Pauly Shore and the Urban Farmer

Connecting urban and rural communities together

Other aging Millennials might say that their young lives were loosely informed by lessons woven throughout books like Aesop's Fables. Mine was shaped by Pauly Shore.

He’s taught me about the critical importance of saying yes to jury duty when you’re called, and how much more chaotically fun life can become after you start digging your own saltwater pool. Pauly has also taught me why you should never say yes to a fake version of Biosphere 2 if Stephen Baldwin is involved. But the film that continues to reverberate in its canonical matrix—or at least in my lizard brain—to date is Son in Law, in which our beloved urban weirdo shows up in his girlfriend’s small town wearing a tie-dye t-shirt, a pair of overalls, pitchfork in hand, ready to shovel cow shit in the name of love/in order to win the hearts of her farmer parents.

As an urban weirdo myself, if you’ve been reading this newsletter for a while, you’ve probably read my cats cradle of untangling myself from New York City for home (Austin) in the height of the pandemic, and how I stumbled into regenerative farming by way of volunteering on urban farms here in Texas that eventually brought me to Spirit Farm, the Diné-led teaching farm in Vanderwagen, New Mexico, where I have learned so much.

The farming that has appeared in my life started with death, first though. There I was leaving the life I knew behind in NYC, grieving the loss of someone I loved as I loaded up the moving van and entered quarantine here in Austin. In early 2021, I fell into regenerative farming so quickly (that’s a whole other story) after the quarantine era as we were all stepping out into a world forever changed. And as I spent more time with farmers/spending more time in farming communities, I realized something that even Pauly Shore—corny 90s comedies et al—couldn’t teach me better (that any farmer reading this will understandably roll their eyes at): like artists and birth or death doulas, farmers are agents of transformation. They steward and nurture and witness nature’s life cycles every day. They understand the language of its rhythms like Japan’s notion of 72 microseasons. 

I have lost a few people in my life since 2020 and have been floating through the river Styx, only to discover in the midst of my mourning that the river of grief isn’t solo, but flooded with our collective humanity. So many of us haven’t fully processed how our lives have changed, who or what we have lost since it all began, or how to fully accept that the lives we had can never be the same again before we “move on.” 

And yet for so many of us in cities, myself included, we have our rituals and habits that are still 

rooted in the attention economy, from the essential to the tangential. From overscheduling ourselves to the weekly grocery run, swiping right on dating apps for hours, only to connect with no one, to compulsively ordering objects online to fill a void, outsourcing rather than escaping to nature—even if it’s just a city sidewalk. It’s when we stop to allow the grief to creep in when we’re digging in the literal dirt that things get interesting.

I can only speak from my own experience in saying that grief feels like a lonely experience, even when grieving in community, and yet it’s the highest expression of love, a reminder of what was blooming a few days ago and composted just yesterday. 

I didn’t mean to yank you from a comedic farming trope with Pauly Shore into the underworld, but rather plant you like a seed back into the soil, where the microbial networks live and thrive. Because resiliency and regrowth starts with community. Because growing your own food, or supporting community members in your area who can grow it for you is tapping into a web of connections that will be more impactful towards the support and land stewardship of our ecological systems than a large organization ever could be. 

So for my fellow city dwelling friends, an invitation/question/hit me in the comments to let me know if you are doing/can you/will you/won’t you any of the following to get connect to rural communities:

-lower your cortisol levels and forest bathe in a public park

-join a community garden (and read/listen/watch anything from Karen Washington)

-Join a csa or say hi to a local farmer at a farmer’s market and see if you can volunteer on their farm for a day

-Deepen your local edible plant education (or as the wise Alexis Nikole Nelson would say, “happy snacking, don’t die!”) and forage courtesy of an easy app like Fallen Fruit

-Find a seed library/host a gathering to reseed foodways (even on a fire escape)

And if you’re already doing any or all of the above, drop a comment and share how things are evolving for you on the path ahead. Much like the biodiversity of microorganisms working hard for the soil health below us, we’re no different—it takes all of our unique experiences and diverse perspectives to expand what’s possible towards reentering nature. 

Sending you composting energy and corny punchlines to celebrate this micro-season with a dash of Pauly Shore.