Sunday morning I was up with the sun and in my car by 7 a.m. driving an hour east past orchards lined with hundreds and hundreds of trees dangling lush, ripe peaches (and equally as many roadside stands selling the very same fresh-picked peaches) into the beautiful farmland of upstate New York to spend my morning on a peaceful farm weeding and harvesting in the rich earth and bright sun.
My friend Becca and I are part of a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) group that brings us fresh vegetables from the family owned and operated Peacework Organic Farm every week from May to November. We split a full share of produce every week that we pick up at Abundance Co-Op near the theatre, and in return for these large bundles of fresh veggies, we pay a small sum of money to the farm (guaranteeing the farm a reliable income), and agree to work a few distribution shifts (weighing, bundling, and handing out the produce to the other CSA members), and a few farm shifts (weeding, harvesting, cleaning, hauling the produce from the farm to the distribution site, or whatever else the farmer and his wife need help with that week).
While the thought of rising at 6:15 on a Sunday morning (you know, like hardworking farmers do every.single.day. rain or shine) wasn’t particularly appealing, I had been really looking forward to the farm work for the past several months.
I think it’s nice to be reminded where your food comes from. It’s good to remember that your food doesn’t just appear at the grocery store or in a stall at the farmers market, but that the farm, the earth it comes from, is carefully plotted out, the soil is prepared, seeds are planted, meticulous and timely care is given to things like sunlight, rain, pests, nutrients, diseases, weeding, weather, seasons, etc., and food is picked, inspected, cleaned, bundled and packaged – all before it ever even gets to you. Even the smallest carrot or leaf of lettuce that you can eat in one bite and be done with forever was a long time in the making.
And at small farms like the one we support, all that work is done by hand. By people. By families. And these people work outside twelve hours a day, every single day, in gorgeous weather and in atrocious weather. They worry about too much rain, too little rain, a bad crop of seeds, woodchucks, weeds choking the beets, and what happens when Late Blight infests their entire tomato crop that they have to destroy in order to keep it from spreading – if it will reach the potatoes before they can kill it and what impact that will have on them financially. Their hands touch our food – to plant it, to weed around it, to pull it out of the ground, and to clean it with cold spring-fed water.
It was nice to reconnect to the earth, and directly to the people, who feed us. It was gratifying to get down and dirty for four hours with the farmer, his wife, their hired hand, two mousing dogs, and a handful of other CSA members early on a Sunday morning out in the boonies to share in the hard work and good stories of the muddy boots, dirty jeans, sunburned arms, sweaty faces, big hearts, wise brains, and kind smiles that make sure we have food every week. I was happy and humbled to learn about the farm and to pick our food, so I can always remember where and who it comes from, and to be grateful for it.
And it was fun too. Our group started with cutting big, beautiful, colorful, fragrant stems of basil (6 varieties – regular, lemon, lime, purple opal, cinnamon, and thai) and grouping them into good-sized bundles for all the members to receive in their shares this week. Then we moved on to harvesting potatoes – on our knees beside a long trench of dirt, digging deep into the ground to find yellow potatoes. I could have dug for potatoes all day! It was glorious! I loved it! I felt like a truffle pig searching for truffles and I enjoyed every second of it, with dirt caked onto my knees, up to my elbows and on my hairline, and a small twinge of joy every time I unearthed another potato to add to the three five-gallon buckets full of potatoes I harvested. When the potatoes were gathered it was time to weed around the parsley and pull weeds as tall as I am (no joke) from the rows of beets. At noon we washed off in refreshing, cold water from the spring-fed spigot (which tasted and felt heavenly!) by the vegetable washing and storage shed, and loaded up the cars with the produce for the drive back to Rochester. Truly, it was awesome and I’m excited for another opportunity to work on the farm, when the chance comes around.
*Sorry for the lack of personal pictures, but a working farm is not the place for iPhones. It was beautiful out there and I wish I could share it with you. The produce shots of the cabbage and carrots at the top are from Peacework Organic Farm and the gvocsa webpage, and the truffle pig is a pretty accurate representation of how awesome I felt trufflin’ for potatoes. Also, truffle pigs are the best. Love it!
