Pádraig Ó Tuama writes in In the Shelter that "to name a place requires us to be in a place. It requires us to resist dreaming of where we should be and look around where we are." I have carried that line with me for a long time, but it took a few seasons of weeding carrots to fully understand it.
The drive out to Sydney Null’s CSA farm is never a straight shot. Deer bolt across the county road in the early light, and more than once I have braked for a few cows that slipped through a fence deciding the ditch looked greener. By the time I pull in for my morning stint, clouds are already building over the tree line to the south. Sydney glances at them and knows how long we have until the rains come. I am still learning to read them.
Resisting the dream of elsewhere is harder than it sounds in western Illinois. Our corner of the state calls itself Forgottonia, a name coined half in jest decades ago by residents tired of watching highways, rail lines, and investment pass them by. The joke never quite wore off because it never stopped being partly true. Young people leave for Chicago or St. Louis. Storefronts empty out. Every few years someone asks whether the region can hold on, and someone else suggests it might as well secede. Living here, it is easy to absorb the idea that real life is happening somewhere else, and that our job is to wait for it or go find it.
The farm does not leave much room for waiting. CSA, or community supported agriculture, runs on a simple agreement. Members pay at the start of the season and share whatever the land produces. A wet spring means fewer peas for everyone. A kind August means more tomatoes than any of us knows what to do with. Members agree to eat what grows here, when it grows here, and to share the risk with the person who grows it. In other words, a CSA is a promise to pay attention to this place rather than an imagined one.
Attention, it turns out, is how a place acquires names. After a few seasons, I know that the bare spots in the newly planted carrots are where a groundhog likes to lie. I know the dips in the backyard that will turn my ankle if I am not mindful. I know which CSA members will show up with an extra pair of hands when Sydney needs them. None of this is on a map. It is local knowledge, learned by staying put and looking closely, and it is the kind of knowing Ó Tuama describes. To name a place is not to label it from a distance. It is to know it well enough that its particulars become part of you.
As an anthropologist, I have spent my career learning this lesson in other people's communities. In my opinion, good fieldwork begins by setting aside your theory of what a place should be and letting the place teach you what it is. It is humbling to realize how often I forget to do the same thing in the place I call home.
When I really look, Forgottonia isn't empty. CSA members trade ideas each week for what to do with kohlrabi. Volunteers keep small-town libraries and food pantries open. Families farm ground they have known for generations and can tell you which years the river flooded the bottoms. They create community gardens that are free to all. They protect immigrants who do the jobs the rest of us don’t want to do. Teachers, nurses, and shop owners stay when leaving would be easier. None of this shows up in the census figures on population loss. You have to sit in it to see it.
Paying attention to where we are is not the same as pretending everything is fine. Rural places face real challenges, and they deserve real investment. But no one can care for a place they refuse to see. Repair begins with an honest look at what is here: the soil under our feet, the season's rain, the people who show up.
At the end of the morning, I carry crates of greens to the wash station, stretch my back, and look out at the long flat horizon that people from elsewhere call empty. A hawk circles overhead. The carrots are holding their own against the groundhog. I can name what is here, and naming it feels like a kind of belonging. Ó Tuama seems to understand that home is less a place we find than a place we finally agree to see. Forgottonia will be remembered not because outsiders discover it, but because those of us who live here choose to look.
Heather McIlvaine-Newsad is a Professor of Anthropology at Western Illinois University. Her research focuses on collaborative action for sustainability.
The opinions expressed are not necessarily those of the university or TSPR.
Diverse viewpoints are welcomed and encouraged.