What You Bring to It Is What Matters

What an incredible week for art and music at Farmstead! Om Shalom Trio played for a packed house as we came inside to dodge raindrops. I was able to join the trio on Celtic harp for the final three tunes, spinning melodies from India to Israel for friends, family, and visitors. The camaraderie of food and music needs no borders or language—just togetherness in a moment of celebration in our shared humanness.
The unveiling of my commissioned punch needle tapestry “Hummingbird Haven” was a delightful evening of farm-to-table deliciousness, storytelling, and sharing. Carole (the tapestry’s new owner) left with her friends that night just beaming, reveling not only in the tapestry itself but in the experience surrounding the work as well. Wrapping up a large piece of art that has taken attention and care for months is always a bittersweet moment—though this time it felt more sweet than bitter, knowing the work will be treasured for years to come by loving hearts.
Sunday’s Celtic Music Session played to a filled fiber loft, with folks from nearby lakes to travelers from New Zealand in attendance. From Scotland to Nova Scotia, Ireland to America, we wandered musically on harp, fiddle, recorder, bodhran, and spoons. We’re not a band—instead inviting musicians of all walks to join as they can on 4th Sundays throughout the year to play and share. Traditional music is by and for the people, and we gather to create that collective moment for each other—player and listener alike. Sitting around the large table in the Fiber Loft, surrounded by listeners (and even dancers for a waltz) felt much like the pubs in the Old Country, with food and drink, music and good cheer.
Afterwards, I was able to spend time with the New Zealand couple and their host friends. Delight is a fellow weaver and fiber artist, so we took a stroll down to my studio yurt, swapping stories and admiring looms and pieces in progress. We chuckled about our yarn stashes and shared technique ideas like old friends.
As we wrapped up the afternoon together, I offered, “I’m sure you have experienced, as I have, that fiber arts are not always given the same respect as other mediums such as painting or sculpture. You find people describing your work as craft instead of art.”
Delight sighed, nodding to this truth.
“And many people working in fiber arts are doing craft—which is great; we need those people too. But it’s not the medium that makes something art or craft. It’s not the ‘thing’ at all. The thing could be food or found objects or clothing or paint or whatever—but the thing does not make it art. What makes it art is what you bring to it as the maker.”
If a look can say “I found my people,” then that’s what the two of us shared in that moment.
As the intense week wound to a close, I mused on what I had shared with Delight, seeing how many different layers intersected with the idea. Farming could be seen that way as well. The mediums of farming could be the same: crops, animals, acreage—but what the farmer brings to it can create completely different environments. Take the same elements and cram the animals in large numbers into a compact building and you have an ecologically and communally hazardous factory farm. Monocrop the same plants in large acreage and use chemical solutions to keep them alive, and now there’s glyphosate and pesticide residues in the food you are offering the world.
Alternately, return to the medium of crops, animals, and acreage with a farmer of a different heart, and you can have a biodynamic, diversified, sustainably-minded enterprise that rebuilds topsoil, encourages wildlife, and feeds the community healthy and wholesome foods. The difference? What you as the farmer bring to it.
The same piece of music can be played mechanically, completely accurate to the score but otherwise lifeless. Or it can be played with such heart and expression that listeners are brought to tears. It’s the same piece of music, but it’s what the performer brought to the music that transformed it. The latter brought their passion, their sensitivity, their desire to share meaning and depth, and their willingness to be expressively vulnerable.
We all can do that, no matter what our medium. Your medium might be in a service industry or as a parent or a teacher. It might be on the land or in the office. Take some time this week to think about not just what you “do” but how you “be” in what you do because that is where the difference lies. Many others might be able to do what you do, but no one else can be as you can be. Being takes tending. It takes rededication with each new day.
Many readers ask me, “How on earth do you guys get done all that you do on the farm?” Yes, there is certainly lots to be done around here—way more than I’ll ever manage. But the real story is in the heart behind the doing—in the being, the choosing of the way of it. The doing gets done as it has to. With the right heart, marvelous things can happen, no matter what the medium. What will you bring to this week? See you down on the farm sometime.