Every so often, a simple and elegant concept enters my life and I’m left completely altered.  In 2001, back when Dad was struggling to keep the farm and I was struggling as a freelance videographer, a friend gave me a copy of a paper on sustainable agriculture.   In those few pages, I found not only the gumption to co-create the documentary Broken Limbs which explores the ideas of sustainability, but ultimately the clarity to return to the Sunshine Farm and put these ideas into practice.

Back on the farm for six years now, I have learned a great deal about running a business, about retailing, wholesaling, and maintaining good books to keep it all straight.  But my biggest lessons have come in the arena of relationship.  How can I best lead?  How can I best motivate?  When is praise appropriate?  Criticism?  And to what degree with both?  These questions and more await each morning as the crew and I set out to work. 

Along the way, the few books on leadership and management I’ve read have left me unimpressed.  Too often the approach revolves around reaching some goal, around accomplishing the work-at-hand, but without giving much, if any, attention to the deeper question of ‘why are we doing this?’ 

But this spring, while drafting our vision and mission, I stumbled across the concept of Servant Leadership in a copy of a fruit industry magazine.  The article discussed how an apple grower in the Columbia Basin had built his entire business around this paradigm.

I knew in that moment I had found my leadership tribe.  Just as in 2001 when I first read about sustainable agriculture, I could sense the intrinsic validity of this leadership approach.  

Servant Leadership answers the ‘why we work’ question in two simple words: to serve.  Not to create widgets or to make money, not to advance up the career ladder or even to express ourselves with our talents and gifts.  These are all part of the experience, but ultimately, if they don’t add up to service, they don’t add up to much.

On one level, this is no insight at all.  The Nordstroms championed the paradigm that the customer is #1 decades ago.  But Servant Leadership is far more than just the making the customer happy.  It recognizes that good service to the customer extends from the front line cash register all the way to the owner or shareholders of the company.  Try to fake it with anything less systemic and you may reach short-term goals, but the long-term integrity of the business will suffer.   

It was this context that grabbed me last spring: a company-wide focus on serving each other as we all work towards growing and selling fruits, vegetables, and estate wine.  A week after reading the article, I downloaded an audiobook from Audible by James Hunter and started my education in Servant Leadership.

Mr. Hunter argues that an organization built upon service inherently attracts employees who are working not only with their hands and bodies, but also with their minds and imagination.  He calls them ‘head-down’ employees (versus ‘neck-down’), and they are workers who not only show up physically every morning but also bring their creativity and problem solving abilities to the game.

Hunter goes on to point out the difference between a relationship built around power and one built around authority.  A power-centered leadership style involves the neck-down crowd.  Think king/serf or master/slave; when the former speaks, the latter jumps … or else.  But a relationship built around authority is different.  Individuals respect the authority of a manager or boss, not because he shouts the loudest or has the power to hire and fire, but because he or she exhibits a consistency and a caring for both employee and organization.

This stuff is tricky to write about because we all have room for improvement.  I feel like I’m just beginning my work in this area.  But it is never hard to see where to serve.  As an employer, I aspire to provide a stable employment base that can be a cornerstone in an individual’s prosperity.  Part of this involves creating more year-round employment opportunities on the farm, better living-wages, and basic health insurance coverage.  There is plenty to be done. 

The paradigm of servant leadership speaks to me because it puts the bulls-eye on what matters most – helping others.  I look forward to integrating this paradigm deeper into our organization.  The effects on our business – serving you with the best in locally grown and produced food and wine – I can hardly imagine.

Sometimes my job is really frustrating. Sometimes it is all I can do to keep the frustration from spilling out and polluting everyone around me. Sometimes the condition persists for days, one moment after the next, with me, all the while, breathing in and out, riding it out (hopefully) like a wave.

After a while, I start to wonder if I am really doing the right type of work in life. Is this really my “path”? Should work really be this hard? Sometimes, I wonder if those types of people who chirp on about how they “love their work” ever experience such frustration. I wonder if they know the gnawing power of doubt as it eats away at self-confidence. I don’t know.

But I do know this: I love my work. For all of its frustrations, for all of its battering, I couldn’t imagine doing anything else. There is a deep sense of purpose in growing food, a sense of purpose that can transcend weariness, fatigue, frustration, and yes, even doubt.

Which is not to say this transcendence is easy. In the middle of tough times the only thing I know is that it hurts: I’m tired. It hurts. I’m weary. It hurts. I’m angry. It hurts. I’m insecure. It hurts. Until finally, at the end of the day, when the sun has finally gone down, I sit on the front porch with my hurts and ask, “What is all of this about?”

And usually the clarity returns. Calm lake. Periwinkle sky. Good food for generations. Local agriculture. Service. Off to bed.

Sometimes the redemption comes a little earlier in the day. On Monday, I listened to an interview of Matthew Crawford, author of “Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work.” Crawford earned a PhD in philosophy before realizing that his work was not within the mind and academia, but with his hands and the machine shop. Eight years later, after building a successful business fixing motorbikes, he has written “Shop Class” to explore the theme of work.

The interviewer asked Crawford if he was fulfilled in his work. His response, in all of its honesty, fell like a cool spring shower all around me.

“Fulfillment would be too strong a word,” he said. “The work is often very frustrating. There’s a lot of cursing involved.

“And then there are moments of elation when you solve some problem . . . and you feel like you are three inches taller.”

At that moment, I happened to be in a pretty frustrating place. Farm work seemed to be anything but fulfilling. To hear this fellow talk about his own work-a-day reality in simple terms helped blow off some of my own pressure. He feels like I do. This must be normal.

Now, with a few days’ repose, it’s tempting to be glib; to write about how frustration and elation are both a part of a work day’s ration, how I welcome both equally with the new day sun.

That may be the desired outward appearance, a saint’s equanimity in the midst of the changes of life. But lets face it, inwardly, it’s a different story.

Anger brings elevated blood pressure, a shortening of breath, and a host of judgments and condemnations to the mind. Elation is the opposite. A relaxation, a blissful high, a loosening of one’s grip, sometimes too far.

The real work of work would seem to be gracefully navigating between the two.

Here at the Sunshine Farm, we are passionate about food.  If you’ve ever taken a tour of the farm and heard one of my long-winded narrations on the what, how, and why of our operation, you’ve seen some of that passion.

Another fellow passionate about food is Michael Pollan, author of several books exploring what we as humans eat (and why).  Pollan is a writer’s writer, weaving together science, history, anecdote, and commentary with a grace that leaves me smiling.  Even if you could care less about food, I would recommend him as an author for the sheer beauty of his prose.

Pollan’s latest book, In Defense of Food, addresses the question explored in his previous book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma.  Namely, what should we eat?  This may sound like a silly question at first.  But unlike, say, koala bears, who come pre-scripted with a strict diet of Eucalyptus leaves, we can eat almost anything.  And in modern times, unbounded by cultural tradition or simply scarcity, how do we choose among all the dazzling choices?  What should we eat?

Humans used to know how to eat well, Pollan argues.  But the balanced dietary lessons that were once passed down through generations have been confused, complicated, and distorted by nutritional scientists, food industry marketers, and journalists—all of whom have much to gain from our dietary confusion.  As a result, our discussions about food—and our shopping carts—are no longer filled with food as whole entities (beef, egg, apple) but with packages of “nutrients” (fat, , cholesterol).  The last fifty years have seen real foods shoved to the margins while “edible foodlike substances” move front and center, complete with shiny labels bearing health claims that are not only misleading but in large part based on bad science.

Taking a clear-eyed look at what science does and does not know about the links between diet and health, Pollan proposes a new way to think about the questions of what to eat that is infotrmed by ecology and tradition, rather than by a paltry “nutritionism”.

He offers not just a new way to think, but practical advice.  He begins with this simple axiom:  “Don’t eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food.”  He picks grandma’s mom because, depending on your age, there’s a good chance that your grandma grew up in the age of modern food.  The point is to go back before food products became a long amalgamation of different parts.

Which leads into his second piece of advice:  “Avoid food products containing  ingredients that are a) unfamiliar, b) unpronounceable, c) more than five in number, or that include d) high-fructose corn syrup.”

His point here is to buy whole foods wherever possible.  Things like fresh vegetables, fruits, whole grains, pasta, and fresh meat.  Armed with these two rules of thumb, a shopper has no more need of three-quarters of the products in a grocery store.

Whether you are new to learning about food or have been eating with thought for years, Pollan’s books offer some good insight into our most basic of human daily activities.  Critics call Pollan an elitist, claiming that the general public doesn’t have the resources to follow his practices.  I would venture otherwise.  Certainly planting a garden doesn’t cost much money.  Nor does cooking with whole foods.  What his suggestions do require are some investment of thoughtfulness and time.  They require us to ask the questions:  what am I eating?  where does it come from?  and how can I best prepare it?

I’ve found, as many of you have, that answering these questions takes no time at all if you eat a seasonal diet, cook with fresh ingredients, and have a few friends over now and again to swap recipes!

So, here’s to the Defense of Food.  Whether it’s on the national stage with Pollan or the local stage here at the Sunshine Farm, it’s a fight worth fighting.  And a delicious one at that.