Eighteenth International Conference on Environmental, Cultural, Economic & Social Sustainability

Abstract

Kayann Short, a local community farmer, spent her childhood at her grandparent’s farm, bringing her closer to nature and acting “locally” as she grew up. Her autobiography, A Bushel’s Worth (2013), is published as an Ecobiography that provides a record of lives valuing generational rural roots and the practice of community supported agriculture (CSA) in North Dakota. The paper aims to highlight the emerging genre of Life Writing with a focus on ecobiographies. Through her life writing, Short gives a first-person account to understand the natural world by treating it as a home and exploring the value nature exhibits. Her family’s participation or “green effort” to ecological damage as an owner of a local farm called Stonebridge elicits the need for “a give and take” from the planet earth. The paper emphasizes an individual’s effort to preserve nature and seek a sustainable living. The textual analysis of Short’s ecobiography is based on life writing strategies and methods. The paper discusses the components of this environmentalist’s tale, such as traditional values (including her family’s recipes), her grandmother’s diary entries, and many authentic terms Stonebridge generates with its people. The culture of “farmgiving” curated by women and men, families and villages are at the heart of this research. Ultimately, Short’s ecobiography voices to create a new vision that promotes care to our ecological surroundings and the importance of local lives. This paper highlights the ecological footprints and realities and concludes that if one decides, human impermanence can create a legacy of sustainability.