Coming back

I've had itchy fingers for a while now.  I've had lots of time to think, and I've found bits of narrative floating through my brain, just begging to be written down.  A few weeks ago, I listened to the audiobook version of David Sedaris's  When You are Engulfed in Flames, which he narrates in his delightfully dry, nasal voice.  That week David Sedaris narrated my thoughts.  It was awesome.

But I haven't written a post since last June, and, though these fingers have been itching since at least January, it's taken me until now to take the plunge.  To be honest, I've struggled the most with the question of honesty and audience.  I am so eager to share what I'm doing and thinking, but at the same time, I'm scared to death of just that.  My written self is way more revealing than my spoken self; it's scary to think about how much I'm exposing through these posts.  On the other hand, I love having an audience,  and I think that, however uncomfortable, the vulnerability I feel because of what I share with "the world" is ultimately a good thing.

And while I also struggle do decide who I want to write for (for me? or for you?  Both, I think, but who more?), I know that I often feel very, very far away from many of the most important people in my life, and I want so badly for them to know about my life on the other side of the country.

So my (growing) season resolution will be to sit down and write, every now and again.  I'm not going to fuss with finding the perfect words, or the perfect photo to fit the post, because those details, I find, have more often kept me away from the keyboard.  I will sit, I will write, I will click the "Publish" button, and I will share my stories with whoever wants to read them.  Starting now.

There is SO much to tell, and I just can't let it pile up anymore!  One month ago, Eric and I moved from "The Ranch" where we had lived for eleven months (first in tents, then, starting in December, in a room in "The Duplex" with the rest of the farm staff), to the Hurley Farm, or more precisely, "The Farm on Hurley Way."  This is the one and a half-acre backyard farm that the founders of Soil Born Farms took over twelve years ago and slowly transformed into a Garden of Eden in the middle of a sprawly, shopping plaza-filled neighborhood.  Eric and I have been given the amazing opportunity to farm this little jewel for Soil Born as contractors through a farmer training grant from the USDA.  After learning the ropes last season on the ranch, this year we will attempt to apply what we've learned and see what it's like to be new farmers, with the bonus support of our mentors at Soil Born.   We live on-site at the Hurley Farm, and have a significant amount of autonomy, which is both liberating and scary.

So far, things are going really well.  Winter has skipped the Central Valley this season, and instead of the rain cloud that usually camps out over Sacramento from November through February, we've had nothing but blue skies and mild weather.  Which means that instead of starting planting in early March (this week), we started back in January, and have been shaping garden beds and readying the farm for the season ever since.  We're going to grow a range of produce this season, which we'll sell to Soil Born for the CSA and farm stand, as well as to a few restaurants in Sacramento, including my new employer, OneSpeed Pizza, which makes ridiculously delicious pizzas out of high-quality, responsibly-sourced ingredients.  I started serving there two nights a week in January, which has been a great complement to the farm bubble.


One of the exciting projects we're taking on this year is raising ducks!  We now have twelve hilarious Indian Runner ducks, most of which are much bigger than they were in this photo, and happily living outside in their own little house, spending their days running around in a cluster and munching on grass.  We will move them around on some of our garden beds when they get a little bigger, eating up the slugs and aphids and weeds, and will lay yummy eggs for us to eat and maybe sell.  We also snagged a bunch of hens from the Ranch, so we are poultry farmers now, doing morning "animal chores" and deriving entertainment from watching these little ones and wrangling chickens when they get out of their "paddock."  (I've got to get Eric tackling a chicken on video one of these days, it's hilarious!).

Much more to tell, but I'm spent! Also satisfied to be at it again.  Thanks for reading!  It feels good to be back.

The Sweetest Fruit

I ate a ripe peach off a tree on Monday. This morning we harvested our first gorgeous, multi-colored potatoes for a restaurant order. And this afternoon I reached down into the depths of the tomato plant jungle I was trellising and plucked the first burstingly juicy, ripe Sungold cherry tomato. The lunch Emily and I made today had summer squash in every dish. It's official: summer is HERE!!

It's been months since I last wrote. For a while I felt a nagging twinge of guilt whenever I'd think about how long it'd been since I last wrote a blog post. But then I got over it. I'd write again when I felt like it! In the meantime, I was busy living (and loving) the life I wasn't writing about. Nothing wrong with that!

Admittedly, there are weeks that have been harder to savor than others, days when I find myself glancing at my watch, living from break to break, losing patience with the endless weeding stretching from here to October. But then the fruit started coming, and I now understand how unspeakably precious this food is, for the patience and the dedication and the sweat and the sore backs and the love and the sore feet and the sunburns and the blisters that made it possible. Growing food is hard! Growing good food, in a way that leaves the earth you use and the people you feed better than they were before, is REALLY hard. And indescribably important. I'm so blessed to be able to help out.


The L-R-B (Leaf/Root Block)


Weeding the Squishes.

Our first pepper, just hangin' out.



My first tiny-tomato bite.



And finally, some potato portraits....


Greg.

Guy.

Cristina.

Eric.
Emily.


And Me.

An Education

By far the most striking emotional experience of my apprenticeship thus far has revolved around the learning I am doing on a daily basis. I am constantly aware of how incompetent I am in all farm-related, practical, hands-on. It's a very vulnerable position to be in, to begin each new task from square one, especially when our teachers, the farmers here, are guys who are around my age. Fortunately, they are the most patient and humble of teachers, gently but deliberately offering us opportunities to grow and making us feel safe and comfortable to make mistakes.

Our "professors" giving a harvest training

Even more humbling was learning from our volunteer last week, Mira, a sixteen year-old who stayed with us during her spring break from an Environmental and Social Justice-themed semester program at a school nearby. Mira grew up on a homestead in North Carolina, and was homeschooled until last semester, when she decided to spend the remaining two years of high school at various semester-long programs around the country. Not only will she graduate with a fairly in-depth education in Environmental and Social Justice, Politics and Government (from last semester's program in DC), and urban history and culture (from next semester in New York City) she's also impressively skilled in all things homesteading: carpentry, animal raising, breadmaking, wool spinning, knitting, and welding, to name a few. I want to be like Mira when I grow up.

Admittedly, I was pretty intimidated at first by this sixteen year-old girl wonder. I already felt green enough, having to confront my ineptitude with power tools, plant propagation, and plant and pest identification, and wondering frequently, "What have I learned in the past twenty-eight years?" Now here was this girl, twelve years my junior, who did it all with ease; she was giving the farmers lessons on carpentry and metal working. After a few days of wide-eyed disbelief, I realized that she could teach me a lot, if I just got let go of the fact that she's a high school kid.

Mira, my sixteen year-old hero*

So I got over it. I apprenticed myself to her as she was designing pulley systems for the egg-collection doors in the mobile chicken coop we were building. She'd give me a small task, like screwing in an eye-hook, and half the time I'd still need her help, or she'd gently correct the work I'd done, explaining why it'd be better to do it this way instead of that. I spent the afternoon learning how to bang metal wire into hooks and securely attach pulleys and latches and cables. And then I learned how to whittle a handle. And then she gave me a breadmaking lesson. And then she taught me a knitting stitch I'd been trying to figure out.

Mira and me, showing off our work*

Working with Mira really drove home the fact that I am in control of my education here. I will gain a lot of skills and knowledge no matter what, but to get the most out of my time here will require me to surrender myself to the feelings of discomfort and vulnerability that go along with learning. I'm trying to be patient with myself as I fumble around awkwardly with new tools and new tasks. I'm recognizing that it's okay not to know for sure how to do something before you do it. In fact, sometimes you can only learn by just going for it, accepting that it might not work out perfectly, but when it doesn't, that just means you'll know how to do it better next time.

The other day my friend Kevin came to visit from San Francisco. He was the first visitor I'd had, and it was really great to take him on a tour of the farm. There was so much to share with him, and I realized, while describing plant propagation in the greenhouse, that I knew what I was talking about! These words--this language--was coming out of my mouth that, up until a month ago, I didn't know at all. We've only just scratched the surface, but the knowledge I've gained in just a month is truly awesome. It's so exciting to think of what's to come during the next seven months.

Learning about crop planning in our Thursday afternoon class

The launch of the chicken tractor

Another spectacular sunset

* These photos were taken by the lovely and photographically-gifted Cristina Martinez-Canton

March at the Ranch

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.

California, I'm coming home.

This is where you will find me for the next eight months, beginning March 1. I'm packing up and moving to California. Sacramento, more specifically, or rather, to this farm right outside of Sacramento. I'll be working as a farm apprentice there for the upcoming season, until the end of October. I'll be living in a tent and getting paid close to nothing, but I couldn't be happier. This adventure combines a number of goals I've had for the past few years:

1) Live on the West Coast;
2) Work for a full season on a farm;
3) Get involved with a project that's improving food access for low-income populations; and
4) Live simply.

I had had two previous interviews for this position before the final phone interview last Tuesday, so the possibility had nestled itself comfortably into my brain as just that: a possibility. I had pretty well decided that it was a long-shot, too, because I was unable to go out and visit for a working interview, as had the other candidates. So it was a bit of a shock when I found out, a few hours after the interview, that I had been offered the position, and then decided soon after to accept. It was a quick transition from "life as usual" to "moving across the country in a month."

So, is farming my Job? I'm not sure. People keep asking me what's next, after the apprenticeship is over. I don't have a clue, which is fine. I'm still getting used to the first next, which will be upon me in just three weeks. If I love this, then perhaps I will continue farming and gardening in some capacity. I don't see myself becoming strictly a commercial farmer, but working with a non-profit, educational farm could be great. Maybe I'll realize that a backyard garden is about as much "farming" as I care to do. I know myself well enough to know that I won't know until I do it, and "next" will remain a question mark for many more months. At the end of the day, this apprenticehip might be a career move, but that's not necessarily the point.

So now, I'm getting organized. I'm gathering and sorting and purchasing things that'll prepare me for eight months on a farm. I feel like I'm going abroad again--I keep having to remind myself that it's okay not to bring everything; I'll be able to buy what I haven't brought once I'm out there. California only seems like a foreign country.

And, I'm trying to prepare psychologically for the change. I've had about the coziest winter of my life this year, doing crafts and cooking daily in my parents' comfortable home, reading classic literature by the fire while watching the snow fall. Though it's hard to imagine exactly what it'll be like, I know for sure that nearly all of these comforts won't be a part of my life come March 1. So the challenge will be to maintain the Zen contentment I've got going on here amidst a much more demanding, more dynamic and hopefully fulfilling, lifestyle. Now, however, I've got to get back to my knitting.