Sometimes our dreams didn’t start out as our dreams. Sometimes, our current dreams were once just seeds germinating in the crucible of time and experience leading up to what is now. For Jen Williams, being a seed farmer situated within a small island community was not always the dream.
The dream to effect meaningful change in the world around her started out for Jen in a realm all too prominent for most of us right now – electoral politics and the largest human structures of power in our world.
But over time, disappointments, reality check disenchantments and more importantly, surprising enchantments, Jen's desire to change the world composted and transformed itself into her current life in the soil, with the plants and their seeds, in community, on the land. Now her wildest dreams effect powerful and beautiful change in the world through her - and our - collective relationships to plants, food, beauty, and place.
I had the great joy of visiting Wild Dreams Farm & Seed this past summer, and I am so pleased to welcome Jen Williams to Cultivating Place this week on the seasonal harvest-to-winter transition, life-and-death-and-life-again-cycle celebration day of All Hallows Eve/Samhain.
Because like the seasons, and the past, present, and future realms, and our gardens - our wildest dreams - are the stuff of transformation.
For the past almost 25 years, Jen Williams has been stewarding her family’s shy 2 acres of land on Washington State’s Vashon Island. The initial form of the farmland under her care included a portion of it being dedicated to lavender grown by a collective of women, alongside Jen’s collective market farm of vegetables sold at restaurants, farmers' markets, and natural food stores. The farm is encircled by fruit trees, native shrubs, and tree hedgerows. Jen describes how the more structural perennial plantings were added over time in a movement toward growing a “synergistic ecosystem”
As founder and owner of Wild Dreams Farm and Seed on Washington State’s Vashon Island, Jen grows, harvests, saves, stores, and packages about 125 different seed varieties – for vegetables, flowers, and medicinal herbs. In a nod toward the communal social movement around seed, Wild Dreams Farm works as a trial and grow-out site for other groups, including the Experimental Farm Network, and the Palestine Heirloom Seed Library, but also serves as an educator and educational site for her community around seed and growing work.
The result - across her Island and across our continent is indeed a synergistic ecosystem! Enjoy this conversation, and Happy Halloween!
Follow Jen & Wild Dreams online at:
And on Instagram:
All photos courtesy of Jen William’s Jennifer Jewell/Cultivating Place
If you enjoyed this program, you might also enjoy these
Best of CP programs in our archive:
JOIN US again next week, when guest host Guest Host Ben Futa will usher in November in conversation with John Kish of Somewhere That's Green Indoor Plant Shoppe in Bend, OR, and home to the Greenhouse Cabaret Theatre. That's right here, next week.
Cultivating Place is made possible in part by listeners like you and by generous support from
supporting initiatives that empower women and help preserve the planet through the intersection of environmental advocacy, social justice, and creativity.
Thinking out loud this week...
Hey, it’s Jennifer – a special All Hallows Eve treat for you in the breaks this week – two poetic excerpts from Maria Popova’s newest endeavor – the book (and audiobook) crafted from her seminal, annual, convening of The Universe In Verse: 15 Portals to Wonder Through Science and Poetry – out now from Storey Press wherever you get your books.
In the book, all 15 curated poems are paired with a more scientific explanation of the poet, the history of the subject, as as is always the way with Maria Popova – so much more.
Both excerpts I’ve chosen are read by Maria – this first Sylvia Plath’s Mushrooms seemed so timely a reminder about the true reality of the world and our place in it on this sacred turning of the seasons/harvest, compost, and seed.
For our second excerpt from The Universe in Verse, curated by The Marginalian’s Maria Popova, I wanted something to remind us that we are more than a collection of our greatest faults, our greatest failures or frustrations, even in the height of a highly fraught political season, Jane Hirschfield’s: Optimism.
As The Universe in Verse the book and audiobook notes via its dedication poem by Ursula K. Le Guin: "Science describes accurately from outside, poetry describes accurately from inside. Science explicates, poetry implicates. Both celebrate what they describe."
WAYS TO SUPPORT CULTIVATING PLACE
Cultivating Place is a co-production of North State Public Radio, a service of Cap Radio, licensed to Chico State Enterprises. Cultivating place is made possible in part listeners just like you through the support button at the top right-hand corner of every page at Cultivating Place.com.
The CP team includes producer and engineer Matt Fidler, with weekly tech and web support from Angel Huracha, and this summer we're joined by communications intern Sheila Stern. We’re based on the traditional and present homelands of the Mechoopda Indian Tribe of the Chico Rancheria. Original theme music is by Ma Muse, accompanied by Joe Craven and Sam Bevan.
SHARE the podcast with friends: If you enjoy these conversations about these things we love and which connect us, please share them forward with others. Thank you in advance!
RATE the podcast on iTunes: Or wherever you get your podcast feed: Please submit a ranking and a review of the program on Itunes! To do so follow this link: iTunes Review and Rate (once there, click View In Itunes and go to Ratings and Reviews)
DONATE: Cultivating Place is a listener-supported co-production of North State Public Radio. To make your listener contribution – please click the donate button below. Thank you in advance for your help making these valuable conversations grow.
Or, make checks payable to: North State Public Radio - with Cultivating Place in subject line
and mail to: Cultivating Place
PO Box 37
Durham, CA 95938
Comments