Spontaneous Fruiting
Flying Pig Farm as a place to practice Emergent Strategy
“There are no solutions; there is only the ongoing practice of being open and alive to each meeting, each intra-action, so that we might use our ability to respond, our response-ability, to help awaken, to breathe life into ever new possibilities for living justly.”
— Karen Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway
Principle #1: Small is Good, Small is All
When I reflect on the past year and the ways I’ve chosen to sink my feet into relational entanglement, there is one special little plot of land that comes to mind.
Flying Pig Farm in Manitou Springs used to be a tree nursery a century ago, back when Everard Spencer Keithley, a member of the Forest Service, helped to nurse thousands of evergreens to maturity to replace those that had been logged in the nearby alpine forests. Evidence of this can be seen on the farm to this day, in the presence of the trees that were never transplanted and instead have lived out the first 75 or so years of their lives at the base of the mountain.
The land has been managed by a local family for the past two or three generations, and has been stewarded by close friends of mine for the last decade. I’ve watched it go through many transformations since my first visit in 2018, and it’s easy to see how much it has transformed me, too.
Flying Pig Farm (informally, “the Pig”, despite an absence of any actual pigs) is a non-profit with a very humble disposition. It is a sanctuary for social-emotional learning, a fertile community garden, a hub of creature kinship, and a canvas for open-ended creative play. It is also the backyard of the Farmily, an ever-shifting collage of people who nest and visit and add their love to the shared recipe.
There are goats, hens and roosters, ducks, towering hollyhocks and sunflowers, cosmos, marigolds, yarrow, lemon balm, sorrel, sage, juniper, ponderosa, spruce, beehives, tomatoes, carrots, cabbages, kale, lettuce, peach trees, and Three Sisters plots; it is traversed and inhabited by butterflies, bears, hummingbirds, hawks, chickadees, magpies, deer families, cats, dogs, and humans. There is a cobb oven, a dye garden started by my friend Mel, a yurt classroom/gathering space, a community compost drop-off site, and a fairy garden. On any given day you can find dear Forrest wandering around with a tool in hand, humming quietly to himself and tending the grounds with the tenacity of a beaver to its dam. The farm is a gracious host to community jams and concerts and workshops, impromptu potlucks, field trips for all ages, steaming mulch and burgeoning berms, sauna sessions, solstice celebrations with cauldrons of hot soup, and forest immersions, open for visits at any time, all cradled at 6,300 feet in the eastern slopes of the Mountain of the Sun.
Those of us who are descended from settler colonists have an immense responsibility when it comes to land stewardship. Flying Pig nurtures right relationship by forming lasting community ties with local tribal elders and weaving ancestral knowledge and folklore into all the rituals and teachings that are held on the land. One day soon, barring any unforeseen obstacles, the farm will become a Land Trust and will remain a space for communal earth-tending in perpetuity.
My role at the farm is multifaceted—volunteer, student, and guest teacher, to name a few. Years of observing my friends and other mentors teaching on the farm has nudged me into an active embodiment of my own abilities over the years, facilitating activities and discussions for both kids and adults alike. It is always a co-teaching endeavor, whether or not another human stands beside me at the front of the class, for we are never alone as we engage with our ecosystems. We always bring our shared reality of multispecies intra-actions with us.
Principle #9: What You Pay Attention to Grows
“Emergence emphasizes critical connections over critical mass, building authentic relationships, listening with all the senses of the body and mind.
It is another way of speaking about the connective tissue of all that exists—the way, the Tao, the force, Change, God/dess, life. Birds flocking, cells splitting, fungi whispering underground.”—adrienne maree brown, Emergent Strategy
I first read Emergent Strategy by adrienne maree brown during the lockdown of 2020, and was hooked when I heard her praising the wisdom of interconnectedness that mycelium teaches us. adrienne’s crafty principles of emergent strategy (highlighted in the headings of this piece) urge us to consider that we don’t need to have any answers to the crises that lay ahead; we only need to respond to the moment, the season, the needs of our own bodies, the creatures that we are face-to-face with. The more I pay attention, the more I see this taking place at Flying Pig Farm.
In 2024, I allowed the farm to hold me as I continued to practice my passion for facilitation. First, I was invited to a spectacular teacher training with other local educators last February, wherein my lovely friend Barak BenAmots—the farm’s Director—guided us into greater understanding of Flying Pig’s educational values and tools, providing a foundation in which to root our creative inspiration.
Throughout the year I planned and offered my two-day Connective Tissue class, fungal ecology lessons for various audiences, the creation of several pink oyster mushroom buckets during Farm Camp with dozens of kiddos over the summer. Some classes never came together fully, or I had to cancel them to deal with my medical concerns, but in retrospect the only thing that matters are the threads that were woven by my efforts, not the ones that weren’t. Mycelial webs remind us that our unseen growth and collaboration is just as essential as any above-ground, public-facing work.
It’s impossible not to feel immense gratitude and fulfillment when watching children’s eyes light up with excitement and curiosity as I talk about fungi—introducing them to mycelium for the first time, hearing their questions and attempting to answer them, getting our hands dirty as we touch smelly fermented straw and scoop fuzzy pink spawn out of mason jars. (Mind, this can also be seen amongst my adult audiences, since each of us is just a kid in disguise.)
It comes full circle when the mushrooms we grew together get cooked up with eggs, potatoes and tortillas for lunch. You can really change hearts and minds by letting kids know that some mushrooms might taste better than others—and they don’t have to be soggy if you prepare them in a certain way!
What if emergent strategy allows us to drop our incessant adulting and preconceived notions of problem solving? How can we become more childlike in our relational practices? What if we need only look to the younger generations to understand how to love what’s right in front of us, rather than despair in fear of all we might lose?
The kids certainly don’t know they’re “practicing emergent strategy” when they add their flair to the fairy garden in the grove of pinyon trees along the perimeter of the farm, but naturally, it was bound to come into being, and it plays a larger role than they likely realize. (I’m not sure whose idea it was to get it started, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it were a kid roleplaying as an adult, if you know what I mean.)
“Emergent strategies are ways for humans to practice complexity and grow the future through relatively simple interactions…
Emergent strategy is how we intentionally change in ways that grow our capacity to embody the just and liberated worlds we long for.”
Surprise encounters with unintentionally cultivated oyster mushrooms, springing forth from logs and tree stumps on the farm, inspired me to write this piece. Their emergence was unplanned, uninhibited, and capable of making someone’s day by simply being seen. Fleeting interactions such as these are at the heart of our collective wellspring of adaptability. Where would we be as a species if we did not know the ancestral whimsy of finding a delicious meaty mushroom, poking out amongst the symphony of other life forms? How can we possibly create the world we desire and deserve if we do not allow ourselves this simple, transformative pleasure?
What you pay attention to grows—including and especially the intangible nature of a felt sense of entanglement.
Principles #7 & 8: Move at the Speed of Trust; Less Prep, More Presence
At the extremely wholesome Farm Brunch fundraiser in November, Barak spoke to the cozy contented crowd of 120 community members about the long-term vision for Flying Pig. He rooted us back into our kin-making abilities and our shared responsibility to each other and the land. He reminded us how the earth, even in tiny corners like this two-acre plot, provides all that we need to fortify our bodies and spirits, even as we feel like we’re drowning in anger, terror, grief, pain, and worry.
Local efforts, like those emerging at Flying Pig, are but one patch in giant quilt—a fractal-web of resilience that stretches across the globe and provides us with small safety nets as we stare down the already-unfolding collapse of ecological balance. Small is good. Small is all.
In the coming year, there is much to look forward to. The community has successfully raised enough money for the farm to purchase a high tunnel classroom in which to start more seedlings. It will also provide new opportunities for mycology education—I’ve always wanted to explore in greater depth the breath exchange that happens between plants and mushrooms in a greenhouse setting. I will be learning how to write grants for the first time in order to fund a fungal element of this new life-giving structure (and pocket of increased humidity!).
I take great comfort in knowing that my energy is being focused on this one place. I used to spread myself so thin, especially as a young college student new to the region, before I learned how fruitless and arrogant it is to overcommit. Now I know that my gifts are most medicinal when offered in a consistent, harmonious way. It’s the same feeling I get when I visit my favorite sit spots by the creek in my neighborhood, or when I repeatedly retreat to the San Luis Valley, listening to the irresistible magic that pulls me there again and again in pursuit of greater relational intimacy with myself and the familiar landscapes. Critical connections rather than critical mass.
Even when I feel inadequate, insecure, unsure of my place, I will nudge myself towards the foot of the mountain, towards the fecundity of the farm—knowing that I have a role, even here in the high desert, where my body feels strained and tired and dehydrated and short on oxygen, and the rains are coming less frequently, and the risk of fire is almost always present.
I’ll be trying to remember that the granite and quartz sprinkled all around are markers of deep time and the steadfastness of the earth despite many mass extinctions... trying to mimic the gentle buzzing of a honeybee as it flits from one precious peach blossom to the next. Moving at the speed of trust.
I’ll be practicing emergent strategy by noticing whatever arises each time I visit, whether I’m secluding myself under the drapery of the old juniper tree to cry and touch the fallen needles, or petting the scraggly headbutting goats, or listening intently to an elder as they offer their wisdom, or laughing heartily around the fire with my friends.
I intend to show up more fully and truthfully, instead of masking, instead of feeling nervous and shut down and doubtful. Instead of fixating on what’s missing and getting lost in what hurts, I’ll be remembering that I don’t have to earn my place and I don’t have to sit on the uncomfortable chair and I don’t have to apologize for needing accommodations or gluten free snacks or a ride home. I can say yes to teaching, yes to being compensated for my time, no to overstimulating large groups, no to overextending. Yes to munching on leaves like a rabbit, yes to slowing down and smelling the chamomile flowers, yes to noticing even the tiniest of mushrooms in the mud.
I intend to allow myself, a little more each day, to be whole—neurodivergent, disabled, sick, mad, grieving, traumatized, and vulnerable, in addition to dorky, intellectual, calm, creative, sensitive, and everything else I am. I intend to do this in collaboration, with other beings who are also unfolding into their authentic emotional and spiritual and corporeal selves, one emergent moment at a time.