My life’s work has been involved with renewal—of soils, and of words, with an ear open to the undiscovered country to be found within each. On a level deeper than my understanding I have been led to learn the trade of seedsman, and following that, to discover the art of cultivation. Farming/ poetry, traditional/post-modern, individual/collective? I have only questions: “Not for victories I sing/ but for the breeze, the largesse of Spring…”

I am led to look back and then forward to the conceptual intelligence expressed by Aldo Leopold: “A thing is right when it tends to support the integrity, the stability, and the beauty of the biota. It is wrong when it tends otherwise…” (…in my memory).

PRESENTER: Scott Chaskey

Scott Chaskey is a farmer, poet and an educator. He has worked as poet-in-residence in numerous schools and museums, in the U.S. and in England, and for over twenty years he has taught poetry to children of all ages. Employed by the Peconic Land Trust as a steward of land, he has farmed garlic, potatoes, greens (and sixty other crops) for over twenty years at Quail Hill Farm, one of the original Community Supported Agriculture farms in the country. He is a founding Board member of the Center for Whole Communities (Vt.) and of Sylvester Manor Educational Farm (NY), and is past president of the Northeast Organic Farming Association of New York. In 2004 he edited “Free Concert,” the final book of poems by his teacher, Milton Kessler, published by the Etruscan Press. In 2005 his most recent book “This Common Ground, Seasons on an Organic Farm” was published by Viking/Penguin. He lives in Sag Harbor, NY, with his wife Megan, and their three children.