The Ruminant: Audio Candy for Farmers, Gardeners and Food Lovers - Farming is Gay

Episode Date: May 20, 2019

This ep: a few perspectives from members of the LGBTQ community who farm   This ep: a few perspectives from members of the LGBTQ community who farm Show sponsors: BCS America BC Small-Scale Meat Producers Association

This episode of the Ruminant Podcast is sponsored in part by BCS America. BCS two-wheel tractors are versatile, maneuverable in tight spaces, lightweight for less compaction, and easy to maintain and repair on farm. Gear-driven and built to last for decades of dependable service. BCSamerica.com. This episode is also supported by the Small Scale Meat Producers Association of British Columbia, dedicated to voicing the needs and concerns of small scale meat producers in the province of BC. For more info, check out smallscalemeat.ca. Finally, this episode is supported by the Ruminant's Future Episode Generation Initiative.

Stay tuned later in the episode to hear more about some upcoming episode ideas and how you can play a part in contributing to them. This is The Ruminant, a podcast about food politics and food security and the cultural and practical aspects of farming. You can find out more at theruminant.ca, email me, editor at theruminant.ca, and you can find me on Twitter, at Ruminant Blog, or search for The Ruminant on Facebook. All right, let's do a show. on Facebook. All right, let's do a show. Javin. Hello, how are you doing, Jordan? I'm well. Welcome back to the podcast. Thanks for having me back. I guess. Hey folks, this is Jordan.

You're hearing the voice of Javin Kirby Bernakovich, an expert in ecological design and restoration, which you can learn more about at allpointsdesign.ca. If you recognize his voice, it may be because he's been on the show before to talk about farmer mental health. This time around, I had another topic I hope to discuss with him. Javin, you don't entirely know why I've asked you on the show today. You know that I am in the midst of producing an episode that I am calling Farming is Gay. I do. I know that much. And you are a gay man. That's correct. Yes, it is still correct. All right. Just making sure. I called you on to ask you if you remember when you first told me you're gay. Oh, mate, I don't.

That memory no longer exists. It must have made room for things about fire or something else. Well, I never forgot it. And I wanted to quickly talk about it as an introduction to today's show. Let's do it. The first chance we really had an opportunity to get to know each other and chat was at one of the Permaculture Voices conferences, one of them in San Diego. But here's what I remember.

We were sitting in the lobby of the hotel of the conference and it was like toward the end of the conference. I'm pretty sure I bought us a round of beers and then we got chatting. It was in the lobby. And then like, I asked you one of the inevitable getting to know you questions. And I said, so do you have a girlfriend? You've probably been asked that before. See if you can remember what you would have said to me when I said, do you have a girlfriend? Um, uh, I don't, I don't know. Did I say no, but I have a girlfriend um uh I don't I don't know did I say no but I have a boyfriend something like that yeah you said something along those lines and was so funny to me and with the

like I it really caught me off guard so I just I mean and why why should I have have necessarily thought you were gay I hadn't I had no reason to but I was immediately and this is all happening in like a millisecond in my brain keep in mind I just was immediately so uh I was just so embarrassed that I didn't I didn't say like do you have a significant other you know what I mean like keep it uh keep it more general I was immediately so embarrassed but um you you you said you don't remember the interaction. So I'll have to remind you that, well, I'll tell you what, because you've given the answer that you would have given, that I remember you giving, let's just go through it.

I really just wanted you to remind you and the listeners what my reaction to your reaction was, okay? Okay. That has been cemented in my mind that I've never forgotten about so okay you and i are having beer right now um and then we were chit-chatting and then i say so javin do you have a girlfriend and i say no but i have a boyfriend oh that was my reaction which was um which was my terrible awkward version of like be cool be cool be cool like just be cool um and which i would then immediately was so much more embarrassed about you maybe didn't even notice it or were just polite enough not to make a big deal but i was just very embarrassed that i made that assumption about you um and i just thought it'd be fun to rehash that uh now that

you've i've told you that if you if you still can't remember the conversation have you i mean have you had conversations like that like how often does like an awkward oafish guy like me uh kind of kind of create that make that you know uh wrong assumption about you oh uh yeah across the board there's and you know this is supposed to be lighthearted so i'm going to try and keep it as lighthearted as possible but societal stereotypes being what they are and all of those lovely like 40s 50s and 60s the homosexual given to us by the amazing u.s government it paints a different picture and it says that if you like or are attracted to the person of the same sex then you have certain stereotypical

affectations that would mean that that would be true and we're affected by by what we're grown up through right it's the environment and the people and all the rest of it create programmings and beliefs and structures and parts of ourselves so my thing is i would never i would never fault somebody else for something that i could potentially fall into myself just because just because you're of a certain sexuality doesn't mean you're not going to also be in a place where you would automatically place somebody. Because we do.

We make split microsecond judgments of people. And nine times out of ten, they turn out to be wrong. I think it's like anything. It's what you do with it after you find out. Are you that super awkward person who's like, oh, I have to reconsider everything about the relationship or the tentative relationship we have etc etc which some people do and that's really awkward for a long time or you're just like oh i didn't know cool uh

uh what's the boyfriend like what's he like how are you and and i think a lot of people this was funny i uh i was at my brother's bachelor party a year ago and it's kind of like being a unicorn. There was a bunch of, uh, just a bunch of guys and they're like, Oh, so you're Aaron's gay brother. I'm like, well, I'm his brother. And I happened to be gay. I don't think there's any other brothers, uh, nor do I think the opposite might be true. And it was so fascinating because there was just a barrage of questions. There was a bunch of like, I've never met a gay person before a gay man before that i could talk to and feel comfortable talking to can i ask you some questions i'm like sure and we had these very in-depth questions about what it's like to date and other things uh as it pertains to being a gay dude and uh

it was really funny it was just it was just really childish not childish but from a childlike mind of, oh, I don't know about that. Let's talk about it. And those are some of the most coolest moments because you get to educate people really about a very recent experience because I only at that point probably had come out three or four years, now seven. So that's the cool thing about it is that it's not a big deal if somebody makes a misstep. It's just what do you do afterward? That said, that's because of hundreds and thousands and probably millions of men and women who have gone before who really had it tough, who had to sneak, who had to be incredibly ashamed, who built incredible neuroses and issues around it and were incredibly courageous and some died for being who they were and paved the way for a relatively easy situation that i have today that i you know i still feel like there are issues and i have issues with and have to contend with things but

that's all built on the shoulders of some incredible giants so So Javin, I didn't talk to you about what this conversation was going to be about today. But I'd like to put you on the spot, if you don't mind. This episode is about farmers who are also part of the LGBT community. Right. And I'm exploring or asking members of that community to explore the intersectionality between their farming identity and their queer identity and i'm just now you're not a hundred you're not a full-time farmer you wear many hats but but a farming a farmer hat is one of those hats that you you have worn and you have worn and you still do wear sometimes.

I'm putting you on the spot, but I'm just wondering if when I ask you about how these two parts of you intersect, if anything comes to mind, positive or negative. Sure. Well, first and foremost, I did wear the farming hat for a very short amount of time. I ran a small microg company called eat shoots and leaves in Victoria back. What feels like many years ago, probably close to when I met you and we had our beer.

I mean, and, and I would say the intersectionality of that played zero. Played zero issue. It didn't really change anything. The since then I've, I've done some homesteading i've helped other people farm i've definitely haven't been on the top of the bill on the farm so to speak um help people farm internationally helped with that and there is some interesting intersectionality

i worked in kenya and cuba or kenya and uganda and being in kenya is not what you would call a very favorable outcome. They were and had passed a number of laws about jailing and potentially stoning gays on the spot. But yet the Kenyan tourist manager, minister, put out this amazing, gay tourists are welcome to Kenya, which I always thought was really interesting and probably showed a lot of their, their confliction internally as a, as a government. So that was interesting because I went with a wedding ring and I went with like a fictitious woman in my phone that I could show people who I was quote unquote married to, because it's one of those things where you don't necessarily want to die in

another country while you're trying to help them catch and store rainwater yeah no kidding build nursery it just seems like a bad end to that story so i was just very conscious that that didn't need to be a big part of the story and then when i went to uganda which is even worse in terms of the condition that queer folk have to live under there i was even even more aware. And I shared very little about myself. And I imagine I came off very stiff and very, just very unable to connect with people, which was really heartbreaking to me because the place we worked had one of the highest

HIV infection rates of the entire country. And the school we helped and installed the food system at looked like it was bombed out. And it was abed out and uh it was it was really incredible experience um so you know those are some of the moments where i've had some intersectionality about where let's call it being gay or being queer was relevant since then i found that i was invited to work at a project in Ecuador. And then after I said, great, you know, when is it? I think I'm going to ask my my fiance hubby to be, as we like to say, I want to know when he can come down.

And they're like, we won't require your services. And then asking through an indirect channel, I found out that that was a big problem. That's what I was talking about before. And then since then, it hasn't really come up. And, you know, how many times do we offer up all the things about our lives to our professional conversations? Very little. So, Javin, you gave a number of really, really great examples on this topic. I'm just going to choose one. I just want to have one follow-up question about one of them. You talked about making a submission or it was an invitation, one of the two to, to, to a project in, I believe you said Ecuador. Uh, and then you, you, you, you made, you implied,

uh, you were gay, uh, and, and, and you, you think that's the reason they withdrew the invitation or rejected your application, whichever the case may be. I'm just wondering, like, how did that make you feel? What was your reaction to that? I mean, it's easy enough for us all to say things like, you just got to, you know, they're the ridiculous ones, let it roll off your back. But did you? Or is that really hard to hear and to experience? Well, you're asking a fundamental question about humanity.

Is it hard to hear that because of who you are, in essence, you are not welcome? Of course it is. Be it sexuality, ethnicity, disability, ability, capability, gender, sex, hair color, you name it. It's a shitty thing to hear that you are not welcome because of who you are and so i thought about it rationally and it was just there's no way i would want to work with these people if they feel that way about folks who are certain sexual persuasion there are other pieces that are going to come out there are other skeletons in the closet closet and I'm going to have to really deal with those things. So I've dodged a huge bullet. I was super grateful to be invited and it felt really incredible, but okay, onwards. And that's the most important thing about all of this. Whomever you are, whatever persuasion you are, there are going to be moments, there's going to be situations where you're not welcome and feel that completely. But then take as much responsibility for that as you can, because that's where the freedom comes afterwards to go.

Cool. I wasn't invited. And what does that mean? What's the message in that? What part of me really want to be invited? What part of me is really excited to not be invited and now what do i want to do with it and in some cases it's a bit of um paying the dues to the club that again as i've talked about many incredible men and women have gone through um and and those yet to be decided as that incredible musical likes to say um so it was a bit of paying the dues, finally paying the ticket because there's lots of people who've gone through that.

And then it was, okay, what do I want to do with this now? And it was, I want to understand it. I want to feel the frustration of that. And I'd like to move on because there's lots more good times coming. And if it doesn't include these people who are hyper prejudicial

and very closed-minded or narrow-minded or potentially suffering good times coming and if it doesn't include these people who are hyper prejudicial and very close-minded or narrow-minded or potentially suffering from their own trauma from their use or their past or they they're in a situation where they themselves are closeted and they have to outwardly shun everybody else then they're obviously dealing with things and levels of understanding that i i couldn't possibly. Unless we had a conversation, they could be vulnerable, which is probably not going to happen. So thanks so much, and we'll see you on the flip side. Well, that was well said, Javin.

So listen, man, thank you. Thank you for coming on to help introduce this episode. Thank you for sharing a little bit of your perspective on this topic. And thank you for handling my social gaff so well. Back when I, I made a bad assumption about you that many years ago. I, I, I really, I was grateful for it at the time. I'm grateful for it now. You're most welcome, Jordan. And again, to you and anybody else, it's, it's not the gaffaw that matters. It's what you do with it. And, you know, we're all just trying to navigate. And if we navigate with compassion and we navigate with a heart open situation,

I think we'll navigate as well as you did. Today's episode is supported by BCS America. I've had my BCS 853 for eight years now, and it's the only tractor I use on my 5 acre market garden. One thing I marvel at to this day is how quickly I can switch between attachments. BCS has a quick coupling system and I kid you not listeners, I can be mowing the grass with a front mounted flail mower, swing into my tractor shed and be back on the soil with my rear mounted tiller in less than a minute. Every time I do that I think about the fresh hell I used to experience whenever I had to switch attachments

on a four-wheel tractor. Check out bcsamerica.com to see the full lineup of tractors, attachments, and accessories, plus videos of BCS in action. That's bcsamerica.com. Hi, I'm Emily Heller and I am a queer farmer living in the Lower Mainlands. I'm currently saving money so that me and my wonderful partner, Christine, can hopefully buy a farm one day soon. Emily Halloran, thanks a lot for joining me on the Room in a Podcast. Thank you. I'm happy to be here.

I'm really happy to have you, Emily. You've come on today to talk about your experience or experiences as a queer farmer, but I thought we could start by just talking about your experiences as a farmer. Can you, can you talk a little bit about the kind of farming you do and with an end to being concise, just a little bit of the history of how you got into farming? Yeah, I actually, I'm a first generation farming. So farming has not become, or did not become a part of my life really until I was about 24 years old. I was studying holistic nutrition, and I was like, I really want to help people with food, and I was like, but our food system is

completely broken, and it's very hard for people to have access to healthy local food, and I was like, I'm gonna be a farmer, and I set out to make that one of my goals, And I was like, I'm going to be a farmer. And I set out to make that one of my goals, and I saved up my money, and I went over to Ireland and tried wolfing there, and then I did some wolfing in Spain and Portugal. And I was like, that's it. This is what I want to do. I want to be a farmer.

And when I came back from traveling, I went to the Tawasin Farm School, and I did the farming program there for 10 months. And from there, I went on an internship down to Cuba and was studying sustainable agriculture down there and doing some work with effective microorganisms in the animal husbandry. And then I made my way back up, and I worked at the Tawasin Farm School for another year or so. And then I've just been kind of bumming around on other farms and currently I'm actually working on a butcher because I want to be doing the animal husbandry on my farm and I want to be able to do my own foddering and butchering on farm right so it sounds like you've had quite an array of experiences as a lot of first generation farmers have as they get into farming but it also sounds

like you have focused in on animals is that fair to say yeah that's very fair to say like earlier kind of outside this official conversation you were saying you and your partner are saving up for a farm so like what i'm just curious what i know this changes from my own experience i know this changes but what is you know what what is what is within the realm of what's possible financially what does your farm look like that you're dreaming of um our farm looks like it would be probably about 20 acres and definitely have a forested area where i can do forest pigs uh and then we'll do mixed vegetable production as well my partner's a very very good vegetable grower so we'll focus on getting that um that up and going and then i'll be able to focus a little bit more on my animals as

you know the farm becomes more self-reliant and then you know i hope to have a little sausage company one day too and is that located on this farm what's that is that located on this fantasy farm like a like a sausage yeah yeah everything is located there and most sausage factories there yeah uh that sounds really cool so you said forested pigs forested pigs have you worked much with those with with in that system just i've just raised pigs like out on pasture um but as we started looking at land and stuff, it's hard to find a lot of clear-cut land. So I'm like, well, we can have this much acres for doing our vegetable production, and I can raise pigs out in the forest. They do really good in the forest.

Obviously, they'll supplement their diet with some grain here and there, but forced pigs. So the goal towards Forced Pigs is both an interest and a passion, but also a depressing reality that that new generation, first generation farmers like us can only dream of suboptimal land that we could possibly purchase. Yeah. Okay, so that's great. That's, that's sets us up nicely, just to get a little more of a sense of where your interests lie emily but i specifically asked you on to talk about your experience uh as a as a queer farmer and i would love to kind of talk about that with you now if that's okay yeah i just want to make it abundantly clear so emily halloran farmer and lesbian correct lesbian but i would say no more like queer like my i would say that my sexuality is fluid and you know i'm currently with my partner and my partner is a woman and i i you know i hope to spend my life with her yeah um but i wouldn't i wouldn't identify as a lesbian because my past

sexual experience have included men okay fair so i prefer the term more queer okay so emmy emily halloran queer farmer is emily halloran very proud queer awesome okay so take us back before farming then again in the same way you summarized your your your farming how you got into farming maybe you could just tell us a little bit about life before farming, since it seems like what you want to talk about is kind of the positive outcome when your farming identity and your queer identity began to interact, if that makes sense. So maybe start us before then and take us into that. I grew up and I'm the youngest of three, and I have two older brothers and then an older sister. And so I think I used to always equate my tomboyery to my two older brothers very much so being hard on me as two older brothers would be.

And so I don't know if I had to like take on the tomboy kind of role to protect and self-preserve who I am. But on that same note, like I think that I've always been a little bit different and like I wore shorts every day for 18 years, no matter the weather. And so I think part of me has always been queer in that way. I don't, I,

I, I, I'm, I'm, this is so, so I guess outside my wheelhouse, I don't get the shorts reference. You don't get the shorts reference? You don't get the shorts reference?

No. Do you wear shorts every day of the year? No. I guess not. No, no. But how does that relate to queerness? I think just because, you know, you grow up and there's these gender roles and there's these gender norms, and you're supposed to, as a girl growing up be going to the girl section and

be wearing these dresses and wearing these certain colors and growing up i you know didn't that didn't make me feel comfortable okay and generally speaking and i know this you can't you can't give an easy clear answer but like did you grow up mainly in a family and social environment that was was supportive of your queerness once you presented it or you know what i mean or or or was it was it a challenging one like how would you describe your experience of of your of that budding whenever when at whatever point you really started to explore that part of your identity, what was the environment like for you? I think, yeah, okay. So I first had my first queer experience, I guess, where I hooked up with a woman when I was like 20 or 21.

And I was kind of like, whoa, this is different. I didn't know that this is something I could be interested in. This isn't something I knew that I could kind of do. And I was like, cool, like, I can do this. And at first I was kind of like, I don't know, like, what will my friends think? What will my parents think? What will all these people think? And you're thinking about what all these other people think and not necessarily think about what you feel about it.

And so when I, like, started, you know, kind of telling my friends, like, they were pretty, like, everyone was very, very cool about it um and so when I like started you know kind of telling my friends like they were pretty like everyone was very very cool about it and I think also too like I think back to growing up my parents were actually very open and supportive of me kind of playing a more masculine gender role like growing up like I would shave with my dad and he was just like I had my own little plastic razor kind of shave with him and I think my parents gave me more space to kind of understand and be myself as best as I could. And then they gave me that space, and I think that I'm definitely very fortunate for that.

But I definitely grew up in a more sort of heteronormative upbringing. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. heteronormative upbringing and it's so it sounds like in in when at the point you started to realize or explore this part of your identity i mean i just what struck me about something you just said is just that you you almost right away couldn't just think about what makes you feel good or how you feel but what others are thinking. So you were definitely, you were definitely dancing like people were watching. Yeah. Yeah. And then, I don't know, it's just like something weird. Like, I guess when I had that first experience when I was like 21 or 20, I kind of, it opened my eyes up to being like,

there's all these rules that we're supposed to be playing, but we're not always necessarily playing ourselves. And I guess it was that I kind of like rebelled against what was kind of expected of me or what I felt was expected of me to like kind of marry a man and have this whole white picket fence life. I was like, there's an alternative. And I think that also kind of like kicks up the idea of like, maybe there's an alternative life path. And at the time when I was 20 or 21 like I recently just dropped out of

school I didn't really know where I was going with my life I didn't really know what I wanted to do and so I just started to see a kind of space where maybe I don't have to do what's outlined for me and in a way that kind of started to lead me towards looking at farming as an opportunity in a life path I don't want to put words in your mouth, so please resist it if I'm doing so, but are you drawing a correlation? Like that almost having to wrestle with this part of your identity,

did it allow you? Is that what you're saying? That it kind of allowed you to then also consider career and lifestyle options that you had to that point and not allowed yourself to do, to consider? Yeah. I think that it definitely like having this experience,

like allowed me to take myself out of the constraints that I, I think that I were applied on to me and allowed me to see different career paths that I didn't think were possible. Right. You know, talking to you about this now, like that's pretty huge. That's. Right. Which, you know, talking to you about this now, like, that's pretty huge. That's pretty great.

Yeah, totally. So, okay. So I think this is an important question before we move on to actually talking about the intersection between your queerness and your farming, say. Yeah. Which is, and you've sort of touched at this, but I want to seek some clarity here. By the time you started farming, were you farming, had you fully embraced the truest form of yourself that it sounds like now exists?

Where were you in, I'll call it a transition to embracing a part of yourself that at some point you hadn't embraced? When I started really embracing the farming, I guess I was like two years into uh my relationship with my past partner who was a woman as well and um I think I still struggled a lot with my sexuality and being queer and I didn't necessarily fully feel comfortable in it um and you know I don't really can't pinpoint exactly like kind of why but i didn't

feel fully accepting of myself because i guess in some way i didn't fully feel accepted by society um so you know i yeah and i don't know if that's because I just didn't feel settled in where I was or where I was going, but yeah, I didn't feel completely like settled into myself. And now, is it fair to assume that compare that feeling to your present self? Are you, are you, have you reached a state of, of like much greater comfort with who you are and what you're doing? Yeah, I like, I'm a queer farmer and like, I love being able to say that. I say it with like such pride. And I'm so lucky, like I'm very privileged to be able to speak so openly about that. A lot of people are able to speak so openly about it.

But yeah, it was just kind of when I started farming and really getting into it, I met more queer people, which was never a part of my, my life before. Like I didn't have any gay friends or queer friends until I started farming and I started to find a community of people who, you know, were like me and cared about the earth and cared about the community. And I just started to feel like I found a place where I belonged and not just in farming, but in terms of my sexual orientation as well. Right. And I mean, that brings to mind another related question.

I was just wondering if how often, if ever, in your day-to-day actions as a farmer, this part of your identity comes comes into play whether it should or it shouldn't yeah i think that like for me if i'm on my own farm in my own sort of like space it's like i feel so empowered um as a farmer and as a queer farmer to just do whatever and that like no job is not a match for me like i can i can kind of do any of the tasks on the farm, and that's a very cool thing because, you know, growing up, it's like, you know, this is going back to gender roles, but it's like, you know, you do certain genders do this and certain genders do that. And on the farm, that doesn't exist. You know, like, every task is for every person. That makes sense.

Every task is for every person. That makes sense. So another thing I wanted to ask you, Emily, is, I mean, you know, don't understand the queer farmer experience as well. Um, advice for, for thinking back, I guess, to interactions you've had with, with, with, you know, straight farmers like me, um, social advice, I guess, like whether, and that can be addressing over sensitivity, which is what I tend to be guilty of, or undersensitivity. Do you have anything you want, any public service announcements? I think it's just be open and don't constrain yourself and, like, you know, ask inquisitive questions. But maybe with that, like, don't push boundaries. But, like, as long as you're coming from a positive place of wanting to learn and be more open, there's not...

For me personally, I don't see anything wrong with asking the wrong kind of question, as long as you're trying to grow and get to a better place and find a better sense of understanding. And I also do, like, I really highly encourage doing, you know, research on the internet or watching documentaries about queer farmers or even engaging in some queer groups that might be in your city where you live. Any, uh, any stereotypes, uh, or, or presumptions that particularly annoy you? Um, white male farmer. Just in terms of like you know like you mean white male farmers particularly annoy you i mean you george no you're great i just mean you know it's really annoying anytime you see like an

advertisement for i don't know any any sort of like even was watching this like patagonia promotional video about regenerative agriculture and like it was just mainly a bunch of older men you know presenting their thoughts and ideas and it's like you know we need we need more voices to be heard and even like in the terms of all the like rock star farmers they tend to be white dudes that are like teaching people how to be rock stars sustainable farmers and it's like that's not actually representative of the majority people doing the farming uh so you're not seeing yourself represented nor are you seeing a bunch of of other perspectives i've seen the majority of people who represent farming not being represented

yeah yeah that's that's that's something that really totally and and it's i'm it's you know i think it's also worth pointing out because for those of us who are in that um in that privileged uh group that does get represented it's kind of like being until it gets pointed out it i think it's like being a fish in water and not appreciating the water you know like yeah okay so emily i I said earlier that I wanted to ask you to, to talk a little bit more about your community, like the queer community, the queer farming community. Um, so you're, you've mentioned like you're based in the lower mainland, kind of a metropolitan, uh, core of British Columbia. So yeah. Tell me and my listeners

a little bit about like with more in more specifics about that community that you and that you're so grateful for and enjoy so much um yeah i like i said like just getting into the farming that's just kind of where i started to meet my queer friends like i didn't have any queer friends growing up you know and even until like my mid-20s, I just had straight friends. And so getting into farming, like, I worked at the farmer's market with another girl, and she became my best friend. And even through farming, I met some other farmers who have another friend who ended up being my partner. And I just, I don't know exactly what it is about the queer farming community in Vancouver,

but it exists, and there's a lot of us us and it's really beautiful to be a part of. And I'm just so grateful for all the voices of all the queer farmers in this community. And the main reason I'm asking this follow-up question is because I was on Vancouver Island Far farming years ago for a while and there was a queer farming uh association or group called the rainbow chard collective and i'm just wondering like in your community are there actually organized groups whether they're social groups or um or or or advocacy groups that actually have structure to them? I think that the Rainbow Shark Collective, the people who started them are actually over in Richmond now,

or were a part of it. There's some in Richmond now. But I think it's just, you know, it's hard to get a bunch of farmers together in most of the months to be here. So even then, I'm, like, not even too involved if there is like a community group and then i'm like i should really go and be a part of one of these community groups i just think of my my friends that i've met through farming as my sort of like community group of queer farmers and i guess uh i'll ask this question but i i don't think i i'm to guess that you're not you're not in a great position to answer it. But like any advice, like you've acknowledged that you're in you live in a part of the world where that has been in general, like accepting of of your queerness.

And but there may be listeners who are who are in places where that's not necessarily the case and is there any advice you can give them for finding um finding community i i don't like that's a tough question but it doesn't hurt to ask i'm very i think that's a very tough kind of question um to answer i i think to um like my low days i do find such community and being with the plants that i'm growing and there's just such an acceptance that comes just from working with the earth and i find that it's just like so empowering so even if you you don't feel like you have your support group around you you know there's there's all these plants that care and support and love you as much

as you give that love back to them. As corny as that is, like, on very tough days for me, that just really fuels and can help keep me safe within my space. So kind of like the plants may be also watching you dance, but but they're not judging your moves. Clients may be also watching you dance, but they're not judging your moves. Exactly. Exactly. Emily Halloran, thanks so much for joining me. I've really enjoyed the conversation and I really appreciate the time.

Oh, my pleasure. Gay old time with you, Jordan. Well said. This episode is supported by the British Columbia Small Scale Meat Producers Association, a nonprofit focused on removing systemic barriers that impede small scale meat producers from competing fairly in the marketplace. Smallscalemeat.ca. One member of this association is Fresh Valley Farms, which sent me a huge box of meat for this sponsorship. Steve and Annalise, thank you. I've been enjoying everything in the homesteader box that you gave me. If you're in BC and want to check them out, head to freshvalleyfarms.ca.

All right, ruminant listeners, I need your help. For quite a while now, I've wanted to do two companion episodes, one called State of Market Gardening 2019, and the other called State of Livestock Production 2019. And here's what I want to do. I want to talk to you if you are a full-time farmer in either of those two disciplines who depends on your farming for your income and who considers yourself successful. And the reason I want to talk to you is I want to learn about observations you're making about how your industry or the part of your industry you're in is changing. Particularly, I want to know about how the marketing part of what you do is changing. Have you had to adapt how you sell what you produce to changing markets? Where are the

opportunities coming from one, two, three, four years down the line? Or to put it another way, how would you advise a new farmer doing the same kind of production as you if they came to you and asked you for advice on how to sell their product? For each episode, I hope to feature a few voices who can talk about how they think market conditions are changing, whether in a positive or a negative sense. Does that make sense? So if you think you have something to contribute, I would love to talk to you.

Here's what I would do. Record a quick voice memo on your smartphone with a summary of your observation or observations, and then text it to 250-767-6636 or email it to me, editor at theruminant.ca. I really hope to hear from some of you. I would love to produce these episodes. Thanks. All right, folks, two segments left, and they're both really good. Next up, you're going to hear an essay by my dear friend, Susan Nelson. Susan and I used to farm and live together on the same property, and I consider her a wonderful exemplary human being, except when she decides

to show her affection for me by tugging on my beard hairs, which I really don't like, Susan. Here's Susan Nelson. I hated farmers. It was a long and winding road to being what might be called one myself. In my corner of Virginia, in the U.S. South, growing up in the land of peanuts and pigs, I knew I was doomed. Early on, I realized that there was something different about me, and along with that understanding came the knowledge that the difference was dangerous. Bless my mother, who tried her best to shelter me, but her response to my question, I have a girl's body and a boy's brain, what do I do, was a shell-shock stare at the floor, and I'm embarrassed, don't think about it, it'll go away.

That's when, at nine years old, I understood that adults don't know everything and certainly don't always know what to do, except for Grandma Kemp. In the 1930s photo on the wall I wake up to every morning, she's in a pasture squatting beside a Jersey cow and squirting milk into the mouth of a cat. Hanging around the cow, a couple of chickens are busy being chickens. Not pictured, but not far away, was a big vegetable garden, grapes and fruit trees. It was her and her animal's labor that produced most of what the family ate. She showed me how it was possible for even a woman to be independent, strong, and a farmer. Another of her gifts to me was an unstated, mysterious feeling of recognition and understanding that I could sense,

but couldn't tell what it was until years later when I came out to her and she said, well, maybe that's been my problem all these years. As I trod that agonizingly slow road through adolescence, I used a number of coping mechanisms to survive life alone in the closet. Our house was in a pine forest on the edge of a salt marsh, and the closest neighbors were a ways down the road. The forest and the marsh, and being outside with numerous wild and domesticated animals, was my salvation. As a matter of necessity, we all worked in the big vegetable garden, but animals were my joy and solace, especially before I turned 13. At that magical,

morbid age, hormones at the ready, I mustered my defense. I read my fundamentalist Christian father's Bible three times. I became an expert on hypocrisy. Though my father was a machinist, the church we went to was largely populated by farmers and people associated with them. While half the people living in the county were black, the first time I had any contact with an African American was at 13, when public school systems were forced to integrate. My own vague fears of personal danger for being different sharpened into cold clarity when I saw people on the news being harassed, beaten, and killed for saying that the color of their skin should not determine their access to civil rights. Classmates bragged about their KKK fathers. Much of the violence that went on in the South was instigated in rural areas and in my personal belief, if not direct experience, by white farmers. I did my best in church and especially with my father to point

out that Jesus would not like these attitudes, that in fact Jesus in his time was a rebel against such ways of thinking and behaving. Behind all my outspoken bravado against injustice and my righteous indignation was of course fear and anger. I saw how short the distance was between white farmers' violence and epithets directed at people who were not white, and the responses they would have for me if they only knew who I was. So understandably, rural life, farm life, farm people were a major threat to my sense of safety and well-being. In seeking a refuge, I went to the library and scoured the telephone books of major cities on the West Coast. There it was, the Lesbian Resource Center, listed under social services in the yellow pages of Seattle. I had found a home.

I escaped Virginia with no physical harm, due most likely in no small part to the fact that I only opened the closet door a crack under safe circumstances. City life provided healing of the sort I needed. I found a family of friends and learned what love and community means. No more closets for me in the city. But I missed living on the ground, surrounded by animals and plants. Then one day, I was invited to go to Lopez Island in the San Juans of Washington State. It was the first time I felt safe as an adult, identifiable lesbian woman in a rural public place. Lopez is a farming community, and many of the farmers were out lesbians who were not simply feeding the family,

but much of the population on the island. What a revelation. I could have community and country life too. It took close to 20 years of little steps and big dreams, but I did eventually live a farming life of sorts. For seven years, I was fully occupied with cows and cheese. My partner grew flowers and raised ducks. In a small community, we rented a cabin and some space for our animals and garden. Though not big on public displays of sexual attraction, we never hid our affection for each other. And anyone who had a conversation with either of us soon got the picture. No one made any snarky comments to our faces. We never heard any second-hand commentary either.

A few folks asked direct questions out of curiosity and as an expression more of wanting to understand than any ill will or fear. After years of organizing and hard work by many people, things changed and continue to change, of course, both in the world and in me. I'm very thankful to all those who made change possible. I consider myself extremely fortunate to have had the support to arrive at a place in my being that doesn't require a closet to feel safe. And I realize and I'm grateful that I live in a place where my being a lesbian does not automatically put me in a life-threatening situation, farmer or not. I hear

even Virginia has improved, but there are still places in the world where being an out queer person may prove fatal. Here on southern Vancouver Island, I'd like to think that Grandma would feel right at home and that she could see a bit of herself in me. You can pull my beard hairs all you want, Susan. I miss you. Thanks again. All right, so I've got one more perspective to share with you today. But speaking of perspectives, I really want to make a note that every guest today in their own way emphasize that theirs is only one perspective of many, many perspectives on this topic and that they don't claim to represent the queer perspective in farming. All of my guests in their own way also emphasize that they feel lucky and privileged as far as their lives

have gone and that so many others have experienced so much worse. The reason I'm saying this is because I've had to edit these recordings like crazy to fit them all into today's episode. So I just know that inevitably one or more of these guests comments on that part of it may have been left out and I don't want to make it look like they didn't acknowledge what I just said, because they did. So with that said, I really hope you enjoy my conversation with our last guest. I'll let her provide her own bio, and then you'll hear our conversation. Talk to you at the end. Hi, I'm Jenna Jacobs. I'm the co-founder of Le Ferme Co-operative au Chantilly Champs in Quebec. We're about an hour north of Montreal

and our production is split between vegetables and eggs. Jenna Jacobs, thanks a lot for coming on the Room in a Podcast. Yeah, no problem. I'm happy to be here. Jenna, you've graciously agreed to join me on the show to

talk about your perspective as a farmer who is also a transgender person. And because I'm producing an episode on how, you know, those two parts of your identity intersect. And I think in order to do that, we need to kind of go through a short history of both. So I think we should start with the farming. This is a farming podcast. I'm just wondering if we can talk a little bit about, I guess, your history of getting into farming. Can you give us a little summary of how you came to be where you are right now?

Yeah. So about eight years ago in 2012, I was working on my doctoral thesis in biology, in particular forest ecology, and I was not very impressed with the research culture at the time. It was under the Harper government, and working in governmental organizations seemed less appealing to me. The more I spent in university seemed less appealing to me. The more I spent in university seemed less appealing to me. I always pictured myself working in forests. And the longer I did my education, the more I found myself working in downtown Montreal. So I had an opportunity near the end of my programs, especially near the end of my funding for my program, to join two other women

to start a cooperative farm. And at the time, I thought that sounded great, and I would give it a try. Both the other women had quite a bit more experience with agriculture than I did, but I came in with a skill set of mechanics, carpentry, plumbing, and all these other peripheral skills that often make these small farms work. Yeah, basically you were a dream member of a cooperative farm from your partner's point of view. Yeah, I mean, like me and there was one other woman that worked full time. She had all the crop experience.

I had all the machinery experience. And we actually worked pretty good together. We kind of developed this farm. And then the third member worked part time and she came in with a lot of the administration and finance skills. So we were a pretty good team to start this farm. And then the third member worked part-time, and she came in with a lot of the administration and finance skills. So we were a pretty good team to start the farm. People have gone on to do other projects, and as a cooperative farm, we do have members come and go more than some other cooperative farms I've interacted with.

So we do kind of find ourselves in a rebuilding phase often, but we're still going, and I still enjoy it. So Jenna, what's something you're growing on the farm that you're kind of particularly interested in or proud of or just kind of like, yeah, would highlight as far as your farming goes? I feel like we do pretty well on this farm with the warm weather crops, the tomatoes and eggplants and peppers. But I feel like last year especially we did really well with our melons. And I feel like melons are such a showpiece in a CSA basket on a farmer's market stand.

And I feel like last year we finally got a really nice system for growing really nice melons for a lot of the season. All right. Well, that's particularly interesting to me because I'm terrified of melons, mostly because I find it hard to get them harvested at the right time. So since you've said that, I've got to ask you for just any one tip on melon production. Well, if it's harvesting, get like the full slip, like a full slip cantaloupe.

So the ones that detach from the vine when they're ready. Sorry, are you saying find a variety that does that? Or are you saying that's when you know? No, it's a variety specific. So not all of our varieties do that, but we do the cantaloupe.

I think it's the Halona. That basically you like grab it and it just falls the cantaloupe. I think it's the halona. Basically, you grab it, and it just falls off the vine, and then you know it's ready. Oh, I really need that. But it's ready, right? You have to then get it to an eater. Yeah, or you have to make sure you're there every day, or else for us, the raccoons come. Yeah, right.

And that's been one of the battles. So we surround our melons with an electric fence. I put up a three-wire electric fence with a big charge on it. Yeah, you and all the marijuana farms. Okay, full slip, that's the term I need to look for in my melon varieties? I think so, yeah. Okay. Wow, I'm glad that came up. Thanks, Jenna.

I'll just add one more thing. As a co-op, we are still looking for new members. I don't feel like we're saturated at all. So this might be a good time to put a shout out for other farmers, other farmers that are drawn to maybe a more LGBT farm, that we're always looking for new members. So we're open to that kind of contact. Oh, cool.

Well, I'm glad you mentioned that, if only because I didn't really establish. Like, tell us where you are in the world and the community that your farm is located in. We are in Quebec, right between Montreal and Ottawa, or Montreal and Gatineau. So we're about an hour from Montreal, an hour and 15 minutes from Ottawa. And we always thought that we might be able to service both markets. We used to sell meat to a restaurant in Ottawa, but we really kind of stayed out of Ottawa for the most part. All the founding members had previously lived in Montreal, so our communities were there. And that seemed like the easiest place to start a basket program.

Definitely a rural area that you live in. Yeah, like where i am is definitely rural but we're so close to town that it's it's pretty amazing right kind of the best of both worlds cool okay so so jenna that's that's that's kind of one half of the intersection we're going to explore i was hoping you could to the extent you're comfortable kind of summarize um your kind of your personal history you know as as as, as regards your, your gender identity. And, um, I suppose, I don't know where to ask you to start, except probably if you're comfortable, like at the point when you were young, when you realized there was something

different about you. Yeah. So I feel like I have a pretty typical story of most of the trans people I've met. I felt uncomfortable in my body from a very young age. I feel like I have a pretty typical story of most of the trans people I've met. I felt uncomfortable in my body from a very young age. This was maybe one of my earliest memories was not feeling comfortable in my body. And that was quickly followed by the memory of feeling like it wasn't okay that I had this discomfort, that this discomfort wasn't normal.

So I quickly learned how to hide this discomfort. I was quite closed about it as a child. I wasn't very expressive to my parents. I assumed my parents wouldn't be very open to it. This was in the 80s, and there wasn't a lot of role models or a lot of exposure of trans people in the media. or a lot of exposure of trans people in the media. So I pretty much went until I was about 25 years old before I told anybody about these feelings. And then I slowly started exploring my gender.

Eventually, when I moved to Montreal, it was partly so I could continue in this exploration. And in Montreal is where I first met another trans person, and I was 31 years old. And it really opened my eyes about the possibilities of what could be done. I started with a therapist, and I started seeing some medical doctors and a whole host of other people to help me through it.

And it quickly became obvious to me that transitioning to presenting as a woman was going to make me a lot happier in my life, and it really has. And so about 10 years ago now, I made that switch, has and so about 10 years ago now I made that that switch I um where I I started presenting full-time and and there was a part of my life where I was presenting male part of my life and female part of my life and it was pretty difficult I used to always call like when I presented male I was in disguise felt like a disguise I wore lots of hoodies and hats and stuff because I felt like I needed to hide myself. But then shortly after I transitioned is when I met this farming group, and we started this cooperative farm,

and then I was able to pretty much relocate here presenting full-time as female. And it was like kind of started this new life for me here in this new community and it's been really great jenna i'm i'm wondering what was the biggest difference if we take i don't know i'm just going to zero in on your 20s based on what you just told me but like in in helping in helping cisgender people like me understand your perspective, what was the biggest difference between how you experienced the world and described yourself and how others would describe you or experience you as far as your gender? Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, the way I experienced my gender, there's been a few analogies that have really, like, spoke to me that people talk about being a trans person prior to transition.

What I like is, like, holding a ball underwater. Like, that you're always trying to hold this ball under the water and not let it surface. You're always kind of focused on this. You can't kind of forget about it um because you don't you're scared that ball's going to surface and people are going to know who you really are the other analogy i like is the white noise that it's like there was this white noise in my ear all the time for my whole life until i transitioned that suddenly went away. And there was this white noise that I had to deal with. It was always present. It made me depressed.

It made me angry. And then all of a sudden it went away and life was different. So, okay, so moving on kind of to the intersection between these two parts of you, can we talk about your expectations heading into farming as a transgender person um like how did you as you as you kind of made this decision to move away from academia and into farming did you have preconceived notions about how these this core part of you and this potentially new part of you as a farmer would interact and what the experience would be like yeah and, and it was actually, I remember very specifically talking to my therapist about

this, that I was in a, like I was in academia, it was, you know, a pretty progressive place, people were pretty accepting, people didn't seem very judgmental, and I was going to this place that had at least the reputation of being a little bit more of an old boys club where I expected to maybe see more discrimination based on my gender presentation. But the reality really hasn't shown that very much. I've been pretty impressed even in the small town that I live in, how quickly people are to accept me, how many, really how many old men I interact with on a weekly basis, either at the hydraulic shop or this morning at the metal shop. And people are nice to me. People, like people treat me with a

lot of respect and, and I don't find a lot of just that I'm being discriminated against because of my gender presentation. So Jenna, why you must've thought about your expectation of, of intolerance in the rural community you're in. Um, and then the reality that you really haven't, you've been pleasantly surprised and haven't really experienced that. How have you, how have you explained that to yourself? Like why, why, why, why didn't you, I guess. And I asked that just because I think many people, including myself would have assumed that in moving to a rural community in Quebec, you would experience, um, some intolerance or a lot more than you have. So why haven't you, essentially?

Are you just really lucky? Is it a really special community? Or how would you explain it? I think it's a combination of things. As a trans person, I can blend in in most communities. So I feel like one of the differences here is when I go to the hydraulic shop, am I identified as a trans woman or just as a woman? And I think both those identities come with their own set of challenges when you walk into a hydraulic shop.

I don't see a lot of other women clients in the hydraulic shop. I feel quite lucky that two of the employees of the hydraulic shop are women. So I think there's those things. I kind of go about moving around as being openly trans. I don't necessarily bring it up in conversations, I don't necessarily bring it up in conversations, but I also just don't... I have a hard time assuming that some people just... Like, some people seem to know.

I can see the looks, where people are at least questioning it in their head. And even if I have an ambiguous gender presentation, I think it brings its own set of preconceived notions with it. But what I found when I'm here is that I can navigate this world of the male-dominated part of farming. I think because I was socialized still as male. So I can walk into these shops, and even though my presentation might be different, I think a lot of my action, the way I speak, is what people are used to in these types of environments.

So I think people feel comfortable with me quicker than maybe if I came into this environment as a city person and also didn't come with this male socialization. farmer gives you any special advantages or superpowers like anything anything that you kind of benefit from either because of the total the sum total of your past experience or just or anything like that like any any leg up or or thing you're grateful for about about this intersection i alluded to it earlier in our conversation this idea of being socialized male i think compared to cisgendered women i I feel like I was given this like superpower that I know how to talk to old men in a way that makes them feel maybe more comfortable in the type of environments I talk to them in. And I'm often surprised at how many resource people I use on farming that are in their 60s, for example, or even in their 70s,

to come work on my tractor, the guy at the hydraulic shop, the guy at the tire shop, the guy at the welding shop. And it's these type of people that often I'll go in, and I feel like I'll walk into a room full of men and they'll all look at me funny and then the way I feel like it's the way I can talk to them makes them feel um a little bit more comfortable with me than I think some other cisgender women would experience even if even with the same level of knowledge I have going into it. And I think this is just a strict socialize, the way we socialize little boys versus little girls, the way people are exposed.

And I felt like I was like a spy in this male world for so long that it gives me this ability to move through that male-dominated world a little bit easier. And I'm not saying this is probably true for everyone, but I think it is, like, I think I want to recognize that it is a generalization. But yeah, like, one of the easiest ones is, like, the way women are typically socialized to not challenge men, especially older men, to stand up, to be confident in your knowledge, isn't socialized in women the way it is in men.

And what we often end up seeing in men is that they become overconfident in their knowledge, and they want to explain to everybody else how to do everything. The term has come up as mansplaining, which I think can work against you, but it's also the way people interact with each other, and I think that's part of the socialization that's maybe part of my superpower in these settings. Okay, well, why don't we finish with a little bit of Transgender 101, you know, try and contribute to more inclusivity. You and I did this ahead of the interview.

You kind of gave me some 101. I'm just wondering if you could share some basics for people in terms of how to make a transgender friend or colleague feel more included and just certain questions or topics to avoid or behaviors to avoid. Would you mind doing that for listeners? Yeah, no, not at all. I think that's a good thing to include in this podcast. The first one that comes up for me is pronouns, and pronouns can be difficult, but they're also really quite important to a lot of trans people.

And that's not saying they're important to every trans person, but I know it's like an attack on my identity when people don't use female pronouns for me. It's never clear if it's intentional or not, but getting somebody's pronouns right is important. Here on my farm, often what we do when we have a new group of people, when all the employees start, we'll go around and introduce ourselves and also share what our preferred pronouns are. So that's an easy way to do, and cisgender people can do that too.

Even if it's a room that you think is full of cis people, it's a nice thing to do that round and include it with your gender presentation or with your presentation of your name and maybe where you come from with your preferred pronouns. And maybe it's going to be obvious after the circle, but just having that inclusivity I think will add a lot for any trans people that might be there on the farm. Interacting, maybe there's other people that the gender presentation isn't very obvious that you're interacting with at a conference or farm visits. It's pretty easy to avoid gendering people. You know, if you can imagine there's

a group of three people and someone wants to refer to the third person, we do it all the time in language. We refer to a person as a person instead of a he or a she or a him or a her. Refer to people by their name. Ask them their name instead of referring to, you know, referring to a hymn, you can use the name Jordan, or the podcast host is another easy way. Listening, often there'll be someone that'll use a gender that knows the person better that you're with, and that's another way to pick up on proper pronoun usage. way to pick up on proper pronoun usage. The other one is trans people never like to talk about their life in too much detail before they transitioned. Nobody wants to talk about their

name. Nobody, like, I shouldn't say nobody, I really never identified as male especially now it's really clear to me that even as a young child i was i still like i identified as female but people treated me as male i had a male presentation but i i still felt female back then um there's more and more like literature and science that that supports that idea that that you know even like talking about biological sexes I feel like I'm also biologically female even though at one time in my life I produced sperm I feel that's possible so this idea that I changed my gender, I didn't change my gender ever. I changed my gender presentation.

I think that's a subtle but important difference. And so for that reason, big no-no to say to you in conversation, to refer to the time in your life when you were male, because you never were. Correct? Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. of the time in your life when you were male because that you never were correct exactly yeah exactly like i wasn't a man that turned into a woman or a man that that changed into a woman i just all i did was change my presentation um but i've always identified and it wasn't always clear to me how i identified but through through, through meditation, through therapy, it became more and more clear to me what was plaguing me so much in my life and the discomfort I had felt my whole life.

Jenna, is there anything else you want to talk about before we wrap up? Another important point I feel is that I come from a place of privilege, and I don't think my story reflects trans people in generally, especially trans people that come from less privilege than I do. I grew up in middle class suburbia. I was identified as a white male as a child and a young adult, and all the privilege that came with that. So it made several parts of my life history and my transition a lot different than someone that came from lower class, people of color, often have quite a bit more challenges. I also have a lot of parental support. Both my parents are quite supportive. My partner's parents, they're both supportive as well. So I think that's also, parental support

for trans children is so crucial. And so many trans children don't get that. I hear story after story of people that come out and lose family, lose parental support. And I think that puts them in a lot harder position than anything I've ever had to deal with. Jenna Jacobs, thanks a lot for coming on the podcast to share your perspective and your story. It was really interesting and educational, and I really appreciate it. No problem, Jordan. It was nice to be here. I really appreciate it. No problem, Jordan.

It was nice to be here. Well, that's it. That was one epically long episode and I hope you enjoyed it. I sure enjoyed recording it. I really enjoyed talking all today's guests and I just want to thank them all one more time

for the conversations that they shared with me and also Susan for that wonderful essay. So look, I'm back to a brief run of episodes again. Last time around, I dumped them all together for the first time. This time, they're all going to come out in fairly short order,

but it could be as seldom as once a week for the next few weeks. So stay tuned for more episodes. I've got a couple more in the hatch, and I'm working on the rest right now as we speak. And I really enjoyed the last run. I hope you did too. It was nice to get some feedback from you. I'm probably on the rest right now as we speak. And I really enjoyed the last run. I hope you did too. It was nice to get some feedback from you. I'm probably going to talk about some of that feedback in the days and weeks to come. And that's it. I'll talk to you soon, everybody. Happy farming, gardening, whatever. We'll live off chestnuts, spring water and peaches We'll owe nothing to this world of thieves

And live life like it was meant to be Because why would we live in a place that don't want us? No, but I have a boyfriend. Oh! We could be happy with life in the country With salt on our skin and the dirt on our hands I've been doing a lot of thinking Some real soul searching And here's my final resolve I don't need a big old house or some fancy car to keep my love going strong.

So we'll run right out into the wilds and graces. We'll keep close quarters with gentle faces and live next door to the birds and the bees and live life like it was meant to be.