The New Farmer’s Almanac, Volume VI

The newest volume of the eclectic biannual anthology from Greenhorns, a grassroots network for recruiting, promoting, and supporting new American farmers. The New Farmer's Almanac Volume VI: Adjustments and Accommodations seeks to recognize our own collective agency in the face of sizable uncertainties. The morphing climate, ongoing culture of land dispossession, continuing global pandemic, shifting and intensifying weather patterns, and migrations of all species—spurned by political and environmental upheaval—are considered within. There is adaptability in each bloom of algae; tiny particles of inspiration can enliven lives and farm systems; the natural currents and connected sentience of the living earth moves genetic material. Dynamic flux and rapid change remain possible. The power of the forces—the river, the wind—are summoned and given thanks, like our ancestors did. Here, we tune to the potential of the commons. Contributors from around the Earth reflect on natural systems, logistics of change, localization, resource sharing, and preservation; we eye new experiments in planting, seed breeding, and composting. The past is contextualized by the present, informing our ideas for the future. Climate grief and cognitive dissonance are examined among imaginations of urban food systems and equitable access. Readers are invited to envision tweaks to the carbon cycle; to see intercropping as a life practice and sharing dinner as an embodied preservation of cultural foodways. This compendium of ideas, strategies, and arguments honors the almanac tradition in featuring archival and contemporary words and artwork. Photos, maps, prints, drawings, and gems from the archives rest—and agitate—among personal essays, reports from the field, poetry, and interviews. Join us in exploring resilience, responsiveness, adaptation, and accommodation. Featured contributors include: Fallen Fruit Collective The Farwoods Futurefarmers Suzanne Husky Oliver Kellhammer Nance Klehm The Land Institute Gary Snyder Vincent Medina and Louis Trevino of Cafe Ohlone Maia Wikler