Dispatch from a subdued Toronto

May 13, 2020

Looking out my window today, onto the vibrant raggedness of Parkdale, I see the abusive beggar by Tim Hortons throwing his coffee cups at passersby. I hear the downtrodden woman who lives in the bus shelter screaming in fits. People are stepping into grocery stores or walking their dogs or lining up outside of the bank, masked and spaced well apart, standing in silence and looking uncomfortable. There is an eeriness but also a semblance of the familiar.

On another morning two and a half months ago, after my employer abruptly issued a work-from-home order and as rumours of borders closing and food supplies shrinking circulated, I looked out my window and saw a city whose pulse had stopped. The odd car or pedestrian passed, but I couldn't comprehend that silence now dominated Queen Street West, one of Toronto's most bustling spots.

And we began waiting for when it would be safe to resume normal life, a time that keeps moving further onto the horizon and which, when it comes, may well be suddenly and unexpectedly interrupted again.

When I first lived in Toronto, a decade ago, the world seemed relatively secure and undaunted – any disruptions that climate change or social unrest might bring still seemed distant. I was gainfully employed and adequately housed, yet I felt unsettled. I was nearing 30, keeping my head down and bearing the demands of Toronto life: jostling my way through the daily commute and the hours at a desk for a bit of quiet on the weekend, when I began to sense that other skills and experiences would be necessary to get me through the decades ahead.

What prompted me to move with my partner away from the very adequate life we had cultivated to a 36-acre farm in South Frontenac, a place I had never heard of previously, has been made clearer by this pandemic. In the quiet and stillness of farming, you are busy, engaged, putting your body into something that bears fruit. It can be isolating and at times demoralizing, but the steady pulse of work flows from one day to the next indefinitely, regardless of how the world changes; work that engages the deep complexity of nature, but that is reliably if imperfectly productive through simple acts. As Eliot Coleman wrote, “Plant a seed, and it wants to grow.”

As the wider industrial world is forced to slow down and quiet itself, we are restless and bewildered. We wait for things to be set right by the powerful and technically knowledgeable. The complexity we've gotten used to doesn't break down to a dailiness that gives sustenance.

I farmed for a half decade before stepping away from it last fall. I wasn't a skilled farmer, and may not become one if I return to that life, but I recall the value of mundane acts, many of which don't require ability, such as spending a February day bringing trailer loads of discarded shipping pallets that would be made into fencing for pasture – an act that created the kind of habitat we wanted for the pigs we raised, which in turn helped provide meat of the quality we wanted for ourselves and our customers. There was a vitality in these daily activities that kept the farm going and sometimes improved it.

I'm now nearing 40, and thinking about the kind of life I want in the decades ahead. What do I want my dailiness to look like - what do I want the small acts that comprise my life to bring? How will the skills and lifestyle I learned through farming factor into my life as we face prolonged and repeated crises? As we wait on officials to tell us what to do next, I imagine the maverick spirit – the one that drives people to leave and start small farms or develop other creative new ways to assert one's survival and dignity – is stirring in many.

Jonathan Davies is Co-Founder of Long Road Ecological Farm and former contributor to the News