Fertile Ground USA...Celebrating the people behind the plow

July 7
    I’ve been thinking lately about what it is that draws me to farming, what makes me believe I’m suited for it.  There are societal reasons of course, but I’m not the sort to make a lifestyle choice based around a strong philosophical conviction.  What I’ve come to love is farming’s ability to give you space.  Space to think, space to breathe, space to move and be restless and be restful.  Space.
    Let’s backtrack. I didn’t wake up one day and decide I wanted to farm.  In fact, the first farm job I had terrified me. I had been drawn to the farm because of the non-profit that owned and directed their mission.  Hunger relief and community health were at the center of this farm’s workings, and I gravitated towards the combination of public service and physical work.  But mostly, I thought, the physical work of farming would just give me the credibility to call myself part of the non-profit side of the operation. I applied to many other jobs, actually, thinking that working at a farm might be a bit too laborious and a bit too socially isolating (I would be a member of a very small farm crew, after all) for my taste.  But all my other options fell through, and upon arriving back from a stint in South Africa, I began at the farm.
    Although I had believed I would be very involved with the office workings of the farm, it quickly became evident to me that I was going to be in the fields all day every day.  More surprising was that I realized just as quickly that I had no desire to be in the office, and loved my time outside. I was sweaty and grimy, making more mistakes than I’d like to admit, and really connecting with my handful of co-workers.
    Idealism, you say.  It’ll never last.  Listen, I’ve tried having office jobs. No, to be fair, I’ve tried office internships (I’ve never lasted longer than a few months).  It doesn’t take long for me to feel my life energy draining out of me and into the isolation of only communicating with a computer for hours on end.  It just doesn’t jive.  Everything that I love about farming is absolutely absent in the other jobs I’ve tried.
    On the farm, you have to be self-directed. No one can make you hoe faster or harvest more quickly except yourself.  There are no promotions to entice you to put in longer hours. It’s just you and the plants and the open air.
    People-wise, farming is a wonderful synthesis of group work and solitary time.  I find I do my best thinking at work. Something about having my hands busy in the soil or splashing around in the water after harvest liberates my mind.  I’ve had thoughts that border on revelation at work after long, lonely hours. And yet I’ve had some of the most thought-provoking and personal conversations of my life while harvesting, seeding, and washing.  
    This is true even within the larger farming community. There is a sort of camaraderie that emerges from sharing in the kind of work that really demands of you your energy and strength, a work that is at once tedious and immensely gratifying, humble and remarkably beautiful.
    If I wake up restless one morning, full of agitation and energy, I can harness that sensation into my day’s work. There’s nothing like hauling bales of hay for mulch or pounding tomato stakes into compacted earth to rid you of your antsiness.  Or if I come to work emotionally fried, needing to rest, I find solace in the rhythms and repetition of the work.  There’s no need to impress, just to go through the motions, to care for the plants, be outdoors.  To some manual work may not seem like rest, but to anyone who’s ever taken comfort in gardening, a hike, or a swim, they understand. There’s a sense of holistic rejuvenation in the work on a farm, a sense of cycle and rebirth, of need and fulfillment, of simplicity.
    And then there are the more obvious perks.   I get to distribute and eat beautiful food that I’ve helped to nurture, from seed to harvest. There is no pretense to my work- I wake up every morning and throw on yesterday’s dirty tank top and dust-encrusted hiking pants.  And the concept of needing to set aside time for exercise is foreign to me during the season; I spend my day physically exhausting myself rather than restlessly toe-tapping under my desk.
I am awake to see the sun climb up over the trees to pain their tops fiery pink.  I breathe fresh air. The weather dictates my work.  I feel the rain on my back while I crawl along weeding and the mid-afternoon sun as my workdays near their end.  
    I may not be able to sustain a lifetime of full-time farming, I’ve already admitted that to myself. But until I figure out if any other career can afford me the sense of freedom and space that farming offers, I’ll wake with the work of the fields in my hands and my head, reveling in the life it allows me to live.

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