We need 25 bunches of green kale. You got it?
I've got it.
I drag my knife across the gritty sharpener six times, and tuck it in my small harvest apron next to the bunch of rubber bands. I haul the big plastic barrel called a tomba off the truck, and carry it on my back towards the long beds of bushy, green, nutrient-packed goodness. The sky is probably as big and beautiful as always, but the morning mist obscures it for now. I can just see the autumn colors where the vegetables end and the forest begins.
The quiet of 7 a.m. is still upon the fields. I don't mind if the others want to talk, but I'm happy these days to walk a little further down the row to harvest in silence, especially in the morning. The kale is cold and wet in my hands as I roughly bunch up the leaves, and a quick slice of my stainless knife separates them from the stalk instantly. It's nice to handle sharp tools with confidence - no distractions, no blood, minimal effort, clean cuts, an attractive bunch of leafy greens. My now-practiced fingers twist the rubber band around the base of the leaves, triple up the loop, and toss it into the harvest pile. If my father the surgeon were still alive, he might smile to watch me using my hands and a knife to help take care of people.
230 bunches of salad turnips. They come out of the ground with a faint satisfying pop as the tap root comes free. What beautiful white shoulders and smooth bodies. 170 heads of cabbage. Walk quickly down the line, cutting and leaving them lay. We'll double back to toss them to the receiver, who puts them in the big crate being carried by the tractor. 5 tombas of spinach. Sigh. Spinach is tedious for me, but our shareholders love it. I bend over to slice it at ground level into handfuls, then toss it in the tub. Seems like forever just to fill one, especially if it's a weedy row. Next, an entire bed of acorn squash, four rows at 800 feet long...??!! All 8 of us are out there. I'm taking 5-gallon buckets as fast as I can and dumping them into crates on the trailer as the tractor idles along. 6 people are on the ground carrying me more full buckets and taking away the empties to fill. We find flow for a while, brown skin and white and the comaraderie of a system that has harmony like a fine-tuned John Deere.
The farm keeps moving. Harvest, plow it under, seed the next crop, weed the beds, hope for the best. Lay down plastic, take it back up. Watch the satellite imagery as the weathermen tell you that a hurricane is coming up the coast. The rain comes and you watch it fall, taking in the butternut squash anyway and hoping for the best. We lose some lettuce to bottom rot, but the broccoli looks beautiful. The first round of zucchini is delicious, and the second is wiped out by disease that decimates the whole planting. Those radishes are going to save us this year, she says. I smile. How did the share boxes look this week? They were beautiful, I say. Others nod.
The work doesn't have to break your back, but you need to keep moving to stay on pace with the flow of nature. Your hands get dirty. It's hard to drag a tomba full of celery 100 feet to the truck, let alone lift it up. (A tomba, pictured here, is probably about 20 gallons in volume.)
You start at 6 a.m. in the summer, 7 a.m. in the fall. If you're the owner and things need to get done, you get up earlier. The cucurbits (zucchini, patty pan, summer squash, cucumbers, watermelons, and the like) scratch your arms as you reach into the plant for harvest. A bee stings you. You smell like onions all day after harvesting them. Why worry? You're working on a farm.
There is tremendous beauty on the farm. The aforementioned quiet mornings are rich in tiny nuances. In late August, a red pepper right off the plant is a taste explosion. The smooth, deep purple skin of the eggplant is so satisfying to hold, putting them in crates by the dozen. The cold morning air is bracing as you head out at first light on the bed of the truck. The sweet aroma of basil fills the wash barn while we pack the leafy bunches into brimming boxes. The warm feeling of cooperation with the crew to quietly get the job done day after day feels incredibly human.
Working on the farm this year, I've learned the lesson yet again that it is important to have as much of your life as possible be connected to physical reality. Our lives are fundamentally somatic experiences, regardless of how alluring it may seem to live in virtual worlds of our own design. Working with our hands, through easy times and hard, is of the utmost importance. As we put our shoulders to the wheel of a task that needs to get done, we can learn to ride out our inner dialogue that longs to contextualize our experiences with mental contortions.
When we lose touch with our bodies, when we give the captain's wheel to our fearful, ego-centered selves, we rob ourselves of authentic experiences in life. If we're bored, we seek distractions from the computers in our pockets or recorded music that we know inspires a certain mood. If we face a task we dislike or disdain, we try to speed through it if we think we can get away with a shoddy job. If we're afraid of not getting rewarded for being bright and cutting-edge, we learn to posture ourselves as clever by playing with language and sticking to areas where we think we already know the answers. If we think we're being treated unfairly, we create a story that we repeat in our heads about how we have the moral high-ground and how to seek justice and/or retribution. We behave much like children when they spend more energy resisting reality than it will take to accept and complete the task at hand.
In the face of our mind's best efforts to sabotage our own growth, it is empowering to remember that comfort is the enemy of joy. When we ride out our reactions of discomfort, we can get to the other side of our petty stories and discover the joy of simply being with what is all around us and within us. It is a spiritual leap to learn to be with discomfort and not ascribe meaning to it. Not having the right answers, methodology, approach, insight means nothing about me as a person. Rather, it is a chance to open up and have an authentic learning experience.
My own work with meditation is a reflection of this. When I sit in meditation, and my mind keeps racing along thinking about things, that is what is. I accept it, sit the 30 minutes, and get up at the end. Tomorrow I will do it again. I've noticed that my ego goes wild like a chihuahua on bad acid when I simply accept what I'm thinking and feeling, yet refrain from jumping to act on the impulse.
What do you mean you're going to keep writing? You've never published anything. Why keep going?
You're really going to keep working on the farm? What about the doubts you have that you should be doing something to make a bigger splash instead?
You're going to take a pottery class? You know you'll just go for a while and then drop it. Why bother?
All these things and many more have flowed through my neurons while I'm sitting on the cushion. I'm still on the farm, still writing, still throwing pottery, and still trying to not take my ego's stories as the Truth. And miraculously, I'm still alive. You might even say I'm thriving.
If this were an after-school special, I suppose the take-home message is that so much good stuff happens in life when we follow our discomfort, heading towards the things that our egos just KNOW we can't do. A great way to do that is to find a task for your hands and body to do, and get down to it. Bake a sweet potato casserole. Clean the bathroom. True your bike wheels. Take a carpentry class. Go to a silent retreat. Turn off your computer for 72 hours. Breathe into the discomfort. Remember, the chatter in your head isn't your friend, and it will fade away. It may reappear. Keep going. You are practicing being alive and in touch with the wonderful self that is your body, in this amazing world.
