Nourishing Bites | Choice
Pole Beans | Reaching for the sunlight, reaching for community.
Nearly every day, I walk the foot paths in the high tunnel and tenderly gather up any long bean vines that are reaching sideways in the greatest act of trust-- trust and fortitude to keep growing, keep extending, to not stop being unapologetically exactly what they are. Trust that eventually, somewhere, there will be an arriving, a connection, a new and tangible framework to embrace- one that reflects truth. And from this unity of certitude and firmament, the journey of moving closer to the sun can fully unfurl- in a kind of peaceful security.
Bean vines reaching outward— this is trust manifested in physical space.
I see now, that so too, did my farming life begin from a similar place of sureness.
These vine-arms of mine extended out and open, uncertain but knowing with a conviction that I still cannot put into words.
***
This part is hard to write.
We lost our sweet pepper plants to a flash freeze last week. In a micro-climate little pocket of our land, the temperature dipped too low for too long.
This has not happened in late May in my recollection, and I would be kidding to say it was not a gut punch. It took three months of every-day care to grow these plants. It took seven of us all day to transplant, irrigate, stake, and mulch the whole crop.
And it took just two hours early one late-May morning for all that work to vanish.
To say we are deflated, discouraged, doesn’t quite fit. Of course there is always a drop of the stomach upon discovering such a loss, and the kicking of oneself too.
What we could we have done or known differently.
But what is the good in that line of thinking? Lessons are learned, of course, however this is one situation totally beyond the scope of knowing. As my farming sister, (a fellow food steward) said, it’s hard to explain to people what it’s like to have things totally out of your control -- even when you worked yourself to the bone doing everything right.
We do not get to decide the losses we will face.
But the whole trajectory of our life from that point of empty forward is ours to hold and see and translate responsibly. We get to decide the story to write. We get to decide the language we will use, how we will frame this experience, what we will intentionally set down and leave behind, and most crucially: what we will choose to pick up carry forward.
What I know to be true:
Loss is not always simply emptiness. Loss can be an aching, an appreciation, a seeing new, a reframing of old. Loss can be a footpath through the thick brambles to that very tender home called gratitude.
***
I cannot remember a year I haven’t planted green pole beans.
As an inexperienced farmer, each spring the vines danced wildly, and I would grasp the top of the plant, (this place of maximum vulnerability, where life is just beginning with a limber tenderness), and attempt to twirl the long vines back around the rigid metal trellis.
In hindsight, it was an act of stark conformity.
More often than not, the vine would break. Then injured, the young plant would slip back down into the aisleway; a return to only one way of being.
As a weathered farmer, now I have learned, through patience and practice, through questioning, through struggle, through loss, there is another way.
This action, this work, does not concern the metal structure. No. This is between the vine and the bigger spirit of life. This is about welcoming each soul into the fold of our living community. This is between each other, not the structures between us.
This is about community.
It is not a coincidence that bean leaves are heart shaped.
If you have young pole bean vines reaching outward, grasp a section of stem in the lower third of the plant and find a neighbor with a wide and sturdy leaf. Tuck the searching vine stem around the base of this new friend’s leaf.
See then, how everything else falls into place.
***
It’s tough to talk of our sweet pepper crop.
I had to be the one to tell Brad. That was hard. We have invested so much to get to where we are.
We have no backup, there are not enough growing degree days this year to sow another crop. What’s done is done. What is left to do is the sting of the work that remains. Irrigation lines to remove, support stakes to pull up and store, the loss thick around us and heavy as we work.
The day after, Brad and I spent a rare moment working side by side in the high tunnel, quiet with our collective sadness.
For some reason, in a moment of pure revelation, I looked up at him and said, “I’m very thankful that you don’t give up.” He stopped, looked up, caught my eyes, and said, “I’m grateful you don’t give up either.”
A normal human response to loss is to stop, to dwell, to recede, to ignore, to go numb.
A farmer response to loss is to pack it along for the ride and keep kneeling, keep sowing, keep weeding, and harvesting, and tending.
To keep moving forward, with the lessons loss has taught us, steeped in the emotions of the experience. Not an ignoring, but an informing. Silver linings in our minds, continued process improvement and tinkering front and center.
Here is our silver lining: The frost spared our newly transplanted cucumbers and squash, it spared our greenhouse eggplant and basil and hot peppers. The frost spared our tomatoes and tomatillos and tender bean seedlings. As I walk and work now, every crop I touch makes me grateful -- it could have been so much worse.
Next year, we will seed our sweet pepper crop in early March, again.
We will tend and water and uppot and transplant in April and May again. We will protect them from the highs and lows as best we can.
We will plant and hope.
Our characters as farmers are ultimately shaped not by the experiences we journey through, but rather from the stories and wisdom we craft from the beauty, the loss, the ashes, the joy. From what we tell ourselves and each other. From how we waste or glean that which we have weathered.
I am so grateful to have found a farming partner who does not give in to the negative, the hard, the wrong, but instead feels the hurt of the loss and gets back up anyway. Who does not ignore or deny or forget, but instead works to understand, to shift, and improve, and benefit, and bend from the difficult experiences we know with certainty we will need to face.
We cannot control the weather.
But what we say and think and believe about the weather is entirely under our control.
Every day, out here at the farm, the choice is ours.
***
Tonight, like all nights before, Brad will pick up the headlamp and head to the barn to close the chicken coop, check on the donkeys, bed down the goats, pet Slim Pickings the barn cat, and say goodnight to Midnight and her chicks.
Tonight, like all nights before, I will walk to greenhouses, make sure the newly sowed flats are warm and the young seedlings are watered. I will close gates and pull cloth covers over herbs and growing carrots to deter grazing deer.
Tonight, like all nights before, Brad and I will tuck the farm to bed.
And tomorrow, like all mornings before, we intend to rise, put on our boots and go to work. We will not wallow, or become jaded, or complain. We will carry our sorrow in our pocket, but we will keep our eyes to the blooms and the brilliance of the good and the kind and the flourishing that is here now too, nesting right beside the hollowness.
This is farming.
Regardless of what is to come, we trust that you will support us with compassion, because we are committed to walking this road-- together.
This is about community.
***
When I reach the end of the row of beans I am trellising, I often want to stop and open my arms wide, palms skyward in memory.
For this reaching outward with no framework is the same trust I, like other land stewards, employ. We have no other choice. We must trust the process of expansion into the unknown, channeling our energies into growth and life and substance of common wealth, embodying each day with our own spirit and our own gifts in hopes that our efforts will reflect and amplify the gifts and grace of those surrounding us.
We must trust with eyes wide open, that over time, together we will reach firmament- a sense of community, reach a place to curl around, to hold, to care for and be cared by.
I am comforted by Robin Wall Kimmerer who says it best: “...there are no soloists. Not one tree in a grove, but the whole grove: not one grove in the forest, but every grove; all across the country and all across the state. The trees act not as individuals, but somehow as a collective. Exactly how they do this, we don’t yet know. But what we see is the power of unity. What happens to one happens to us all. We can starve together or feast together. All flourishing is mutual.”
Your Farmer,
April
Epilogue:
Nature takes and she gives.
There are a few hardy survivors in the pepper beds. These incredible plants will be tended with extra love all season with the hope that they will be tenacious and tough enough to regroup, flower, fruit and produce seed. If this comes to pass, that seed will be worth a great deal to us- something no amount of money can buy- for they contain the genetics to survive such a frost. Our farming is set back this year, but we thus will gain a powerful ally for the future seasons. May these seeds come to fruition and feed us all.