Mission Statement :

Straight out of a shack in Vermont, the Flatlander Underground comes together seasonally to clear a swath for an exploration of weather aesthetics. United by the forces of extreme weather, we hail from the sprawling continuum that aligns urban and rural environments. We aim to chart the migrating scales of weather. In tracing the movement from the minuscule to the meteorological, we dowse for our subterranean pulses. It is that belowground lifeblood that draws us from the flatlands into the scythe’s path.



Issue Statement:

The global milk protests of this fall demonstrate the intrusion of the rural into urban consciousness—tractors blocking city traffic, the spray of milk straight from the udder onto the shields of police. The spectacle of rivers of milk dumped on fields across Europe is a gesture of waste that dramatically indexes the frustration of farmers with nothing left to lose due to falling milk prices. All of this suggests that the forces impacting food production are as political as they are meteorological.



Weather grows food. Weather is energy: clouds water the grass and sunshine adds sugars to the crop. Vegetables are energy once removed; animals are energy twice removed. We depend on the churning of the seasonal cycles, and fall is the time of harvest. The cows start to wean their calves, the apples fall from the trees, and carrots get sweeter after the first frost.



While the seasons are changing outside of us, our internal barometers fluctuate with the food choices we make—both in terms of what and how much we consume. Food and weather create community; they bring people together in extremes: during Hurricane Katrina groups of strangers united to locate and share food and water, but also in smaller moments, such as seasonal potlucks with friends, and local farmers’ markets. In this issue, we collaborate from the backwoods, mountains, and city streets, delving into our own changing relationships to food production, consumption, and community.