Protection from Annihilation

Jair is an apprentice for Kia, an experienced farmer, and together they come every Saturday to the Broad Street Farmers Market to sell their produce. Jair has been farming for two years; he discusses his relationship with nature as he eats a traditional Ethiopian breakfast made by Martha, a chef giving out free samples at the market.

Jair: I chose farming for protection, salvation. From annihilation. If we don't have control and knowledge of the earth, then we're barely even existing here. We're just living in a constructed world. I want to be as closely surrounded by the objects that created this world as possible. Why be born into a place that I don't explore, you know? If I stay inside, then I stay in a world of thoughts instead of the actuality. So I want to be in it. Let’s go over here.

(Jair walks back to Martha’s stand and asks for more kinche. She puts several spoonfuls of kinche on his plate.)

Jair: Man, she’s so good to me! Have a nice day! 

(Jair walks away)

Jair: I started farming with Kia through Southside Community Land Trust. They do apprenticeship programs where they connect new farmers with experienced farmers so they can get past a lot of the inexperienced problems of not knowing what to do or what to grow or how to grow. There's a lot of intricacies in growing different kinds of food. If you don't know what a plant likes, then you'll have trouble making it grow properly. 

Kia is so kind. And very educational. She's a very hard worker. You can't work with her unless you're willing to go hard. I went through a lot this summer, but I'm stronger because of it. So I’m cool with that. 

You can do the apprenticeship for two years with Southside, but I feel like learning is your whole life. I'm not really interested in being a single lone farmer. To me, that doesn' t make sense. I'd rather be farming in community. And building long-lasting relationships with people and food. So that's what I'm more focused on

But the plants are what built us, you know. We come from the forest, originally, and not knowing the plants is one of the fastest ways to ill health. Right now we're living with all these random medicines people are creating and coming up with. And some of it's good for you and some of it's bad for you, you know? Because of how scary our current medicine is, we've actually become more afraid of plant medicine because if you make a wrong move with Western medicine, you could really hurt yourself. But in general, plants are very forgiving and most of these herbal medicines, while they're very effective, they're very considerate of you and they aren't just going to throw you into a dangerously low blood pressure. They're going to consider where you're at while you're consuming them and try to get you better towards balance. And people don't really understand that.