"What are we planting here dad?" I asked. I was just a little girl, on a walk with my dad one morning, checking out the fields on our farm. I already knew about crop rotation: the old-school method of managing soil health, pest control, etc. We plowed the fields with heavy plows each season, rotated corn, soybeans, and grain and used organic matter as natural fertilizer. Today you would call these old-school methods regenerative, sustainable or organic.
The plot in question was filled with the buzzing of bees, butterflies, and birds. It looked happy but wild. "Diverted acres", he answered. "We're letting the soil rest this season." I found this practice to be fascinating. A rest. "How cool is that?" I thought. My great grandfather, my grandfather, and now my dad all farmed in this way, caring for the soil as it were a living thing. Which it is. I learned early on that we were caretakers of this place we called home and it was our responsibility to keep it healthy, strong, and beautiful. Rest is important.
Our farm was built on what I call sacred land. Many years before my great grandfather bought the property in the mid 1800s, it had been a Native American village, on a vast lake, full of life. My brother found artifacts, tools, and arrowheads buried in the land on his adventures there and kept a treasure trove of his historical findings. I grew up as a nature girl and spent a days with the animals, climbing trees, picking fruits and veggies.
On some afternoons, my mom, dad and I would take a drive to check out the other farms. "How does the corn look?" or, "Lets stop and say hi to the turkeys" The turkey farm visits were some of the most ridiculous, at least to me. The turkeys were free range, and all we had to do is stop by the edge of their field and say hi. They seemed to love my dad and the entire flock would come running and gobbling. "What if we were robbers?" I wondered. These big birds would make it easy to nab them.
It was on one of these drives, sometime in the early 60s that I noticed test plots of crops near the road with signs indicating what was being tested. Chemical fertilizers, seeds, pesticides, herbicides. Soon this scientific, chemical way of farming was routinely used, even mandated. I occasionally saw cropduster planes spraying chemicals on fields nearby, but these test plots were part of something different and what would become new industry standards. Gmos came later along with glyphosate, aka roundup: the deadly and destructive herbicide that was introduced in 1974 and is somehow still used today.
When I was about 8 yrs old, my dad was mixing up some weed spray to apply on the field when he accidently spilled some of the concentrate on his foot. He went into the house to wash his foot, change his sock and boot and went back to work. Later that evening he had an angry red rash on his foot, and by morning a huge blister had formed along the top of his foot. The blister then turned into many and soon grew to cover his leg along with extreme inflammation. He developed gangrene and the doctors considered amputating his leg. The weed spray clearly had entered his bloodstream and he was being poisoned. Thankfully his leg healed and all seemed ok, until about 7-8 years later.
I had older parents. My mom was 40 and my dad was 50 when I was born. (I was a surprise.. ) Around the age of 65, my dad began having severe bouts of confusion. He couldn't remember many things, one of which was how to drive to Svea, a little community built around the church my great grandfather and other farmers founded long ago. Svea was just 3 miles away, a place he frequently drove to his whole life. It was a small but convenient community with a creamery, granary, and a well stocked general store. This was frustrating to my mom who couldn't understand what was happening.
His confusion soon grew to include hallucinations, agitation, and insomnia. Doctors didn't have an answer, calling it "unexplained early dementia" and prescribed him heavy anti-psychotic meds such as Haldol. (Not the right medication for dementia.) I always felt that the weed spray incident had something to do with this sudden change. As a young teenager my opinion didn't actually count but the professionals didn't have an answer either. They tested him, experimented with treatment, but finally recommended my mom put him in a nursing home which she initially rejected.
My mom agreed to the nursing home when she was finally convinced she could not safely care for him. Our pastor, attorney, and banker together met with her to help her make this decision. "Dorothy, you're not only losing Philip, but we could lose you too." They insisted. The nursing home was quite nice, located in Willmar, just 6 miles away. We sold our farm to a classmate who's dad helped him with the purchase and she moved into town where she could walk to spend every day with him.
It was heartbreaking to lose my beautiful home that I loved so much, and heartbreaking to witness my dad's sudden dementia. He lived for 6 more years like this and died at the age of 72 from a stroke, one of many he had during the nursing home years. I had since gone on to study fashion design and was living and working in New York City as a designer when I received the news of his final stroke. My mom, my sister Phyllis, his sister Alice, and I were all with him as he passed.
I went on to start my own fashion brand in 1983, three years later. I took the inheritance he left for me and invested it in the materials and equipment I needed for my belt designs, which I designed and produced in-house in my apartment.
My work was eco before eco was a thing, and I believe that my farm-to-table, health-focused life on the farm created the core values that influenced my creative ideas as well as my business. I had learned as a child that we were caretakers of the place we called home and I carried that sensibility and love with me into my work as a fashion designer.
I know that the lessons learned as well as the heartbreaking change in my dad's health all have to do with the health and well being of the land, air and water. I am happy to see regenerative homesteaders breaking the chain of chemical compliance and implementing restorative practices in order to heal the soil depleted after the years of chemical use. And I am grateful to indie eco designers creating conscious products for health, beauty, wellness, fashion.
I had such a wonderful, thoughtful and loving dad and I still miss him. Much love to my dad on the other side, and to all the dads on this Father's Day. We need you. xo
