Decade in Reflection Part Four: Beyond the Field
/In honor of our ten year anniversary, we’re taking a trip down memory lane in a new multi part series. Through archival photos and retrospective writings, we’ll revisit forest gardening, water management, plant medicine, and other pursuits we’ve explored over the last ten years at Fields Without Fences with the kind of nuance and cosmic humor that only hindsight provides.
Memory forms in a relational context, and looking back on the past ten years, it becomes difficult to parse apart one moment in time from all that came before it, and all that happened after. In this regard, these reflections do not follow a strictly linear presentation, or timeline of the farm. They are not a list of perceived achievements or failures, but travel instead the way memory does in the mind’s eye, layering and folding in on itself, constantly reconfiguring itself into a cohesive narrative.
I once heard someone say, the past does not generate the present, it streams out behind it. What is, at any given moment, is determined by the position of the observer at present. Spooky action at a distance…
Past and present, as it turns out, is a bit of a to and fro.
Read Decade in Reflection: Part One: Forest Garden Farm
Read Decade in Reflection: Part Two: The Way of Water
Read Decade in Reflection: Part Three: Plant Medicine for People & Planet
Circa 2013, Johann & Lindsay, fields without fences, Frenchtown, NJ. Photo by Sean Walsh.
fields without fences
Ten years ago the call toward “sustainable farming” was an open acknowledgement that the primary modes of food production were causing serious harm to the environment, and ultimately contributing to a future where food production would be increasingly difficult; and existentially unsustainable. The focus at the time was oriented toward harm reduction, reducing soil erosion and limiting chemical applications. Conventional farming methods inhibit biodiversity with vast monocultures and chemical insecticides, degrade soil health with regular tillage and chemical herbicides, and interrupt nutrient and hydrological cycles with the removal of plant material. Keeping the land in a chronic state of disturbance and extraction that consequently requires the application of chemical fertilizers to maintain production - which have the unfortunate side effect of trickling into our shared waterways, creating algae blooms and disappearing aquatic life. In the successive years since sustainability arose in the popular lexicon, there has been a shift in the popular consciousness to question the legitimacy of sustaining a status quo rife with innate inadequacies.
In a vast ocean of possibility, a slippery question arises: Can agriculture move beyond what is reasonably sustainable, to function as a catalyst and vehicle for widespread ecosystem renewal and repair?
It is a question that surfaced organically for us when we began interacting with this severely degraded plot over a decade ago, and a curiosity that we followed through explorations into permaculture, forest gardening, agroforestry, ecological restoration, water management and various other modalities falling under the rubric of “regenerative agriculture,” the preferred term at present. These explorations, which began in applied practice on our farm, ultimately led us further afield, as we found ourselves working with other farmers and land stewards across the region, pursuing that same confounding question.
For all the nuance and specificity of our story, there is also a quality of ubiquity to it that places us within a continuum of human beings navigating how to be in relationship with their surroundings. It’s a shifting calculus because our surroundings are constantly changing. Each unfolding moment brings with it a fresh novelty of circumstance; seasons layer upon themselves, something happens which creates the conditions for something else in an endless emergent unfolding to which we calibrate. If there are answers to be found in the land, they seem to be oriented around adaptation, diversity, and relationship.
Sometimes you grow into a name. Work that began within the confines of a ten acre plot of land expanded into an experiment in ecological restoration and agricultural production, the inspiration for and location of diverse educational programming, a regional agroecology consulting service, and a catalyst for our own spiritual and philosophical evolution. Along the way, we’ve had the privilege of becoming connected to an incredible community of people engaged in work along the continuum of ecological restoration, agricultural production, and food sovereignty. These relationships, that have emerged beyond the field, have situated us within a deeper web of connection to people and place. There is resiliency in a diverse landscape that is buoyed by a myriad of forms and perspectives. We adapted to the niche we found ourselves inhabiting, and in following the open path that emerged, we found the answer was not something, but rather the absence of it.
May 30th, 2015, Designing Perennial Polycultures Weekend Workshop, fields without fences, Frenchtown, NJ / May 31st, 2015, Dave Jacke & Johann Rinkens, fields without fences
In the late winter of 2015, we received a call from Dave Jacke, co-author of the exemplary tome, Edible Forest Gardens Vol. 1&2, letting us know he’d be down our way for a conference in the spring, and would we like to collaborate on a weekend workshop at our farm? The year prior, we had spent a deeply complex and truly memorable ten days in an off-season YMCA camp at a teacher training led by Dave. Three years before that Johann had beseeched me, in the soggy spring of 2011, that a week-long immersion into forest gardening with Dave in rural PA might substantially inform a direction for our degraded farmland, otherwise beset by dwindling paths to production. The workshop proposal, an unexpected natural progression of sorts, sounded like a terrific and terrifying idea, we happily agreed to.
An entire course full of forest garden enthusiasts descending on the land to explore every crevice of our experimental forest garden farm, with the well-known author of a seminal book on forest gardens, no pressure… In the weeks leading up to the course I was full of quiet ambivalence, weighing the prize of connection against the cost of scrutiny. But when the weekend finally arrived, and I fully surrendered to it, it mostly felt like a celebration. The garden came alive against the backdrop of people. All those trees and shrubs and herbs growing together could look like an impenetrable wall of greenery in a photograph, but pressed against the contrast of human form, the garden gained nuance and perspective. The people glanced up at the elders in bloom, gestured toward the catnip and sorrel, leaned toward the earth to observe the trailing ground cover of strawberries.
Does a tree falling in the forest make a sound? All those rows of engaged humans, cognizant of the plants and all their creeping, clumping, fruiting virtues felt like a natural extension of one continuum. The earth holding a mirror up to itself in a self reflexive consciousness. I remember it being fun, and washing dishes at the kitchen sink for hours after the cookout. I remember at one point Dave described what we were doing as “jazz”, and to this day it’s one of my most favorite compliments we’ve ever received. But most of all, I remember some of the wonderful people that came through the farm that weekend, because we’ve stayed in touch, connecting around plants and permaculture and the like on occasion. Dave has stayed a close family friend, and we’ve collaborated on projects from time to time over the years since. The garden, tethered in place, has proven to be a stable post from which to cast a web that spirals out into the world.
May 19th, 2019, Annual Open House Farm Tour, fields without fences, Frenchtown, NJ. Our annual open house events always featured an in-depth farm tour of our forest gardens, wild meadows and emergent woodlands, water systems, and were a free event for the community, generally held once a year.
June 4th, 2019, Front to back, Rhiannon Wright, Mary Beth Bragg, Brian Guerin, South East Field, fields without fences, Frenchtown, NJ. Apprenticeship Program participants interact with a multi-strata agroforestry system in the field.
June 25th, 2017, Plants of the Summer Solstice Plant Walk, Lindsay Napolitano (author) & participants, Center Field, fields without fences, Frenchtown, NJ. Running a tight ship on a summer herb walk; single file, alphabetical order, shortest to tallest!
November 3rd, 2016, Jean Gajary, Grace Majorossy, & Emily Brady, End of Season Party, fields without fences, Frenchtown, NJ. The apprenticeship participants surprised us with a cake during our end of the season party. Jean had us laughing about the particularities of explaining this cake design over the phone to her neighborhood bakery in Philly.
It’s a relationship
Permaculture is an ecological design system which mimics naturally occurring ecosystem functions through patterning and harnesses their potential for long term sustainable renewal. Agroecology is a practice and field of study that applies an ecosystem framework to agricultural production. Swamp Loggers is an unfortunate reality television series from the late aughts where we originally learned techniques to safely maneuver farm equipment through our waterlogged fields. Over the years, we have derived inspiration from far-ranging sources, and in doing so, have escaped the burdensome weight of any particular dogma or approach - but more importantly, have maintained a fascination for the work propelled by genuine unobstructed curiosity.
Curiosity is contagious. There is a joke I’ve told that has mostly fallen flat, but it goes, I could teach you about something you are interested in, but it would be much more fascinating if I taught you about something I was interested in! The spark that ignites us is what makes us compelling to others. The educational programming we’ve offered, or participated in, has been informed by this impetus more so than any particular subject matter. When we haven’t felt like we could bring the right energy to it, we’ve stepped away from teaching, and politely declined invitations. In doing so, the education component of our work has disappeared and reappeared at various intervals throughout the decade. There have been so many amazing experiences over the years on the farm, at conferences, and schools, but our most enduring and indelible memories are from the apprenticeship program, an intimate, long-term learning program we offered on the farm for four seasons.
We began the apprenticeship program in 2014 with two wonderful part time seasonal employees, and ran it that way for two years before concluding that combining education with paid employment at that level wasn’t sustainable for the business. We weighed discontinuing the program, but there had been such richness to the quality of self discovery in the context of interacting with the land, and aspects of a long term teaching program that we found personally fulfilling, we were remiss to fully part with it. So the program was reimagined in 2016 to include more participants, and less emphasis on day to day operations. We cut it down to one day a week over the course of the growing season. We’d spend half the day in relaxed learning, and half the day doing volunteer work on the farm, in a low stakes work/learn exchange. In reality, we spent more time learning than working (whatever that means), but the freedom to explore concepts and ideas more deeply made for a truly unique farm apprentice program. In this context we were able explore practical applications and techniques, alongside a parallel inquiry of why do we engage with this work? We ran the apprenticeship again in 2019 with a phenomenal group, and all told 18 people completed the program over the course of the four seasons we ran it.
Our apprenticeship days were filled with everything from the mechanics of water management and plant medicine, to philosophy and crop production, to personal reflections on interactions with the landscape in real time. We created a loose curriculum that changed and shifted with the collective consciousness of each group, leading to days with such variable dynamism, we couldn’t recreate them if we tried. Learning is an interactive exchange, inextricably dependent on participants and site specific context. It’s the parts in participation that make it fully whole. A network of synapses sparking.
October 18th, 2018, Johann Rinkens & Yoni Wolf, Client Farm, Gladstone, VA
There are some years when our work has covered hundreds of acres across four states in a single season. I should be more precise about this, mostly Johann’s work. While Johann has traveled across the region consulting and advising with farmers and land stewards, I have mostly preferred to stay home, tend the plants, mind the animals, and keep the compulsory fires burning. I’m not much of a traveler. Or, as my friend Andrew once put it more precisely, “I mean, you don’t physically go to a lot of places…” It only took me two years of offsite consulting work to realize I prefer to be home on the farm, focused on the work in the field, with the familiar rush of the river nearby.
On this particular occasion, I, along with our dog Yoni Wolf, had accompanied Johann on a trip to a project down in Virginia. For all the time Johann and I spend comparing notes about the various projects we’re engaged with, there remains a great deal of dark matter for me regarding the moment to moment of work far afield. Landscapes I’ve only seen on base maps, and characters I mostly know through Johann’s descriptions. This afternoon I was far from home, snapping photos of Johann laying out contour lines on a hillside, while Yoni Wolf trotted about stopping only to survey the sweeping vistas. I was excited for the potential of the project, enjoying the beautiful scenery, and wondering rather naggingly, if the sheep back home were getting restless for new pasture…. The call of the world and the pull of our farms has been an underlying tension, and a taut cord connecting our work to the work of so many others.
It hasn’t always been an easy balancing act. There have been years when we’ve prioritized outside projects over the farms, and years where we’ve had to pull back on outside projects to move forward development of the farms. But at its best, it's been an exciting exchange, as we’ve parlayed experiences on our land into knowledge passed on, transmuted afar, and delivered back again. It’s made the work feel more participatory and collective as Johann and I traded diverse perspectives on a day’s work at the dinner table. And it’s been interpersonally helpful for us to cultivate autonomy within our various auspices, as a kind of release valve for the pressures that tend to accumulate within work/life partnerships. We are very much partners, but Johann will be quick to direct all expressed appreciation of the farms to me, just as I will be quick to direct all advising inquiries to him. Working together and apart has had a complimentary and equalizing effect.
I left Virginia to drive back to New Jersey with Yoni Wolf after only a couple of days because the farms couldn’t be left unattended for very long. Yoni was similarly restless for home. At every fluorescent rest stop along the way, I was reminded with incandescent clarity, I’m not much for travel.
But Johann is.
July 17th, 2020, Upper Terrace Field, Ironbound Farm, Asbury, NJ. We collaborated with Ironbound Farm over the years on developing water management, field layout, and alley cropping systems. Here a crop of squash grows between young apple orchard plantings.
Circa 2015, Photo Credit: Jared Rosenbaum. Woodland restoration project, Great Road Farm, Skillman, NJ. We collaborated with Wild Ridge Plants in 2014 on a woodland restoration project. Native edible and medicinal plants were introduced and encouraged in a blown down woodlot.
July 18th, 2018, Johann Rinkens, Eric Berg, Mark Shepard, Karen Vanek, Client Farm, Only, TN. Water management project with Restoration Agriculture Development team (RAD).
May 6th, 2020, Front to back, Johann Rinkens & Joe Pizzo, Client Farm, Ambler, PA. Tree planting of a field on a RAD client’s agroforestry project.
Far Afield
When our friends started asking us for perspective on their various projects, it felt like a natural broadening of the work with which we were already engaged. A veggie start up, an urban garden, a broadscale non-profit community farm project - all felt proximal to our experience. Word of mouth and farmer to farmer referrals spread into a fractal pattern that put us in contact and collaboration with landscapes and stewards throughout our watershed, and eventually our region. These relationships became the “ecological services” side of operation, and have taken the path of natural extension to become a significant part of what we do.
Our farms are located within the Delaware River watershed, on The Piedmont, in a temperate climate region of the earth. The Delaware River basin flows from Mohawk and Munsee through Lenape land to the Atlantic Ocean, in an interconnected vascular pattern of sinuous streams, creeks, and tributaries. The Piedmont, a sweeping plateau remnant of an ancient mountain range, extends from Alabama to New York, sharing a low rolling topography, clay dominant soils, and similar plant communities. The temperate climate region is a middle latitude of the earth between the tropic and polar regions, characterized by variable seasonality, and home to most of the world’s human population. Our farms, finite in their borders, and tethered in position, can also be understood as an arising feature of larger existing patterns, a detail on an expansive tapestry. When we conceptualize our world this way, the relative health and harmony of every landscape is inextricably connected to our own.
We were introduced to the inspirational work of Mark Shepard at New Forest Farm, and his iconic book Restoration Agriculture in the spring of 2014, and that fall, in a kismet unfolding of events, found ourselves consulting on the same project. A year later it happened again on a different project. Our paths kept crossing, and we started working together more and more. Mark had implemented water management and agroforestry cropping systems informed by ecotype and watershed stabilization twenty years earlier. He was becoming well known in permaculture and regenerative agriculture circles following the release of the book when we were turned on to his work and indispensable contributions to the field of regenerative agriculture. We had a lot of common interests, a deep friendship and partnership formed over several years, and by 2018 we were collaborating on broad-scale agroforestry projects from the east coast to the midwest under our sister organization, Restoration Agriculture Development.
There is a vision of an agricultural future that harkens back to a horticultural past, where large land masses move out of uninterrupted cycles of corn and soy extraction, and toward an architecture and speciation more contiguous with the complexity of a naturally emergent ecology. The rainforests were shaped this way, by humans and our kin, over successive generations. Thousands of years later they are “the lungs” of the earth, so complex and robust, they are assumed to be spontaneous and divinely arbitrary. These cumulative efforts require many hands over vast stretches of time working in concert - similar to the cacophonous songs of summer, sung out loud by the frogs, and birds, and vibrating insects into the anonymous abyss of the night’s sky.
June 22nd, 2017, Andrew Geller, fields without fences, Frenchtown, NJ
One of the most meaningful relationships we’ve cultivated throughout the years at fields without fences is with our friend Andrew. Andrew has worked part time on the farm in various capacities for the last eight seasons. There have been some years when I’ve seen more of him, and some years when I’ve seen less of him, and years like 2020, when he was one of the only people I saw on a regular basis. He is an extraordinary human being I feel lucky to know.
When Andrew reached out in 2015 looking to work on the farm, I explained that our two apprenticeship positions had been filled, but if he wanted to discuss volunteering we could have a phone chat about it. With the spiral corded receiver of the office landline cocked on my shoulder, I spent the majority of that first conversation with Andrew trying to convince him not to work with us. Had he reached out anywhere else? Oh good, they’re a great farm, you should work with them… My neck started to cramp to the tenor of my protestations. Andrew was unphased, he wanted to work with us.
Andrew turned out to be an intriguing character. He is a documentarian who had spent years filming some of the last independent coal miners in Pennsylvania. His favorite film at the time was the celebrated classic Harlan County, USA. Uncanny! “Lindsay used to work for Hart Perry, the documentary’s cinematographer!” we told him. Andrew was into motorcycles, and plants, and performance. During all the time we’ve known him, he’s played in a popular sci-fi party band called The Roddenberries (multi-genre, multimedia experience really…), that puts on one of the most committed and fantastic shows I’ve ever seen. And on the day this photo was taken, Andrew had just taken an unplanned ride up from Philadelphia because we were strapped scrambling to get the farm ready for an event and he wanted to help. He’s that kind of human.
Season after season Andrew returned to the farm, and became a consistent feature of our story, and a part of our family really. He has a wonderful sense of humor and an incredible kindness that feels like a gift when he’s around. He works hard, with a spirit for adventure, and has persevered through eight seasons working with arguably the most inhospitable soil this side of the Delaware. He has shown patience and diplomacy during times when Johann and I have bumped heads in the field, even as the language grew increasingly colorful, and the vibe grew decidedly “Jersey.” And he’s spent many twilights sipping cider and talking with us into the sunset after a long day’s work. Andrew has been there through almost all of it.
November 6th, 2018, Lindsay Napolitano (author), fields without fences, Frenchtown, NJ. In 2018, I was invited to join the Kingwood Township Agricultural Committee. Serving on this committee for five years so far, with other farmers in my community, has been an honor.
May 24th, 2018, C.R.A.F.T. Tour, Gravity Hill Farm, Titusville, NJ. Our local organic farming community stays connected and collaborative. Here Johann Rinkens & Malaika Spencer host a tour of Roots to River’s vegetable fields at Gravity Hill Farm. We collaborated with farmer Malaika on field layout for managing water on the steep slopes of her auxiliary grow operation at Gravity Hill Farm.
November 9th, 2016, Johann Rinkens & Lindsay Napolitano (author), WDVR FM Radio Station, Sergentsville, NJ. On the airwaves talking shop as frequent guests on Carl Molter’s beloved “Into the Garden” program.
July 3rd, 2017, Bradley Beach, NJ. Checking out the growth on a volunteer community dune planting we had participated in two years prior.
One Thread Weaves Us Together Or Unravels Us All
In exploring the world beyond ourselves, we encounter a series of mutually defined entanglements; nectary plants and pollinating butterflies; maritime coasts that bleed into pine barrens and flat lands; nature and nurture; society and culture. Our relationship with our environment, rather than the expression of unbridled singular desire, is more like a set of often unconscious negotiations made between diverse, interconnected and involved parties. Farming and development take certain forms because there are structures in place that support and encourage those practices.
The challenge for the world, as we learn and relearn how to be in a mutually sustaining relationship with our environment, will require an ongoing flexibility to dissolve structures and remake them in a perennial process of shifting equilibrium. When it comes to agriculture, a wholesale shift toward regenerative practices will require the overlapping work and input of small scale farmers, broad scale farmers, indigenous peoples, land planners, non-profits, educators, private sector businesses, institutions, and government led initiatives to support and implement real world changes to how food is produced, processed, distributed, compensated, and consumed.
Throughout the decade we have collaborated with over 40 different farmers, land stewards, and organizations on projects involving water management, annual cropping, agroforestry, permaculture design, ecological restoration, and food system planning. The diverse work being done at every level within the regenerative agriculture community is exciting, and fraught, and ultimately the humbling work of humans engaged in the unfolding mystery of life on earth. Our work over the last ten years, however all encompassing it has felt for us, is such a small contribution to the conversation, but indeed, a largely heartening to and fro at that.
Ten years is substantial in a human lifetime. Ten years can transform a meadow into shrub land. And on the outer reaches of the known universe, ten years barely registers, if it exists at all. I’m not sure a determinate destiny sits waiting like a prize for our collective efforts. The end is so far inconclusive. And in the meantime, we bend and stretch into a world of relationships that require constant reconfiguring and mutual calibration. The ground ivy curves left to make its way around a tuft of plantain, and we can only hope it does so joyfully.
September 2nd, 2012, Johann Rinkens & Lindsay Napolitano (author), Wedding
Ten years ago we started a farm, and got married. We worked every day from sun up to sun down, and at night I set about planning a big Italian wedding. In nearly every photo from that summer, including some of the wedding photos, I look as if someone has spontaneously and disconcertingly thrown open the cargo door on the airplane, and invited me to step closer and check out the view at thirty thousand feet. I was exhausted, and unsure, and felt myself to be on the precipice of an abrupt and unknown future.
At thirty eight years old now, I have known Johann for exactly half of my life. Behind us, so many versions of who we were, and iterations of lives we’ve lived, stream out in increasingly diffuse recollection. I mostly wrote this series for us, so even as the landscape shifts and our lives change shape, there might be something I could preserve in time, like a picture, or an idea, or an ideal, as a counterweight to the natural tendency to lament the past in hindsight. A momento through which to consider, perhaps provocatively, that the juxtaposition of ups and downs is precisely what makes it such a fantastic adventure.
I’ve said this before: Two things I am most proud of are my long term relationship with this man and with this land. Both are perfectly imperfect, living, evolving, relationships that grow and shift with each passing year, but remain anchored to a foundation of deep love and mutual understanding. A soft and sturdy web bellowing to the shape of the breeze.
Jumping, as it turns out, is much easier with a net.
September 22nd, 2011, BIRD, back of the cottage, Frenchtown, NJ. When fields without fences was still a nascent idea.
April 6th, 2013, Johann Rinkens & Lindsay Napolitano (author), fields without fences, Frenchtown, NJ. A photo we took with the timer on the camera in front of the barn.
August 26th, 2022, Photo Credit: Jacquelyn Tierney. Roan Rinkens, Johann Rinkens, & Lindsay Napolitano (author), fields without fences, Frenchtown, NJ. Current view of life and the biggest adventure of the last decade.
September 8th, 2014, Late Summer Night’s Sky, fields without fences, Frenchtown, NJ.
Beyond the Field
We have a fence, in case it was a question. When we were coming up with a name over a decade ago, Johann was insistent it not include the word “farm,” and be resolutely, fields without fences, full stop. It gave the name a nebulous quality, a floating picture, or idea, or ideal, that became its own kind of Rorschach blot, and people tend to read into it what they will. Turns out, you can learn a lot about someone by the way they say, “You’re farmers without fields, or whatever…right?” And have a lot of fun with someone who playfully quips, “what exactly do you mean by fields?”
There have been a lot of changes in our life recently, and in figuring out where we are headed in the next decade, I reflected, “at least fields without fences is a good shapeshifter.” Over the years, we’ve found our niche by expanding and contracting aspects of the operation based on a nuanced mix of feedback, opportunity, and personal motivation. Kind of like the way plants fill in the space around each other, no two sharing the exact same shape. As to what work looks like beyond the field at this point, we’re always responding to context and circumstance. We've slowly begun to engage in educational programming again. About two years ago, in a change that was a long time coming, we turned the focus of our consulting and advising exclusively toward agriculture and broad scale land stewardship. To that end, we’ve been using the term “agroecology” more than “permaculture” lately to reflect that narrowing of focus. We’re no strangers to adaptation, and try not to get too fixed in our ways. Wherever the future is winding toward, we’re more clear than ever that that future ought to be born out of collaborative partnerships and connections, in the spirit of biomimicry.
Connecting to the outer world is just as essential as defining an inner one. The relationships we form and participate in with each other and our environment, are inextricably informed by the relationship we are engaged in with ourselves at any moment in time. We can only ever make meaning in the moment, in a self renewing process that unfolds in the present. In the endless to and fro of a self reflexive nature, the world reaches out to know itself, and folds back into its own becoming. It layers like the seasons, and memory.
Authored by Lindsay Napolitano, 2023
Photos by Lindsay Napolitano & Johann Rinkens
