Berakhot No.2: The Blessings of the Farmer

What’s it like to be a Jewish farmer in 2020, and how can living off the Earth teach us to make better blessings on our food?

Janna Siller is the Farm Director at Adamah Farm in Falls Village, and represents the Jewish non-profit Hazon as a member of the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition and the National Young Farmers Coalition. She writes about, teaches, and lives the Jewish values of ethical and Earth-conscious eating.

Special thanks to our executive producer, Adina Karp.

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Music from https://filmmusic.io

"Midnight Tale" by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com)

License: CC BY (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

Transcript

spk_0:   0:01
welcome to Inter relieved when we take a deep dive into topics from the DA fio me with modern day stages of the Torah and the world. I'm the tunnels. Ellis, fully on today's episode, bounty, blessings and bridging the gap between us and our food

spk_1:   0:16
way. Do interact with all of these other species, whether it's the lettuce itself or, you know, the insects that would want to eat the lettuce. If the former work protecting the lettuce, the soil microbes that actually in live in the soil such that the lettuce congrats. So we actually as people who eat we are in touch with them. But when we don't grow our own food, we actually it's so obscured. The effects of our actions come as a surprise to

spk_0:   0:44
many. Consider the six chapter of Bro code, which mainly deals with the laws of blessings on food and particularly the global kind to be the most difficult chapter in the track. Tate. This is probably because we, as a society, are so far removed, whether in time or space from the agricultural economy assumed in the chapter and more pertinently, from the source of the food we eat, our hyper connected modern economy allows us to nourish our bodies with food that was created across the world just days before with ingredients we can barely pronounce by people whom we will never meet. Joining us today to teach us how we can begin to bridge This gaping void is Janice Seller, who writes about teaches and lives the Jewish values of ethical on Earth conscious eating, one of the first of a growing number of Jewish women farmers, Jenna serves as farm director at other My Farm and Falls Village, Connecticut, where she leads a crew of participants in the Adam A fellowship while mutating the fields of the resident learning space for visitors. She teaches classes on practical farming and gardening skills, as well as classes that explore the big picture systems, policies and issues that shape what we eat and how it has grown. Janet represents the Jewish nonprofit has own as a member of the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition at the National Young Farmers Coalition. Janna, welcome to the podcast.

spk_1:   2:00
Thank you.

spk_0:   2:01
The chapter starts with the question of how do we know that we need to make blessings on food to thank God for allowing us to enjoy the world that God made and the Tom would use is pretty strong language, saying that eating without making a blessing is like stealing from the temple. Whether one interprets that as a technical, whole ethic obligation or a more general imperative to be aware of where one's food comes from, it seems all the more relevant now, when most of us are so separated from the source of our nourishment, and it must be so different when you're actually working on and in your case, running a farm and actually growing food from start to finish. How is your relationship with food and your understanding of the growing process changed since you started working and in particular? And Adama

spk_1:   2:41
Yeah, I think it's changed, Uh, quite dramatically. I know. I'm, uh, remembering back to the first meal I ever made myself from food. I had grown, and that was about the 16 17 years ago. Now I was interning on a farm in Illinois, and I wasn't much of a cook, but I had taken some carrots and some tomatoes and some kale that I had harvested. I don't think I'd known really what kill was before. Um, you know, maybe the week before that, and I put them all in a pan and heated them up, and I ate it. And I thought I had, like, created this perfect recipe that no one had ever had before. No one knew if you combined tomatoes, kale and carrots that it would taste like magic. Um, and I later realized that it had to do with the fact that the things that was putting together into the pan weren't objects that I had purchased weren't things I'd read on a list from a recipe and then decided to combine together. They were living things that I had interacted with, and it completely changed my experience of it. And that change continues till today, with the experience of eating food that I've grown

spk_0:   3:52
well, that must be Ah, really powerful variance. Has that relationship evolved more since you started working at at Adama?

spk_1:   4:01
Yeah, I think something wonderful, Adama, is that I get to spend a lot of time in community, and I get to actually witness a lot of people have that same experience. For the first time, we welcome participants in our fellowship program onto the farm. We have two or three cohorts a year, so 10 to 15 young people joining us for two or three months at a time. And many of them are having that same experience for the first time. And so I don't you know, I could kind of get, like, just in a regular rat like Oh, yeah, you know, I stick a spout into the trunk of a maple tree and sugar water comes out. Obviously, I've done it every year for a while, but instead every year I watch people put a spout into the bark of a tree and watch delicious liquid come out and, like just completely, you know, have their brain chemistry changed by it. And so it keeps it really alive for me.

spk_0:   4:57
Oh, that's great. I love finding the connections between no real life experience and the Talmud. So the Tom with actually jumps right from that discussion about blessings to a rather strange argument between two stages. Whether there is an obligation from the Torah toe work for a living and specifically to work the land, the Tom decides in favor of the opinion that there is an obligation which makes sense because at the time juice had already been farming a raising livestock since Abraham and Sarah. I would continue to grow their own food for centuries and yet hundreds of years removed from a primarily agricultural global economy. So few of us Jews actually do that. What do you think we as a people are missing since we've moved away from my intimate relationship with the earth?

spk_1:   5:39
Well, I know that working every day as a farmer allows me to be in relationship with other species, not just humans. That's something I definitely find really distinct when I go into a city and feel like, well, just really humans being main other. You know, others that I'm interacting with, Um and I think the agriculture in particular, as different from going for a hike in the woods or just being outside in general really requires that you well, you could partner with other species. You could also see them as adversaries to Taymor domesticate. They're different approaches, but you really do have to intersect with other species and be affected by them. You have to leave yourself open and vulnerable. To be affected by the lives of BC is other than our own. So for me, some of the things that come of that a really a shift in time, right? Like the life cycle of the specifically the annual plants. So annuals, meaning plants that don't survive through the winter. So the vegetable species that we work with our annuals and they're just they have a very specific times, like on. So getting really in tune with those is something that I find yeah, changes. My own relationship gives me some sense of that. There are other cycles, and I'm scales functioning out there and just changes your perspective to work with plants and and other animals. And then I think another thing that really we're seeing playing out right now is how surprising a lot of the news about climate change is. I really think a lot of us air and so many people are really unable to even believe what the science is telling us around climate change. And a lot of that, I think, has to do with how separated we are from our food sources and from the process issues that require us to interact with other species. So anyone who's working with the land can really see actually climate change play out in in real time and and when we're not required to do that because of food, sort of comes to us without those interactions It It comes, as is a big surprise and something that is hard to grapple with in a different way.

spk_0:   7:58
What are you at? Adama and has own more broadly doing, too. Repair the relationship or to change it to rebuild it.

spk_1:   8:07
One thing is just welcoming people onto the land. We often experience that. It's quite uncomfortable for people. Thio step onto the fireman takes some courage and some some real motivation for people to step out of their wage earning lives and take the time to learn how food is grown, which is really what we do in the Automat Fellowship. People come for a few months at a time, and really most people who join us in the fellowship are not there to become farmers. They're not. There is a farmer training program that there to build community, to experience Jewish life on the land, and so one thing that we can do is not only teach them, but also specifically welcome them and help then find ways of sort of power. And through that discomfort, whether it's out of my fellows or folks visiting us through at the Isabella Friedman Jewish Retreat Center or or you know his own more broadly on a national scale, is working to develop curriculum and help Jewish institutions everywhere to kind of make those connections.

spk_0:   9:13
So on the next page, the Tom it talks about the intention of the grower as essential to determining the blessing on that food. For example, there's a discussion about what blessing to make on the hearts of palm, because in the times of the Thomas date, palms were almost always not planted with the primary intention of harvesting their hearts. How does intention play into your mission and your day to day routine? Adama.

spk_1:   9:35
Really, Hugely, I think as a farmer, you're always making decisions in the moment about how you wanna approach a challenge. For me, part of it is like, really for organic farmers. We talk about you feed the soil, not the crop. So it's really about figuring out how to create healthy conditions so that plants can grow. And so a lot of that, really, it's about figuring out. What's the environment that I want to create for these plants so that they'll grow well, and I think that's true of our programming as well. There's not a clear rubric for you know how to make someone feel comfortable on a farm when they, you know, maybe been alienated from from the lander or it's a new experience for them. How do you bring that sort of intention what health looks like and and bringing about in those small decisions that you make throughout the day?

spk_0:   10:24
While the chapter focuses more on the trees in the forest, it is still an interesting case study of the intersection between agriculture and law. One example. Because what needs to eat an olive sized amount of food in order to be obligated in a blessing after eating the changing average size of an olive over time also changes the volume of food one needs to eat. To be obligated. You've written about the impact of big picture policy on agriculture, especially small and community supported farms like Adama. What policy changes have affected you recently, and what new changes are you fighting for?

spk_1:   10:57
Great question. I'm gonna try and encapsulate it in a brief answer. There are lots of federal policies, state policies and local policies that impact what we end up eating. And on the federal level, the foods that are healthiest for us are often the least accessible or most expensive. And there are a lot of federal policies that actually artificially decrease the prices of some of those less healthy foods, like specifically, you know, highly processed corn and also meets that are where the animals are fed those grains. And so there are also federal policies that really incentivised and hold up sustainable approaches to agriculture, regenerative approaches to agriculture, some of those programs that we benefit from with the sequined program, the Conservation Stewardship program there, for example, we just received some money through federal funding to host a workshop and be a that worked up Thio. Hire a permaculture consultant for a tree planting project that we're working on. Our commercial kitchen, where we make our sauerkraut and pickles was all funded through a state grant. So there are these funding sources for farms like ours, but they're very small piece of federal funding for agriculture, though I am, and his own and Adam are are very highly engaged in working toward, you know, communicating Thio elected officials, people who make decisions about the benefits of climate, smart agriculture, for example, whether it's through incentives or research into carbon sequestration and strategies of farming that can store carbon in the soil. On whether it's technical assistance for farmers to be ableto, you know, put into place practices that we know are address both the emissions caused by agriculture and also that allow farms to adapt to a changing climate, their programs out there to support soil health. An ecosystem help, um, and in particular doing that work with racial equity lens and thinking about the history of racism in the food system and also thinking about equity in the food system. There's a lot there I could I could go on and on. And I think what's important is that there have been a lot of really effective advocates on behalf of reform in the food system, and I think you know, the more we are able to articulate what an alternative model of farming might look like, the more we actually make headway toward creating those systems

spk_0:   13:42
just in spirit of the you know, argumentative style of the Talmud. Do you feel like there's kind of like an US versus them mentality with small farms and big farms and big kind of food industry? In general?

spk_1:   13:55
I do think it's more complicated, and I feel really always surprised and amazed at the ways that farmers, no matter their approach to soil, health or whatever it is desire to talk to each other and learn from each other. So maybe when battling it out over, um, we'll get subsidies for what? In the farm bill? Maybe yes, a bit more of an US versus them mentality, but also in practice, you know, there's not a dark, thick line between conventional agriculture and organic culture. There are plenty of incredible farmers that are far from organic but are figuring out what steps they can take to mitigate climate change, too, You know, address, whether it's soil erosion or whatever, the whatever the issue is, and some really creative solutions that might be far in between the two poles that you might think of, you know, a Duma with our uber sustainable practices. On the one hand, and, you know, a giant monoculture. There's just so much gray area in between and people doing really. I mean, I think there's just a lot of incredible innovation happening right now and in in agriculture and in figuring out how to address the current moment that we're in.

spk_0:   15:10
So one of the laws that comes up in this chapter is the prohibition of kill I am or hybridization of produce. It poses a challenge to the human creativity that is so essential to sustainable farming and food production. In what ways are you able to be creative in your farming and gardening?

spk_1:   15:26
I think they're there in some ways that maybe there are two different kinds of creative in my mind. So I remember back that that very first internship I had on a farm, I remember telling my friend who had been farming for a lot longer than I had like that. I was feeling that this certain rigidity of working on the farm and feeling like I missed poetry and a certain version of creativity and remember her just looking at me and saying, Is there anything more creative than you're doing? But creating food from not food where it didn't exist before, and that still resonates in my mind. And I think for me, especially at Adama, I'm lucky to have both. So song humor. We make a lot of silly skits, Adama sort of just a part of you, part of our culture. They're like there is a lot of yeah, a lot of opportunity for poetry and that kind of wide open artistic creativity. And then there's also just the creativity of figuring out how to, you know, Cokes, food out of the land in ways that are in concert with everything else that's happening in the bayou region. So I think for me, a lot of that comes from really understanding as deeply as I can the soil and the soil. Food Web, which is really just refers to the idea that there's this healthier. The life in the soil is, um, the healthier your plants will be, and then from that kind of deeply ingrained sense, then those creative decisions of when and how will you plant your cover crops, your vegetables, your perennials, how you inter crop or reduce tillage or make space for pollinators. These kinds of decisions that you make one managing are kind of come from that sort of desire to create a healthy ecosystem in the soil. And so, yeah, there's a lot of room for sort of like thinking through different strategies. Once that baseline is

spk_0:   17:32
speaking of creativity, it seems like the rabbis used quite a bit of it toe. Think about the botanical aspect of food, like when they call honey the mere sweat of dates. Or when they launch into complicated debates over whether the skin is considered part of a fruit or not. It made me wonder how much exposure they had to the food science of the day and how much scientific consensus matter to them. As a farmer. Would you consider farming more science or art? And which aspect do you connect more personally?

spk_1:   17:59
Yeah, I couldn't choose. I really consider it both so much. There's this quote I really like from The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, where, he says, for nitrates or not, the land nor phosphates and the length of fibre in the cotton is not the land I love that that quote. And if folks have garden before, you know that, um, nitrogen and phosphorus is heir to really important nutrients that you need to make sure in the soil in order to grow healthy crops. Um, and a conventional approach to agriculture really analyzes again in this reductionist way. OK, do we have the exact right amount of, um, N p k nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, um, and and feeds things that way. And I think what Steinbeck is trying to get at there is that there's something much more there. But But you can't define it in this super clear way. And I find that so much of our Jewish tradition also kind of gets around this idea of like and I think, really, what it comes down to what it is, what the other thing is, that's not the n. P. K is the interconnectivity of the life that's in the soil, uh, in the soil and everywhere. So that said, Yeah, I guess my answer. Your questions, really, that it's so much both. And for me personally, I connected both. I do think the science is really important. I think that we've learned a lot as ah ah, species, about how we can grow food with minimal impacts and with high yields. And I think that was increasing populations. We need to only do that more, and I don't think that ignoring the science will will get us there. And I also think that if we reduce things to just the science that we know, I mean, for example, in in Agriculture, one of the emerging subjects of study is really about the relationship between Michael rise of fungi and plant roots. So Michael Raizo fungi, fungi that live in symbiotic relationship with the roots of plans. Um, and what we've learned is that plants actually offer, ah, high percentage of the sugars they manufacture through photosynthesis to these Michael Raizo fungi and in exchange, the reason that they do that is actually because the fungi offer back nutrients that they're they have greater access to their just. They have a lot more surface area in the soil. They can access nutrients and water that the plant roots can't necessarily. And so there's this trade happening, So this is actually a really new emergent area of study. But if you look at ancient biblical agricultural techniques, a lot of them actually foster relationships of my career as a fun jay. The whole concept of following land of of Smita, um is is a concept that really allows for breaks in the village of the soil, which one of the now revealed benefits of that kind of practice is about fostering Michael Wrestle fungi or also, you know, nitrogen fixation through legumes, which would have, you know, potentially grown up his weeds or just the increase in organic matter in the soil from that you gain from following. So there's these kinds of things that we now have scientific ways of describing but doesn't mean that people didn't didn't know them. And in the same way, Yeah, I think there's a lot there. Yeah, there's a lot there to explore there, a lot of lines between what is science and what is art and what is spiritual and what is what's Jewish law. And each of those pieces that actually are less separate from one another than we might think

spk_0:   21:33
as a farmer. Other certain things that are not acknowledged in ah the brujo, the blessings that we should be acknowledging. What blessings are we not reciting on food?

spk_1:   21:44
I guess part of me is like, Well, who am I to say? But I would I would love for there to be well okay. I make up my own blessings for certain things that I don't have fixed blessings forming people Ask me all the time. What's the blessing over putting a seed in the soil? Or, um, you may have gleaned from this conversation that I have a lot of passion for soil microbes. So, um, you know, some specific specific red coat for the soil microbes. I do feel lucky to live in a Jewish community where we have, you know, we have a lot of wisdom around the bro code, and we also have a lot of Yeah, we have a very, ah live Jewish community that that makes up our own hope when we need. That

spk_0:   22:30
was beautiful. Janice. Hello. Thank you so much.

spk_1:   22:33
Yeah. Thank you.

spk_0:   22:37
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