The Farm in My Hands: Roots and Reinvention
Carrying the Farm
Returning to the farm after five months away feels unfamiliar, as if it remembers the shape of me more clearly than I do. The homecoming is almost shy—the silence heavier than before, the soil greeting me with a tenderness I hadn’t noticed in years. My heartbeat sounds too loud in the stillness, as if the fields are listening, holding their breath alongside mine. Hands that once worked here exist now only as traces in the rows, woven into vine, dust, and breath.
Losing my brother has shifted the ground beneath me. The pain didn’t vanish; it settled in, became a quiet companion I wake up with, something I learn to carry—day by day, breath by breath.
For a time, I believed I could carry it all—his legacy, the weight of the vines, the strength meant for all of us. I thought endurance was a kind of inheritance. But life unfolded otherwise, in quieter, more complicated patterns. I am learning the grace of limitation: that I cannot hold everything, and that this, too, may be a form of care.
I watch my parents now, their hands deep in the soil, asking questions about how he used to do things. There’s a quiet beauty in that. Their curiosity, their devotion—it’s become its own love story. They’ve stepped into the vineyard with tenderness, letting his memory rest quietly in the work of their hands, in every row, every leaf, every knot of the vine.
Dad in Brother’s Vineyard, VE SAV
And I’m here too, a little apart, but still woven into it. Watching. Listening. Feeling both grateful and undone. It’s hard to stand in a place that once felt whole and see how it has changed. Edges have softened, forms are shifting, still searching for a new shape.
Some days I feel present, grounded—held by the dirt, the light, the scent of grapes that never made it to harvest. Other days, I drift. But even in the drifting, there’s a strange kind of faith: trusting that being here is enough for now. Maybe that’s the work—to stop pretending I’m healed and learn to live with what remains.
I created a mix that captures the ongoing transition from the farm to the city—made for the road, for a journey, for whatever you’re moving through, tracing the spaces in between. It reflects those months when the city’s rush overtook the farm’s quiet; I let the city speak, yet the farm still lives inside it. The mix traces that collision: a physical departure and a mental return, where fields and streets blur, and both worlds continue to live inside one another.
Collage, Ve Sav
The Green Chair
What I’ve been practising these past months is carrying the farm with me—wherever I go.
Not through soil or vines, but through something far simpler: a €9 camping chair I found on sale at the start of summer. My biggest investment, truly. Since then, it has travelled with me like a quiet companion. It lives in the back of my car, ready for an unexpected pull toward nature or a stolen morning with my journal in the rain. It’s been in my backyard, in my apartment, by the sea, and in all those unnamed in between places.
Somehow, this small green chair has become my pilgrim’s passport.
Each place it touches leaves an invisible stamp. Every time I unfold it, I feel closer to something I still can’t name—a steady, grounding presence that reminds me how to be.
It’s not about movement, or improvement, or even healing. It’s about the simple act of sitting—letting the world hum around me, letting the chair hold me.
It brings back the pure sensation of being—stripped of expectation, of hope, of any need to shape the future. These small, unplanned pauses—these accidental walks and unintentional moments of stillness—have become the way I return to myself. Not to prepare for anything, not to seek meaning, but simply to exist.
Maybe that’s the quiet truth at the heart of all wandering:
not the journey itself, but the soft place where you finally allow yourself to rest.
Perhaps in these quiet gestures, I learn to carry the world inside me, gently.
Kernavė, VE SAV
The Farm Inside the City
The pre-collection I will soon launch on my website was born from my search for my own farm—trying to understand how the farm lives inside the city, and how I carry it with me even when I’m far away. These past months, I moved through the city with rural habits in my hands: a camping chair slung across my shoulder, a simple potato baked over fire in my apartment courtyard, a woven basket carried softly, almost invisible among the city’s rush. I gathered what the city offered—hidden greenery, unnoticed shoots of life—and brought them home to cook, to transform, to remember.
I began questioning a gastronomic phenomenon: why is a potato, twenty cents in the soil, suddenly thirty euros on a plate? How is value created, and how does meaning shift with context?
I experimented with three different approaches to basket weaving. The process demanded more thinking, sketching, testing, and problem-solving than simply weaving the baskets themselves. My goal was to incorporate leather into traditional Lithuanian willow weaving—a dialogue between materials I first presented in the context of my flash exhibition.
“Fields Between” Basket — Process, Willow and Untanned Leather, VE SAV
The idea began when I found forgotten potato bags in my family farm shed, woven by my great-grandmother from tough linen. Dirty, patched, and worn, they were treasures. As a child, I carried them to the fields, helping my grandmother dig potatoes under the late summer sun, then watched them stored underground. I can still feel the rhythm of digging, the weight of potatoes landing in woven willow baskets made by the family men, and then being transferred to bags with quiet strength in every loop of linen. These memories—of labor, of craft, of shared hands—linger in the baskets I weave today.
Potato Bag Used as Basket Lining, VE SAV
“City Passenger” Basket — Process, Willow and Untanned Leather, VE SAV
Me, My Brother, Mother, and Grandmother in Potato Storage, VE SAV Archives
The basket becomes a symbol of collective consciousness, a bridge between worlds: continuity of tradition, adapted rather than lost; the memory of work, care, and the tools our ancestors left in our hands.
These baskets were born from that tension—between roots and reinvention, between what remains and what transforms. They carry the memory of labor, the touch of tradition, and the quiet act of carrying the farm inside the city.
From VE SAV Diary
Fields Transformed – Evening Bites by Gintarė Ramačionytė
The exhibition where I presented my three baskets contained that bridge with food as well. A tribute to the table our grandmothers set. Warm caraway seeds infused into a clear, aromatic shot - the scent of pantry jars. It was served with VE SAV unmistakable rye bread and a soft, smoked potato butter. A gesture as simple as it’s enduring: grain, seed, root. What was once everyday becomes a silent luxury now.
Caraway and Grain, VE SAV
Inside of the gallery we served potato from the basket, reimagined. A cold bonbon wrapped in a thin butter shell scented with caraway - fragile, glossy, urban. Inside, pure potato: soft, humble, familiar. Finished with ash made from it’s own skin, a reminder of the fields it came from. A single bite where memory meets technique, where farm labor becomes city craft. The potato you pay 30 dollars for.
Urban Potato, VE SAV
Outside, we made a fire. In a city. Yes—a dream. The same ingredients, stripped of ornament: a potato baked directly in the flames until the skin blackens and the flesh turns sweet and smoky. Split open, dressed only with caraway butter and coarse salt. Nothing added, nothing disguised—a return to the farm’s original honesty. A counterpoint to the bonbon: the rural voice speaking plainly, alongside its refined urban twin.
Rural Potato, VE SAV
What stayed with me was how people responded to the simple potato dish. The humble, smoky potato—familiar, unadorned, inexpensive—resonated more deeply than the refined urban bonbon. Guests lingered over its warmth, savoured its quiet flavors, and connected instantly with its honesty. Complexity and technique can impress, but simplicity carries memory, comfort, and meaning in ways that are immediate—and often speak louder.
The Farm in My Hands
The farm lives in my hands, and the city hums inside me. In the weight of a potato, the fold of a basket, the quiet green chair, I carry memory, labor, and care. Small gestures become bridges between worlds—roots and reinvention intertwined. I keep weaving, keep returning, tracing the spaces in between. What lingers in the quiet, steady and true.
Talk soon,
Ve x