WHY ARE WE HERE?

Yes, we are here because eating fancy food and drinking fancy cocktails in a beautiful ballroom is pure joy. 

Yes, we are here because slurping up innovative and inspired dishes from some of the best chefs in the PNW is an immense pleasure and privilege.

Yes, we are here because having the rare chance to get footloose and fancy free with your community of friends, family and peers - who perhaps you haven’t seen in too long because they, or you, or both have been too busy in the fields or in the kitchen - is necessary, life-sustaining work.

Yes, we are here because enamel radicchio pins are officially this month’s hottest style trend (I can attest to this as this year’s reigning overseer of the merch table).

Yes, we are here because seeing Chandler from Hayshaker Farm at the pizza party in a magenta wig far too small for his head, (which is probably just too full of radicchio wisdom) will provide gleeful giggles for months to come.

And, yes, we are here because biodiversity is sexy as hell. (I mean, really).

But, the reality is, we are here for something bigger than all that. Something bigger than this morning’s Sagra, bigger than Chicory Week, bigger, even, than just radicchio. Behind every hug hello this morning is the presence of a weight we all carry, the deeper imperatives that lay at the heart of Chicory Week. Yes, this weight feels like a burden, but it is the most joyous kind of burden I’ve known.

We are here because we are the kind of people who lie awake in bed at night after we see this graphic, or this one, or read this headline, thinking “what can we do?”

We are here because when we hear “transformative changes” are needed, the kind that will require entire culture shifts, we think “well, that sure sounds impossible” but  decide to go for it anyway. 

We are here because we belong to a tribe of people dedicated to the necessary work of stewarding our collective biodiversity, adaptability, and resilience. We are here to unpack the complexities and potentials of plant breeding and to celebrate the plant breeders and seed savers restoring the public commons of open-pollinated seed.

We are here because we are the people who read seed catalogues like they are juicy novels.  

We are here to reclaim our relationships to place, to restore an awareness that life is determined by the realities of space and time, and to restore the art of living within the limits of place and seasonality. This is about counteracting the monoculture mindsets of today’s food system by honoring that our foods should taste different in Oregon than they do in Florida, different in January than in August.

We are here because this is about refusing to accept corporate control, monoculture, rampant pesticide use, and extractive land and labor practices as the new normal for our food systems.

 We are here because we are the people willing to hang over a banister and yell at a room full of people to stop buying lettuce from California and do our darndest to dismantle the extractive, exploitative, and oppressive structures of the corporate salad machine.

 We are here to celebrate the beautiful collaborative work that plant breeders engage in and the knowledge our seeds contain.

We are here for the farmers who model unbelievable perseverance in the face of adverse circumstances. Because, if a farmer who just lost 2.5 acres of unharvested vegetables to an unprecedentedly early flood can have a can-do attitude, you better be able to, too.

 We are here because we know that when you sit in a farmer’s living room, soaking in the warmth of their hospitality, reveling in the cup of coffee they are sharing with you, giggling at the sweet interjections of their ukulele-toting young son, that you can’t afford not to do this work.

 We are here out of a recognition that this work requires us to move beyond the “I” and towards “we.” And it is about ensuring that “we” is more inclusive of all people and all the more-than-human beings we share this earth with.

 We are here to rise to the challenge of recognizing that our lands, seeds, and plants are perhaps the wisest teachers and allies we have in the face of climate disaster, if we can only learn to listen better and act as better co-conspirators, if only we can learn that a human-centric worldview is toxic. 

We are here because we believe that our salads can be – or rather, have to be – both poetry and politics. 

 We are here because each of these chefs’ dishes is not the delicious (although it is that too), it is tangible translation of the relationships and stories imbued in each bitter leaf from its journey from soil to table. It is a way to materially experience the depth of meaning behind plant breeding and sustainable farming practices; a reminder that the tastes we experience are just as influenced by emotion and narrative and place, as anything else.

We are here because we believe that throwing a big ol’ party for a bitter vegetable just might be a powerful act of everyday resistance.

 And, we are here because we know that, honestly, this morning is not enough. We know there are so many more conversations to be had about topics such as seed ethics, land rights, and where colonialism, white supremacy and patriarchy are alive and in our agricultural system. We know there is still so much to be done to create new paradigms based on care and healing rather than control and extraction. We know that, after the amaro wears off, we better roll up our sleeves and get back to work.

I mean we’re also still here because, hubba, hubba, amiright?

Katie Gourley is a writer, artist, professional baker, urban planner and researcher, and all-around amazing human who practices radical hospitality. Read more about her here.