Sacred Harvests

British folklorist George Ewart Evans remained sanguine about contemporary small farmer and rural community prospects. But he recognized the possibilities of new cooperative relationships by which growers could pool resources to buy machinery and share storage and marketing facilities. He characterized these arrangements as “a return on a higher level to the structure of the Middle Ages.” The situation was not unprecedented in Evans’s view, as he cited the introduction of the heavy Saxon carruca plow to Britain in early medieval times and the enclosure movement as changes that necessitated innovative cooperative practices. The “break” in appreciation of the old ways of labor, thrift, and economy, Evans wrote in the 1960s, “has chiefly been in the oral tradition: a farm-worker of the old school, a horseman for instance, had latterly no apprentice to take up his lore; and the young—the true bearers of the tradition—have in this respect been receiving a speedily diminishing heritage. It is not so much that they are not interested…; they have now so few points of reference against which to measure it.”

Mutual dependency among neighbors and community members was more than virtue. It was necessity when harvest-time was essential endeavor and ritual for all able-bodied persons including field laborers, cooks, and craftsmen. The rise of mechanization that has reduced exhausting manual labor and technologies to facilitate communication and transportation will not abide nostalgic appeals to preserve the old ways. Evans characterizes such doomed efforts as “misguided romanticism” that is impossible in practical application and ignorant of the abiding dynamics of rural life through the ages. Aspects of social cohesiveness evident in harvest operations of former days have also diminished an isolated parochialism that limits wider multicultural understandings as well as individual opportunity in life. Moreover, a host of political and environmental conditions that threaten the wellbeing of farmers and rural communities cannot be understood apart from participation in global solutions.

Needlepoint Grain and Grapes Altar Kneeler, National Cathedral, Washington, D. C. (2019), Columbia Heritage Collection Photograph

Public awareness of land stewardship takes on special significance in a day when an unprecedented surge of industrial and technological change has led to some 15% of American farms producing nearly 80% of the nation’s food supply. At the same time science writers contribute to a new genre of environmental despair in the wake of global warming and population growth with troubling titles like The End of Plenty, Red Sky at Morning, Countdown, and Death and the Afterlife. (The phenomenon started with publication of The End of Nature in 1989 by mild mannered Methodist Bill McKibben, who now warns in Falter [2019] of significant disruption to world crop production and decrease in grain protein levels due to climate change.) The United Nations reports that world grain yields have flatlined since 2000, and that nearly one billion developing world inhabitants are at risk of chronic malnourishment after decades of decline. Medieval era population peaked at approximately 300 million inhabitants but rose to a billion by about 1800, doubled to two billion in 1927, and reached three billion in 1960. Demographers predict this exponential growth rate will result in ten billion by 2040 and bring attendant challenges for food resources, species diversity, and stewardship of the soil.

Titles and shapes in the surreal agrarian artwork of contemporary Canadian artist Jo-Anne Elniski reflects these concerns. The Last Harvest depicts a fulminating sky in vivid swirls of yellow, purple, and white that rain down upon rows of grain that wave in the same garish colors. Other works by Elniski like Field of Gold and Prairie Harvest appear as flaming fields of abundance that rise to confront brightly lit horizons of pink, orange, and yellow. The depictions are awesome if unsettling. Yet concerns expressed through art and literature also present opportunities for intervention and progressive change.

Thresholds and Theology

Lewiston, Idaho artist W. Craig Whitcomb has painted rural scenes for a half-century in watercolor and acrylic with subject matter ranging from isolated Northwest grain elevators to English thatched cottages and Japanese landscapes. His Amber Waves (2008), finalist for the first annual “H’Art of the Palouse” Banner Competition, shows an immense abandoned grain elevator in vivid rusty reds and blues rising from a field of ripe grain. Vibrant watercolors of grain and legume fields scenes by Palouse Country artists Jacqueline Daisley, who lives on a farm near Pullman, Washington, and Andy Sewell of Viola, Idaho, have appeared on the posters of the Pullman-based National Lentil Festival.

Andy Sewell, National Lentil Festival Poster (2008), Columbia Heritage Collection

Works by Seattle’s Roger Feldman, winner of the 2005 Prescott Award in Sculpture, reflects his study of theology and art education. Raised in the Palouse Hills, Feldman has created large site-specific sculptures in the United States, Canada, and Europe. He meticulously plans each installation by visiting the location to “dream about the possibilities” before rendering a small 3-D scale maquette from mat board before fashioning a larger, more refined model from wood. For Threshold (2013) at Laity Lodge, an ecumenical retreat along the Frio River in Texas’s Hill Country, Feldman conceived of three interconnected chiseled limestone monoliths including a 15-foot tall tower to represent the three-in-one concept of the Trinity. The work’s title is derived from Hebrew words used in the Old Testament (saph, miptān), a raised beam at the edge of a threshing floor, to signify the boundary between the outside world and sacred space for contemplation and worship.

Roger Feldman, Threshold (Laity Lodge near Leakey, Texas, 2013), Courtesy of the Artist

Tradition and innovation have presented cultural tensions since the dawn of civilization, and responsible appropriation of lifeways from each contributes to humanity’s wellbeing. Like Van Gogh paintings of gleaners and reapers with factory smokestacks on the horizon, great agrarian art and literature contribute to better understandings of tensions that involve emotion and reason, and local and universal values. Among other recent developments in grain production, the advent of minimal tillage operations using specialized power equipment has greatly reduced soil erosion on American farms while increasing yields.

The emerging New Agrarianism of the twenty-first century moves beyond nostalgic romanticism to moderate use of industrial energy within the context of natural systems for soil fertility. Wise approaches to innovation respect stewardship of land and the long term wellbeing of others. Duke Divinity School environmental theologian Norman Wirzba writes of a New Agrarian ethic that honors modern science as well as ancient religious appreciation for the transformative mystery of soil, water, and grain for human sustenance. Implicit acknowledgement is also made of fair compensation for farmers and other workers. “How we make bread, how we share and distribute it, are of profound moral and spiritual significance,” he writes in Food and Faith: A Theology of Eating. “[E]very loaf presupposes decisions that have been made about how to configure the social and ecological relationships that make bread possible.”

Tim Dearborn of Fuller Theological Seminary and author of Taste & See: Awakening our Spiritual Senses (1996) tells of Jesus’ reference to bread in the context of material well-being and spiritual strength. During his temptation in the Wilderness (Luke 4:4), Jesus quotes the familiar Old Testament passage, “[M]an does not live by bread alone” (Deuteronomy 8:3), which recognizes legitimate needs for “daily bread” physical sustenance (Matthew 6:11) provided through divine provision and sacrifice. Sharing food and faith goes hand in hand with prayer (“grace”) and communion with family and friends for the vital, sinuous experience of daily feasting. In this way, meals can transform mundane consumption into enriching spiritual experience that honors grains, greens, and other foods, but recognizes their material essence, cultivation, harvest, and preparation as rooted in meaningful service. The tragedy of religious piety is not materialism Dearborn writes, “but that in a particular way we are not materialistic enough.” By dividing aspects of human existence into sacred and secular realms, one can also render possessions, physical needs, and the land into domains separate from their divine source and protection.

Frustrations with farm equipment repair and long hours of solitary fieldwork may appear scarcely related to religious faith. But farmers and other members of St. Macrina’s Episcopal Church near San Francisco regularly meet to share the challenges of twenty-first century farming with area millers, bakers, brewers, and consumers. All contribute perspectives on grain as a “community crop” and how each group can participate in consequential efforts to strengthen cultural ties and serve as stewards of the land. In 2015, St. Macrina co-founder and Agricultural Chaplain Elizabeth DeRuff established The Bishop’s Ranch Field on Russian River Valley church property near Healdsburg, California. Young and old gather there throughout the year to plant, till, and harvest heritage grain that is milled for communion bread and distributed throughout the diocese. “We want to see local farmers succeed and be part of local communities,” explains Rev. DeRuff, “and to learn with them about ‘belonging’ as well as ‘having.’”

Although based in Baltimore, landscape artist Katherine Nelson has regularly traveled cross-country since 2001 to the Palouse’s undulating grainlands. Her fluid charcoals and dye sublimates capture the summertime chiaroscuro of swirling slopes, saddles, and swales laden with wheat, barley, and legumes. Nelson has also contributed to Oregon State University’s Art About Agriculture program and to Glen Echo, Maryland’s Yellow Barn Gallery exhibitions. She traces threads of her fascination with the region to her diplomat father’s interest in Turkish rugs: “I remember their luxuriant textures and shapes which influenced my affection for rolling landscapes. The Palouse is a tapestry of woven connections among seasons, fields, and people. The effect is thoroughly spiritual and provides a place of reflection, solace, and beauty that overcomes the noise of the outside world.” To emphasize the rhythmic effects of light for line and shadow, Nelson works entirely in black-and-white which evokes heightened awareness of layering, texture, and movement. “My ‘Portraits of the Palouse,’” she explains, “are metaphors for the human prospect. ‘Harvests’ to me are exhibitions that depict the land as hallowed space through views of heritage farm architecture and landscape vistas. Implicit rural values relate to the natural environment, hard work, and community, and are relevant anywhere.”

Katherine Nelson, Ideas About Infinity (detail, Grainfields from Steptoe Butte, 2018), Charcoal and dye sublimate on opaque and sheer fabric, 3 x 9 feet, Collection of the Artist