Lynn Miller’s magazine is somewhat of an anachronism in the field of agricultural publications.
The oversized quarterly features photos of teams of workhorses and plows, not high-powered tractors and implements.
He reprints how-to articles from the first 25 years of the century rather than features on the latest in global positioning systems.
His editorials rail against “the blood-sucking dragon of the corporate ethic,” and wax poetic about the beauty and honesty of hard work on small farms.
Like a prophet in a black down-filled vest and nice-fitting jeans, navy cotton handkerchief tucked in the back pocket, he weaves a spell about the calling and the romance of farming.
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Meet Lynn Miller, editor of Small Farmer’s Journal, a magazine “honoring independence, craftsmanship, diversity and good humor,” collected and cherished by small organic farmers for the past 23 years.
In the next 10 to 30 years, he believes there will be a flood of the working poor and disenfranchised white collar workers moving away from cities to farm.
Miller, 52, captivated an audience at a recent organic agriculture conference at the University of Winnipeg with the story of how he came to farm at Sisters, Oregon, on the eastern slopes of the Cascade Mountains.
Miller grew up in cities, but now loves the land as only a born-again farmer can.
He started farming in 1970, but lost his first two small farms – one to urban sprawl, another to the high interest rates of the late 1980s.
That’s when he came across an abandoned 2,100-acre farm with 160 broken for $100 per acre.
“That ranch was dust,” he said.
Today, it’s a highly productive grain and livestock farm, where eagles, bears, cougars and wild turkey roam amidst “velvet green” fields of oats.
Thousands of swallows live in the open implement shed where he keeps his 16 horses. They control flies and add a “shimmering cloud” to the backdrop of pine forest and snow-capped mountains on his ranch.
When he works his land, “I know that I’m in heaven, and everything works,” he said.
Miller runs his publishing operation on the side, and, with staff, finds time to go through 100 to 300 letters he gets each day from fans around the world, letters that pepper the pages of his magazine.
Gerry DubŽ, an organic farmer from La Broquerie, Man., who helped organize the conference, said he was inspired by the mix of art and practical information he saw in the magazine when he first borrowed a copy from a friend in 1989.
Robert and Celia Guilford, who farm at Clearwater, Man., have bought their first team of horses for seeding this spring, partly inspired by Miller’s magazine.
The magazine is full of low-tech, homespun wisdom, with a few quotes from famous philosophers thrown in for good measure. In one issue from last summer, Miller compared learning to farm to courting an attractive woman. He says there’s “a primal nature of being called to the plow.”
He speaks out against the movement toward organic certification, saying he doesn’t like the “itchy underwear of compliance” involved. It reminds him too much of corporate agriculture, he said.
But the time has passed for organic growers to be political activists, he said. Instead, they have to reach out to other farmers and build bridges.
“To attack directly is to miss an incredible time-sensitive opportunity,” said Miller.
Too often, “kooky, sanctimonious, self-righteous people pushing organic food” have alienated rather than converted rural neighbors, said Miller.
He has seven phone lines on his farm for the constant stream of calls from people who want to know how to grow their own food.
“We’ve arrived,” he said. “The water is beginning to clear.”
He believes farming on a small scale is critical.
“Our farms need to approximate gardens in their patchwork quilt diversity,” he said, adding he knows of 10,000 or more successful small farms.
“Our farms need to be little churches.”
