August brings us another kind of birthday reflection.

On August 4, Corrine Hansch (MO# 207) of Lovin’ Mama Farm celebrated another turn around the sun. Her words below arrive just a month after we celebrated the July 4 birthday of the Declaration of Independence—and invite us to consider another kind of independence: one rooted not in separation, but in relationship with the living systems that sustain us.

The Declaration spoke of the “powers of the earth” and “natural law,” yet the democracy that emerged from that revolution has too often separated human liberty from responsibility to the soil, water, seeds, animals, workers, and communities that make our lives possible. Here in the Mohawk Valley, the Haudenosaunee Confederacy offers a much older democratic tradition rooted in the Great Law of Peace, in which governance is inseparable from responsibility, reciprocal care, and the wellbeing of generations to come.

Perhaps that is part of the unfinished revolution of our time.

Corrine’s reflection brings that question down to earth—to heirloom tomatoes, onions, farmers’ market tables, tired farmers, family, birthday cake, and the question of why it sometimes takes a food-safety scare for us to remember the value of food grown with care, close to home.

Her words speak directly to our co-op’s member-owner priorities:

• supporting the farmers who grow food for our community,

• strengthening a regional food system,

• and helping make the lovingly grown food we encounter at the farmers market available throughout the week—not just for the four hours a market is open.

In that sense, a community-owned grocery co-op can be part of an important middle ground between a farmers-market and a corporate grocery store: extending the relationships and accountability of direct farm-to-eater food into a year-round community food system.

As a recent Civil Eats article put it, farmers’ markets, farm stands, urban gardens, and CSAs “create important ties between urban and farming people” and are key to regional food security. And for those who cannot always make it to a farmers market or join a CSA, whole heads of lettuce and bunches of greens available through local stores can offer another step toward food that remains recognizable as what it is: something grown in soil, on a farm, by a farmer.

This is also the larger promise of the Real Organic Project, whose farmer-led standards center soil health, pasture, whole-farm ecological practices, and labor protections—and ask farmers to plan not just for the next harvest, but for the seventh generation of farmers, eaters, and Earth.

Corrine’s words say it best.

Another Turn Around the Sun

Lovin’ Mama Farm
Corinne Hansch (MO# 207)
August 4, 2026

Another turn around the sun—my kids spoiled me with this gorgeous cake for my Bday last Sunday. Lemon strawberry basil cake with cream cheese icing and more strawberries layered throughout.

It was a long, tiring day.

Up at 5:30 am to do last minute harvesting of heirloom tomatoes for our Sunday markets, splitting the leftover produce from our Saturday markets, packing up Matthew to go to Spa City, then packing up our truck for Schenectady (thank you Joe for all your strength and support!). Halfway in, we realize we forgot two coolers full of onions.

Turn around to retrieve, setting us back about a 1/2 hour. Get to Schenectady with only an hour to set up a three canopy stand with over 60 different products- don’t get set up in time- Joe starts making sales while I scurry around the stand getting the remaining veg and value added displayed, the signs put up, and helping with sales when the line got too long.

We’ve been having record turnouts since the Cyclospora outbreak- which is awesome, but also slightly frustrating.

We saw this during 2020 - when the grocery store shelves are bare or the media tells you grocery store lettuce (or eggs, or bacon) isn’t safe—eaters come out of the woodworks to get safe, local produce.

It’s amazing to see the demand, I just wish it would stick around, that eaters didn’t need the fear monger if from media to prioritize fresh, local, seasonal food. Cause we—eaters—really do need to eat this way all the time, not just during pandemics or epidemics. We can actually prevent major health issues by eating from our local farms!

My latest mission/ passion project as a Real Organic Project farmer is to keep inspiring eaters to prioritize and seek out Real Organic produce for their homes. And to make sure that EVERYONE has access to Real Organic food.

When we prioritize Real Organic food for ALL as a society, we solve major societal issues in one fell swoop. Real Organic farms are major environmental land stewards—building soil health, habitat for pollinators and beneficials, creating clean watersheds and living wage jobs all while providing clean, toxin free, nutrient dense food for our community.
 

What kind of revolution will we grow?

Corrine ends with a bold declaration for the future: food for all, grown in ways that care for the whole living system, can address multiple crises at once.

That is not a small proposition.

It asks us to reconsider what we mean by health. Not simply the absence of illness, but the presence of nourishing relationships.

It asks us to reconsider what we mean by wealth. Not simply accumulated money, but living soil, clean water, biodiversity, resilient farms, dignified work, healthy bodies, and communities capable of feeding themselves.

It asks us to reconsider what we mean by independence. Not isolation from one another or from the natural world, but the capacity of communities to sustain the relationships on which our liberty and vitality depend.

And it asks us to reconsider what we mean by revolution.

Perhaps the revolutionary call of this moment is love—not love as sentiment, but love as a practice of attention, responsibility, reciprocity, and care.

Last month we asked how we might cultivate civic love.

But if we take seriously the conditions that make a healthy civic life possible, that love cannot stop at the boundaries of our civic institutions. It reaches into the ways we feed ourselves, care for one another, support our farmers, tend our soil and water, and take responsibility for the living systems that sustain us.

In this way, civic love expands into revolutionary, evolutionary love—a love that recognizes our lives as inseparable from one another and from the living world around us.

Love for the people who grow our food; love for the workers whose labor makes abundance possible; love for our neighbors who deserve access to nourishing food; love for the soil beneath our feet; love for the watersheds that carry life through our communities; love for the seeds and pollinators and creatures with whom we share this place; and love for the generations who will inherit what we choose to build—or fail to build—now.

This is the kind of love that does more than make us feel connected. It asks something of us. It changes what we value, how we participate, what we build, and what we leave behind.

That is the kind of evolution worth participating in.

And perhaps, in the Electric City, this is part of what our revolutionary moment can look like: not merely celebrating the revolutions of 1776, but asking what revolutions are needed now.

What would it mean for Schenectady to become a place where everyone can participate in a local food system rooted in health, dignity, ecological regeneration, and relationship?

What would it mean to make the soul and soil of our city part of our democratic practice?

What would it mean to choose, again and again, the living systems that sustain us?

The next 250 years will be shaped by countless such choices.

Some will be made in legislatures and city halls.

Some will be made at kitchen tables.

Some will be made at farmers’ markets—and in the aisles of our co-op.

And some will be made quietly, beneath our feet, as farmers tend the soil and plant seeds for people they will never meet.

That is the long revolution.

That is the work of evolution.

And that is another declaration worthy of our next 250 years.