The Generational Community of Farming

When we preserve our local farmland, we are preserving more than the land beneath our feet. We are also preserving our generational community. About 2 years ago, a woman in her 90s showed up at my family’s farm in Apple Creek with her son, niece and nephew. She introduced herself and showed us all this photograph (circa 1940).

The woman’s brother, also in his 90s, had recently passed away and this photograph was being displayed at his funeral. When she saw the picture, she asked the younger generation standing around her, “would you like to go see that barn? I know where it is.”

As it turns out, the little boy in the picture (standing inside the barn) is her brother, and the man on the tractor is my grandfather. Their family used to live across the road from our farm, and they would come over regularly to help and to explore. She had not been to our farm since being a child.

Had our barn been torn down and our farm developed, she would not have been able to visit her past, and we would never have met her or her family. The generational community between our two families could have been lost---forever.

These communities are just as important to preserve as the soil we till (or no-till). The land holds our history and traditions. It holds our collective work, our scrapes and bruises, our stories, the laughs we’ve shared and the love we’ve created. The land holds the community we have been building for generations and that is preserved when farmland is protected.