Community Supported Agri-Culture and Art Making

Marianne Combs:

Welcome to Filling the Well, a podcast created to nourish, provoke, and inspire artists and arts leaders. I’m independent journalist Marianne Combs.

Leah Lemm:

And I’m Leah Lemm, citizen of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe and community story sharer. On filling the Well, we’re talking to indigenous culture bears as well as creatives living and working in rural areas about the challenges they face and the particular joys of making art far from the city. Nice to be with you again, Marianne. Excited for another great conversation.

Marianne Combs:

Yeah. Me, too. Today we’re talking with the founders of the Wormfarm Institute, Donna Neuwirth and Jay Salinas. And we’re going to be talking about the concept of belonging and the relationship between art and agriculture. In the early 1990s, Donna and Jay were city dwellers working as artists in Chicago when they decided to go for a long drive into Wisconsin’s Driftless area. They fell in love with the rolling hills, and within a year, had purchased a farm just outside of Reedsburg, Wisconsin. They started a community supported agriculture, or CSA program, and called it the New Earth Wormfarm. Here’s Donna.

Donna Neuwirth:

First of all, it was sort of based on an old Bullwinkle cartoon, but also the idea of worms as subversive and digging holes for nutrients to be surfaced and water to go down deeper. And it’s sort of silly and people would remember it. So the New Earth Wormfarm was born first as a CSA, and then the Artist Residency program sort of grew out of that. And then we formed the Wormfarm Institute in 2000.

Jay Salinas:

Yes, the name Wormfarm be because worms are an indicator and creator of healthy soils. We thought that this is what we learned as new farmers, and so we paid homage to the worms by naming our farm after them. But there’s also a quote from Charles Darwin that we repeat all the time, so we’ll do it one more time here. And that is, “Every fertile grain of soil has passed at least once through the gut of an earthworm.”

And so we appreciated that because of its sort of subversive nature. It sort of turns the food chain upside down where these lowly creatures are actually responsible for all the food we eat. And the other thing was, and our somewhat idiosyncratic view of the world. When we started the CSA, we knew we weren’t going to be Whispering Pines or Twin Oaks, that were going to be something a little bit unusual and goofy. And so we chose that. Had we thought that we’d be still talking about it 25 years later, we might have done something differently. But it has chosen to be a remarkable because even though we always have to explain it, people never forget it.

Marianne Combs:

So, Leah, I have to just tell you about their residency program, which I think is just such a clever business concept, and it really was just a natural outgrowth of who their friends were and how they worked that here are two artists who move to the countryside and buy a farm. And so they invite their artist friends out to come and stay and paint landscape paintings, view it as an artist retreat. They come out, they have their own apartment, they can work on their art while they’re out there in this beautiful landscape. “But we’re going to put you to work.”

And so they end up working the farm and learning about how a farm works, and it’s this beautiful cultural exchange program, but on a one by one personal level. And it’s become the core part of their artistic practice is to bring in artists from the city and have them experience farm life and agricultural life as they help their CSA farm in the summer months. It’s brilliant.

Leah Lemm:

Yeah, totally. And it works for both parties involved. Even the artists. I can imagine being an artist going out there to this beautiful place and working the land and having that aspect being an inspiration for work as well.

Marianne Combs:

Exactly. Let’s go back to Jay.

Jay Salinas:

The CSA really helped establish the model that we use. So we marketed our produce to our friends back in Chicago, friends and family, because those we figured were the only people we could convince to support us. This farm also included big farmhouse that had already been duplexed and there’s a separate three bedroom apartment upstairs, kitchen, bathroom, living room, et cetera. And so the way the CSA was structured is that each of the shareholder families had to come up to the farm at least one weekend during the delivery season, and they would get their farm experiences. And on Sunday we would load up their cars with the vegetables and drive them back to Chicago.

And what was, again, the only economical way we could see to get the vegetables back to the city turned out to be our best marketing ploy ever because these people really had a deep connection to the farm. In our post-season surveys, we found that the farm visit was valued more highly than the actual vegetables themselves.

Marianne Combs:

So you’ve been here for 30 years now. Are you locals?

Donna Neuwirth:

Never. I think they say, “You’re never a local until the last person who knew that you weren’t from here has died.” So nope, not yet.

Jay Salinas:

Yeah, the day before yesterday we arrived here, according to our neighbors. And it’s an interesting phenomena. The place where we live, we bought it from a family called the McNamara’s. And for the first 10 years we lived here, whenever we were giving instructions to a tradesman or the pizza delivery man, we’d say, “Pass the third corner on Briar Bluff Road.” And they would say, “Oh, you mean the McNamara place? Why didn’t you just say that?” But now I think we might have finally surpassed the McNamaras and people know the Wormfarmers out there.

Marianne Combs:

So I’m really curious as to your relationship, as the city folk who came to the country, how you built up this relationship in which you have artists coming back and forth, which fabulously, you’re sort of giving them this agricultural rural experience that they’re taking back with them and it’s fueling their artwork. But your relationship to the community itself and how that has grown and changed over the years.

Donna Neuwirth:

Well, when we did this, we were doing it for the first time. So we weren’t necessarily thinking that we had this challenge of somehow fitting into the community. We just showed up and there we were. And actually, that’s another interesting parallel with the worms who are also invasives. So we are an invasive, but we try to be a friendly and accommodating one. But the neighbors, first of all, the nearest neighbor was about a quarter mile away. And the residency, when the artists would come, it’s not a public situation.

The artists are coming from wherever they come from when they’re there. But just because of the nature of our neighbors, neighbor Jeff would come over on his horse and was very curious about the artists that were there. And the neighbors and the McNamaras across the street, not so much. But I think that Jay would probably agree that because we were out there working in the garden every day, there was a certain amount of field cred. That’s what they noticed is there’s always somebody in the garden working in the dirt. So I think that that was somehow helpful.

Marianne Combs:

I love that it’s not street cred, it’s field cred.

Donna Neuwirth:

Yeah.

Marianne Combs:

That’s awesome.

Jay Salinas:

Yeah, so the first five to seven years that we were here, everything was centered on the farm. And then this building that we’re sitting in now, it’s the office for the woolen mill. And in 2001, we purchased this building, restored it, and this is right on Main Street in downtown. So now we’re literally invested in our downtown. And we had a higher profile and began doing work to engage with the community. On the first floor here as a beautiful storefront with wood floors and high ceilings, and we made it a gallery for a few years. And we installed some really fabulous shows, but we found out that people in rural Wisconsin weren’t really super interested in going to art exhibitions, although every time we did it, one or two new people would show up and become part of this growing cohort of sympathetic folks.

But the real thing where we began our public presence was we started doing murals, and this building hosts the first historic mural that we generated for the community on the side of the building out here. And it commemorates… So we got the Baraboo River right out here, and at the end of the last millennium, all of the dams were removed along the length of the Baraboo River, making it the longest restored river in the United States. So we made a mural commemorating that transfer from the woolen mill that was powered by the river was now gone, although this building still stood, and we were turning more toward a natural resources component. By removing the dams, you allow a healthier river. Sturgeon are coming back up the river to breed. And so all of those things, those were the sort of things that inspired a series of murals we did in the community at that point.

Marianne Combs:

You say folks weren’t necessarily interested in going to a gallery opening to see an art exhibit. I’m guessing you’re not doing a Robert Mapplethorpe show. Were you really pushing the envelope in terms of what you thought the audience would take?

Donna Neuwirth:

Well, but what we did do is fine art and curiosities. So we would bring in an artist that we’re working with that we wanted to show their work, but we’d also pair it with a collection of tractor seats, for example. So we played with it, we had fun with it. And what would make somebody pause and decide to go in the door? It’s not that we knew that people wouldn’t be interested. It’s just we didn’t know, so we would just try things. And this Main Street presence gave us an opportunity to do that. And that’s where the Puppet Festival came because what if we did something right on Main Street here? So one thing led to another.

Marianne Combs:

So over time, I know we’re in a Midwestern community, so the likelihood is if they don’t like you, they’re not going to say anything about it. You’re not going to necessarily know about it. But I’m just curious as how has the tenor changed over time in terms of receptivity to what you’re doing in the community?

Jay Salinas:

Well, I think our community has expanded much more beyond Reedsburg. If you reed history of the area, Reedsburg is described as being full of ginger and hustle. So we always loved that. But it also suggests a certain orientation that is not necessarily cultural. Sauk County, where we are is a amazing place with a really unique human and natural history. And those are things that always compelled us. And there are other communities here. We’re half hour away from Spring Green, Wisconsin, which is home of Frank Lloyd Wright, the nationally famous American Players Theater. And then Baraboo, which is the county seat, and has a university branch and a bookstore. I jokingly refer to Baraboo as the Paris of Sauk County. And Reedsburg is not. So I think that that’s one thing.

We didn’t necessarily strive for acceptance in the community, but I think there was this kind of subtle dance between what we offered and what they responded to. And I think we just a adapted, and as we became more of the community by our presence here and learned more about what our neighbors were up to, if not now, a hundred years ago, that informed a lot of the work that we started to do. And I think we grew closer together. The thing that really cemented our presence in this community is in 2010 when we hosted a Museums on Main Street exhibit that Smithsonian offers to small towns under 10,000, where there is a national traveling exhibit where you are invited to host it, and you’re selected based on the strength of your supporting programming.

And that’s where Fermentation Fest and the DTOUR came from. So where in the previous 10 or so years where Wormfarm wanted to do murals or Wormfarm wanted to do puppet festivals or whatever we were up to at the time, when all of a sudden we had the Smithsonian working with us, then people started paying attention and we could draw a bigger steering committee through the chamber, et cetera, and work much more closely with our business community from that point on.

Donna Neuwirth:

I think our move to Reedsburg was transformational for us. And so I think we carried with us that enthusiasm and the curiosity about this place that we were just learning. And so the idea of how we fit in from my point of view never occurred to me. It’s just, “I’m so happy to be here and so happy to have these opportunities.” And that’s what kept us going is that we had our own personal enthusiasms for the discovery process that brought us here and kept us here and we remain here after 30 years. So I think how the community, whoever that is, accepts us, it’s something we can never really know.

Marianne Combs:

Do you feel like you belong here?

Donna Neuwirth:

That’s a loaded word. First of all, I grew up in a military family and I’ve lived in, what, six states and three countries. So I am a permanent misfit and I’m completely comfortable in that role. So you can only be who you are, where you are. So I’m this comfortable misfit here. But I don’t want the idea of worrying about whether people want me to be here or not to slow me down because the things that I have to offer may be different than the things that other people have to offer. But if you come to where you are with a spirit of generosity and curiosity, good stuff can happen. So I don’t want to worry about whether or not people think I belong or whether I think I belong.

Marianne Combs:

Do you feel like you belong?

Jay Salinas:

I try to assimilate. My friends back in Chicago think I sound like Fargo now. They think I’ve gone full, “Ya, hey there.” But folks around here within 30 seconds of communicating with them, talking with them that I’m not from here. And there’s a certain city forwardness and pushiness that still startles some folks around here sometimes. There’s a couple of different ways that we share that kind of sensibility and that. For instance, when we had sheep, if I wanted to buy hay from somebody who I knew had some, I couldn’t ask him if he had any hay and how much you would sell it for. You had to start with the weather and there’s this sort of construction that I still like to do. It’s like you would say, “Hey, if a fellow were looking for some hay, where might he find some?”

And then the farmer would respond, “Well, I might know a fellow had some hay.” And so there would be this thing. “Well, what would a fellow pay for a bale of hay?” And it would never be this really direct thing where, like Donna, she would go, “You have any hay? I want to buy some. How much?” And people would be just stunned by that. They want this social lubricant. The folks we bought our farm from moved across the street, and they would engage us regularly and would call the telephone. And the first question was, “Jay, you see any deer?” And so we would talk about deer for a little while and then we would talk about other stuff and finally would say, “Hey, I saw some cows out.”

“Oh, my cows are out?” After half an hour of conversation, because that was the protocol. You had to be neighborly before you got on to your business.

Marianne Combs:

You’re listening to Filling the Well. I’m Marianne Combs and I’m joined by my co-host Leah Lemm. And today we’re talking with the co-founders of the Wormfarm Institute, Donna Neuwirth and Jay Salinas. And, Leah, I love what Jay’s saying here so much. What we’re listening to here is really, it’s this cultural exchange that’s happening between city dwellers and country dwellers. And it reminds me of AFS or Peace Corps, this idea of each person is bringing themselves to this relationship and they’re coming away with something new by this encounter. And Jay is really, he is going into community learning how to talk with locals like a local and creating these relationships that are handled so differently from the way he would’ve in Chicago.

Leah Lemm:

And I see that so much. I identify with this as somebody who moved to a small town from a large city, and it’s like learning a new language, learning a culture, and being respectful of the people there. Understanding that there’s brilliance, that there’s active citizenry happening. It’s not necessarily this stereotype of a sleepy area that sometimes rural towns get. It’s important to go into new places with an open mind, respect, curiosity, and understanding that you’re the new person. And that’s okay.

Marianne Combs:

Yeah, this takes me right back to my own experience as a Peace Corps volunteer going into a new culture and being told, “Don’t go in like you have all the answers. That is not the right. You need to go in there to learn all about the wisdom that already exists before you start and try and figure out what the solutions are.”

So I asked Donna and Jay if there were times where they’re coming in with their great ideas to a community that already has its own well-established culture for a long time. If there were ever moments where people would kind of bristle at the notion that they were coming in to change things/ here’s what Donna had to say.

Donna Neuwirth:

Well, yeah, that’s absolutely true. And oftentimes. We will avoid the A-word because it’s not helpful. But if you do find yourself in conversation with somebody about what is important to you and art is important to us, then it might be dismissed. However, that same person might talk about his mechanic as being not just a mechanic but an artist. So I find that sometimes that word is difficult if you want to move things along, but paying attention to what is something is important to an individual person and something that they put their heart and soul into and being curious about what that thing is, I think people do respond to.

And so if you can bring them into a space where their curiosity is released, and I think that that’s kind of what the DTOUR has done because it’s driving the country and you see this thing and you see that thing. And we call it the Farm Art DTOUR. Farm gets top billing.

Marianne Combs:

Yes. Tell me about the Farm Art DTOUR and exactly what it’s like.

Donna Neuwirth:

It is a 50-mile self-guided drive through scenic working farmland, punctuated by temporary art installations, site-responsive art installations, pasture performances, roadside poetry, local food stands and more. And if you’re old enough, you might know about Burma-Shave ads.

Marianne Combs:

Oh yeah.

Donna Neuwirth:

And so it’s actually original poetry in the format of Burma-Shave ads. And so it’s red signs with white letters spaced sequentially with the poet’s name at the end. And so it’s six signs, then it has to fit on the sign platform. And we’ve been doing that since year one.

Marianne Combs:

So you’re getting people out in their cars for a country drive, or these people might be out and about doing their normal daily business, and they’re seeing things that they’re not used to seeing on their drive in the country.

Donna Neuwirth:

They may not call it art. They’ll go, “What is that over there?” It’s that we want them to pay attention to because it slows them down. And you see the landscape that we all depend upon. And we talk about it as punctuating the landscape because the narrative, the story that this 50=-mile route is taking is about the land and what farmers do every day, and perhaps more importantly about what they might do tomorrow, bringing people closer into this land that matters and having artists help us do that.

Jay Salinas:

One of the things that I think that makes the DTOUR successful is that it lowers the barriers to engagement, which makes it particularly challenging for us because it occurs along public thoroughfares. There’s no turnstile. We never know exactly how many people see it, but there is that thing where there’s folks who come specifically for it, and those that just stumble upon it, and we love both of those things.

The thing I like about it is the work is beautiful and seeing the people out there appreciating art is great, but there’s these numerous interactions and transactions behind the scene, between farmers and artists, between business owners and Wormfarm staff that really are what it’s about, these relationships. We say, “None of this art could be installed without the explicit permission of the farmer.” And oftentimes we have their participation. And sometimes they become allies and even longtime friends with the artists who install in their land. And so it’s a really interesting dynamic.

It succeeds in ways that we never imagined in 2011 when we had this idea, “We’re going to put some stuff in farm fields.” And now we find out that there’s this whole symphony of relationships that are choreographed, that are composed, and that are renewed every couple of years. And, to me, that’s where the real power of the DTOUR lies.

Donna Neuwirth:

And oftentimes the farmers, because they’ve seen it happen in other areas and they see how many people there are, they may have their own little roadside stand and sell their grass-fed beef or pumpkins or whatever because they know there’s going to be a lot of people around. People have a garage sale. So it’s amazing how entrepreneurial people are when they see that people really are going to show up. And so that has led to more acceptance by people who couldn’t necessarily care about art, but they care about traffic and about how they could benefit.

Marianne Combs:

Have there been moments when you’re like, “I don’t know if this is going to work” or “Who am I to be suggesting that we try and infuse something in the community that isn’t already there?”

Donna Neuwirth:

Well, I don’t think it is an infusion. I think it’s an arrow pointing at what already is. It is farmland farmed by humans that make choices and that respond to primarily the decisions that are made by urban people where most of the people are, and they determine how land is used. And so it’s an opportunity. And this is the thing that we didn’t really realize. After people saying yes to this idea, the farmers in particular, we had a thank you dinner afterwards, and we were surprised by how effusive they were because it’s kind of a pride of place.

You get enured to the beauty of your own place, and then if you have people in their cars with a map traveling around going, “Oh, look at that” and the that they’re looking at is your land. And then if you’re there when they’re there, they will have questions about what’s growing over there, or they’ll have a misunderstanding about what kind of corn it is. And there’s an opportunity to have a conversation where the landowner and the farmer is the person with all the information, and the tourist is the one asking the questions. So what we hope… There are times we make some wrong choices, but I think the idea is for everybody, the people who live here and the people who we lure in from cities, pay more attention to this land. And the idea of regional prosperity that includes both urban and rural places, I think, is critical for our future.

Jay Salinas:

We’ve tried to be thoughtful about our approach. We were in this community for 15 years before we thought about installing work along roadsides. So we sort of had a sense of what farmers were willing to deal with and the surrounding community. I think it’s really important that it is an ephemeral event, that it’s only 10 days. So whatever disruptions take place, so proud of the fact that within a week after the DTOUR has ended, there will not be a sign of our presence there except for footprints in the field.

Everything is gone, everything is restored to order and, yeah, we’re out of the way. We worked on this in order to understand this. I’m thinking specifically of, there was kind of an inflection point that this seems to me, and that was in about 2007 or 2008, we were asked by the Humanities Council, well, one of several organizations around the state to do a project about putting the culture back in agriculture.

That was their term. And so we conducted a series of progressive dinners where we started with a core group and had some conversation, but also good food and some fermented beverages, but some facilitated conversation, a couple of presentations. By the end, we had some really vigorous discussions. And one of the things that is really meaningful to us is one of the farmers objected to putting the culture back in agriculture. He says, “Why don’t you put the agri back in culture?” So we’d sort of been heading that way anyway, but to have them state it so succinctly, and I think he got a round of applause when he did that. So we knew that we were in a place where we could at least begin to have that conversation from a respectful place where we felt that we understood concerns and had our own idiosyncratic vision that we’d been honing for the 15 years prior to that.

And I think that that’s where this DTOUR came from. So one of the things that I really like is that, and it has to do with an acceptance and that host community, is that we go to county board meetings, we go to the schools, we go to the libraries, we go to every town board meeting that we will impact in a year or months in advance and share with them what we’re up to, what we’re thinking about, and if they have any questions. And that has fallen to me, and I love going to those meetings where these guys, they want to talk about culverts and chip and seals and, “Well, we’re going to talk about art for a little bit here now.”

And there’s this posture, these town boards, they’re all white, usually male, usually elderly, the suspenders and belt farmers. And they take turns being on the town board because not everyone wants to do that. And there’s this pose of sitting with your arms crossed, leaning back in your chair, and it’s not really a challenge, but it’s sort of a challenge. Yeah. “What are you going to tell me?” So like I said, I accept that challenge and I will go to those meetings and I will talk with those folks and ask them questions and have them ask me questions.

Marianne Combs:

Again, Leah, I want to take a second to talk about the fact there’s this very important thing that Jay brought up, that these farmers at a conversation organized by arts organizations and foundations, humanities organizations, saying, “We want to put the culture back in agriculture.” And a farmer is saying, “Why don’t we put the agriculture back in culture?” And I think just by saying those words is such a powerful paradigm shift and makes those people who are culture purveyors, these artistic organizations, it’s saying, “Look, why are you saying we need you so much? You need us. You need the land and the people who work the land to be infusing the art.”

This is something that’s missing from the art and culture in what is predominantly an urban-based endeavor. The funding for the arts, it’s centered in urban areas, a lot of the activities. Even though there’s a thriving cultural scene in many places outside of the cities, the attention that gets paid and the money that gets paid is often based in urban areas. And so they’re missing this perspective of people who live in the land.

Leah Lemm:

Yeah, yeah. Saying, “Put the culture back in agriculture,” it has this assumption that that culture looks a certain way and that it doesn’t exist or is lacking in some way. So I understand being put in a defensive mode. Totally.

Marianne Combs:

Yeah. And I think it’s just, it’s about who are you centering? Are you centering the culture? Are you centering the land and the people who are on the land? And it’s saying, “Let’s flip this and take a look at it from a different perspective.” And I just think it’s so smart. Back to Donna and Jay. I asked them about their personal artistic practices.

Donna Neuwirth:

My background is actually in the theater. Jay’s a sculptor, so it kind of fits. I create worlds and ask people to look at this framed area for a moment, and then the text is the land itself. And so it’s about interpreting that text and sharing it with the public. I never thought about that doing it. It’s only in reflection that I see that my background actually does sort of prepare me for it.

Jay Salinas:

So I was trained in a foundry, so very traditional art. I describe myself as having been a compulsive object maker for many years, but acknowledge that farming has cured me of that. So now I-

Marianne Combs:

I need to hear more about how that happened.

Jay Salinas:

…well, because one of the things that we didn’t know, one of the many things we didn’t know when buying a farm is that owning a farm is constant toil and work. And if you’re not doing that, you are neglecting it. So anytime I spent in my studio, and I was manipulating a lot of the same materials that I would be out in the field, wire and gourds and all this weird stuff, these natural materials.

But I also have been inspired many years ago by the German artist Joseph Beuys and the idea of social sculpture. So that is not work on a pedestal in the gallery, it’s the world and everything in it. And so when I go to those town hall meetings, I’m making art. When I introduce Melanie from Little Legal Arts Foundation to Muneer Bahauddeen, a community artist from Milwaukee, and they begin collaborating, that’s a piece. I’ve helped make that creative thing happen. So that’s how my creativity is manifest these days.

Marianne Combs:

If you could talk to your young selves as they were coming out and said, “Oh, we got to buy a farm. We got to move here, and we’re going to do this thing,” what advice would you give them today?

Donna Neuwirth:

Well, I think the world has changed, but when we made the move from the city to the farm, we reduced our rent. Actually, our rent was three times what our mortgage payment was here. So in the grand tradition of artists moving from one crummy neighborhood to another in a city because of cheap rent and available space, that’s what we did. And I don’t know what the equivalent of that is right now. So I think that in order to have the space to imagine and experiment, you need to not have a paid gig at 50 hours a week that drains you of the ability to do that, and I don’t know how people are going to do that now.

Marianne Combs:

Also, but looking back at your experience here, if you had only known back 20 years ago, you would’ve done certain things a little differently, or you might have smoothed over some of those moments that didn’t go so smoothly. What was the advice you would’ve given your younger self?

Donna Neuwirth:

Okay. I think I might have joined more things, like joined the Chamber earlier. I remember one terrible mistake I made, it was very early in our time here. There was something in the local paper about a performing arts. “Anybody interested in the performing arts, come to this meeting.”

And it was about wanting to build this big complex for the arts. And I mistakenly talked about how the best theater I’d ever seen in my life has been in the basement of funeral homes, in the back rooms of bars. I was disinvited to future meetings because they wanted to build this big state-of-the-art place. So, yeah, a little tone deaf.

Marianne Combs:

What about you?

Jay Salinas:

Well, for years we used to say that, referring back to the constant toil of owning a farm, that had we known what we were getting into, we might not have done it. But I think that’s changed completely now because I don’t want to brag, but we have an awesome life now. Donna still works 50 hours a week, but it’s following these wacky ideas, but these wacky ideas that have proven to have real value in the community. Donna is now on the board of the Sauk County Development Corporation. So there’s some joining for you that you might not have anticipated before.

Marianne Combs:

Tell me more about how amazing your life is.

Jay Salinas:

Well, so last night we went to Madison, an hour away, because that’s where you hit culture, and we got to listen to the former and current poet laureates of Wisconsin at the Overture Center, the big culture thing. And Dasha Kelly, the former poet laureate, we’ve worked with her numerous times over the years. And so it was sort of like, “This is an outgrowth of our work is that we get to be here. And we’re at work right now.”

And then after that, we went and saw a musical performance by another powerful, highly talented, underappreciated musician, and we worked with her many times over the years. So this is my job. This is what we have to do. We have to go to Madison tonight and do this thing. So having those types of experiences be part of our daily or weekly reality is just much richer than I could have ever chosen for myself had I picked an ideal lifestyle.

Marianne Combs:

Plus, you’re growing organic food.

Jay Salinas:

Yeah.

Donna Neuwirth:

We eat well.

Jay Salinas:

We eat so well. Our freezer is full of food, and every day, we eat food that we grew. Our eggs from our chickens or meat from a neighbor. And all of those connections are just so rich and delicious. And, again, this is just the life that we live.

Donna Neuwirth:

And there’s also lots of cross-sector collaborations. So a lot of our colleagues and friends work in conservation, land conservation and forestry and regenerative agriculture, as well as the artists and the poets. And we tend to be in the same room with them at the same time. So these collaborations form between the conservation folks and the farmers and the artists. And I think that, especially to the younger self that might be here right now, those cross-sector collaborations are critical.

Regenerative agriculture could be one of the solutions to climate change issues, as well as eliminating some of the problems. So I think that there’s a huge incentive for people to go into fields that are about preserving the land because the land is the soil and the soil is our food. And so those relationships that we’ve been able to make and the way that they recognize the arts as an outreach tool for people to care about things that they didn’t know that they cared about, which is kind of what the DTOUR does too, because some people come for art and trip over farming, and some people come for farms and trip over art, and each experience is enhanced by the other. So I think the moment for more of that is now.

Marianne Combs:

That’s Donna Neuwirth talking about the work at the Wormfarm Institute. And, Leah, I’m so curious to your thoughts on this. I, personally, really resonated with this sense of urgency about building these relationships between artists, culture makers, and environmentalists, people who care about the land, to help spread this message and awareness about the health of our land and the importance of taking care of it.

Leah Lemm:

Absolutely, Marianne. And thank you so much for bringing this conversation out into our ears. It’s really wonderful. And we’ve talked about this before on Filling the Well, how difficult it is to silo off art from other practices. And this is just a really great example of that. Art is infused in so much around us that we can appreciate it from so many different perspectives, from agriculture, culture, from the land, from all of these different foundations. So this is a really great conversation.

Marianne Combs:

And I think, for me, the takeaway is the fact that art can both change the culture subversively, like the worms in the soil can go in and revitalize something, but it can also, as Donna was saying, point to something and just make us appreciate what we already have and say, “Look at this. You should be proud of this. This is amazing. We should value this more.”

And that’s just a really powerful thing that makes me see art as even more of a valuable tool in helping us, that art can point to something and help us to recognize how valuable it is. And that in itself is incredibly important. You’ve been listening to Filling the Well. I’m Marianne Combs.

Leah Lemm:

And I’m Leah Lemm. Thanks for listening. Join us next time on Filling the Well, where we’ll hear from two great native entrepreneurs about their businesses and their art.

Marianne Combs:

Looking forward to it. This podcast was produced and edited by Emily Goldberg and mixed by Eric and Amanda Romani, with original music by Damien Strange.

Leah Lemm:

Filling The Well is a podcast of Arts Midwest, amplifying the power of Midwestern creativity. Find out more artsmidwest.org.