Farm Sweet Home

A little over a week ago, I bade farewell to San Francisco and my generous friend Meg, who had hosted me for a yoga-filled four days in that great little city, and set off North for the unknown. My new home, American River Ranch, in Rancho Cordova, awaited me at the end of a journey that included three trains and a pick-up truck, but took just around three hours.

What I found at the other end of the trip is just about the best new home and job I could ask for. American River Ranch is a forty-acre farm with about five acres in vegetable production. It’s in a blue-collar suburb of Sacramento, and is nestled between a residential neighborhood, the sports fields of a local park, and a twenty-five mile-long bike path, which runs along the American River into Sacramento, fifteen miles west, and Folsom, ten miles to the East.

I live here with three other apprentices, with whom I share a common kitchen, bathroom, and living space, in an old field hand bunkhouse next to which our 10’ by 10’ canvas tents are set on platforms. Four other staff--the second-year apprentice, the Farmer/Educator (our supervisor), one of the youth job corps leaders, and the assistant farm manager--share a duplex ranch house two hundred feet away, and just between is the farm manager’s cabin. The organization’s main offices are in a house here on the property, too, so there’s a good-sized group of fifteen to twenty of us here most days.

We work from 8am-5pm (7am starting next week), with an hour break for lunch (which is cooked for us and which we eat together around a long table outside in front of the office), and every day so far, besides setting gopher traps in the morning, our work has been different. The four of us are equally excited to be learning how to graft fruit trees, dig garden beds, harvest and sort oranges and grapefruit (Oh, California!!), and build a mobile chicken coop, and spend our off-hours marveling to each other about what a great life we’ve got.

Our “teachers” are four young farmers, between one and four years older than me. They are very smart, laid back yet efficient, and very patient, humble, and kind. They explain clearly and quickly, then hand the reins over to us, making it clear they are available to clarify and correct. It is humbling to be so green and exposed before these experienced peers, yet they make it as comfortable as could be expected.

I’m still in the honeymoon period, for sure, (“for sure” is a favorite phrase of my new Californian friends) but I’m breathing it in deeply. With the sun making a moving masterpiece of the landscape each day, I can’t imagine the post-honeymoon could be so bad.