Celebrating Spring

Fraser Common Farm is the oldest community farm in the Fraser Valley, and its Spring Celebration is older than a I am. Growing up on and around the Farm, my earliest memories of Spring are of searching fields and forests for hidden Easter eggs, planting seeds in rain-soaked soil, and welcoming the season by reading the Buddhist poem Hakuin’s Song of Zazen. Over the past two decades, many of the people and practices associated with the event have fallen away. In 2020, the Celebration stopped completely, and at the time it seemed it may never happen again.

This year, on March 31st, Fraser Common Farm held a Spring Celebration for the first time since the pandemic. The program did not feature all the same activities as when I was a child, nor did it need to. There are fewer young children on the Farm now than twenty years ago, and many elders who then enjoyed long walks across the farm now find their mobility limited. Thus, Easter egg hunts have given way to capture-the-flag, and roasting wieners and marshmallows over an open fire.

The Farm and its membership have undergone many transformations over its nearly fifty-year lifespan. In the past decade especially, the Farm has welcomed several generations of new members, and many of its founding members have fallen off or passed away. In light of these changes, the Farm has experienced some level of generational and interpersonal friction. Many of the rituals which united the founding membership are no longer meaningful, feasible, or accessible for everyone in the community.

Living in community requires patience, empathy, and a willingness to adjust even cherished traditions to fit the changing needs of members new and old. Yet this is not to say old practices should be abandoned entirely. The Spring Celebration initially fell away because, to the people around whom it was centred – young children and the founding members of the farm –it seemed no longer relevant. Yet seasonal events have long been anchoring moments for the Fraser Common Farm community, and without a Spring event, it felt incomplete. The conscious reimagining of the Spring Celebration therefore represents a tangible step towards bridging generational divides and ensuring that Fraser Common Farm remains a tight-knit, balanced, intergenerational community.

Although the 2024 Spring Celebration was not the same event I remember from my childhood, participating in it brought back those cherished memories. The event has taken many forms throughout the years, yet change has done nothing to diminish its power or relevance. Like the other seasonal events, the Spring Celebration is at once a way of marking the passage of time, of honouring the land, and of renewing the bonds of community that unite the members, workers, and friends of Fraser Common Farm.

~ Gerhardt Troan, April 2024