Bringing personal sustainability into sustainable farming- taking care of ourselves amidst the physical and emotional stresses of farming to avoid burnout and injury.

1. Bringing Personal Sustainability
into Sustainable Farming
Jamie Davis
of A Way of Life Farm
Sunshine, NC

2. Sustainable Farming
• Environmental
• Financial
• Social
• Personal – encompasses both the physical and
psychological/emotional
– Avoid burnout!
– This means finding ways to avoid injury, build
strength and flexibility to sustain a long farming career

3. Outline
• Awareness, Activity, Rest
• Specific “Exercises” to build awareness,
openness and support
• Specific farming activities

4. Awareness
• It all comes down to awareness!
• On a farm we have a lot of external forces
driving us: production and marketing goals,
weather, etc. If we lose track of our self-
awareness, often times our personal
sustainability suffers.
• If you don’t know what you are doing, it’s hard
to make changes!

5. Awareness
• Exploration: Listen to your breath -- it can
provide insight into how you are doing on a
more subtle level.
– What is my breath like at rest?
– What is my breath like during moderate activity?
– What is my breath like during a challenging task?
– How do they compare?

6. Activity
• Do something different
– Yoga, aerobics, pilates, martial arts, non-contact
sports, dancing
– Alexander Technique, Rolfing, Feldenkrais Method
– Increase your body’s vocabulary and give it
a broader story to tell

7. Activity
• Do the same thing in a different way
– Jog, run, or bike as a means of transportation
around the farm
– Find ways to make a task into aerobic exercise or
something of a dance

8. Activity
• Farm work tends to be very inward directed:
bend and grip and lift and hold and pull!
• The forces of contraction and compression:
– We walk around looking down, generally carrying
weight, be it tools, food, feed, or water. Also, sitting
at the computer, on the tractor or in the truck -- we
are pulled forward and down. If we give in to the
forces exerted upon us, we will end up in a heap on
the floor. Thus, cultivate your inner buoyancy and
find an element of extension and expansiveness in
anything you do.

9. Rest
• Conscious Rest – not sleep!
• Lunchtime (just before eating) is a great time
• Conscious rest has the effect of a power nap

10. Conscious Rest
• ON THE FLOOR
• Hands at your sides, palms face-up
• Use a timer set to 5-10 minutes
• Always roll to your side and pause a
moment before getting up
• Take the time to turn off the lights,
draw the curtains, and cover
yourself with a blanket
– This dampens external stimuli (or
distractions) and allows your
attention to rest more easily
inward.

11. Alexander Technique
“The Monkey”

12. Half-Dog and Variations

13. Seated Trunk Lengthening Variations

14. Two Ways to Stand Up From a Forward
Bend: #1

15. Two Ways to Stand Up From a Forward
Bend: #2

16. Holding and Carrying Weight

17. Holding and Carrying Weight

18. Specific Farming Activities
• Bending: Transplanting, Weeding, Harvesting

19. Transplanting and Harvesting

20. Transplanting

21. Specific Farming Activities
• Lifting and Carrying

22. Specific Farming Activities
• Standing, Repetitive Action: Hoeing, Walk-
behind Tractor/Tiller, Broadforking

23. Specific Farming Activities
• Sitting: Driving a Tractor, Driving a Truck,
Sitting at a Computer

24. Specific Farming Activities
• Walking: can feed tension and gravity OR we
can use walking as a time to re-center and
maybe “Do Something in a Different Way”
(School of Funny Walks anyone?)
• Pulling: the “grunt work” of farming
– Often happens when something has already
gotten the better of us

25. Tools and Techniques for “Lightening
the Load”
• Landscaping Fabric, Precision Seeders, Flame
Weeders, Silage Tarp

26. Tools and Techniques for “Lightening
the Load”
• Hand trucks, Mover’s Dolly, Tractor with Forks
www.northerntool.com

27. Tools and Techniques for “Lightening
the Load”
• Quick-Cut Greens Harvester, Chain Digger
Photo from www.Johnnyseeds.com

28. Food and Eating Habits

29. Food and Eating Habits
• Food should be meaningful
– through connection to food you helped grow or
prepare
– through tradition and culture
– through good company sharing a meal together
• We are farmers who feed the soil biology – now
let’s feed our own.

30. Resources
• Body Learning by Michael Gelb
– Good introduction to the Alexander Technique
• The Lean Farm by Ben Hartman
– Great book in general, but in terms of our topic, it provides a systems approach to
avoiding injury and maintaining personal health: good workplace flow and making
good decisions about production efficiency can save a lot of wear and tear on our
bodies!
• Anatomy of Movement by Blandine Calais-Germain
– Great, functional anatomical drawings; helps me discern and understand more
clearly exactly what is ailing me.
• The Microbiome Solution by Dr. Robynne Chutkan
– As farmers, we feed microbes in the soil to benefit our crops (think compost,
manure, mulch, organic fertilizers). This book suggest we do the same for the
microbes in and on our bodies. Lots of great recipes for feeding your good bugs.
• The Divided Mind by Dr. John Sarno
– An integrated approach for dealing with chronic pain syndromes. If you deal with
chronic pain, and it seems like nothing is working, you should take a look at Dr.
Sarno’s work.