We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Lyndsey Langsdale a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Lyndsey thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Are you happy as a creative professional? Do you sometimes wonder what it would be like to work for someone else?
I think about this all the time. My fantasy regular job is bagging groceries at the Raleys down the street from the farm. “Paper or plastic?” I could probably make it through the whole day by just uttering those three words. All I would have to decide would be how to Tetris the items into one of those bags, a bag choice that I did not have to make by the way. I fantasized about this yesterday. I was trying to figure out how to move flood irrigation water strategically so the animals can first graze, and then the flood water comes through behind them after we move them into the next paddock. However, the irrigation ditches are pretty blown out, so even if I knew how to do this, I would not be able to as is, soI was talking with the Natural Resource Conservation Service about getting funding to improve the ditches, but since we don’t know if the ditches are in the right spot, we need an agricultural engineer to come out with a machine called a lidar to assess the grade, blah blah blah. I have no idea what I’m doing, and this is all quite a complex puzzle, therefore, I fantasized about the simple puzzle of putting the canned goods at the bottom of the bag in the bread on the top in my fantasy job at the Raleys down the street. The insight is that I get this feeling when I can’t answer my own questions and have to rely on someone else to help me. Dang it. “I can do it myself!” But…I can’t…and I don’t really want to if I’m honest. So I carry on and stop at Raleys on my way home to watch the baggers for a few moments.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
Hello! My name is Lyndsey. I am a farmer, an artist and an anthropologist. I’ve done many jobs in my life, but my work with Reno Food Systems is my calling and the culmination of my life‘s work. I remember the moment I decided to be a farmer. I was in India doing human rights work, which I imagined would be exciting and you know…working with humans and all, but I found myself behind a computer. And I thought to myself, “how did this become a desk job?!” And in response to that question I asked myself, “what job could I do that is the farthest from a desk job?” And I went home and I started to learn how to be a farmer. That was 20 years ago, and since then I have dedicated my life to building a Local Food System in Reno, Nevada. Reno Food Systems is a 20 acre urban nonprofit farm in West Reno. At Reno, Food System, we are farmers, mentors and advocates, committed to stewarding lands and sharing food and resources for the well-being of our earth, community and future generations.
We are honored to work daily on a beautiful parcel of historic ranch land with stunning Sierra views, which inspires us to set goals for preserving this community resource. However, we acknowledge that this is not our land, and our use of it is a privilege and a huge responsibility. This land was forcibly transitioned from the traditional territory of the Numu and Wa She Shu people. We are devoted to returning the land back to the common good and to be in relationship with the land for the well-being of our future generations by working with and learning from descendants of this land’s original inhabitants and those in our community committed to environmental justice. Our goals are to ensure the farm remains a community resource in perpetuity, ensure that this land and the life on and around it are well and thriving, prioritize universal access to fresh food, and create a lasting impact on food sovereignty, and regenerative agricultural policy.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
Every day, trying to grow food in a high desert landscape is an exercise in resilience. To be a farmer, you have to be resilient, end of story. In our country, farmers have one of the highest suicide rates by profession. Isn’t that wild??! From where I sit, a farmer is one of the most important humans there is. No farmers no food, no food no life. Right? It’s pretty simple. There is so much loss. There are so many things up to chance. The stakes are high and the margins are low. A farmer can lose their entire livelihood in one day. No matter how good of a grower we are, no matter how prepared we are, no matter how long we’ve been doing this, we work with nature and we have no control over her actions. That’s what’s so beautiful and so cruel about the work that we do. My mom said to me once. “I don’t understand how you can do this job, you worked so hard all year and then in the winter you just have to watch it die, all your hard work erased.” I’ve never seen it that way. I am privileged to get to work with natural cycles. That is not something many humans today are aware of, much less get to be a part of. I get to appreciate periods of bounty and periods of rest, to observe that nothing really dies it just transforms and becomes the groundwork for the future. If you’re not a desert person I encourage you to take a trip…walk into the desert and start looking for plants…you’ll find them, they might be at first unimpressive, probably are a bit prickly, small leaves, strong roots, they are the most resilient of all plants, they taught me how to do this job.
Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can provide some insight – you never know who might benefit from the enlightenment.
It seems like some people struggle to understand that farming is a creative endeavor. A well functioning ecosystem is the most beautiful thing there is. It functions like a symphony, like a Shakespearean drama, like a perfectly crafted poem that breaks your heart and makes you feel incredibly alive all at the same time. We humans have destroyed so much. A well functioning ecosystem is hard to find these days especially in an urban environment. Being an urban farmer I get to play a part in restoring a degraded ecosystem, working with the plants and the animals, the water, the bacteria, the microorganisms, the wind, the sun, to create something that has never existed before in this exact form. Farming is art it’s finest. To create food sovereignty and work to take back control of our food system, especially in times of social unrest is a rebellious act of creativity.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://Www.renofoodsystems.org
- Instagram: @renofoodsystems
- Facebook: Reno Food Systems
Image Credits
Lyndsey Langsdale
Misty Kinser
Rachelle Lerude