Nourishing Bites: What I Love
It seems like I’ve started so many essays over the years with “one of the things I love about farming” so much so that now I have to self-edit a little bit because I don’t want to sound like a broken record. But deep down, I can’t help myself. There are so many things I love about the work that I do.
However, in the heat of late June with a seemingly long summer on the horizon, things can get a little dicey. Thick, hot, summer weather is hands down the most grueling part of my year.
This is the point in the season when I feel I am carrying the most. The hot weight of so much work presses down on my shoulders and back. Tasks and to-do’s flit around me like our steely blue barn swallows chasing supper at dusk. The hours of each day pour over me so quickly I cannot possibly hope to catch a drink.
This is not the time of year I have space or bandwidth to make grand plans, commit to new endeavors, tackle big projects, or sign up for more of anything.
To be successful, it becomes increasingly important that I don’t try to think expansively but instead stick to the immediacy of the sweat and heat and plethora of tasks that crowd around me begging for attention. Prioritizing becomes a sheer act of will as so many things surge forth calling out for love.
Come summer solstice, we farmers have a long hike ahead.
There are still many weeks and weeks to seed and tend and harvest now that spring is giving way to summer. All transitions come with extra work - the spring plantings are still going strong and now the summer crops begin to add their voices to the rising chorus. Vines need trellising, tomatoes need mulching, the hay needs cut, and when we are fortunate (and how fortunate we have been) the harvests come rolling in like waves - a tide that does not cease but rolls, and rolls, and rolls. There is no other option but to embrace what is, and what is right now.
We must be ready to pick and catch and pull the bounty before the ebbing gifts- the whole reason for our exhaustive efforts- slip between our hands and fall back into the earth.
Over the years, I’ve begun to find a rhythm in this onslaught of work. At first it was nearly overwhelming, and I have to say, when I was farming solo, there were only three reasons I didn’t quit: (1) my family, (2) the land itself, and (3) I was simply, completely, absolutely unwilling to give up.
“It’s not the load that breaks you down, it’s the way you carry it.” — Lena Horne
Sow. Tend. Harvest. These are the verbs of summer.
This is the time of year where my day calendar remains oddly empty of appointments because it is a given that there is no time for appointments. One of those three verbs has already staked a claim - my days are filled with an exacting load of physical field work or the fantastic privilege of collecting and caring for abundant harvests. And in a really good year, farm life likes to make sure I am double booked. Often, in the span of a single breath, I find myself utterly exhausted and utterly in happy awe.
On Sunday, the day we “strive” to rest, Brad and I pulled 135 pounds of gorgeous broccoli from our field, nearly doubling the yield we harvested from a previous sowing. How do these gifts materialize? Right now, it is not for me to question. Right now is the time I’ve learned to let go of the reins. I no longer lead but rather follow my farm and all her manifest desire to bloom and blossom and burst forth into creation.
The basic realities of old-fashioned nitty gritty labor, day after day, in the sun and wind and through long months is so easily forgotten once you’re off the farm. Because in any single tomato, you can’t taste the hours of weeding, or the extra watering before dawn, or the time spent pruning and training in a 90 degree heat wave. And yet, it matters.
To me, such work can feel transient, and at the same time residual. I can weed out a row of onions once, twice, three times and for a brief few days my work is evident - then poof! Nature resumes her symphony and what I have labored over fades from vision... and yet it has changed the outcome of those glossy crystal-skinned onions without question. Like the new bark of the trees or another sleek, summer coat of hair on the donkeys, the work of the farm isn’t that of permanence, but rather of having enough experience to simply do what needs doing and know it will make all the difference.
When I’m on my hands and knees, half way down a long row, my back talking loudly, all I have to do is summon the thought of a winter day in my kitchen. I inhale the smell of warm onions sauteing in my favorite cast iron skillet and by the time I’ve exhaled, the joy of everything I do has returned.
It is impermanence that drives me to make sure the food my farm grows is appreciated and loved at a diversity of dinner tables across Clark County, not across the globe.
It’s vitally important to me that I know you and you know me and there is not a long haul truck trailer or a stack of shrink-wrapped boxes between us, but rather a working, loving farm and deep reverence flowing both ways.
Such ongoing gratitude is born from a growing understanding of what each meal, each plate of food has required to come to fruition. My hope is that you will find a way to perpetually celebrate the incredible and amazing way nature provides. Not once, not twice, but every single day. Every single leaf and root and rib is a gift, is it not? And that’s how all this impermanence can take permanent root in your life.
Nature herself, and this beloved farm, is certainly my permanent wellspring of inspiration. So the sweat, tired muscles, and a fully-booked summer calendar? Yes, of course! It’s what I love about farming. ~AJ
Our hen Midnight’s newly hatched chicks begin to discover each other and their world at April Joy Farm.
“Love is like the sea. It’s a moving thing, but still and all, it takes its shape from the shore it meets, and it’s different with every shore.”