Week 12 of CSA / Farm Updates
Wow, I haven’t posted a farm update in 5 weeks! The season is moving so fast I can hardly keep up with all that I am doing and learning. The crew is fully in the swing of things, harvests are beautiful and abundant, pest pressure is not too bad, and the weather has been wonderful (albeit dry and hot, but no hail yet). Of course anything could go wrong at any moment, but that’s farming! Hell, that’s life. You can either sit around worrying about it or you can keep on moving, rolling with the punches, planning for the worst and enjoying the best.
Farming is full of routine and repetitive tasks that are somehow not monotonous like the many mundane jobs I have worked. The simple tasks of weeding beds or transplanting plugs or washing vegetables are certainly predictable.. I know that the bed is 180 feet long and I will have to hold seedlings in place so they don’t get uprooted when I pull the weeds out. I have planted thousands of transplants in a row and fully expect to be crawling on my knees in the dirt for at least a few hours. While washing, I know that I need to inspect every bunch of root crops for leftover debris or bugs before they go into the clean bin. I can expect all of this because I’ve done these tasks over and over, typically for many consecutive hours. Still, none of my daily work is a chore to me. Even sometimes when I am doing (what seems like) the most exhausting or tedious task, for example hauling a hundred pounds of muddy row cover to row ends or cutting the gnarly damaged parts out of endless tubs of culled carrots (to be sold as juicing carrots) or picking 300 pounds of snap peas, I actually end up getting into the rhythm of it. I become present. I never dread going to work to perform these repetitions because I know they are meaningful. There's not time for petty busywork or staring at the wall waiting for customers. I am surrounded by life, calmly moving and bustling in it’s natural rhythmic dance. My hands are moving with it. My hands are making it happen.
The farm is alive and I am an integral part of it. I am fulfilled by its health and success. I feel very here and I don’t know how else to explain that. I try not to hold on to many things, but this is a state of mind I’m keeping in my pocket for awhile.
