"I'm always going to have to convince people that my vegetables are worth what I'm asking for them." —Austin Blair
The toil, strain, and occasional pleasures of one young farmer's year is the basis for the new documentary, The Organic Life. The filmmaker was in an unusual position to document this process, as she lived it herself.
Following her live-in boyfriend Austin Blair's travails as he learns to farm under the guidance of Sonoma Valley veteran agriculturalist Paul Wirtz, filmmaker Casey Beck says that she made the film "partly to comfort myself, partly to show other people, and partly out of complete awe."
Austin and Casey will be onsite with us on Saturday, July 19, when we screen The Organic Life in our upstairs Grange.
The two met in college when Austin was just transitioning from an engineering program and Casey was studying filmmaking. After college, they went to Argentina on Casey's Fullbright and then WWOOFed on a farm. Seeing their host family's cellar loaded with homemade preserves, pickles, cheeses, salumi, and other stored foodstuffs jolted Austin in deciding that he wanted all of that. He wanted to farm.
A sweet-faced man who is seen chewing something off of a plant in nearly every scene, Austin really likes food. But, as he tells the camera, he didn't grow up eating anything special and probably never had anything indeed as special as a "real" carrot. (He did, however, have the Taco Bell menu memorized.) Learning to grow and eat only "real" food brought a profound change upon him; in fact, it's become his life's calling.
The Organic Life doesn't labor to impress us with the poetic grandeur of organic agriculture. Rather, it underscores the stresses of the life that Austin's chosen. Is sustainable farming truly sustainable, Casey asks, if it can't actually financially support the farmers who do it?
"Just seeing the quality of my produce makes it worth it, but — it's not enough to pay the bills," Austin admits to the camera. He shrugs. "But how fun would it be if it were easy?"
His partner could probably tell him. Now that the film is finished — it took three years, two crowdfunding rounds, two fundraisers, and all of Casey's savings — she's working a day job in Richmond to help support them, teaching video skills to underserved youth. Reached by phone at her East Bay office, Casey admits that she's an unusual figure in the farming world — because she doesn't much care for it.
"If Austin needs help, I'll go out and do it," she says. "In the same way that he doesn't enjoy filmmaking, I don't really enjoy farming. We're very different people that way. I like being outside, drinking a lemonade with a book, but I don't like all the random projects he has going on. And farming is really a profession where people want you both to do it. And it's like no, we can't do this. We couldn't stay married if we did it. You don't expect that of any other profession."
But she does like farmers, saying that presenting the film and talking about it after the screening has been a true highlight. "It really never gets old with audiences to have that light bulb turned on," she says. "On some level, we all know it, but when you actually see it, there's a Eureka moment of 'Oh. There is a person out there growing my food.' It's so incredibly rewarding to have people say, 'Now I want to go to the farmers' market.' I know that I did a good thing for these farmers. It's just really beautiful to witness that."
The vagaries of weather during climate change and the effects of pure physical exhaustion become themes in The Organic Life as the fields remain water-logged well into the planting cycle and the couple finds themselves too tired to enjoy activities their 20something friends take for granted, like going dancing or taking a three-day camping trip. For Austin, life is work, work, and more work — none of it resulting in any kind of a real fiscal respite. For now, at least, he's resolute: farming is what he loves and being a farmer is what he does. Since the film's release, the couple has been offered land of their own to farm later this year; currently, Austin still works for Wirtz at Paul's Produce.
For Casey, The Organic Life was a labor of love conceived of love. Austin amazes her and she wanted to highlight the effort he and all farmers share. "The real goal of the film is to get people to go out and meet their own farmers," she says.
"I know mine pretty well."
Join us after hours on Saturday, July 19, at 8pm for a screening of 'The Organic Life.' Casey Beck and Austin Blair will be in attendance. $5; farmers, free.