WEBVTT - Scott Chaskey is America's Favorite Farmer 0:00:03.840 --> 0:00:07.000 This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the thing, 0:00:07.640 --> 0:00:12.080 My chance to talk with artists, policymakers and performers, to 0:00:12.160 --> 0:00:16.920 hear their stories, what inspires their creations, what decisions change 0:00:16.960 --> 0:00:23.279 their careers, what relationships influenced their work. In a society 0:00:23.440 --> 0:00:27.560 where the convenience of food outweighs quality and farm the 0:00:27.640 --> 0:00:31.160 table is marketed as a luxury, it's rare to find 0:00:31.200 --> 0:00:36.280 someone whose full time occupation is farmer, and even more rare, 0:00:36.440 --> 0:00:39.279 as is the case with Scott Chaskey, to find one 0:00:39.320 --> 0:00:44.959 who's also a poet. But the bearded, sixty six year 0:00:45.000 --> 0:00:48.680 old farming virtuoso is nothing if not one of a kind. 0:00:49.320 --> 0:00:53.840 And Ohio native with a degree in creative writing, Chaskey began, 0:00:53.960 --> 0:00:57.680 in his words, consciously growing food while living in England 0:00:57.720 --> 0:01:00.840 with his wife in the nineteen eighties for moving back 0:01:00.880 --> 0:01:03.360 to the States to take over as the head of 0:01:03.440 --> 0:01:07.319 Quail Hill Farm in Amagansett, New York. One of the 0:01:07.360 --> 0:01:11.320 first community supported farms in the country. Quail Hill began 0:01:11.400 --> 0:01:14.399 in nine as a small piece of land for a 0:01:14.440 --> 0:01:18.640 few local families, but the concept, which hinges on sharing 0:01:18.760 --> 0:01:22.400 risk with the other farmers, has gone global and Scott 0:01:22.480 --> 0:01:25.720 Chaskey is known in the agricultural world as the quote 0:01:25.959 --> 0:01:30.880 spiritual father of community farming unquote. So we've been around 0:01:31.000 --> 0:01:34.679 twenty seven years, um, and we are part of I 0:01:34.720 --> 0:01:38.360 work for a land trust, the Peconic Landrust, which is 0:01:38.400 --> 0:01:42.000 a conservation organization that has preserved twelve thousand acres of 0:01:42.120 --> 0:01:44.120 land on the on the east end of Long Island. 0:01:44.280 --> 0:01:47.880 So Mechanic Land Trust is a conservancy that protects land 0:01:47.880 --> 0:01:50.400 out here. Who had the idea of let's take some 0:01:50.440 --> 0:01:52.840 of this land and farm it organically? Did someone come 0:01:52.880 --> 0:01:55.160 to you? You went to them? How did that happen? Yeah? 0:01:55.240 --> 0:01:58.640 So so um, two years before we actually came to 0:01:58.680 --> 0:02:01.840 emmaganstt and and and hooked up with a Pconic Land Trust, 0:02:01.880 --> 0:02:05.680 there were ten families that were heard this about this 0:02:05.760 --> 0:02:08.800 idea of c s A. And you know from the 0:02:08.840 --> 0:02:12.239 beginning of it in Western mass your parents not, Oh 0:02:12.480 --> 0:02:15.560 they were, that's right, they were part of the of 0:02:15.600 --> 0:02:17.639 the first ten families. And that's actually how I got 0:02:17.680 --> 0:02:20.600 involved because when we I lived in England for many years. 0:02:20.639 --> 0:02:22.840 When we came back, Bill said you want to come 0:02:22.880 --> 0:02:25.519 to this meeting about this community farm that were part 0:02:25.520 --> 0:02:28.560 of I obviously wasn't part of it at that time. 0:02:28.880 --> 0:02:33.600 And uh, here I am. You came back nine, that's right. Yeah. 0:02:33.880 --> 0:02:37.160 What was dining like in your childhood and your relationship 0:02:37.240 --> 0:02:40.080 to food when you were a child? Where are you from? Uh? So, 0:02:40.160 --> 0:02:43.840 I grew up in um western New York, near Buffalo, 0:02:43.919 --> 0:02:49.120 a place called Tonawanda. Uh And um what he had 0:02:49.120 --> 0:02:52.960 an interesting job. He ran a bookstore at university, so 0:02:53.280 --> 0:02:55.480 he was. But he was so good at it that 0:02:55.520 --> 0:02:58.840 he kept getting hired to go on to another university. 0:02:58.880 --> 0:03:02.520 And so I like that living around a university and 0:03:02.560 --> 0:03:05.400 being part of that um. And so he ran the 0:03:05.440 --> 0:03:08.239 bookstore at the University of Buffalo and then at the 0:03:08.320 --> 0:03:11.280 University of Washington and then finally at Cornell. And so 0:03:11.400 --> 0:03:15.040 Ithaca became home in the end, and I counted as 0:03:15.080 --> 0:03:17.280 my hometown, even though I didn't get there until I 0:03:17.360 --> 0:03:21.239 was I think seventeen, so the end of your high 0:03:21.240 --> 0:03:24.000 school years. Yeah, yeah, I graduated from Ithaca High School 0:03:24.040 --> 0:03:27.360 and it was immediately home, even even though I don't 0:03:27.400 --> 0:03:29.720 I mean, I've never been back to Tonawanda actually, right, 0:03:29.760 --> 0:03:32.560 And we're not to college to college fifty miles away 0:03:32.560 --> 0:03:35.280 in Binghamton, Harper College at the time it was called 0:03:35.640 --> 0:03:40.080 sunny Binghamton was harper and what was what was the 0:03:40.120 --> 0:03:42.480 relationship with food? Because I think about my family and 0:03:42.480 --> 0:03:46.040 how it's unusually once when I think back now, Yeah, well, 0:03:46.080 --> 0:03:49.760 my mother is a great baker, so Irish mother Mary 0:03:50.040 --> 0:03:55.200 and German father Harry and um he grew up in 0:03:55.720 --> 0:03:59.240 a Germanic household, and so meat and potatoes were you know, 0:03:59.400 --> 0:04:03.160 was the law up? Well, yeah, until did you rebel? 0:04:03.400 --> 0:04:07.200 I rebelled a surprise surprise in the sixties. How many 0:04:07.240 --> 0:04:11.000 siblings to to an older sister and a younger sister. Yeah, 0:04:11.040 --> 0:04:12.960 I was in the middle of the boy in the middle. Yeah. 0:04:13.360 --> 0:04:16.280 But getting back to food, it was really my mother's 0:04:16.320 --> 0:04:21.320 Irish recipes and uh highlighted also on Sunday evenings every 0:04:21.360 --> 0:04:25.680 Sunday by my father's German potato pancakes. Was it was 0:04:25.680 --> 0:04:28.840 it sitting down at a table, yeah, very conscious meal. 0:04:28.960 --> 0:04:32.000 Oh yeah, very conscious, well paced meal and everybody bolting 0:04:32.000 --> 0:04:34.760 their food like my house. No, we we sat and 0:04:34.839 --> 0:04:38.880 we ate, et cetera, and lax there's always dessert, you know. 0:04:39.040 --> 0:04:43.200 It was it was every evening was you know, customary basically, However, 0:04:43.279 --> 0:04:46.919 I do remember as life got a little busier that 0:04:46.960 --> 0:04:49.400 there was also the beginning of the TV dinner era, 0:04:50.080 --> 0:04:53.600 so um, you know, yeah, I experienced that too. So 0:04:53.600 --> 0:04:56.839 when you were growing up and and and and living 0:04:56.880 --> 0:05:00.360 this way, when did you change your consciousness about what 0:05:00.440 --> 0:05:03.320 you wanted to eat and didn't want to eat? Well? College, 0:05:03.360 --> 0:05:06.680 I mean, so I went to Harper College in in 0:05:06.839 --> 0:05:11.120 nineteen and in the the pretty fiery year right after 0:05:11.200 --> 0:05:15.440 the UH Democratic Convention that year, I remember, you know, 0:05:15.760 --> 0:05:18.760 being shocked watching that and here I am in in 0:05:19.040 --> 0:05:23.320 uh initiation week in or you know, in introduction to 0:05:23.360 --> 0:05:26.400 college and being away from home and the SDS, the 0:05:26.440 --> 0:05:30.320 local STS chapter at at my university took over the 0:05:30.360 --> 0:05:34.360 administration of Students for Democratic Societies who was took over? 0:05:34.400 --> 0:05:38.400 And I was, you know, had no idea of what 0:05:38.480 --> 0:05:41.480 this was, what was happening. So I mentioned that because 0:05:42.200 --> 0:05:45.520 my entire consciousness and probably the consciousness of the country 0:05:45.600 --> 0:05:47.560 changed as well, a lot of questioning of everything that 0:05:47.640 --> 0:05:50.440 was ever, absolutely everything. How did that plan to your 0:05:50.440 --> 0:05:55.120 eating habits? Yeah? And uh, do you know of the 0:05:55.279 --> 0:05:57.800 do you know of the Moosewood Cookbooks? That's a it's 0:05:57.839 --> 0:06:01.360 a restaurant in Ithaca that's arted and right right at 0:06:01.400 --> 0:06:03.839 that time and and it was, you know, the first 0:06:03.920 --> 0:06:07.880 sort of vegetarian outburst really at that time, and so 0:06:08.080 --> 0:06:12.200 it was cooperative, etcetera. And so that had tremendous influence. 0:06:12.240 --> 0:06:15.520 And and also I remember when I left it may 0:06:15.560 --> 0:06:19.120 have been the year I left college. Um, Francis more 0:06:19.200 --> 0:06:22.360 Lapay had written Diet for a Small Planet, which sold 0:06:22.400 --> 0:06:25.080 millions of copies and still still does as a matter 0:06:25.080 --> 0:06:27.000 of fact. And that's what I took when I went 0:06:27.000 --> 0:06:29.520 out into the world to you know, learn about my 0:06:29.560 --> 0:06:32.160 own style of cooking and eating, etcetera. Where did you 0:06:32.160 --> 0:06:36.279 go to begin that process? Um? Everywhere? Traveling? It was 0:06:36.320 --> 0:06:39.520 a traveling I traveled, yeah, uh, you know, with a 0:06:39.520 --> 0:06:46.120 little Volkswagen bug. And then you know it's predictive everywhere everywhere. Yeah. Yeah, 0:06:46.400 --> 0:06:50.159 When did you first go overseas? What did you overseas before? Uh? 0:06:50.200 --> 0:06:54.440 Probably during during college, sometime sometime in the middle of college, 0:06:54.440 --> 0:06:59.400 which was putting uh, Switzerland, France. Um. And what struck 0:06:59.440 --> 0:07:01.720 you when you wrote? What was happening then for me? 0:07:01.800 --> 0:07:04.440 And the traveling was was opening to a new world 0:07:04.480 --> 0:07:06.840 basically because all I knew was the United States. So 0:07:07.200 --> 0:07:08.839 I just think it's about it in terms of it 0:07:08.920 --> 0:07:11.400 for someone who later on goes on to spend a 0:07:11.520 --> 0:07:14.640 huge part of their adult life growing food. Your life 0:07:14.680 --> 0:07:18.160 is about food and agriculture, so so your relationship to 0:07:18.200 --> 0:07:20.760 those things which is very in ordinary. Then I really 0:07:20.920 --> 0:07:25.440 entered into consciously growing food in England when I moved 0:07:25.440 --> 0:07:27.600 to England. So this didn't come Did you move there 0:07:28.320 --> 0:07:32.880 to get a graduate degree in in literature? And I 0:07:33.080 --> 0:07:34.920 lived in Oxford for a couple of years, but I 0:07:34.960 --> 0:07:38.880 actually was studying through an American university, Antioch College, which 0:07:38.920 --> 0:07:42.080 had a center for British studies in London, and the 0:07:42.120 --> 0:07:45.120 fellow who headed the program was studying for a d 0:07:45.280 --> 0:07:48.120 phil at Oxford. And so I said, I like the 0:07:48.160 --> 0:07:50.680 idea of spending time in Oxford, and I went back 0:07:50.720 --> 0:07:53.080 and forth to London, got a job as a gardener. 0:07:54.080 --> 0:07:55.760 That was the beginning job as a gardener, And that 0:07:55.800 --> 0:07:57.920 was the beginning. Did you seek that job? But that 0:07:58.000 --> 0:08:00.200 was the only job, you know, I think was a 0:08:00.240 --> 0:08:03.080 local paper and you know I had I I was 0:08:03.120 --> 0:08:06.000 living in a bedsit it's called you know, one one 0:08:06.360 --> 0:08:09.640 one room little not an apartment, just the room in 0:08:09.680 --> 0:08:12.840 Oxford across seven pounds a week and I didn't have 0:08:12.840 --> 0:08:15.480 any money. So I got a job as a gardener 0:08:15.520 --> 0:08:17.760 for a pound an hour. And what happened when you 0:08:17.760 --> 0:08:21.680 did that job? It really led to um, you know, 0:08:21.880 --> 0:08:25.160 my love of the earth. And I worked with gardeners 0:08:25.240 --> 0:08:29.120 up in a really beautiful place called Boers Hill outside 0:08:29.160 --> 0:08:32.920 of Oxford, is five miles uphill. Actually, there's a famous 0:08:32.960 --> 0:08:35.800 little woodland on the way up called Benzi Poplars, and 0:08:35.840 --> 0:08:38.960 there's a great poem by grown Manly Hopkins about Binzi. 0:08:39.320 --> 0:08:41.760 And I rode my bike by that every day, and 0:08:41.760 --> 0:08:44.160 I worked in these gardens and I'd come down and 0:08:44.200 --> 0:08:47.360 spend the rest of the day in the body Land Library, 0:08:47.440 --> 0:08:51.200 which was heaven on Earth and you and you did 0:08:51.200 --> 0:08:53.640 the gardening job for how long? A couple of years 0:08:53.679 --> 0:08:55.880 when I lived in Oxford, and then when I came 0:08:55.920 --> 0:08:58.040 back to the States, I sort of picked it up 0:08:58.160 --> 0:09:01.319 and and learned some more ardening from friends, et cetera. 0:09:01.440 --> 0:09:03.680 And yeah, and he decided to move back that went 0:09:03.720 --> 0:09:07.640 back to England, and because we missed it by that time, 0:09:07.679 --> 0:09:10.800 I met my wife in England. Two of us were Americans, 0:09:11.440 --> 0:09:14.320 but we were really cross paths over the cross passed 0:09:14.480 --> 0:09:19.360 in a poetry class because a friend of mine was 0:09:19.400 --> 0:09:22.200 teaching a class and asked me to come in and 0:09:22.240 --> 0:09:26.679 read next to your No, she was. The story that 0:09:26.720 --> 0:09:30.320 we tell often is that she was wearing ll bean 0:09:30.360 --> 0:09:32.240 boots and I had lived in Maine, and so I 0:09:32.280 --> 0:09:35.559 remarked about her ll bean boots and here we are. 0:09:36.160 --> 0:09:39.080 That was a key. That was a key. Actually the 0:09:39.160 --> 0:09:41.559 real key was that a week later because I was 0:09:41.600 --> 0:09:43.320 scheduled to go back to the States. And a week 0:09:43.440 --> 0:09:47.200 later we saw a poster for a Wordsworth festival in 0:09:47.360 --> 0:09:51.960 London and it was being opened by Shamashini before he 0:09:52.160 --> 0:09:55.440 won the Nobel Prize. And the second night, Basil Bunting, 0:09:55.480 --> 0:09:58.800 who was my teacher at Binghamton, by some odd chance, 0:09:59.360 --> 0:10:02.679 great North reading poet. We're reading Wordsworth. And so I 0:10:02.800 --> 0:10:05.200 stayed and she and I that was our first date, 0:10:05.320 --> 0:10:08.040 was to go to the words. Do you find I 0:10:08.080 --> 0:10:10.560 don't think this is necessarily so, but do you find 0:10:10.600 --> 0:10:14.800 that your passion for and your immersion in literature and 0:10:14.880 --> 0:10:19.520 poetry and your work in agriculture go hand in hand? Oh? Yeah, 0:10:19.559 --> 0:10:21.800 they do go hand in hand. Yeah. I can't quite 0:10:21.800 --> 0:10:25.480 explain it, um, but but they go hand. Yeah. You 0:10:25.520 --> 0:10:29.040 get it to your dough. So you go to England 0:10:29.040 --> 0:10:32.960 for ten years, right, and you are involved in agriculture 0:10:32.960 --> 0:10:36.520 the whole time, are you studying literature teaching a little 0:10:36.520 --> 0:10:38.960 bit of a little bit of both actually, or all 0:10:39.000 --> 0:10:42.280 of that. But we lived on a Cornish hillside. So 0:10:42.360 --> 0:10:46.120 after Oxford, um, my wife read a book called The 0:10:46.160 --> 0:10:48.840 Cry of a Bird written by this woman who started 0:10:48.840 --> 0:10:52.360 a bird sanctuary in a little village called Mousel, and 0:10:52.559 --> 0:10:57.599 we went down as caretakers after they had died of 0:10:57.600 --> 0:11:01.560 of their studio and their cottage and uh and their 0:11:01.600 --> 0:11:05.160 publishers owned owned the places at that time, and they 0:11:05.200 --> 0:11:07.120 after we were there for three months, they said, well, 0:11:07.840 --> 0:11:10.320 it seems you know you're the ones who should be here. 0:11:10.559 --> 0:11:13.120 Do you want to buy the places? So we had 0:11:13.160 --> 0:11:16.880 never thought of settling in Mousel, or or England for 0:11:16.920 --> 0:11:19.920 that matter, and nor did we have any money. But 0:11:20.120 --> 0:11:23.679 we figured it out and we bought the studio in 0:11:23.760 --> 0:11:26.760 cottage and stayed there for eight years. So your kids 0:11:26.800 --> 0:11:29.839 born over there? Yeah, My oldest Levin Levin was born 0:11:30.280 --> 0:11:32.600 and had a Cornish accent, so it was really really 0:11:32.640 --> 0:11:36.280 fascinating to have the American parents with him and over there. 0:11:36.480 --> 0:11:38.680 That's when we came back when he got to school age, 0:11:38.679 --> 0:11:41.120 but he did he was enrolled in a preschool and 0:11:41.120 --> 0:11:44.040 then he went to you know, kindergarten for a while, 0:11:44.120 --> 0:11:45.800 and you came back for the back when he was 0:11:45.840 --> 0:11:50.600 about five. Because it wasn't really working schooling. It didn't 0:11:50.640 --> 0:11:52.760 seem quite right. So we thought, well, let's try it out. 0:11:52.760 --> 0:11:54.720 When you know, it's our first kid, let's you know, 0:11:55.160 --> 0:11:57.040 and you're really focused on that sort of thing. And 0:11:57.120 --> 0:12:00.000 so and also by that time we'd lived eight year 0:12:00.080 --> 0:12:02.960 is in this little fishing village and life was good, 0:12:03.000 --> 0:12:06.360 but my wife was missing home, and so was her home. 0:12:06.960 --> 0:12:11.120 Her home was originally New Mexico and then Berkeley in 0:12:11.160 --> 0:12:14.280 the sixties. And you guys are touching all the lefty 0:12:14.320 --> 0:12:18.920 touch stuff Berkeley. Yeah, well, maybe we'll get to that 0:12:19.040 --> 0:12:22.760 later on because because we actually my wife grew up 0:12:22.800 --> 0:12:26.640 on this beautiful property along the Rio Grand. Her father 0:12:26.720 --> 0:12:28.559 had kept the land. He sold the house, but he 0:12:28.720 --> 0:12:31.440 kept this ten acres of farm farmland on the real 0:12:31.480 --> 0:12:34.120 Grand and when he passed away left it to my 0:12:34.160 --> 0:12:36.720 wife and her brother and and we just put a 0:12:36.720 --> 0:12:43.480 conservation easement on this farmland in in that um lots 0:12:43.520 --> 0:12:47.280 of you know, hot things, peppers, etcetera. Right, and uh, 0:12:47.320 --> 0:12:51.160 it's a beautiful, beautiful place and uh, you know fifty 0:12:51.200 --> 0:12:54.000 five years later, she's coming back to this land that 0:12:54.080 --> 0:12:56.840 she grew up on. And uh, and you put an 0:12:56.880 --> 0:13:00.280 easeman on. It was really interesting for me to on 0:13:00.280 --> 0:13:04.000 this side. Worked for a land trust creating conservation easements 0:13:04.120 --> 0:13:06.600 with other people for many years, and now I was 0:13:06.600 --> 0:13:09.040 on the side of being a landowner creating an Eastman 0:13:09.200 --> 0:13:11.760 was it's a really beautiful thing when you come back. 0:13:12.280 --> 0:13:16.440 What year was that? Had you decided was there a 0:13:16.480 --> 0:13:19.160 preconception where you would go where you weren't sure? We 0:13:19.320 --> 0:13:22.240 know we would touch base here because we had moved 0:13:22.320 --> 0:13:27.000 Connie here and and yeah, Connie's my my wife's mom, 0:13:27.320 --> 0:13:32.240 my mother and my mother. And why here she moved 0:13:32.240 --> 0:13:35.960 here because she was divorced at that time. And and 0:13:36.080 --> 0:13:39.280 her best friend was Elaine da Kooning And Elaine da 0:13:39.320 --> 0:13:41.679 Kooning had come to teach at the University of New 0:13:41.720 --> 0:13:44.360 Mexico when Connie was there many years before. As a 0:13:44.400 --> 0:13:47.880 matter of fact, Um, there's a story of her dancing 0:13:47.880 --> 0:13:50.280 with Megan, my wife in her arms when Megan was 0:13:50.320 --> 0:13:53.760 one year old. So that's that's the year. And Connie 0:13:53.760 --> 0:13:56.640 stayed friends with with Elane and she came out to 0:13:56.720 --> 0:14:00.480 visit Elane. Uh. They took a walk found a house 0:14:00.640 --> 0:14:04.280 in the Northwest Woods, very close to here, and Connie 0:14:04.280 --> 0:14:07.280 bought that house and moved and we moved her. We 0:14:07.280 --> 0:14:09.920 were at this period where where we could help her out, 0:14:09.920 --> 0:14:12.360 and we moved and settled here for a little while 0:14:12.400 --> 0:14:15.959 to help her. Where part Uh, it's sag Saddle Lane 0:14:15.960 --> 0:14:20.520 now in so we were at Connie's house and it's northwest, yeah, northwest, 0:14:20.560 --> 0:14:22.720 it's you know, a stones throw from where we are 0:14:22.800 --> 0:14:26.480 right now. Again Elane lived right around the corner. What 0:14:26.560 --> 0:14:28.880 I love is when we're talking, I don't know Mausel 0:14:28.960 --> 0:14:31.360 and I don't know this little corners hillside, but you 0:14:31.400 --> 0:14:33.760 and I talking, our listeners are probably going, what you know, 0:14:34.040 --> 0:14:39.640 Hants Creek, northwest wife Brook. It's it's he's Tampton focus tempton. 0:14:39.760 --> 0:14:43.960 When did Peconic Glantrust start? And it was really because 0:14:44.040 --> 0:14:48.720 John Halsey, who grew up in in Southampton, had gone 0:14:48.720 --> 0:14:51.520 to school in California when he came back and he 0:14:51.600 --> 0:14:54.640 saw houses popping up in all the potato fields and 0:14:54.640 --> 0:14:57.560 he said this, this isn't right. Should do something about this, 0:14:57.600 --> 0:15:00.880 and he got together with some friends he learned abo Atlantras. 0:15:01.320 --> 0:15:05.760 Because land trusts had had been existent in this country 0:15:05.760 --> 0:15:10.280 since the nineteenth century, but they didn't take off in 0:15:10.280 --> 0:15:13.480 a way until the seventies. John found out about land 0:15:13.480 --> 0:15:16.840 trust and what land trust could do something that municipalities 0:15:16.880 --> 0:15:20.640 could not do right in protecting land, conserving land, and 0:15:20.680 --> 0:15:24.400 so three he started it and started kind of slowly. 0:15:25.080 --> 0:15:26.560 But when I came up a lot of money to 0:15:26.640 --> 0:15:28.960 run a land trust, a lot of money to buy 0:15:29.120 --> 0:15:33.440 land or protect land, and the Hampton's obviously right. So um, 0:15:33.480 --> 0:15:36.120 I had never heard of a landrust before I got 0:15:36.160 --> 0:15:38.960 involved with the community Farm. That was my first interest 0:15:39.040 --> 0:15:42.320 was that. But then I learned about what John was doing, 0:15:42.600 --> 0:15:46.840 and John was open to this idea of of accepting 0:15:47.200 --> 0:15:49.480 the community farm even though he had never heard of 0:15:49.480 --> 0:15:52.000 a c s A either. But that marriage took place 0:15:52.000 --> 0:15:55.080 in nineteen eighty nine, the marriage between the community Farm 0:15:55.440 --> 0:15:58.000 where we talked about earlier, where my my my in 0:15:58.080 --> 0:16:00.400 laws were part of those first ten families, but I 0:16:00.520 --> 0:16:02.440 wasn't connected to the land trust at the time, So 0:16:02.480 --> 0:16:04.760 it was the first ten families, that first ten families 0:16:04.840 --> 0:16:06.960 was doing what forming the c s A. Forming the 0:16:06.960 --> 0:16:08.840 c s A because they had heard of this idea 0:16:08.920 --> 0:16:12.040 and it was you know, this little colonel what landed 0:16:12.080 --> 0:16:14.600 were they? Were they farming? Then I was in Bridge Hampton. 0:16:14.840 --> 0:16:17.720 Uh did you did you ever run into Hugh Williams, 0:16:17.800 --> 0:16:20.200 guy named you Williams. He had to so he had 0:16:20.240 --> 0:16:23.560 an apple orchard. He didn't own the land, but he 0:16:23.600 --> 0:16:26.040 was a biodynamic farmer. In the first c s A is, 0:16:26.080 --> 0:16:29.080 the idea of c s A started on biodynamic farms 0:16:29.120 --> 0:16:32.520 in different parts of this country. And Uh, when I 0:16:32.560 --> 0:16:34.400 went to the first meetings of c s A is 0:16:34.400 --> 0:16:38.000 in a little Waldorf school which is based on ruff 0:16:38.000 --> 0:16:42.880 Steiner's teachings. Uh, in Kimberton, Pennsylvania, there were twenty people people. 0:16:43.120 --> 0:16:45.000 The next year there were fifty people, and then a 0:16:45.040 --> 0:16:48.240 hundred and fifty people, and c sas began taking off 0:16:48.280 --> 0:16:51.600 all over the place. Now it's estimated that there are 0:16:51.920 --> 0:16:55.160 six thousand or more in the country. Um, so it's 0:16:55.240 --> 0:17:04.800 just taken off like blossoms. Basically coming up, Chasky discusses 0:17:04.840 --> 0:17:09.560 what community farming looks like in China. To hear from 0:17:09.560 --> 0:17:13.439 the founder of another socially conscious empire, this one a 0:17:13.480 --> 0:17:17.960 bit more caffeinated, explore our archives to hear my conversation 0:17:18.000 --> 0:17:22.320 with Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz in the back of my mind. 0:17:22.359 --> 0:17:25.119 I kept dreaming about what I needed to do for 0:17:25.240 --> 0:17:29.920 my dad, and my dad died in and I wanted 0:17:30.000 --> 0:17:32.320 to try and build the kind of company he never 0:17:32.359 --> 0:17:36.360 got a chance to work for. So the entire business 0:17:36.440 --> 0:17:41.879 model was trying to balance profit with conscience, benevolence and 0:17:42.000 --> 0:17:45.720 social impact. Take a listen at Here's the Thing dot org. 0:17:55.440 --> 0:17:58.119 This is Alec Baldwin, and you were listening to Here's 0:17:58.160 --> 0:18:02.360 the Thing. Scott Chaskey weaves together his passion for planting 0:18:02.480 --> 0:18:07.600 and prose. He's penned multiple books on the community farming movement, 0:18:07.840 --> 0:18:12.479 most recently Seed Time. Through decades of thoughtful farming in 0:18:12.520 --> 0:18:16.080 his fields, fueled by an earnest desire to do good, 0:18:16.520 --> 0:18:19.440 he's created a road map for the kind of food 0:18:19.520 --> 0:18:24.280 creation that America desperately needs. I mean, what what's happened 0:18:24.480 --> 0:18:26.800 is that I don't think we could have predicted this 0:18:26.880 --> 0:18:28.840 in the beginning, is that it would take off the 0:18:28.880 --> 0:18:32.320 way that it has, So that are I feel that 0:18:32.359 --> 0:18:36.240 our real influence goes way beyond those fields, for instance, 0:18:36.760 --> 0:18:38.960 So listen to this. I never would have guessed, So 0:18:39.000 --> 0:18:41.000 that you know we're doing this kind of work and 0:18:41.040 --> 0:18:44.080 spreading the word in this country but I just went 0:18:44.160 --> 0:18:49.520 to a global CISA conference in China in November with 0:18:49.600 --> 0:18:53.240 people from twenty eight different countries, and I never would 0:18:53.240 --> 0:18:57.160 have guessed that that level of engagement and would would 0:18:57.160 --> 0:19:00.840 would happen, you know, from from starting a community farm 0:19:00.920 --> 0:19:03.560 and amaganst so I was on a on a panel 0:19:03.880 --> 0:19:09.640 discussing biodiversity in China with a Japanese farmer, a French farmer, 0:19:09.880 --> 0:19:15.000 and a Chinese academician. It was absolutely fascinating. And and 0:19:15.080 --> 0:19:18.119 so the reach of what we've done, what I'm saying 0:19:18.200 --> 0:19:22.520 is is goes far beyond our fields. And but my 0:19:22.640 --> 0:19:26.439 attention daily is on those fields. How many separate parces 0:19:26.480 --> 0:19:29.560 of land other than the classic quail hill down there, 0:19:29.640 --> 0:19:32.840 other by the windmill, one other? How many other areas 0:19:32.880 --> 0:19:35.080 are you responsible for? How many fields? Well, so the 0:19:35.160 --> 0:19:40.560 total acreage that Deborah left was two We leased some 0:19:40.760 --> 0:19:43.119 to Part of our mission as a land trust and 0:19:43.359 --> 0:19:46.880 as a community farm is to lease land. Basically when 0:19:46.880 --> 0:19:49.560 you ask, you know, who's farming, who are we employing. 0:19:50.080 --> 0:19:51.840 The way we've done it all these years is that 0:19:51.880 --> 0:19:54.920 we have an apprenticeship and so we're actually training young 0:19:54.960 --> 0:19:58.160 farmers to you know, go out and manage their own 0:19:58.160 --> 0:20:01.280 farms basically, and so uh, Katie and Amanda for member 0:20:01.320 --> 0:20:03.919 Waves were my apprentices and now they're in their seventh 0:20:04.000 --> 0:20:06.480 or eighth year of running their own farm right over 0:20:06.520 --> 0:20:09.680 the railroad tracks. And and that's land that that's land 0:20:09.720 --> 0:20:13.320 that we had managed for another landowner as well. So 0:20:13.440 --> 0:20:15.119 what's your staff at the height of the summer, you have? 0:20:15.160 --> 0:20:18.120 How many people win your stuff? Ten? At ten at 0:20:18.160 --> 0:20:21.000 the most, it's and and we we could Is it 0:20:21.040 --> 0:20:22.639 tough to find those ten in the summer or is 0:20:22.640 --> 0:20:25.360 it easy? No? Because we're well known now we get 0:20:25.400 --> 0:20:28.560 a fair amount of applicants for the apprenticeships and we 0:20:28.600 --> 0:20:32.000 actually get to choose which is they come all over 0:20:32.200 --> 0:20:35.280 and house we house them. That was the most difficult. 0:20:36.119 --> 0:20:40.240 What's your housing plan here? We've got three houses which 0:20:40.240 --> 0:20:43.280 we sort of accumulated over the years one way or another. 0:20:43.320 --> 0:20:47.760 Basically Deborah left us one where yeah, but but the 0:20:48.040 --> 0:20:51.000 uh um, the other two. I mean we moved a house. 0:20:51.119 --> 0:20:54.119 It was a sixties ranch house that actually would you 0:20:54.160 --> 0:20:56.919 put it? We had a ninety two acre piece that 0:20:57.000 --> 0:20:59.480 had a separate lot on it so that we wouldn't 0:20:59.480 --> 0:21:00.920 and we put it right on the edge of the 0:21:01.000 --> 0:21:04.280 separate lot. What are you doing on that it's habitat, 0:21:04.440 --> 0:21:08.120 it's it's land preserve or habitat. So when these what's 0:21:08.359 --> 0:21:14.520 the number of people off season with you two? It's 0:21:14.520 --> 0:21:16.560 a little lonely. But we have a winter share, so 0:21:16.680 --> 0:21:20.880 we actually have people coming all winter to pick up vegetables. 0:21:20.920 --> 0:21:23.880 It's not just the summer. We have a traditional roots 0:21:23.920 --> 0:21:25.879 seller and we store crops in the roots seller and 0:21:25.880 --> 0:21:28.440 people come all winter and so they get we grow 0:21:28.520 --> 0:21:31.880 green's in the greenhouse and etcetera. So if you can't 0:21:31.920 --> 0:21:35.480 compare and contrast, if you would, I'm not assuming that 0:21:36.359 --> 0:21:40.560 one is favorable and one is not. But techniques and philosophy, 0:21:40.600 --> 0:21:43.280 even that you witnessed and that you lived over in England, 0:21:43.400 --> 0:21:45.879 compared to the way it is here, what do they 0:21:45.880 --> 0:21:47.199 do better than we do? And what do we do 0:21:47.240 --> 0:21:51.440 better than they? If anything, they do better by having 0:21:51.480 --> 0:21:55.199 a sense of history that is not ignored. So I 0:21:55.240 --> 0:21:57.960 mean that's a very general statement, but you know this thing. 0:21:58.400 --> 0:22:03.280 Recently I've been doing reading and returning to the thought 0:22:03.359 --> 0:22:07.919 that in this country where people without history, you know, 0:22:08.040 --> 0:22:11.000 and and of course there's lots of history, but we 0:22:11.400 --> 0:22:13.520 live as there's no time for history, have no time 0:22:13.560 --> 0:22:16.320 for history. So I mean that's what I was fascinated 0:22:16.359 --> 0:22:18.800 by in England. I mean I would have been anywhere 0:22:18.800 --> 0:22:21.680 else in Europe as well, just happened to settle in England. 0:22:21.680 --> 0:22:23.960 But that's what I felt there, and I felt perfectly 0:22:24.000 --> 0:22:29.520 at home with that concept and I missed the Yeah, 0:22:29.720 --> 0:22:34.280 in the end, it is a more thoughtful approach. Yeah, yeah, 0:22:34.320 --> 0:22:36.040 I guess people are in a hurry all over the 0:22:36.040 --> 0:22:39.560 world now. But um, this trip to China was open. 0:22:39.880 --> 0:22:43.040 It was absolutely eye opening, like what does a community 0:22:43.160 --> 0:22:45.160 farm look like in China? And how do you help 0:22:45.160 --> 0:22:47.720 the Chinese leap frog to where you think they should be? Yeah, 0:22:47.840 --> 0:22:50.080