Farming – Page 2 – vander giessen-reitsma

Doing the work

By Kirstin Vander Giessen-Reitsma | August 31, 2020

Throughout the summer, folks throughout the country and the world have been demonstrating and continuing to work for racial justice, particularly following the murder of George Floyd in May. At the beginning of this month, we came together with a group of neighbors to help repaint a Black Live Matter street mural that had been vandalized. The small rural city where we live has a lot of work to do to be truly equitable for all our neighbors, but we’re grateful for many amazing people in our community who are doing the work and standing together for justice.

August has been another month of transition as we said goodbye to our summer AmeriCorps folks who helped out at the Huss Project. We had an amazing crew this summer, and we’re very sad to be saying goodbye. We all really appreciated one another’s support and silliness through this strange time.

This month has also been bringing on the vegetables in earnest, and ramped up food preservation season. Each year, we work to fill our freezer and our basement shelves with lots of good food from the farm that we can enjoy through the colder months.

Because of the busyness of the farm season and now the pandemic, we weren’t sure if we’d be able to go anywhere this summer, but we did manage a short weekend camping trip to the small farm where our friend Emily (who’s really more like family) has been living and working. It was a true delight to see the place where she’s landed and meet some other folks doing an interesting farming project on a small scale. We’re really looking forward to raising our child close to the land with knowledge of where our food comes from and love for all of the incredible gifts of the wild, wooly natural world.

Spending time outdoors

By Kirstin Vander Giessen-Reitsma | July 31, 2020

As the pandemic continues into the summer, many of our usual patterns have shifted. We’ve had to cancel a lot of events we’d usually help organize, like storytelling nights and a summer festival, but the new farmers market has been thriving as a place for folks to get fresh food and also a little social time.

We were grateful to have a little bit of time visiting outdoors with Kirstin’s family at the lake this month, including an aunt and cousins from Georgia, uncle and sister and nephews and niece from Indiana, and Grandpa Duke. We’ve also had some nice socially-distanced outdoor visits with Rob’s parents. This time has really emphasized the importance of being intentional about connecting with loved ones.

Our community of friends who work and volunteer together at the Huss Project has been enjoying weekly outdoor gatherings, as well as a couple of days of workshops and conversations around our work in the community. As much as things have changed this year, we also feel like the relationship-building and food production we’ve been doing for years has prepared us to support each other and our neighbors in this difficult moment.

We’ve continued to enjoy many walks around our small rural city and the weather has been especially beautiful, with big blue skies reflected on the many waterways nearby. Kirstin probably has several thousand photos on her phone at this point, documenting the changes of seasons and the small moments of beauty. Oh, and we’ve started feeding the birds more regularly in the pandemic, which has been a very welcome addition for our cat!

Saying goodbye to Grandma Beverly

By Kirstin Vander Giessen-Reitsma | June 30, 2020

June was…let’s say a month of contrasts. After a sudden and quick decline, Kirstin’s Grandma Beverly passed away. All through her growing up years, Kirstin never lived more than a half mile from Grandpa Duke and Grandma Beverly and has many happy memories of sleepovers, holidays, and Sunday dinners. Grandma was generous, funny, fiercely independent, and always fashionable. She never let a phone call or visit go by without saying she was praying for you and loved you very much. “You’re precious to us, you know.” As a young teacher, Kirstin’s grandma had Rob’s mom for a student in second grade—how’s that for “going way back”? Since we started dating when we were 15, Grandma Beverly was very special to Rob, too, and we’ll dearly miss her prayers, hugs, visits, treats, and many kindnesses.

Alongside deep grief: new beginnings. Namely a new Saturday farmers market at the Huss Project, designed to bring food from local farms (including our small urban farm) to our neighbors safely during the pandemic. We’re starting small with what’s available early in the season and just a few farms represented, but we’re hoping it will grow throughout the season. We’ve also restarted our beehives and got 27 fuzzy little chicks in the mail, so here’s to honey and eggs before too long.

Though we feel Grandma’s loss every day, we continue to enjoy the beauty of the place we live in because of her adventurous spirit. It was Grandma, after all, who suggested the leisurely drive to Pleasant Lake, where she and Grandpa ended up buying a cottage in 1976. Little did they know that 44 years later, their grandkids would be wading in these rivers and longing to share such joy with their kiddo before too long.

Transitioning to Spring

By Kirstin Vander Giessen-Reitsma | May 31, 2020

May has been a month of transition in a lot of ways. Where we are, this month tips the scales for fresh, local food and a lot of delicious things start coming on—rhubarb, asparagus, and lots of herbs and greens. We had fun at the Huss Project making “hand salads,” or one-bite salads, out of a variety of edible plants, including flowers.

The seedlings that Rob has been tending in our basement for the Huss Project Farm have been going crazy and we finally reached days in the middle of the month that were warm enough to get them in the ground. Thankfully we’ve had lots of help from Dan and Margaret, as well as a new group of folks who moved to Three Rivers through the AmeriCorps VISTA program to work with us for the next year. It’s been an interesting experience getting to know new people through quarantine and social distancing. The sad part has been having to say goodbye to friends who finished up their year-long term of service here and moved on to what’s next. We couldn’t have the goodbye party we would have hoped for, but found other creative ways to send them with encouragement and well-wishes.

Kirstin started going back on site for work some days, with many safety precautions in place. It’s been really good to reconnect with dear co-workers face-to-face, including Puck (the goat) and Minna (the pony). These happy, wily critters have no idea what’s going on in the crazy world around them, and it’s just as well. They bring comfort and joy to many just by being alive and reveling in spring.

The beginning of a pandemic

By Kirstin Vander Giessen-Reitsma | March 31, 2020

Well, what a month. We could not have imagined when we returned from California that by mid-March, we’d be stuck at home waiting out a global pandemic.

One of the last gatherings we had before the shutdown was a funeral for our dear friend, Martha. We knew she was amazing, but she’s one of those people who, when they pass away and folks start telling stories, you see even more depth to their compassion and humor and wish you’d had more time with them. So many folks in our church and our community will miss Martha’s laugh, kindness, and commitment to equality. We’re grateful we got the opportunity to spend time with her and her husband Henry a few years ago in Martha’s home country of Costa Rica.

Following the funeral, much of our time was spent learning about safety precautions and making decisions around coronavirus—for the retreat center where Kirstin works, for the group of folks Rob works with at the farm, and for the fair trade store we help out with. It was especially difficult to make the decision to close the retreat center for a while, but Kirstin is thankful her organization is allowing everyone to work from home while we see how things progress.

Saving graces through it all have included things like long walks to watch spring emerge, recording a silly “happy birthday” song for one of our nieces, campfires in our back yard, and starting seeds for the farm in our basement. Overall, we’re feeling very thankful to have a place to live, dependable work, and plenty of preserved food in the basement and in the freezer, and we’re paying attention for ways we can support our neighbors in need during this time.

Planting futures

By Kirstin Vander Giessen-Reitsma | May 26, 2019

As the weather warms up, it’s been delightful to get outside and start working on the farm. At the beginning of the month, we got a crew together to plant several varieties of potatoes, which is always a big job and definitely wakes up the muscles after the long winter rest. Our tomato and pepper seedlings have been struggling in the basement this year for some reason, so we’re trying to figure out how to work with our local farmer network to make sure we have plenty of summer vegetables to share.

*Planting potatoes at the Huss Project Farm*

This has been a big month of transition for our community development organization. For many years, we’ve been hosting potluck dinners on Friday nights at our community house, and we had our very last potluck there before our big move on May 18. Prepping the new house involved some heavy-duty teamwork to move an old player piano out of the foyer and over to the home of a local piano tuner, among other tasks. But we managed to get settled in in time for orientation for our new AmeriCorps program. We’re excited to be taking this step as an organization because it will spread out the labor among a larger group of people and help us develop our vision and capacity for the next phase of our work.

Category: Farming