!!
"Slow Money"?
Sounds great. Congress makes a law to slow down money by taxing the living poop out of ANY investment profit from the sale of an asset LESS THAN 5 YEARS OWNED. After 5 years, the tax gradually goes down. If you want to slow money down, you have to destroy speculation.
And by the way mr. Pastor, WTF are you doing taking a vacation in these times? ANY extra money you have should be used to help the unemployed.
That is what he did, stupid.
Taking a holiday means that he is circulating money, spending it in restaurants, hotels, national parks, all sorts of things where money gets spent directly on communities, instead of big corporations. Everybody should take holidays more often, that is how a real community-based economy can be built.
Maybe we on the left also need to slow down: there is a lot to be done if you want to make the world a better place, but once you are on the right track, you don't have to be in a hurry. Of course, it still takes a long time before we are on the right track.
Instead of stressing about the jobless, you can also just enjoy life, just the way many 'jobless' people are doing. The times in my life that I have been jobless, I was much more in touch with my social environment and did a lot of introspection of what I want to do with my life. They have actually been among the most gratifying parts of my life. There is a lot of sense in this 'slow' movement.
I thought the same thing, but thanks for showing that holidays are productive both for the receiver and the giver!
Think the article and most posts here are nice and sweet natured...however all nicities aside what we as a county really need to do is have a....
TOTAL WORK SLOWDOWN
All jobs all levels all day every day.
Now of course the boss's wouldn't like this very much but if
HALF our population slowed down at the more complex jobs that now cannot be YET outsourced, then we could make "change we can believe in". JL
I will also add another "change" ...or rather, back to the PROPER way of doing things:
MORE workers for EVERY line of work. in opposition to "fewer workers doing MORE work as quickly as possible for LESS money" as capitalism dictates.
SPREAD the work among MORE workers - the result is - QUICKER RESULTS done by more taking turns and getting paid and contributing back to society that becomes more prosperous and can afford to pay MORE workers MORE wages for LESS work for every individual but MORE work for ALL...and the aim ought to be for a "four day" work week
case closed.
businesses DON'T LIKE IT? TOUGH - don't get into business. any Management team or owner team that inserts the reasoning of "cutting costs" through labor costs in order to "survive" ought to be REPLACED by management that will accept a different philosophy. PERIOD. until such kind of mentality is seen by society as simply ABERRATIONAL, BIZARRE< MAD, and USELESS. it's a question of attitude.
it will be DONE by others ANYWAY..and the more there are that work under these conditions - but saved from being USED UP -
the result is even better.
it is called "FULL EMPLOYMENT AT HIGHER and EVER RISING WAGES" economics.
it's STUPID to think it CAN"T be done.
if anything - it ought to be the most natural thing in the world.
the American CALVINIST thnking of endless "work" to make a person AVOID "bad thoughts because of IDLENESS" - is WRONG .
PERIOD.
I have to say that as one who is disabled and also advocates for those who are disabled, I firmly believe that "slowing down" is the gift of our illnesses/disabilities and the lesson that we can teach others. When you walk with a cane, or a walker, or a wheelchair, or knee braces, you have no choice but to slow down. Rather than crying, "Why, oh, why me?" I have come to the conclusion sometime quite long ago that the pain I live with on a daily basis and the assistance I need to walk helps me to do something I never did before I became ill...sloooow down, notice the magic around me, listen to the birds, take a nap in the middle of the day, and remind others that living slow in this way can be the equivalent of living with joy. I do not wish pain on anyone, pain from disease or trauma or what-have-you, but I do wish you all the ability to slow down and be mindful of the beauty of life. So mote it be.
Amen to that!
What a beautiful , wise message. Thank you!!
I have heard this from many people.
They were in a corporate whirlwind and (usually) an auto accident slowed them down, it was then they realized life was passing them by.
THANK YOU, you opened my eyes. I never looked at disability in that way. And I believe many disabled would dearly appreciate this message when the night is darkest, just after the realization of being disabled.
No matter how fast I run, I still feel like I'm in slow motion and can't afford to slow down and can't get enough done.
The years move so fast also. I still can't grasp that we're almost finished with this decade.
And of course kids. One time you see them, they're seven, the next they're seventeen. They're growing up so fast they have no time to learn. Just push 'em through!
Great post Wise Crone.
I can understand everyone's desire to "slow down", but I think an analysis of WHAT people are doing now is important before taking that huge step to slow down.
I'll state up front that I believe that as individuals, our primary contribution to society is to provide essential services (food, clothing, shelter, education, meaningful work) and to help the young, infirmed and incarcerated.
Now, how many of us are directly performing these essential functions? Alas, very few.
For the rest of us, especially in the US, we perform service tasks. The US is no-longer a manufacturing society, and so instead, most of us are involved in providing non-essential services, or value-added services. In simple words, most of us do jack sh$t. Yet we work 60+ hour weeks. Our masters have become very effective at convincing us of our worth, either through monetary reward or vocational titles, and so we run around at top speed, in endless circles, being non-constructive and in reality, return little to society.
Sound depressing? Not really, because this fact makes it easier for us to "slow down". No-one will suffer as a result of this slow down, but we will all rejoice in the new-found riches.
i think you adequately took care of the analysis part.
now, if everyone just read the Tao of Pooh...and then we would all see that we've let insipid Confusionist owls rule the world. We mistakenly let them hijack Knowledge and Expertise ( at the expense of "frivolous" Joy and "unproductive" Leisure ) and they done went and convoluted the true meaning and purpose of those things.
Let's all be more like Pooh instead. Joyfully and cooperatively doing the essentials; enjoying our daily pot of honey.
http://men.style.com/details/features/full?id=content_9817&mbid=yhp&npu=1
Interesting related article I found today.