Nourishing Bites | Welcoming Trust
Plant and Hope | Butterhead lettuce and sunlight.
Welcoming Trust
And now it is time.
Time to wash crates and wash sinks and wash the walk-in coolers.
Time to assemble spreadsheets and survey forms.
Time to disc and prepare the soil for the fall crops yet to sow.
Time to trellis lanky tomato vines and thin exuberant grape buds.
Time to pull shade cloth and row covers on and off, off and on, to protect and shelter and shade and warm through the fits and starts of spring weather patterns which have brought us hail and heat in a crazy quilt fashion.
Time to harvest crinkly heads of lettuce and deep green beet leaves that startle me awake to the power of miraculous Life. Oh my goodness LIFE! Each kohlrabi and broccoli and cabbage, each oregano and carrot and scallion, each comfrey and Gravenstein apple bloom, each Mason bee and bleating goat and singing frog and nesting wood duck and newborn barn owl-- what pullulating LIFE lives within the borders of this farm.
Now, yes, it’s time to write the first essay of the 2021 season.
***
2021 is utterly unique - a coming home and expanding of community in equal measure that I could not have orchestrated nor conjured up in the thousands of iterations of April Joy Farm I have spent visioning and dreaming.
And yet, I sit writing today, incredulous that here before me- out the east office window past the lime green budding maple leaves and across the seeding house, the vineyard, into the vegetable fields and up into the furthest reaches of the east fence posts of April Joy Farm- is a great unfurling of deep and true community.
I could not have written this story- I am only the scribe taking down these facts:
This year we welcome a total of 101 CSA families to the April Joy Farm community.
We welcome back into our fold our dearest farm caretaker Courtney while also welcoming our most kindhearted first farmhand Hillary as a CSA member.
We welcome back our very first apprentice Lauren and two new emerging farmers, Darnell and Jordan.
With my tears of thankfulness still welling up, we welcome an unofficial farm carpenter who, alongside his patient and generous family, poured weeks into dismantling and rebuilding six of our field greenhouses after the Valentine's Day snowstorm left us heavy with despair. For all you tomato lovers- their work is the reason a tomato crop is even possible this year.
We welcome new pup Archie and my two farm-loving nieces and four gentle goats and just this past week Midnight’s tiny-as-a-teacup newly hatched chicks.
We welcome our precious extended family, including our most ardent, dependable, behind the scenes, everyday angels who fix leaks, who mend spirits, who haul and lift and pack and sort and clean and nurture and tend and forgive: Mom and Dad and Dusty and Karen and Phyllis and Mary.
To our emerging Fruit Valley partnership, we welcome twenty CSA families, two school resource center directors, an extraordinary program coordinator, nearly sixty supporters, a generous metal artist, and a passionate community chef. (More on all this in the coming weeks.)
Yes. Can you see?
A great welcoming is unfolding.
Although I could not have dreamed of this particular iteration of April Joy Farm, the essence of my dream remains intact because I did not confine its form or demand a certain shape or look. This holding- but not too tightly- is a dance that takes practice rooted in trust. It has taken year after year of folding and unfolding my knees onto the soil - sometimes dry and rough, sometimes soft and giving, to plant and hope, plant and hope, plant and hope.
Trusting as a practice is like learning to dance with your dream in a way that allows a flourishing of both partners - at times I lead, at times I let my Dream lead. This is the same trust I employ in the fields. Farming in its highest form is a conversation with Nature. Sometimes you speak, but more often you must listen intently, you must reflect, you must bend as I imagine the pasture grasses bend towards me in a fond acknowledgement of the sacredness of that early morning light we share.
Even before the first rhubarb stalk is harvested, we have so much to be thankful for, so much to celebrate, several hurdles we have already jumped over or walked around. Forecasted seed shortages avoided. A too-short, weary winter full of un-deferrable projects and maintenance, COVID concerns, skyrocketing material and shipping costs, packaging compromises. The need to bend and shape-shift, to adapt and creatively problem solve grows ever greater.
A farmer friend reports from Georgia that his work has been delayed because he had to rescue one of his employees from the side of the road. She had run out of gas on the way to the farm due to fuel shortages.
Yes, the hurdles for us farmers are increasingly unpredictable and wearing.
All this is a means to say that the sheer labor required to arrive at the very first CSA pickup day is something of which I have not often written, but feels especially potent now.
So as we celebrate first harvests and fill our plates, we will not for one second assume tomorrow's full plate is certain. But we will, with utmost intention, plant and hope.
***
And now it is time.
Time to open the farm gate and my arms wide and trustingly.
Time to watch our collective efforts nourish us in unforeseen and powerful ways.
I say:
Welcome now.
Welcome to this blessed work.
Welcome to this blessed place. ~AJ
“Everything in nature invites us constantly to be what we are.”