05068 - Royalton, Vt.
Jinny Cleland, 63, owns Four Springs Farm in Royalton, where guests are invited to vacation on the farm to learn about organic farming. The following is an edited interview.
Sometimes I wonder, why am I doing this? A lot of people think about retiring at my age. Why am I doing something so hard? But I really believe that if you own land, you should be either using it or sharing it. Here, I’m trying to do both.
I remember the first time I saw carrots growing. I grew up in suburbia, so I never had a garden. Carrots! Living in the dirt! I couldn’t believe it. It was food that was magically there. That discovery I think is important, and I want to give people the opportunity to feel that.
When people come here, there’s no swing set, there’s no swimming pool. People will ask what there is to do and I tell them it’s nature’s playground. The goal is to find a way of relating to nature, not to build something to play on.
A lot of what I do is passive education. I invite campers to tag along with chores in the morning. You can carry the grain, maybe collect the eggs. You’re not going to get to feed the animals yourself, but you’ll get to see how all of this works.
I’m interested in building community here because I can’t do everything alone. In order to have any stability in this work you’ve got to have the next generation to take it over. Other people have to keep coming along and learning what they don’t know.
I tell my kids that we’re here on this earth to do something for someone else. There are things to be done that are helpful and meaningful and there are things that are just wasting time.
I’m not the kind of person that people flock to. I put my foot in my mouth, I don’t make people feel great about themselves all the time. I wouldn’t call myself a people person. But this is what I’ve been led to do. It seems like it’s needed, and it seems like it’s appreciated, so I’ll just hang with it.
There are moments where I’m crazy and stressed-out, but the majority of the time I’m fine. For me, what I love about farming is that it has integrated my life. My life is one, and it’s all right here. This place is home, finally.