Telling Women's Lives

Moriarty- Farmer Jane Response

Of all the women in “Farmer Jane,” I found Gloria Decater’s life work particularly compelling. Decater, who runs the 40-acre biodynamic “Live Power” farm in California with her husband, aligns her business with nature—rather than against it—in order to succeed. The “biodynamic” approach to farming Decater has adopted uses microbes inherent to the soil to increase productivity and looks to the “cosmic and planetary rhythms of the earth” (Costa 50) for guidance.
I always find it ironic that so many of the answers to the “big questions” pressing our society—rather than calling for complex technological solutions–—can be found in going back to basics. The world is governed by inescapable rhythms—like the changing of the seasons—that establish the natural pace of our existence. While we may suppress them in our feverish quest to further our own shortsighted human agendas, all of us have a deeper instinct that tells us we are beholden to forces more powerful than ourselves. The crash-dieter—even while counting calories and pushing aside desserts—always knows she will eventually return to her baseline weight, just as the oil tycoon liquidating nature’s underground fuel wells must know the earth—even if he is no longer walking it when it does—will ultimately pay for his greed. The only enduring solution is to cease fighting for the upper hand against nature and instead live in harmony with its rhythms, which know the secrets to prospering on this planet far better than we do ourselves.