All of farming is a risk. There are an infinite number of variables we don't control. At best we deal in limited fields of influence and mitigation. Influence over where we farm, what we farm, how we farm. Mitigation against the failures that have happened before or that we believe will happen in the future. And we rest within those spaces, we rely on the choices we've been able to make to create the bridge between planting and harvest, harvest and sale. Hazards, planning, risks, mitigation; patterning unpredictability.
Sometimes though, the threat that can pull the whole farm down, is the one you never saw coming.
Vashon as a farm location and as a community felt as low risk as it gets. This place was special and perfect for our family. We and our peonies could grow here. We quite literally bet the farm on it, buying 12.2 acres in 2021 and planting 9,000 peonies the following year. Enrolling our children in island team sports, signing them up for island summer camps, becoming members of the island parish--baptizing our youngest there, finding joy as the best of neighbors became the best of friends. Relocating after realizing the best humans I have ever known are here, in this tiny, tiny place. But--and it's a huge one-- what we didn't anticipate was that the school supplies list would have been more helpful with the asterisk: *legal insurance recommended if your child has special needs.
We were optimistic when we first reached out to the school, having heard how wonderful the curriculum was, how so many people bussed and ferried their children to the island to attend. But the District's warm welcome of our then-non-resident student seemed to end exactly when their knowledge of our child's special needs began. What started as an emailed refusal to accept our child's transfer "due to OT needs" spiraled into having to file harassment complaints, litigation, a month long absence due to the District's refusal to allow our child to bring his powered wheelchair to school... and an entire semester and counting of missed curriculum due to his physical inability to complete a school day. Sadly, our child isn't the only student at the elementary school challenged to attend; there are several more we heard of, all in similar grade levels, all with special needs. Ableism isn't new, especially with invisible chronic conditions, but it still sucks, especially if you're eight years old. Witnessing islanders struggle as District leadership made statements along the lines of support creates disability and denied the existence of kids' disabilities was heartbreaking.
This year the (alleged) harassment (and Office of Civil Rights' investigation into the District's conduct) of our kids continues. Last week, our children were denied residency based on District leadership belief that we don't actually live on the island and instead opted to spend $50k on a trailer, empty our prior house of our belongings, list it with a realtor, and lie about having sold it, all to fraudulently force them into providing educational services for our medically complex 8 year old... Seems legit, but Tater Tot here has doubts.
In stark conference rooms, they spread copious medical documents and doctor's notes that affirm our son's needs around while denying that his pain and fatigue are worthy of dismissal based on their non-medical interpretation of his behaviors. They sit there and put up barrier after barrier to providing educational access while saying how badly they want to support him. Demanding a definition of how many feet he needs to walk before he can use his wheelchair. Wanting external measures for his fatigue and pain because it seems "habitual," ignoring the concrete facts of his genetic reality. Saying they don't know for sure that he can't finish a school day, since we've never forced him to push through his pain and fatigue to do so. All this said in front of him. My response was simple: "At some point . . . when he says that he's tired or in pain, you're just going to have to believe him." Court documents and a recent report by parent advocacy group SEPAC, suggest what looks to me like a pattern of action by the District in a space void of thought-out policy and procedure impacting the most vulnerable of students. It is the one pattern I didn't see coming.
Coyotes taking a duck despite our safeguards: check. Having to euthanize a gosling after a bald eagle failed to account for its weight when flying off: saw that coming. Mink indiscriminately attacking and maiming no less than 5 of my most beloved ducks in one night: viscously devastating, but a known issue on Vashon. A puppy with a broken hip, rescued alpacas completely deaf, a favorite duck with epilepsy and wry neck drowning, open wounds, parasites, losing my goat Loki to urinary calculi....All risks we chose to accept in our lives. Even discovering our new baby alpaca, August, has a bilateral heart murmur and no immune system is pain I accepted and to some extent anticipated as a farmer.
Eventually a mountain lion or the literal Bear will make their way to the island and we will need to accept that hurt as well. I accept the natural consequences with the joys of this life and when it comes down to it, I'd chose the Bear over explaining to my 5 year old during an IEP Team meeting, that the tears streaming down my face are "big emotions" and that my big emotion was "frustration," but that we were "safe" and these adults aren't hurting us. The safe part felt like a lie and the harm is very, very real. Every one of her neighborhood friends have been assigned their kindergarten teacher while we wait to see if the District will follow through on their threat to dis-enroll her and her brother today.
I'll never understand why it is hard for some to fathom that so many families are choosing to opt-out of a giant dream house and typical consumptive American lifestyle and into a bare bones homestead. Following the iconic "I choose the Bear" moment, white women who paid any attention were aghast when BIPOC turned around and said they'd choose the Bear over a white woman in a conference room. How could they?! White women were allies! They know exactly how to help! Such people forget just how much pain and harm happens in those rooms. How lengthy and pervasive the torture is when she decides she knows a child is faking pain in a Maryland hospital; or decides she knows a trad wife would rather be a ballerina; or leads the school District's lawyer into demanding to see our "grocery receipts" to prove we live at our home.
The reality is simple. Regardless of background, we are in fact choosing the Bear. Sitting with the natural discomfort of natural consequences and the natural weight of foundational work after being traumatized through an entire cultural movement of adults leaning in and thus away from or onto their children. We are rescuing ourselves, our animals, and our children--if we are choosing to have them. It's not a gaggle of millennial adults cosplaying at being farmers--
Homesteads are Human Sanctuaries.
Spaces of Walz-ian hope that others will quite simply, mind their own damn business. Where all living things are treated with equal respect and humans of all ages are encouraged to find kindness in themselves and others. Where unhealthy competition is an anathema and supportive encouragement a daily occurrence. In short, the Bear is a natural safety-risk-reward balance we will always choose, not what we fear.
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