Happy Farm: Healing Fields and Farmers
- 3 days ago
- 6 min read
Mindful Agricultural Community Harvests Bounty and Soul
“There is no way to harvest; harvest is the way.”
Mick McEvoy, manager of the Upper Hamlet Happy Farm in Plum Village in France, is telling The Earth & I about the connection between mindfulness and farming when he uses this enigmatic expression. It was coined by the Buddhist monk who helped establish Plum Village, Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh.
The process of farming is like a harvest for the soul of the farmer and is just as important as the end goal of produce, McEvoy explains over a Zoom call. His analogy shows how practicing mindfulness and farming dovetail together.
The farm is more than just an organic farm—it’s a living laboratory where agroecology is shaped by mindfulness.
Plum Village, situated in the fertile countryside of the Dordogne in southern France, is a unique expression of regenerative agriculture. The farm is more than just an organic farm—it’s a living laboratory where agroecology is shaped by mindfulness, and community building intertwines with ecological stewardship. By aligning mindful living with organic food production, Happy Farm invites volunteers and retreat participants to engage deeply with the land, their community, and their own inner relationship with Earth.
Rather than focusing on yields and productivity, Happy Farm positions farming as a pathway to individual and collective well-being, seeing cultivation itself as a form of insight and connection with the living world. In doing so, it asks a provocative question: Can the practices that nourish soil also be the ones that heal human relationships with nature and with one another?
“Be aware of your inner garden, of your emotional reality.”
McEvoy believes so. Over the course of an hour-long conversation, the softly spoken Irishman explains how practicing mindfulness while working and living on the farm makes Happy Farm transformative for the practitioners.
“What makes it different from a farm is this deeply embedded mindfulness practice. We try to be really aware of what we are doing while we are doing it. Be aware of the abundance of nature in the living world around you; check in with the humans around you and be aware of what state your own body is in; be aware of your inner garden, of your emotional reality.”
And the practice extends beyond the self to the physical landscape being cultivated: “Mindfulness is our connection with the living earth, the more-than-human life that is on that land with us; the seed, the soil, and then the human,” McEvoy explains.
This humble approach attracts people from all over the world. In fact, McEvoy describes Happy Farm as the “United Nations of Mindfulness.”
This spring, retreatants from six different nationalities will join the farm for a year. McEvoy says: “You can come as you are from whatever your tradition. For many who come to the farm, there is an intuitive knowing that they want to spend time outside on the farm, in the beautiful climate. This is healing in itself without any input from us.”
Mindfulness is one aspect making Happy Farm different from a conventional organic farm. Giving ecology the same value as food production is another.
McEvoy explains: “We intentionally give a lot of space for rewilding, as this relationship with earth is very spiritual for us. After all, the host of life that was there before the farm will be there after our farm is gone. Food production can coexist and be supported by the ecological element, with an awareness of mindfulness.”
The group of farms that make up Plum Village limit the amount of heavy machinery involved and have a “no-till policy.” This means there is neither plowing nor using excavators to turn the soil over. Instead, the soil structure is permitted to heal while benefiting biodiversity. Compost is added to improve the integrity of the soil ecosystem and the number of vegetables grown is maintained, providing a yield that is “quite abundant,” McEvoy says.
“We call this human-scale farming, not using a lot of machinery and no commercial activity in the food growing,” he explains. “There is no waste, and everything is consumed on the farm.”
“There is no waste, and everything is consumed on the farm.”
Beyond the harvest yield, the farm’s agroecology model has a positive ecological impact. The food is consumed hyper-locally—barely a kilometer from the field to the farm’s kitchen—and of course, there are no additives, pesticides, or herbicides. McEvoy draws a surprising parallel with another organization: “Like the Boy Scouts, we want to leave something in better shape than we found it. We want to enhance the habitats that are on our farms, so we have wild park meadows, pockets of woodland and wetland and add more habitats for all life forms. We connect ecology with an abundant and thriving agriculture.”
As part of the monastic heritage of the farm, the residents live closely, side-by-side, many sharing rooms with those they have just met. This style of living brings its own ecological benefits: Cars, vans and even washing machines are shared—five machines operate for 100 residents—while economies of scale reduce the kitchen costs.
McEvoy admits communal living isn’t easy compared to an aspirational lifestyle, but choosing to live together is a form of healing in itself: “Communal life is as important, if not more important, than any individual pursuit of enlightenment. Harmony is more important than enlightenment.”
He continues: “The idea of the intentional community is that in the era of individualism, community life is the balm or antidote. In this epidemic of loneliness where people die from the symptoms of loneliness, there is a solution. Remember, we belong to each other.”
With visitors coming from all over the world, it is only natural that the farm’s positive practices have spread: “In the 13 years since I began doing this, a significant number of people have gone on to becoming farmers, making it part of their livelihood. The ripples are far and wide. The most important thing for us is to empower people to know they can practice mindfulness wherever they are in the world, in whatever they are doing.”
McEvoy is happy for the Happy Farm blueprint to be adapted and altered: “I would say to people, ‘This is a group business model; take it, just take the idea and fit it to your own social or cultural context.’ People are so hungry to be on the land and to be in a community together. It’s not about Buddhism, it’s about coming back to the soil, growing, cooking, eating together.”
Furthermore, the practice doesn’t even need a farm: “We also say you can do this in your own back garden or with a window box—wherever people who have been on retreat can take it back to.”
He adds: “When we grow a little bit of our own food, we switch from having food apathy to empathy for our food, but we also understand the mystery of what happens when we grow, the mystery of the soil, the alchemy of the seed becoming a plant, one grain of corn becoming a towering, beautiful plant full of ears of corn.”
There is also a more day-to-day application of the Plum Village way: “It might make you more aware of where you want to spend your money when buying food or even getting involved yourself in a local community agriculture program.”
“Plum Village," McEvoy says, "is just one small light in the world, where we need to have positive things happening all over the world.”
*Gordon Cairns is a freelance journalist and teacher of English at the Forest Schools, based in Scotland.
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