Stewardship Stories: What's in a name?

This is the third title I have chosen to delineate posts involving land tending. Ten years ago, I called the posts Farm Beginnings, because, that was the idea right? I was going to be a farmer - growing food and selling it to my community (or at least growing enough to feed ourselves for a full year as an experiment).

Then Bean was born, medical blah blah, Dragon was born, and more medical blah blah. In 2021, Farm Beginnings morphed into Homesteading Middles. To homestead felt less grandiose than to farm. The gingham term felt cozy and manageable. Homesteading felt good.

No longer. Now the word gives me the hives. Why, you may ask?

I was blind to the racist hypocrisy of our government denying formerly enslaved Americans their 40 acres while at the same time allocating 160 acres as part of the 1862 Homestead Act. The Act effectively remained in place until 1934 - during that time over 1.5 million White families “eventually profited from it.”*

I didn’t put the two pieces together until I saw a clip recently of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. speaking before the March on Washington in August of 1963 (see below for the video, here is a transcript).*

At the very same time that America refused to give the Negro any land, through an Act of Congress our government, was giving away millions of acres of land in the West and the Midwest. It meant it was willing to undergird its white peasants from Europe with an economic floor.

But not only did they give the land, the built land grant colleges with government money to teach them how to farm.

Not only that, they provided County Agents to further their expertise in farming.

Not only that, they provided low interest rates in order that they could mechanize their farm.

Not only that, many of these people are receiving millions of dollars in federal subsidies not to farm - and they are the very people telling the black man that he ought to lift himself up by his own bootstraps.

This is what we are faced with. This is the reality. Now when we come to Washington in this campaign, we are coming to get our check.

For over 70 years, my government perpetuated this blatant awfulness. Jim Crow in the South and White folks displacing Native nations in the Midwest and West.

I spent a few hours contemplating whether I should go back and rename all of the Homesteading pieces - to erase my naivete and ignorance. Then, I got my head out of my ass.**

Erasing history doesn’t serve anyone. That is what led to my idiocy in the first place.

So, my Homesteading nomenclature stands as a testament to my best intentions at the time.

Moving forward, these will be called Stewardship Stories.

This all came forward recently when the lovely humans at Dirty Gaia asked me what I wanted our land to be called for the The Good Dirt: Farm and Garden Ramble (happening this Sunday, July 19!). I had been using the term Sweet Showers Homestead. No longer.

Stewardship Stories feels better on so many levels. To steward feels respectful of my role in this dance of tending the Earth and respectful of Her role as well. My role is to put seeds in the fridge for seed stratification, plant them in warm wet soil three weeks later singing a silly planting song, and wait.

Gaia does ALL the rest. The unfurling, the stretching, the magic. I get to be a hall+ward (Middle English provenance of steward) and revel in the glory of witnessing Her glory.

Amen.

*According to research done by the National Park Service, there were about 3,500 Black claimants compared to the 1,500,000 White American-born and immigrant families.

**This is a term of endearment from my father - he loved that phrase. I love you Dad.