The Shade of Kindness
August 12, 2022
On Sunday we methodically walk our fields, identifying work tasks we must tackle in the next seven days. At this time, we also inventory every crop to get a sense of quantity, health, and harvest timing. Usually, this is a restful pause in our frenetic work week- time to take stock and take a deep breath before the next round of activity. But during bouts of extreme weather, our Sunday walks become a sprint. Heat is an entirely different animal than rain - things don’t slow down, they speed up.
Heat waves add an additional burden to our already full load. There are extra irrigation sets to cycle, additional livestock welfare checks, and in late summer, an entirely up-ended harvest schedule that can easily consume precious hours of daylight.
Diversified farming is a risk management strategy- it’s good insurance to have a variety of crops because while possible, it’s unlikely to have 100% crop failure. But diversity can present its own set of challenges. In a heat wave, if you are only working with one or two crops, your mitigation strategies and harvest plans are simplified. But add a lot of crops and you get a lot of complexity; this past Sunday, everywhere I turned there was another crop needing tended or harvested or watered.
The thing about heat is that there is no waiting. Our metal harvest buckets become so hot to the touch we can’t use them after 10 a.m. Shade cloth pulled 2 hours too late can make the difference between having a harvest or a row of sunburnt, overripe tomatoes that melt when you pick them up. Summer squash, cucumbers, lettuces, tender herbs– all these crops need to be harvested regularly and ideally before the heat hits, because waiting a mere 8 hours can mean the difference between bolted bitter lettuce and tender sweet heads. That means we have to make hard choices, and gamble… or compromise on size, ripeness level or quality.
It typically takes 1 hour to pick our green bean row and a good harvest is around 10 pounds. We do this every 2-4 days. Last Sunday Brad worked for over 3 hours in 96 degree heat to get the job done. He came away with 40 lbs.
The work doesn’t end after harvest, because then we have to juggle a whole second set of variables regarding market demand with a roller-coaster supply. We do our very best to buffer our customers from the boom or bust cycles, but it’s not without challenge. Just because we have four times the planned amount of green beans harvested doesn’t mean our families will take four times the amount one week and nothing the next three weeks. Even if our families were willing to do so, the added burden of communication and logistics (what about the crops that do need to be sent home the next three weeks?) is far too challenging to change mid-stream or explain week by week.
These are a few of the reasons severe weather events during the harvest season are very stressful on farmers. Every day we’re pushed to make a hundred decisions about where to spend our time, what to focus on. What is worth the cost and what is it we can stand to lose? Every day our meticulously-made schedule is swept aside to deal with urgent needs. We’re forced to weigh risks and uncertainty. Every day, we must be hyper vigilant to changing conditions and face the consequences of our previous decisions. You have to have an understanding, flexible market (the entire point of the CSA model) or things get really dire really fast.
And that’s just the external demands. Internally, we’re juggling the intense pride in our work– our personal reputation, and our commitments to our families, our plants and animals, with very real limitations on physical resources and stamina. It takes a lot to be continuously resilient, to keep getting up, keep working and caring and tending through the realities of that particular day, not knowing how many more such ‘days’ lie ahead.
Farmers are constantly pressed to skillfully tend the acute sense of loss and fear that comes with watching what you care so deeply about suffer or wither up or bolt because of factors beyond our control. Without a stable, loving support system and a healthy perspective, the fear and shame of thinking you could have done better, more, faster, etc… can quickly overwhelm.
So, at some point, no matter how hard it is, we walk away and let what is, be. We can’t be everywhere all the time or we’ll drive ourselves straight into the ground. This means we acknowledge our limitations, we rest, we tend our spirits, we sit quietly with a glass of water, we pause, and breathe, and remind ourselves that any action of kindness, done with good intention, is sometimes the best we can give to a world we love so deeply.
All this is a means to say, as I have said a thousand times in these essays, every harvest is a miracle. Every week we fulfill our commitment is a complete gift. Again and again, I cannot emphasize enough– when it comes to food, please take nothing for granted.
***
These days, I make a point to walk in the dusky evenings. The heat of the day is still present but draining slowly from the sky. I walk with Archie up the north side of the fields, along the low swale that many years ago was logged and drained. Fortunately, by the time I arrived, the drain tile was broken and water burbled up in spots. One of the first things I did upon arriving was to plant water loving native shrubs and trees here in an effort to restore and clean the water that drains to our land and eventually daylights at the head of our canyon.
A decade and a half later, I keep returning to this place where I have found antlers shed and raccoon tracks and birch bark rubbed raw and swarms of wild bees and many other signs that the local wildlife appreciate my efforts. I revel in the pockets of cool air, the birds that flock and nest in the tall branches, the restorative smell of willow and wet silt, and the lanky adolescent cluster of native oaks that are old enough now to be laden with acorns. I revel in all this shade and shelter I planted and the gift it is to our world. The gift it is to me. Maybe, I think, this is the most important thing I’ll have done with my life.
That would be enough.
My walks to the low swale do not solve or fix or ease any of the stress of farming through climate change. But they are like the sound of a bell- waking me up to the present, reminding me to tend my thoughts and carefully craft my intentions. My low swale plants were selected with the specific goal to filter and clean all the runoff from neighboring properties. I see now, all these years later, how this peaceful place helps me filter out the noise of worry, helps me come back to being present to the magnificent works of living art that natural systems are, and- however imperfect and fraught with missteps- the living art that my hands have nurtured too.
This past Sunday eve, in the cool twilight, out of the silence, merely to the whisper of his name under my breath, Archie came bounding at me up out of the tall grasses, panting and wriggling and shaking from nose to tail, more excited to come to me than to track the numerous scents and sounds of the night. His joy, it made me smile. His loyalty, it made me shake off my weariness. His whole being, entirely present to my presence, it made me believe in the power of the smallest acts of kindness and kinship. ~AJ
Summer’s Eve in the Low Swale | A group of young oaks marks the edge of the shelterbelt.
“[…] Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.”