Julie Rawson.
We’d had a couple false starts.
Our first date got rained out, and the next one was a mixup on my part~ traveling, filming and hot weather tend to fry this brain.
So when the third time came around and Julie’s newsletter shared that she had just been bedridden for a week with a swollen leg thanks to Lyme disease, it seemed that our filming session was simply not meant to be. Shot an email asking if it made sense to reschedule again.
Julie responded that she could walk now, so we’d stick to the plan. We would indeed film on Thursday, July 10th from 12-2. This was official. Set in stone.
Not wanting to squander a moment, headed down early and arrived to an empty house. A couple cars with “Kennedy ‘24” bumperstickers sat in the driveway and a few dogs lazily lounged on the gravel in the summer heat. Before long, Julie and her husband Jack arrived.
There’s a certain fitting feeling on farms in operation for many decades. There’s a thriftiness, a threadbare beauty of function and form. A couple dozen poults had just arrived, baby turkeys that’ll be processed in November for Thanksgiving. Our family runs a beginner’s homestead and as they shared their thriving-for-decades poultry setup, began to see that every little nook and cranny of the outbuilding had a purpose. The concrete floors. The heat lamp spacing. The height of the ‘knee’ wall.
At 43 years old Many Hands Organic Farm is one of the longest running organic farms in America. In the early 1980s Julie and Jack had become disenchanted with city life and (in their thirties with four kids) decided to make a go of life in rural Massachusetts. Barre to be exact.
After a couple minutes of checking out the gorgeous Southern facing house heated by an old time woodstove that also serves as oven, stovetop and hot water heater, headed out to film with Julie. She’s a naturally outgoing human, very curious and my style of filmmaking involves the subjects pretending the camera is not there. This was exceedingly hard for Julie who wanted to know all about me, how I made a living and about our family’s homestead. After awhile, she was able to quell her default and channel towards weeding and taking stock of chores to be completed tomorrow when the staff and volunteers would descend on the farm. Somewhat recently, Julie had decided to take Thursdays off.
Spending time with Julie on the farm felt a bit like getting to spend time with a wild animal in it’s natural habitat. The majority of her life she’s walked these fields, pulled the weeds, harvested the fruit. Her confidence is contagious and she’s what some cultures call “of the Earth”. There’s no pretense, no filter, no strategic omissions. What you see is what is fully there.
She walked barefoot everywhere (even into the pig pen) and pulled about a thousand weeds on the way to gather eggs, eventually squeezing into a hen house at the age of 72 that many people in their 30s would have a hard time finding the flexibility for.
After filming verité footage, we went into the house and ate lunch. Apparently, Julie and Jack host thousands of guests a year, and the fluidity and ease of our shared meal was on display. Homemade sesame crackers dipped in homemade hummus followed by homemade chicken soup. Flavor full, health full food. So good.
Wrapped up the visit with an interview in one of the outbuildings where they stored hog feed. Sitting on an upside down 5-gallon bucket, Julie shared her philosophies on life. Her thoughts on paradise resonated most:
paradise for julie when you're in a place that you want to be in doing the kind of work you want to do with the people you want to be doing it with
It was 2pm and our time was up. Said goodbye and promised to return soon to film with Jack and the rest of the crew. Drove home a few hours North.
best thoughts,
graham
p.s. For paying subscribers, thanks so much for the support. Scroll down past the paywall below to see this week’s short film portrait of Julie. For everyone else, thanks for reading. God bless.
