She Sells Sanctuary
Episode 15: And the world turns around.
The details are fuzzy. It’s 2010. Maybe 2009. Regardless, it’s spring and I’m driving with the windows down on the Sidney Slab, heading east to Seven Sisters Farm for the first time. I’m especially pumped because I not only get to hang out at my friend Cathe Capel’s place—an actual! small! farm!—12 miles from town, AND hang out away from the bustle of the food co-op and the farmer’s market and board meetings and other places of commerce and discussion and occasionally argument, but Terra Brockman will also be there. Terra is the founder of The Land Connection and the author of The Seasons on Henry’s Farm, and I just want to learn from these two women in peace and quiet, if they’ll have me.
The farm, when I arrive, is so small. It’s so small and humble and powerful and beautiful, with its vegetable garden and flowers and chicken coop and sheep on pasture. There is a dog. Maybe two dogs. My shoulders relax when I enter the house through the gorgeous workhorse of a kitchen and find my way to the relief of the dining room table. I do not have to posture here, be a “food person” here; I can safely learn here, try things on, see if they fit. And they do.
I’m back on the Sidney Slab driving east in March 2012, hurtling toward Cathe’s small barn full of sheep requiring shearing. Again, the details are fuzzy. (Was it a class from U of I that’s getting some hands-on training shearing sheep? I can’t remember.) Whatever the case, I’m armed with a digital recorder and a microphone, because I’m going to transform this trip to Cathe’s into an audio segment for Backyard Industry—something I would never have had the courage to try if not for that dining room conversation at her house, with her and Terra, a year or two or three before.
It’s a few months later, summer in the year 2012, and my friend Millicent (this is also Millicent) is visiting from New York, touring her book about pie. Cathe agreed to let us come to the farm, so we hit the Sidney Slab together, free for an hour or two from whatever else we had going on, heading to the farm to raid Cathe’s egg stash and briefly interview her for yet another Backyard Industry audio segment. The plan is to have Millicent, who’s teaching a brunch class in Brooklyn when not touring the pie book, give me a 1:1 lesson on proper poaching technique using Cathe’s spectacular eggs. We do it. I can’t remember if it was before or after drinking a 12-pack of Old Mil in my driveway while killing a pack of cigarettes between us like we were in our 20s in Chicago, but we do it.
Something about the shearing of sheep fascinates me. The ewes, every time I’ve wandered east on the Sidney Slab and found myself at Cathe’s place at shearing time, are always heavily pregnant, lambs visibly squirming around under the long wool and, later, a crew cut. It’s good to shear them before the lambs come, Cathe says—less fleece = less mess during birth, and you get a winter’s worth of wool to boot. In 2014, my creative partner and colleague, Tim, and I document shearing at Seven Sisters, where we learn from and shear with the legendary Harold Davis, but first share a communal meal at the dining room table with people both familiar and new. It is pure conviviality around the table. We’re all trying things on, seeing if they fit. And they do.
Cathe is selling Seven Sisters. This smallholding—this bastion of small-scale sheep and chicken farming, home to the finest eggs in central Illinois and encouraging, life-altering conversations in the dining room and a kitchen that takes my breath away to this day—lives on in my mind and on the internet, thankfully. But I desperately want the farm to belong to someone who will respect its rich legacy and keep farming at this scale (or maybe a slightly larger scale —see the listing for more info).
We require small farms here, and small farms require us*. Farm diversity is even more of a must a must here in downstate Illinois to feed people and to perpetuate a local food economy that has been undeservedly bruised in recent years by climate disruption, the pandemic, rising costs of inputs, supply chain problems, war overseas, changing consumer habits, and the loss of other nearby farms.
I don’t have buy-a-farm money, but oh, if I did (and if I were 10—OK, 15—years younger), I would snap it up in a hot minute. I’m a little crushed by Cathe’s news, but I am so rooting for you, future buyer of this farm! I hope to see you at UMATS or the Champaign market in a couple of years.
Thank you, Cathe.
*From this edition’s notes: “Wringing of hands at the far mar among those of us who understand that farms of all sizes keep whole communities grounded in this part of the country, flyover country, a place “no one” wants to be.”
Sweet potato scene report: They lasted two (2) days before the teenage rabbits got them. The third time will be the charm next year, because I’m fencing FOR REAL.
Garlic scene report: It’s too damn hot this week, but the garlic harvest is looking good for this Sunday. Bonus: Jim is deep cleaning the garage, so there’ll be plenty of room to (sort of) properly cure it and hang it this year.
LOTSA (LISA’S OPEN TABS, SAVED AGGRESSIVELY)
Anna Fusco's poster is the best art I’ll buy this year
I can’t remember why I looked this up, but here you go
This edition’s title inspiration
That’s it. It’s past my bedtime. More next week.
Thanks for sharing this news, Lisa. I remember your audio piece on sheep shearing! And also have fond memories of Cathe Capel interacting with Uni students for the oral history project on small farms. She is a gem, and so are you!
While I know nothing about sheep, that farm looks dreamy!