Alena Steen
Where were you raised? Has the landscape of that place influenced your work in any way?
I grew up in the Piedmont of North Carolina, with summers spent rambling in the woods around my grandmother's house on Martha's Vineyard, MA with my younger sister and our neighbor's dog. I've always felt very connected to and curious about the natural world, and was fortunate to have a childhood with a lot of free, creative time outside in various deciduous forests and riverbeds along the east coast. I think that searching for and feeling a really deep connection to landscape has definitely been one of the defining themes of my life, and what led me to gardening and organic farming in my 20s. Although I grew up in the South, both of my parents were born elsewhere, and so I had a lot of fascination with my friends whose families had multi-generational ties to a particular place. I feel like a part of me has always sought that long-lived, embodied memory of place, and I find that through working with plants now as a farmer.
How do you re-charge your creative battery?
Long hikes. Reading and writing. Sitting in my garden without working. Traveling.
What book are you reading?
Poems by Louise Gluck and "Stamped from the Beginning" by Ibram X. Kendi. I also just finished a back to back reading of two of the best novels I've read in a long time: "Homegoing" by Yaa Gyesi and "The Water Dancer" by Ta-Nehisi Coates. And I am always opening any of Mary Oliver's books to read a poem or two, and revisiting favorite pages from Robin Wall Kimmerer's "Braiding Sweetgrass."
What was the last thing that you fell in love with?
My partner and I just adopted a four month old puppy and named her Persimmon. She's been making me belly laugh every day, romping about in the field and attacking flowers. It's so so fun to be around a baby animal brimming with boundless curiosity and enthusiasm.
What do you love most about yourself?
My empathy for others, and my ability to feel my feelings deeply.
What do you think is the most important quality in a human?
Open-hearted kindness.
Do you have a spiritual practice?
I don't have a conscious practice, but I am fortunate to spend the majority of my time quietly outdoors, listening to birds and the wind and focused on deeply grounding work which feels really nourishing and stretches time in a way that feels very restful and necessary as the world moves ever-faster.
Who are your role models?
My 90 year old maternal grandmother, who left post-World War 2 Holland to find intellectual freedom and equality in the U.S., and still actively makes art, writes, and organizes for social justice.
Robin Wall Kimmerer, an ecologist and Indigeous woman whose book "Braiding Sweetgrass" gave me the eloquent blueprint I needed to connect my interests in science and natural history with my more magical and emotional understanding of the natural world.
Rachel Carson, another scientist who recognized magic.
Suzanne Simard, a forest ecologist whose life-affirming work on forest kinship, communication and reciprocity I recently discovered.
A trio of older women who mentored me as I first began to garden and farm in North Carolina who taught me how to be a plant lady.
If you could change one thing about our world, what would it be? Is there a individual or an organization doing work in this area that you want us to know about?
Hm, wow. There's a lot I would change! The first thing that comes to mind is land reparations for Indigenous people all around the world, and Black people in the US. Soul Fire Farm in New York has an amazing resource for land reparations for Black-Indigenous farmers and anti-racist food and farming projects in the US: https://www.soulfirefarm.org/get-involved/reparations.
Before I die I want to…
Plant an orchard, with all the hope that project entails: rain water, a stable climate, future abundance.
