Author Michael Perry (Population: 485; Trailer) will be in town on Saturday promoting his latest book, Coop: A Family, A Farm and the Pursuit of One Good Egg (HarperCollins). Perry, who supports his small, family farm with his work as a writer, shares the trials and tribulations of returning to the farmhouse and land of his youth, a disheveled, thirty-seven acre lot located in Wisconsin. Coop has garnered much praise, and we look forward to his appearance here at Talking Leaves on Main Street. In between tour stops, he had the time to answer a few of my questions:
Buffalo Rising: If raising chickens really is the new pesto (a point made in a review on Cleveland.com) and homesteading is the hipster trend of the new decade, what do you feel that says about our society today?
Michael Perry: Well, postmodern irony only takes you so far. Hipster or farmer, either you will grow your food or you won’t. Is it possible that calling out hipster trends is itself a hipster trend?
BR: Do you feel that the urbanites who fantasize about farm life are disillusioned? Care to dispel any major misconceptions?
MP: Having lived through the “back-to-the-land” movement of the 1970s, I believe that today’s urbanites are actually somewhat more realistic about the reality of farm life. Sure, you’ll have plenty of folks who give it a shot and decide the supermarket wasn’t such a bad idea after all, but what really encourages me are the folks who are getting “back to the land” in their own back yard or window box. Having said that, if you really do take the plunge and get forty acres with dreams of truly surviving as a small-scale farmer, odds are you will need to give up sleep, money and smooth skin. How many times as a farm kid did I hear guys in overalls at the feed mill tell the joke about the farmer who won several million dollars in the lottery. “What are you going to do with all the money?” the reporter asked him. “Well,” the farmer drawled, “I reckon I’ll just keep farming ’til it’s all gone.”
BR: What can everyday people do to support farmers like you and those who live in communities like yours?
MP: First, out of respect to the farmers who raised me and those of my neighbors still struggling to make a living as farmers, I rush to point out that our family survives primarily on my income as a writer and performer. Yes, we grow much of our own food and even sell a little of it (don’t tell the gummint), but if all of my pigs die, that’s a bad weekend – not the end of my career. Second, as a former fundamentalist Christian gone agnostic, I’m always a little shy about telling people what to do. I don’t think you can effectively hector or even exhort people into “supporting farmers.” It’s a multifaceted effort, from local people banding together to form CSAs and co-ops, to farmers realizing they have to market themselves uniquely, to the guidance of visible leaders like Michael Pollan and Joel Salatin and Barbara Kingsolver and Gene Logsdon, to plain old word-of-mouth. I doubt you can “guilt” someone into supporting farmers, but if they get a taste of local grass-fed beef or carrots pulled this morning, well, then they’re gonna come back on their own. When my NASCAR-loving brother-in-law, who’s about as organic as a naugahyde seat cover, told me he was raising his own pigs and chickens because he wanted to know where his kid’s food came from, I figured, “Well, now we’re gettin’ somewhere.”
BR: Do you have any feelings or opinions regarding urban agriculture (especially as it relates to cities trying to recover and reclaim land after decades of blight and poverty)? MP: I think it’s exciting and a critical element of true sustainability. In the early pages of Coop, I write that although I’m a country boy through and through, I hope my children don’t grow up thinking “rural” equals “righteous.” Some of the brightest developments in sustainability are coming from the heart of the inner city. I am thinking specifically of Will Allen, and his Growing Power project right here in my state of Wisconsin. He’s in the middle of Milwaukee and performing miracles. I’d also mention again that I’m thrilled with the number of urban folks I meet on book tour who are gardening in ten square feet, or a window box. There’s another guy in southern Wisconsin named Robert Frost (yes), he’s doing things in his suburban driveway and backyard plots that put me to shame.
BR: In our region–as is the case in most other areas–the average age of our farmers is over 50. Many of our best farmers cannot find people to take over and care for their farmland and instead end up selling their well-tended and much-loved land to developments or factory farms looking to expand. Do you have any thoughts or opinions on how to repopulate farms with people who are both capable and (realistically) interested in farming?
MP: This one tears me up, because it kills me to see farm after farm succumb. I grew up on a dairy farm surrounded by dairy farms touching dairy farms from county to county, and right now you can drive three miles before you come to the first dairy farm and it’ll be at least that far before you come to the next. And yet, I know farmers who worked themselves to a skeleton for decades and had nothing to show for it but that land, so when someone offers them the money, who am I to begrudge their decision?
As far as repopulating, I’m leery of “programs” as such because I’m backwards that way, and I keep returning to this idea that until the populace as a whole puts a value on local foods, it’s going to be tough to prop up smaller operations. Government programs have a way of turning into their own millstones. Sometimes I think our best hope lies in conversations just like the one we are having here. If this revivification is going to happen, it’s going to have to come from the grassroots and be driven by people ready to get down and dirty and work hard for a long time. The numbers are not in our favor, but I’d have to say that based on my unofficial assessment the numbers are better than they have been in decades. I fear I have given a poor answer to your question. Someone with a greater vision is required. I spend much of my time writing mildly humorous essays and reality-based discussions tend to expose me as underpowered.
BR: Who handles the farm work when you’re on tour?
MP: Mostly my wife and my daughters. One of the neighbors has come in to plow for me two years in a row now. He is a semi-retired banker with a John Deere B and a three-bottom plow. Sometimes if the whole family is gone the neighbors come up to collect eggs and open and close the coops. One of the reason we don’t have pigs this summer is because I’m on book tour most of the spring and the pig chores are a bit much to leave for someone else. We are beginning to fence our old pastures to set up a paddock grazing system for beef, and in order to remain within the realm of reality, we have begun talking with a friend about partnering on the beef operation. To return to themes of hope, I find that this whole experience has revitalized the idea of getting to know and work with your neighbors…something that was an integral part of my farming childhood, and yet evaporated over time and automation.
BR:
Favorite chicken breeds?
MP: Dominique. Most of the old timers call them Domineckers. It’s my favorite breed because my all-time favorite singer is Waylon Jennings, and he did a song called “Black Rose” that was written by Billy Joe Shaver, and the opening lines are:
Way down in Virginia
Amongst the tall grown sugar canes
Lived a simple man and a dominecker hen
Ever since I heard that song I wanted to be a simple man with a Dominecker hen. Never managed that, but I did get a Dominecker rooster. His name was Knuckles. He was an insufferable lover and just tore up the hens. We ate him.
Michael Perry Book Signing
Saturday, June 12th @ 5pm
Talking Leaves
3158 Main Street
Buffalo, NY 14214
(716) 837-8554