Katrina Rodabaugh feels incredibly grateful for the one-acre of land in upstate New York that has become the whole world for her husband and two children as a place of shelter, nourishment and learning during this time of pandemic.
Her journey to this place was meandering. After agitating for an environmental studies major, working in art organisations in big cities, studying creative writing and beginning her slow fashion awakening, Katrina moved cross country to now be homesteading in the Hudson Valley where her work and life are holistically cocooned.
What began as a personal project called Make Mend Thrift in 2013 has evolved into an inspirational career of making, writing and teaching others about mending, slow fashion and sustainable living by sharing her values, experience and skills documented in her book Mending Matters.
“I am this hybrid of having informal training in fibre arts and folk art heritage from land-based practices a couple of generations ago … through to conceptual and community-based art … and now homesteading. It is this funny space of being from the urban world and the rural world as well.”
“It is meaningful and touching to work with the plants and the seasons, and expand my knowledge of plants that I can identify, and expand their uses, their place in the ecosystem … I am interested in the triple power plants – plants that are edible, medicinal and dye plants.’’
Her creative projects just now are ones she can pick up and put down, that can be interrupted around children. ‘’I can grab my knitting while doing home schooling and knit a few rows. Mending and plant dyes are good too. We are turning to the garden a lot, prepping our garden for spring, starting our seeds, pruning our trees.
Tips: There is just something really important and beautiful about a daily rhythm is, whether it is meditation, exercise, or creative practice – whatever that thing is we can show up to on a daily basis and see how it changes, that can really be meaningful and truly transformative. So I walk, I garden and I stitch, then I’m on the computer, then I’m trying to help my children.
Changes: My worry is there will be such an economic crisis, the focus will return to building the economy by any means necessary. The model of profit over people is how we got to this mess environmentally to begin with, by forgetting our limitations and core values of taking care of people and the planet. On the other hand, the incredible interest in baking, gardening, raising chickens, homesteading and handcrafting is powerful and meaningful for people, and I hope it has staying power because it is so important to sustainability.
Find out more about Katrina here, read full transcript below.
Full transcript of what Katrina Rodabaugh said:
Lockdown has been very hard. We feel fortunate because we are healthy and immediate family members are healthy, we are very grateful for that. Two young children, ages 5 and 8, home with us the whole time. My husband and I are both artists, we both run very small businesses. The challenge for us has been the work/kid balance. Splitting the days so we each have three-four hours to work. Also running a small business at this time, trying to keep the work that was in contract or already secure, and noticing the work that has fallen away – anything that was in person, workshops or classes, have fallen away – and trying to come up with the bandwidth to create new programming. That’s been the biggest challenge for us. Navigating this, with very little time to work, and yet the pressure to create these new programs to keep bringing in the finances we need to care for our family. It has been hard but also humbling and it has made us so grateful for this homestead that we have been building for the past five years. We moved here from Oakland, California, five years ago and little by little we have been expanding the garden, planting fruit trees, and chickens and bees, and redoing the house and the barns. Now this is our whole world – literally for my husband and I and our two children, this is our entire world, the one-acre of land, and we feel incredibly grateful for that. We see the fruits of our labor, in terms of that space we have been making.
Mine is a meandering journey. I was an environmental studies major in college 20 years ago and in an interdisciplinary major. I had to petition the college to be in an environmental studies major, which didn’t exist at the time. I think about this as a marker for me, in terms of activism and change, because now the college has an environmental studies department and most colleges across the US have these departments as well – tremendous growth in 20 years. So I was an environmental studies major and then I went straight to big cities and to art organisations – galleries and theatres – and then I went back to school for creative writing and studied poetry and book arts. So I had my creative practice and worked full-time in galleries and considered myself an environmentalist personally and in my work I would use recycled and reclaimed materials. But it really was the Rana Plaza factory collapse in 2013 that was this huge light-bulb moment for me when I realised I spent a lot of time thinking about my food, my garden, choosing wool fibres over synthetic fibres in my home goods, but not in my clothing. That was this huge moment for me in thinking about the basic needs of food, clothing and shelter, I had left clothing out in my own life. So I launched a personal project called Make Mend Thrift and decided for one year, as a creative project, I wouldn’t buy any new clothing. I would focus on making simple garments, shopping secondhand and mending what I already owned. From there my work teaching, mending and writing about sustainable fashion and my online shop – everything over the last seven years has pivoted towards sustainability, fibre and slow fashion.
Two years ago, I took a step back to analyse what was happening with my business because these things have a way of continuing without us. My work happens in three areas: making work for exhibition or for sale online; writing for blogs, magazines and my book; and teaching, most of which has been in person. Now, the teaching is almost entirely gone on pause or to be rescheduled because that was all in-person. That has been the most affected. The online shop has been fantastic, for those who have a virtual market place and already engaging in that, we are fortunate at this time because that was something that could continue. Then writing and publishing is always stop and go for me – I will get a bunch of requests for articles or will solicit for articles and that comes in waves anyway. The in-person stuff is a big question mark for a lot of us.
I grew up in a very small town and my mother’s family has been from that area of the country for many generations. They were farmers and her grandfather had a lumber mill, they were agricultural workers, and there are roads named after my great grandfather. Through that, my great grandmother was a quilter, my grandmother was a hobby artist and my mother very much a crafter. They were all incredible gardeners, my great grandmother was a homesteader with chickens and herbs. I ran away from all of that, although not the fibre-art side, but I just wanted to be in big cities, be involved in the arts community and the creativity there. I feel like I am this hybrid of having informal training in fibre arts and folk art heritage because they were literally up in the hollows, very land-based practices a couple of generations ago. And then I have this urban arts community, conceptual art and community-based art. I think the fibre arts practice is a blessing right now for any of us who have any hand-work during this time. The homesteading has only come back in the last five years since we moved here. I always had small gardens, I didn’t realize how small until I moved to an acre of land and we tend the whole acre. Now it is grounding us in a different way. To be here. It is this funny space of being from the urban world and the rural world as well.
We have a professional farmer across the road from us. It is always very humbling and hilarious as we try to figure out what we are doing. He is a kind man, he will bring us wonderful vegetables and we will ask questions about how to do the right thing with our garden and he will just nod and maybe answer and maybe won’t. It cracks me up when people think we have the homesteading thing figured out – it is an experiment by trial and error – but it has given us incredible respect for friends who are full-time farmers or our neighbors who have other work and professionally farm. It connects you to land in a way that is otherwise hard to describe. You are connected to all of the challenges of the land – the weather, groundhogs and pests – things you don’t think of when you think about the pretty pastoral life. We are constantly thinking about how to convert more of the grass in our yard to edibles and dye plants. It is meaningful and touching to work with the plants and the seasons, and expand my knowledge of plants that I can identify, and expand their uses, their place in the ecosystem. That is a lifetime of work. For me I am interested in the triple power plants – plants that are edible, medicinal and dye plants. There is a whole world of those plants, and varieties of those plants. It is amazing, and that is the thing I have come to cherish about rural life. Favourite plants include nettles, even stinging nettle which is nutritionally dense, a dye plant, and edible so we grind it up to put in soup. Roses are an amazing plant, I always thought they were cliché, but they are also medicinal and create beautiful colour on cloth, it’s tricky to get that colour on cloth. They have a legacy of beauty also. I am planting more of those two, but there are other common plants like dandelion, clover, and violets and things that people consider weeds that have potent colour and are edible as well.
We are live in upstate New York, two hours north of Manhattan, have a really productive growing season June, July, August, September. Some things start coming in April, May, some things go as long as November. Very hard to find local produce here from December, January, February, even March. Moving here from California that was heightened to me right away. In Oakland, California, it is an 11-month growing season, so you can get ripe, fresh produce all year round, and there is such a movement there around slow food and sustainable food. Here there is a period of time when we don’t have access to local produce anyway. The thing I’ve noticed in the lockdown, we have a local farm nearby and they have been an amazing resource right from the beginning, they have created online purchasing system and have curbside pickup for all local produce – and also working with other local farms to have produce available at their farm stand. It has been amazing for us to watch, they really have assumed this place in community organizing in this time and it is something this farm is good at anyway. That has made us realize how important it is to support them and how much we want to support that community. We have some other small groceries nearby that have tried to support local bakers and local farms. We have changed some of our habits, because our kids eat so much fruit and that has been a challenge. You don’t take it for granted – if strawberries start to go bad, we make strawberry-rhubarb pie, the fruit has become precious for us. We have chickens, so have been lucky to have access to eggs the whole time. It has shifted our thoughts of what we can access and what we want to support too.
Creative projects I can pick up and put down are the ones I am drawn to right now, because we have young children here all the time. I am a very new knitter, only a basic knitter, but it is so easy to pick it up and put it down and no sharp objects for my little one. The shawl I have been working on, I can grab my knitting while doing home schooling and knit a few rows. Mending and plant dyes are good too. Anything that can be distracted or interrupted, I can do around children. Turning to the garden a lot, prepping our garden for spring, starting our seeds, pruning our trees. I haven’t been able to take on any big creative projects, I don’t have the bandwidth for that at the moment with watching the kids and trying to run my business. That is one thing I loved about mending from the beginning, when my children were young and I could spend 15 minutes and put it down. When I am making a garment, I need more mental capacity to follow the pattern and remember where I am up to. Hand mending and hand work, any kind of hand stitching is very forgiving, and be interrupted.
I have always been a walker and a hiker, I have beautiful memories of my Mum hiking up and down the hills where we lived. It is mental health, it is wellbeing, also the connection. I walk outdoors when it is very, very cold here. The only time I don’t walk outdoors is if it is raining or sleeting. I will even walk in the snow. It is connection to outdoors, or connection to any road you are walking on. Just in the time of quarantine, I have come across a coyote on the road, there have been deer on the road, an injured bird I helped get off the road. You start having this interaction. That is really the magic about plants, or gardening or dyeing. Any kind of relationship or practice you have with the land, you keep showing up at the same spot and you keep noticing the subtleties about the spot. I have this two-mile walk and I notice different things every time. The kids and I take field walks in our neighbors’ field – it has been nine weeks now and just yesterday we noticed the grass was too high to walk there now, whereas in the beginning the grass was just coming up again. Watching the fruit trees coming into bloom.
Tips: There is just something really important and beautiful about whatever that daily rhythm is, whether it is meditation, exercise, or creative practice – whatever that thing is we can show up to on a daily basis and see how it changes, that can really be meaningful and truly transformative. So I walk, I garden and I stitch, then I’m on the computer, then I’m trying to help my children. It is not as slow and lovely as I’d like it to be, it is also pretty frantic at times.
Changes: Two things that comes to mind. Thinking about this local farm that has created an incredible service, I hope that there is respect and reverence for those local communities and organizations that are digging into the community right now and supporting us in ways that we can support them back. The other thing is transition from live events to virtual events. There is such an abundance of that right now. My husband works in the theatre, he is a designer for performing arts, his whole life has been about in-person events and we were talking about the trend in his world to seeing theatre moving online. He was mentioning the divide was always the screen – you had television and film, and then you had stage. That was the divide, even in the union and the contracts. That is a fascinating difference. I wonder if there will be even more reverence for live events and teaching in person, or if that will be much smaller … depends on how the pandemic plays out and how long before we can resume contact in larger groups again.
There has been a tremendous shift to slow fashion in the past seven years. When I started my fast, I had a hard time finding certain garments that now are much easier to find. You could always find a nice linen tunic, but not organic cotton leggings, undergarments, socks, outer wear or those sorts of things that rely more on synthetics or conventional cottons. There has already been a tremendous change and I don’t think that will reverse. The companies that are interested in sustainability and ethical fashion, those are core values so I don’t imagine those are going to go away. In terms of the larger fast fashion industry – I don’t have experience working or advocating within the industry – so I don’t really know. My worry is that there will be such an economic crisis and the focus will return on building the economy by any means necessary. That frightens me because that is how we got to this mess environmentally to begin with, by forgetting our limitations and forgetting those core values of taking care of people and the planet. The model of profit over people is how we got to this environmental crisis, much slower than the pandemic crisis obviously. On the other hand, there is this incredible interest in baking, gardening, raising chickens, homesteading and handcrafting. So I hope that can be so powerful and meaningful for people and I hope that it isn’t just a flash in the pan, I hope that will have the staying power because it is so important to sustainability.