Mixed Media Abstract Painting
30” x 30” x 2.25”
Created by InterArtist Jen Haefeli
WildRootCreations®
Wild Root Creations.com

Military families and farming families have some common threads. There is a regimented protocol in daily life. The bugle or the cock, daybreak has its waking call. The pounding of boots or the stomping of hooves, there is work before chow. Many rely on you, and despite needing to provide care for yourself, the milk doesn’t flow if the cow isn’t fed. The bombs can’t drop if they aren’t loaded. The grain doesn’t grow if the seed isn’t spread. The earth doesn’t harvest itself. The rows don’t plow themselves. How many things take place before one brushes their own teeth? Farmers and soldiers have lost count. A piece of land, like a patchwork quilt, can hold a square plot for a garden, a home, or a battle. The beauty of planting, watering, harvesting, and cultivating life to nourish ones body, and provide for a family can come from the same soil that others have fought and killed on. That same square can become a graveyard.

Our family is comprised of immigrants. Farmers, soldiers, independent business owners, and strong women who have stiff upper lips. We are beautiful women, who don't stand for men behaving badly. Farm to Table represents the farm fields where food now grows where boots once stomped. Where cows now graze where bodies once fell. Where wars were won and lost. Where the sun rises with the sounds of women singing and it sets to the sound of children. Where the grain is harvested. The seed is laid in the soil, growing as history presses on, and when women do the work that we do, tempers are calmer, and bread is broken on the farmhouse tables.