Dandelion Roots Run Deep: An Environmental Memoir

By Merry Clark and Merrill Clark

"Dandelion Roots Run Deep" is the true story of three generations of Midwestern women who "nevertheless persisted".

The book focused primarily on Merrill Clark, who fought for organic agriculture and Michigan's environment from 1967 - 2009. Merrill worked on this book for years, but then developed Alzheimer's in 2010 and her daughter Merry finished it for her.

The story traces Merrill's background in Illinois, her marriage to John Clark, and their harrowing cross-country trip before launching their ultimate mission: starting an organic farm in 1980.

Merrill Clark then became a charter member of the National Organic Standards Board in 1992, and she describes the struggles involved In the first efforts to define "organic" on the federal level.

The dandelion analogy works on many levels in this book: the family roots, the roots being part of the solution to climate change, and the roots that connect to other issues that underlie the lived experiences of these three women.

"Dandelion Roots Run Deep" will appeal to lovers of Wendell Berry, Rachel Carson, and Aldo Leopold, environmentalists, women, and anyone dealing with Alzheimer's.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: May 16, 2024
• ISBN: 9798350958638

Merry Clark

Merrill Ann Clark grew up in Elgin, Illinois and graduated from St. Charles High School, then went on to earn a Bachelor of Science in Communications from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. There, she met her husband, John CLARK, and they were married in 1959. They moved to Berkeley, California, where John earned a PhD in bio-chemistry and then they took a road trip to Boston where John had a position waiting for him at MIT. They had their first child in Boston and then John got a job at Notre Dame and they moved to Michigan, living in various locations until starting a 1500 acre organic farm in Cassopolis Michigan in 1980. Merrill was a devoted environmental activist, and always made sure her voice was heard. She was then on the National Organic Standards Board in 1992 which was the first group of people to determine what the term "organic" would really mean.

Book preview

Cover of Dandelion Roots Run Deep by Merry Clark

Having known John and Merrill Clark from Organic farming in Michigan in the 80’s and 90’s, it is good to learn more of the family’s history that helped make them the leaders and in many ways the pioneers that they were. And it is good to know that the roots run deep in their family shown in Merry’s writing of the said history, while her brothers manage the farm and the cattle at Roseland Organic Farms. The family voice continues from their collective past to help shape a better future.

Joe Scrimger Bio-Systems II, Soil Expert

Doctor John and Merrill Clark were true heroes in the early years of the commercialization of the organic farming movement. They were both dedicated practitioners, willing to share their knowledge widely. And as corporate agribusinesses started wielding influence on the federal regulatory system, they were among the few willing to speak out to save the foundational values that organics was founded upon. Often controversial and never shy, they were organic truth-tellers when it was more popular to just be organic cheerleaders.

Mark Kastel, Executive Director, Organic Eye

"John and Merrill came to DC to one of the early National Pesticide Forums to make sure that our fledgling organization was clear and unequivocal on the need for and purity of organic agriculture as the basis for fighting chemical agriculture. He came armed with the facts about his and Merrill’s experience since 1978 on their 1800-acre farm in Cassopolis, Michigan, the southwest part of the state. The book, Unnecessary Risks, inspired by John, has served as the guiding light for the organization. The report documents the bias and failure of the EPA’s pesticide regulatory system that keeps pesticides on the market despite the availability of alternative pest management practices."

Jay Feldman, Executive Director, Beyond Pesticides

The insight and perspective that the authors impart regarding the organic movement and the challenge of an against the grain" life are invaluable lessons. Laying the foundation with family history of how rapid change occurred during the baby boomer years explains the desire of a core group of thoughtful souls to challenge the norm and attempt to correct the path that conventional agriculture continues to go down, leading an uninformed public.

A wonderful memoir and fascinating story of a full life spent in ministration to family and community."

John Hooper, Board member, Michigan Organic Food and Farm Alliance

Merrill Ann Clark and Merry Bell Clark © 2023

Book design by Merry Clark

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

ISBN: 979-8-35095-759-4 (soft cover)

This is a work of nonfiction. Some of the characters and events have been enhanced or embellished in places. The authors have done their best to represent the information and events as they were studied and perceived at the time. Even so, this book may contain unintentional errors or omissions and the authors encourage readers to verify any information independently.

FOR MY MOTHER,

Merrill Ann Clark

Table of Contents

Foreword

Preface

Introduction (Her)

Part One: The Woman With the Fuzzy Headscarf (Her)

Chapter 1: Thoughts on the School Bus

Chapter 2: The Stick House in Saint Charles

Chapter 3: The Grandest Place

Chapter 4: Far from the Madding Crowd

Chapter 5: Into the Frying Pans

Chapter 6: That Cheerleader from St. Charles

Chapter 7: Love Letters

Part Two: Beatniks (Her)

Chapter 8: From Berkeley to Boston in Two Tandem Jerry-Rigged Jalopies

Chapter 9: The Boy and Cows

Chapter 10: Butte Lake to Steinbeck and a Pepsi Can

Chapter 11: Soap Flies Off, Lava Beds, and the Wedge

Chapter 12: It’s About Time

Chapter 13: The Train Whistle

Chapter 14: From Yellowstone to a Tipping Point

to a Baby

Part Three: Putting Down Roots (Us)

Chapter 15: The Many Missions in Michigan (Me)

Chapter 16: The New Organic Kids (Me)

Chapter 17: The Beginning: The 1980s (Her and a Little of Me)

Chapter 18: Grandma’s Lane: Meanwhile, back in St. Charles (Her, then a Little of Me)

Chapter 19: Land Ethics (Me, Her, and Dad)

Chapter 20: A Letter from Dupont (Her, Dad,

and a Little of Me)

Chapter 21: It Takes Dead Cows to Turn the Tides (Her)

Part Four: The Organic Struggle (Us)

Chapter 22: The Charter Members (Her, with Dad

at the end)

Chapter 23: Aftermath: Letters (Her, Me, and Dad)

Chapter 24: To the Courts (Me and Her)

Chapter 25: Boxing with Boxelders (Her)

Part Five: Was it All Worth it? (Me)

Chapter 26: The Tangles 2019

Chapter 27: I Can’t Let Them Take Over

Chapter 28: Deeply Rooted

Chapter 29: What it All Comes Down to

Chapter 30: The Social Climate, Cancer, and Women

Learn More

Acknowledgments and Gratitude

Bibliography of Inspiration for this Book

Further Reading

About the Author

Foreword

Dandelion Roots Run Deep is a unique three generation family love story about people and place. The intermediate generation: John, a deep-thinking biochemist/organic farmer, and Merrill, a journalist/master environmental activist, lived during a time of major change in the U.S. food system. The book’s descriptions of events like a hen house fire and continental trek in elderly vehicles make the reader feel they are seated comfortably in a movie theater anxiously awaiting the next episode while listening to ever changing background music. John and Merrill’s profound concern about negative impacts of synthetic chemicals on ecosystems became a life-long endeavor for change. Their detailed records provide new and important information about the environmental movement and U.S. organic agriculture. Of special interest is Merrill’s experience as the first Chair of the National Organic Program, Subcommittee on Animal Agriculture. The family’s activities contributed significantly to the process of moving towards an era of equitable development. Much, however, remains to be done in a world of more than eight billion people. The book would not have been possible without sincerity, true love, and interactions among three generations of women.

George Bird, Professor Emeritus, Entomology, Michigan State University, Nov 2023

Preface

December 2021

I always knew. But I didn’t know that I knew.

My mother is my only child. Without realizing it, I arranged my life so that I could be available for her when she needed me in her later years. After living out west for most of my adult life, I was drawn back to Michigan because of her. Oh, I had a few other reasons to be here (medical issues, housing), but the reason I am here now, in Michigan, in this old farmhouse, writing this, is because of her. As I write this, my mother is still alive, but Alzheimer’s stole her ability to write around the year 2010. It is now 2021, and she is in the nursing home but has little conception of where she is in time or space. She has no notion of her own identity nor anyone else’s. She floats through her very basic days in a haze. It’s clear she knew she would outlive her memory, so she kept her memories alive as long as she could by writing them down over and over and reading her writing over and over. Her only wish was to remember.

It is now my job to edit her work to some extent and bring it out into the light of day. Some of it is based on her mother’s writing, which is rendered here as if my mother was an omniscient viewer of events. She had some of her mother’s writing from which she drew, but the originals from the 1940s are long gone. My father’s voice is here too, although this story is told from a female perspective. You, as my dear reader, will want to pay special attention to who is speaking in each section, and I have attempted to make those shifts as clear as possible in a story that covers multiple generations, multiple voices, and multiple perspectives. There are more perspectives than voices as I expand on all the issues here and then connect them to current issues in the larger culture, which are intertwined, embedded, and entangled in the experiences of all three women. This expansion is how the roots run deep in more ways than one in this book.

Tenacity is the bedrock of the organic movement, which grew out of the Back-to-Land Movement. My parents did not start the fire of organic farming that began eons ago; they just refused to let the fire go out. And now here I am, documenting that indelible through line between them and telling my own story of what it was like growing up with parents who wouldn’t back down.

All her labor was born of love, as this book is too. She loved her mother, who died in 1987; she loved her husband, who died in 2006; and she loved her children, all of whom are still alive. But above all, she loved Mother Earth. Not a day went by that she did not watch carefully. She would count the leaves as they fell in the fall and note the order of first blooms in the spring. Some might say she was a privileged lady to be able to pay attention to these small glories. She turned the privilege into responsibility.

Some might call this Midwestern values, but at this point, that phrase has political connotations and means something different to everyone. I like to think it’s just living as if tomorrow matters. Tomorrow’s Life Matters. And when I say life, I don’t mean only human life. When I was young, of course I hated the Midwest and longed for California. But there is something much more rooted and grounded about the Midwest. All of California is made up of transplants, after all. I was lucky to have my roots in Michigan and the wings of youthful ambition to get to California, both of which I owe to my parents, since by their example, I chose lofty goals.

The next generation is coming into the ranks of organic agriculture and environmentalism. From this book, they can learn about the difficulties of starting out in organic and some of the history of the green movement. Older generations can relate to the agrarian history of the 1940s, as my mother wrote about growing up on a twenty-four-acre farm in Illinois. Many women will relate to the marriage issues and family conflict that can arise in a small family business. Those resisting the anti-women and anti-democratic forces that have been afoot in this country in recent years can relate to her grit and persistence. Those who are or will be caring for a parent with Alzheimer’s can certainly relate to my experience trying to care for my mother.

There are five parts to this book. Parts One and Two are all her voice; Parts Three and Four are Mom, Dad, and me. The last part is my expansion on all of this.

Introduction (Her)

The Dandelion, 1992

There is something that makes one respect the dandelion. I’m sure you have no idea what I’m talking about, but it is, at its root, the tooth of the lion. With a name like that, it’s got to be tough. The dandelion is one of the most detested weeds in most yards, and so it is sprayed, it is mowed, it is ripped up, it is hacked off with a machete. Yank it out of vegetable patches, it will show up between the patio bricks. Pull it out from between the bricks, it moves to the bare places by the doghouse. The cattle must know something about it because I never see it flourishing in their pastures. But somehow the dandelion stands its ground even with all the warring going on around it. Wouldn’t you take your hat off to something as gritty and determined as that?

Lately, I have read about therapeutic uses for the dandelion, so it seems like there’s nothing bad about it but only good, just not widely known. Why this vehemence against a trusty little plant with a lot of positive attributes? Is this bright, cheerful, fringy, tickly, lion-toothed, leafy thing really such a disgusting weed?

When Europeans come here, they are delighted upon seeing the scattered yellow dancing heads of dandelions cascading across roadside slopes and residential lawns. They can’t believe that the flower is so well-naturalized, not requiring any time or toil to get it to grow in barren landscapes. It seems to grow where nothing else will.

She took her cues from this small flower, growing and flourishing in Cass County Michigan, the rural, highly agricultural, southwest corner. She bloomed where she was planted, and it took all the energy she had.

She wrote letters to the editor and turned them into a series called:

And So the Earth Said . . .

I gauge the pace of autumn by the order in which the leaves crumble and fall to the ground. Today rich, red, oval dogwood leaves lie in scattered disarray, and the sun outlines their curved veins. Yellow maple leaves, some burnished brown, already pile around the myrtle vines and Virginia creeper. Euonymus foliage hangs thin and brilliant from squared branches, and the gray sculpted fox with the curled cub sit contentedly surrounded by nature’s splendor. Autumn— at once glorious and shining, then barren and gray, that ephemeral time frame when brilliance gives way to solemn cold.

Across the yard, next to the barn, the walnut trees have long since dropped their foliage. They stand starkly by while other neighbors glow above and around them, feeling secure in the fact that they have left thousands of delectable walnuts on the ground.

The hickory leaves drop in groups of five and seven while the witch hazel is miraculously blooming with whorls of fiery yellow green florets. The pond down the lane, however, is less delightful. The lack of rain all summer has left it looking destitute. Mud flats are showing up and an ominous ancient barrel has surfaced at one end, but the marsh birds see no problem as they fly low over the water snapping up insects on the wing.

I’m hoping for a languid, colorful fall, but it never really happens because the color always goes no matter what. Each day reveals a duller red, a brownish yellow, down a decibel from the day before, and I feel sad that I have no power over the turn of the seasons. The earth turns, the sun’s rays angle lower, and the miraculous flow of fluids in the trees and all living plants changes course, marching to its own drummer, not mine.

Forever fall would never work though; that would mean spring beauty would never arrive, and summer would not mellow out into a sublime green.

In southwest Michigan in early November, colors still glow today; no frost has yet appeared. We have been blessed with an extension of colorful confusion, the bluest skies, and the cleanest breeze. But we may have seen the last of our gathering of sandhill cranes strutting and gaggling in the field near