Art can bring us together. Take for example, the many guilds and groups I am a part of. Some are for knitters, some for spinners, some for challenging our creativity, some for eating. What would we be without our communities? Here we share, we laugh, we lift each other up, and share each other's burdens. We find in each other kindred spirits.
Art does this, but have you thought how agriculture does that too? When it's a tough year and there's drought, you share with thousands of other farmers the same feelings and the same struggles. When you are busy harvesting, chances are, your neighbors for 20 miles around are too. We share stories, our frustrations, sometimes even our equipment when a friend is in need. It's a tight knit group but when you are in, you know they have your back.
How many groups do you have like that? If you don't, keep trying until you find that. Community is a sense of finding a cause beyond our own that we can believe in. Sometimes just the cause of encouraging one another is enough of a reason.
I believe that the Wisconsin Quilt Museum's group of ladies believed a lot of that, in getting their dream off the ground. They planted an idea, and with enough tending, it's amazing what it grew. The act of creating is very alive and present in both art and agriculture.
In fact, when it comes down to it, art and agriculture share a lot of similes. That is one of the reasons I believe strongly in tying the two together. As a farmer and an artist, that is just natural for me. Yet in the walls of a 170 year old barn, where a dream was planted by a farmer many, many years ago, a dream still flourishes that will live on. To see beautiful art on the walls where cattle once lived; to know the foundation we stand on was built from rocks pulled from the land, one at a time, by the sweat rolling off the brow of a determined farmer; to know a farm that once sold farm-fresh milk now nourishes the souls of the community, is powerful.
Let's keep tying art and agriculture together. As far as I know, we need both in the world today more than ever, don't we?