This column is dedicated to those who in their community, create change, stand up for what is right and force what is wrong out.
At the past few meetings of the Eaglet Lake Farmers Institute, I have come to realize that the optimism and perseverance of the farmer, who plants seeds every spring in hopes for fruit in the fall, is what will see us all well into the future.
I will thus share a quote I fancy by Wendell Berry, a wonderful wordsmith of community and agriculture.
"If it is doomed, then I have no doubt that much else is doomed also, for I cannot see how a nation a society, or a civilization can live while its communities die. If that were all my thought, then I might find some comfort in despair.
"I might resign myself and at least sleep better. But I am convinced that the death of my community is not necessary and not inevitable. I believe that such remnant might still become the seeds of a better civilization than we have now-better economy, better faith, better knowledge and affection. That is what keeps me awake, that difficult hope."
Through a program called the Young Farmer Project and one called the New Farmer Project Eaglet Lake Farmers Institute is preserving a way of life that has been pressed into an ever smaller corner by means of the industrial food systems and big ag pricing.
These programs are offering mentoring, funds on equipment and seed to help facilitate in the eradication of the current trend of the average age of Canadian farmers, which is 54. Only 8.2 per cent of farmers are under the age of 35. I can tell you that in the Prince George region, this average age is much older and it is a wonder how some of our major producers are still going at the age they are. Maybe they are solar powered, harnessing the limitless energy that is the bright orb in the sky that is making its appearance known in these early spring days.
It is well known that the collapse of an economy or community is based on the over exploitation of the resources of the community as the economy and the ecology are one and the same. Forestry and the railroad is what built the East line community on the traditional territory of the Lheidli T'enneh.
It is those industries coupled with the game of winners and losers known as capitalism that has over exploited the region and concentrated the wealth into the hands of a few conglomerates that do not even live in the area in which they profit from. All the while the residents of the East Line struggle to make ends meet as the economy has failed them here in an area of forestry and farming where consumers eat food brought from foreign lands at subsidized pricing and forestry workers are imported from the city to make their wealth on the resources that surround the community.
Eaglet Lake Farmers Institute's activism in the face of adversity shows the relentless pursuit of a culture of farmers and a way of life. The farmer knows that they will not make great wealth on what they do. It is a service provided to the masses to keep the hungry fed. The farmer is the servant to the people. Without the consumer's monetary contribution to buy local, the local farmer cannot survive and serve the public. Without new farmers to take the place of the aging population of farmers, all will fail.
It is with this fight for survival from the Eaglet Lake Farmers Institute that I share this poem by Dylan Thomas:
"Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light."
