Emma Peaslee
speaker
237 appearances
4 recordings
1 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard 22 Jul
Emma Peaslee’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.
Appearances
And this is maybe the coolest part of the day. Farmers are sprawled out across tables. They're pouring over their maps of the osing. They're constantly writing and erasing as they go back and forth on offers.
Yeah, farmers are trying to trade their plots like Monopoly property, hoping to get a bunch of them together.
Are there rules for trading? Not really.
But then, the other farmer abruptly walks away.
What does that mean, a little bit? A little bit means the other farmer is open, he's willing to trade, but only if Friedrich and his son convince the farmer with the plot on the other side of them to trade too. So they'll have to wait and see on that one.
His son walks up to one of the big farmers and proposes a trade. He tells them about one of his schlumpy plots. But before he even gets to the specifics, the group laughs him off.
One farmer says he might make a deal with them. But Friedrich's plot is next to an organic farmer's. That might be a hassle. It might affect how he can farm. So he's going to wait and see who else will make him an offer.
A little bit of hardball.
The people here spend three or four hours negotiating. You can picture the map of the osing being drawn and erased, drawn and erased hundreds of times throughout the night.
A handshake? Yeah.
And we notice, yes, each farmer is looking out for their own interests. But there's also this sense of community. People are making deals and saying, like, we'll figure out the money later. Because the people here are all neighbors. They'll sing in the community choir together. Their kids will go to school together. And they'll all see each other at the one restaurant in town.
Shout out to the gasthaus Grunerbaum. And of course, they're going to do this whole thing again in 10 years.
They get ready to leave. Friedrich feels confident he'll get some trades done in the next couple of weeks before all the plots have to be locked in until 2034.
Way back when, the lottery was a solution to all kinds of equity problems. And at different points in history, the people of the Osing could have abandoned this lottery.
But instead, the O-Sing holds the lottery every 10 years. Every decade, the plots all get mixed up and reassigned. So everyone gets a chance at getting the good land. And if not, they can see what trades they can make.
Today's show was produced by me, Emma Peasley. It was edited by Jess Jang, reporting help from Sophia Shukina. It was fact-checked by Sierra Juarez. It was engineered by Neil Rauch.
I'm Erica Barris. And I'm Emma Peasley. This is NPR. Thanks for listening.
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