[Chapter_Fourteen] the fence

[margaretha haughwout]

On our farm we find heroin needles in between the broccoli plants. We have a
barbed wire fence that wraps around the entire 2.5 acres of our "freeway
food forest" -- a food forest that is rising from the ruins of a freeway
that collapsed and then lay dormant for 20 years. At night there is a
pregnant cat that makes the place her own (all the sheet mulching has
stirred up the mice and rats). Other folks crawl through the fence at night
too. With perhaps one exception, the people that come at night aren't the
same people that come during the day. Often “fresh” needles appear in the
morning. The stories we write about here all have to do with the chain link
and barbed wire fence that was on site when we arrived. The forces it is
meant to keep out, the forces it is meant to contain, the edge it creates
around our site, the fact that it is there at all.

...

There are regular potlucks Tuesday evenings on the farm. Last week I didn't
go, but I live really close by, so I got a text message from a friend saying
she way stopping by. She came up saying she wouldn't stay long as she was
getting up at 5:30am tomorrow morning to let H.O.T. - Homeless
Outreach Team<https://docs.google.com/document/d/1m2-j1YZPmjG-sh_s3PdcieqLL_wQqrW9Rwxr1dCYgC8/edit?hl=en>through
the gates to talk to the folks that were sleeping there. "I guess
someone called them,” she said. I said I’d get up with her. I was curious. A
few minutes later I got another text message from another friend leaving the
potluck. "Coming over!" it said. Friend no. 2 came up and we told her how we
were getting up early for the Homeless Outreach Team. "Oh," friend no. 2
said; "I called them. That was me."

This call was predicated by several debates in our community about the
homeless. Some feel we should let them sleep in the farm, others are more
wary. Personally, I like the idea of city worn homeless people finding the
soft sheet mulch to sleep on, and maybe even helping themselves to some
cherry tomatoes. For a farm built on the principles of people care and fair
share as well as earth care, we are torn by what it means to give them the
boot. Youth education coordinators despair over the fact that a child might
come across a needle before they do, and since we lost our bees this summer
from a senseless act of
violence<http://www.hayesvalleyfarm.com/blog/324-two-killed-and-one-attempt-at-the-farm.html>,
we are all a little more skittish. The last time I sat with the women who
were at my house after the potluck, we had heated debate on the topic around
another table at another house in the neighborhood. It ended with all of us
agreeing if there was such a thing as a needle drop box that was configured
in a way that you couldn't reach back in and use the old needles, it would
be a good idea to install a few of those around the perimeter. We also
agreed that eventually we should probably just take the fence down.

The obvious issue at hand in this story might be how to handle the issue of
homelessness and nighttime drug use on our urban farm. The not so obvious
issue in this story, but one that we want to tease out and explore is how we
decide what to do about the homelessness and the needles - and the fence. In
the scenario above, some of the farmers debated it at length and then one
person took action ad-hoc without really having a method of checking in with
the rest of the community. Also, the way in which the conversations occurred
were very ad-hoc, and happened at a variety of nodes located not only on the
farm but in the neighborhood around it - both inside and outside the farm.
There is a lot to say here about how we make decisions on the farm,
particularly when they negotiate between the farm and the city, the inner
and the outer, day and night, permacultural and urban. A lot of times
decisions happen exactly in the manner I’m describing above. This is a
thread someone might pick up for discussion: the thread of decision making
and accountability when our values ask us to be responsible to the land, the
common people and the terms of our lease asks us to be accountable to a
larger hierarchy. I love the unfolding at play in the story above, but what
if friend no. 2 decided to call the cops instead of H.O.T.?



-- 

♫ Spread the word, please help us support the farm on Kickstarter!
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Lead Researcher, Hayes Valley Farm
http://www.hayesvalleyfarm.com/

Lecturer, Film and Digital Media
University of California Santa Cruz
Communications 151

chapter fourteen<http://lists.beforebefore.net/listinfo.cgi/chapter_fourteen-beforebefore.net>
http://www.beforebefore.net/
http://www.bitterpattern.net/

I am best contacted by email:
xmargarethax at gmail.com
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