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Five months & 11 days out -- we hippies are STILL right

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A tribute to the "back to the landers" who still sustain.

Although it's harder to grow hair on my head than on my back these days, the world view and vibe remain in my heart and under my feet. Thank the Goddess.

I am typing this from my cabin on a farm that I bought (with five partners) back in the heyday of the "back to the land" movement -- 1969-70. We bought a house and 27 acres for $3,000 back then and, two years later, added another 120 acres for $10,000. Bought the land with a life estate agreement with the old couple who lived here before us, and enjoyed seeing Miz Kelly live to be almost 99 years old. Slept under one of her hand-stitched quilts again last night -- her Dresden Plate design -- that she sold me for $10. I was always her "tent boy" since I lived in a tent under a spreading black walnut tree by the creek one summer out here. (I still remember her introducing me to other granny-women, her fellow midwives out here, with the words, "I want you to meet 'tent boy'. He's good people.")

Although my other partners wandered away and sold out their interests in the farm to me over the years, my heart has always remained here. Wrapped in the quiet beauty of fourteen ridges and thirteen valleys, four creeks and a waterfall, no neighbors in sight or within shouting distance (but available in a heart-beat if I need them, or they need me.) And because my body lingered also, I was able to trade some hippie sensi-bility and appreciation for the learning of lots of farming and basic survival skills, passed down from the loggers and moonshiners around here to a new generation of us who had arrived with differently fueled "illegal smiles".

Instead of isolating ourselves and working only on our own farms, my other hippie neighbors and I proved our worth (and our commitment to community) by helping our older neighbors get their square bales into the barn on stormy summer days, by building and renovating our little town's square and community center and then by taking the stage together in those homemade venues to sway to the beat of bluegrass and blues. For all of our Democratic ideals and voting histories, we were accepted locally not only by the many "yellow dog" neighbors out here but by everyone here who knew that -- at heart -- we were deeply committed conservatives too. Working to conserve clean water and air, working to conserve extended families and welcoming communities, working to conserve the "commons" within which all voices were welcome, working to conserve our community schools, working to support those elders whose children had abandoned this way of life and moved to the cities, working to conserve the Native folk wisdom embodied in our home-grown pain medicine (and mood-altering antidote to the depression of serious illness and old age) that our Goddess had bestowed. (Magic seeds don't grow beans, but they sure make beans and fried 'taters taste better.)

This morning, almost forty years later, I awoke in the same cabin, now equipped with indoor plumbing and the internet, prepared to spend my day planting late fall greens and annual ryegrass as a cover crop in my four decade organic garden and to go "deadhead" the zinnias in the little town square's flower beds that I still tend. While there, I might stop by my town's only diner to share a moment with the elders and the other balding hippies (now considered elders out here too), trading words of thanks for an autumn that has finally arrived and the much-needed rains that brought it here. I will take note of the framed copy of a cover story about me ("Marijuana Martyr" -- http://www.nashvillescene.com/Stories/Cover_Story/2007/04/26/Marijuana_Martyr/) that the diner owner has placed prominently on the wall (next to the pictures of our local church groups and high school basketball teams) to welcome me home from my 18 month stint in a federal Bureau of Prisons halfway house. (She tells me that framed cover story will never leave her wall, in partial thanks for the help I gave her husband before he died.) And if I have the energy left as the sun sets behind my western ridge at 4:00 pm, I will drive north to the outskirts of Nashville to sit in a circle of other Tenase hippies gathered to hear wisdom from three elders from within our midst, and to share the fruits of our fall gardens (me bringing homemade pumpkin pecan bread).

Yes, the hippie ethos is alive and well in Fly Holler, TN this cool autumn morning. We've known all this time that, truly, "it is all good". Good enough to conserve, good enough to share, good enough to cherish, good enough to work hard to hold on to. Good enough to give away.

Peace out.

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