The Reluctant Farmer

Once in college someone remarked “I can equally see you as the CEO of a corporation or an organic farmer.”

I liked that assessment of me. I had often fantasied about the possibility of both. Never mind the simple truth that until that time I had focused my efforts on becoming what other people thought I could be, rather than discovering and cultivating who I actually was. None the less, it was a moment when I really wondered who did I want to be? 

Here I sit on the cusp of my sixtieth birthday to say I’m still working all that out. As I turned thirty I remember thinking I’d spent the first thirty years of my life figuring out how to survive. I thought about trying to put what I learned into practice.

Upon graduating college, something I did at the age of thirty-seven, the idea of graduate school intrigued me, but the notion of accruing more debt on my back for the required amount of time seemed too much. I just needed to get a job and take care of my two children. I was a single divorced broke mom who needed to get to work full time to provide for my children. 

I loved growing food. I had maintained vegetable gardens whenever and wherever my housing situation provided the opportunity to so. I watched my dad recreate his life, arise out of the wreckage of his alcoholic downfall into a new love and a new life that included living on an organic farm and having a big garden. Peace was palpable in his new life. He was about ten years sober and he was my north star. Everything he could not be in my early life he became in my early adulthood. I sought him out. He showed up for me by welcoming me into his life and helping me by actively loving my children in a way he could not actively love me when I was his child. He was no longer the lawyer he had formerly been, his life’s work had become his life. It was pretty attractive. 

I started cultivating my life by tending a garden. A tiny step toward the intentional nurturing of something. I put my kids to work, digging, weeding and harvesting. I have a vivid memory of taking Alex out into the garden one day and she was eating broccoli as lunch straight off the plant. That memory is burned into me as something pure and good. 

My association with farming was all too romantic. At thirty-five, I spent a weekend on Caretaker Farm, in Williamstown, Massachusetts with my new love. I was captivated by not only the beauty of the landscape of the Berkshires, but the rhythm of the daily routine. A collaborative effort with intentionality to accomplish not only the tasks of the food being produced, but the chores inherent in feeding and caring for the people doing all the work. I witnessed what it meant to truly live in a day. All task were quantified and parsed out on a rotating schedule each player willing to take on their responsibility. It was beautiful and yet I quickly realized real farming was real work. What was really attractive was the idea that the farmers work was gritty, real and all about giving into something so base and real for the purpose of proving something beautiful for others. Again, tending to the life of the plants for the benefit of the lives of the people who eat the plants. A beautiful endeavor. I married into the family of these farmers. Sam and Elizabeth Smith are the parents of my sister-in law Barclay. She and Ed’s brother Tony farm one hundred acres in Norwood, Colorado. I have spent many days and nights working beside them in the intervening twenty-five years since we’ve become family.  My skills and experience growing food and understanding more fully the passion with which farmers attend to their work. Nurturing the land, dealing with the reality of what is, holding the hope that the work will bear fruit for themselves, their community. This is the messages that resonates deeply within.

“Identify, don’t compare.” A lesson often heard amongst the people I hang around. Giving into the impulse to tend the earth and grow something good in a world that spins wild at times feels like a luxury. To do less in a contemporary culture that seems driven toward the impulse to do more reminds me of my recovery from addiction. Simplicity seems somehow like a radical alternative. I staked my claim by naming our tiny farm. 

Wharf Cove Farm, Peaks Island. I grow food, I raise laying hens, I host live musical performances, I volunteer in my community, swim in the ocean and attend to the business of daily living, all of it sometimes reluctantly. Daring to live a dream is scary. The list of tasks and chores involved even on our tiny island farm are never ending. All of this made possible of course by Ed’s professional job in the world that provides the means necessary to undertake this agrarian lifestyle. 

Again, acceptance of the reality that in contemporary America, the opportunity to own land, a concept I find deeply problematic. We are stewards of this land, granted to us through the white colonialist laws that assumed control from indigenous People of The Dawn. Peaks Island is unceded Wabanaki territory.  The privilege we experience were built on the foundation of imperialist colonial history. We own home and I am able to choose work close to home. My job is to help bring something beautiful to the world. This feels luxurious and I humbly accept the reality built through generations of systemic white privilege and on the back of my hardworking immigrant family.  

The internal messages that speak to me saying I should do something more productive with my life are old thinking. I’ve spent most of my adult life working toward the balance of the demands of our family and the deep inner desire to be of service to my community.  What I now know, and trust is that whatever messages I have internalized or whatever internal struggle with self-doubt or self-criticism or the judgments of others, are really none of my business. Notice the thoughts breathe in gratitude. Notice the breath, exhale acceptance. Repeat. By paying attention to the work at hand, the cultivation of the peace and acceptance of what is becomes my soul objective. There is a pace of life that suits. A pure deep exhale that comes with letting go of the drive toward being more than just doing. Even when I know slowing my breath and noticing what is seems right and good accepting and embracing this simple truth chafes.  I pile up distractions and look for reasons not to simply attend to the business at hand. Farming is a good way to slow the heck down- like down to the rhythm of the pace at which plants grow and things decay. Slow things down to the pace of walking or a heart beating. Slow things down to notice breathe in gratitude, exhale acceptance. Truly a countercultural action. 

Today’s mantra is something like- This is just what I’m doing today.  Today it raining and it feels like enough to write.  The gardens are being nourished by the rain as am I. There will be weeds to pull, muscles to strain and chores to attend to. For now, at Wharf Cove Farm I sit in gratitude and acknowledgment of the passing of time that has brought me to this one lovely moment. The next thirty years will be what it is. My hope it is pay attention and be generous and kind.