Via Community News Service, a University of Vermont journalism internship, in partnership with Vermont Public.
Bekah Gordon is a farmer and teacher at Bread & Butter Farm in Shelburne. Cate MacDonald also works at the farm, and she made this sound art portrait of her coworker.
🎧 This story was produced for the ear. We highly recommend listening to the audio. We’ve also provided a transcript below.
Bekah Gordon: My name is Bekah Gordan, and I am a farmer and teacher here at Bread & Butter Farm. I am a proud momma of two, and I am also someone who is always trying to just come back to belonging on this earth.
Yeah, this land. I feel so, I feel so lucky. So lucky.
We have pigs, cattle and we have the vegetable operation. We’ve got homeschool, village school, partnerships with the local colleges, summer camp, workshops, Blank Page Café and the farm store. We also have events. There’s burger nights, on-farm dinners, catering events, weddings, there’s barn dances — yeah, there is literally always something going on.
One of my biggest mantras is every decision that I make is rooted in belonging. If I am ever confused about trying to answer a question, I say “Okay, does this bring me closer to or further away from belonging?” There’s your metric.
Yeah, this land. I feel so, I feel so lucky. So lucky.
This land is just very much in my heart and soul. I’ve walked it, hunted it and skied it and forged it, and biked it, and slept on it, and run it, and made fires on it. Farmed it, got married on it, and grew on it. Had children on it. And I have ancestor’s ashes buried on this land. It plays a lot of meaning in my life.
It’s rare to stay in one place for so long. But I’ve had the fortune to love where I grew up and found a place like this that continued to center community, multigenerational living, tradition, ceremony — things that I wanted to raise a child in, too.
If I think about my life, like, I want to grow old somewhere where I’ll have meaning and purpose. And I want to be a part of a community when I am old, and not at like a senior citizen center or bingo, you know? I want it to be somewhere where I can be surrounded by children and sun and soil and healthy food, and could, in theory, die on the land.
Why would I leave, you know?
I feel like the farming sometimes feels like a secondary piece of what we do, but it just sort of makes sense. Because humans need to eat.
And we need to create food and cultivate that. How do you do that in a place? How do you learn how to do it with that place? How do you listen to what the place wants from you?
People who end up here and stick around here and want more of this place, I think it’s because there is something that really speaks to them about what it means to be awake in the world as a human being. Like truly being.
Yeah, this land. I feel so, I feel so lucky. So lucky.
It’s way more to me than just like, “Oh, we grow spinach.” It kind of started off like that!
It’s really more than just a farm.
My name is Bekah Gordan and I am a human here on this earth.
Music in this portrait is “Go to Sleep” by Podington Bear.