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| Rutabaga painting by Jaimie Wolf. |
It is
November, and about to rain. I decide to make beef stew for dinner as I hold a
giant rutabaga. For many years, calamities have befallen the rutabaga crop at
Simple Gifts Farm. An apprentice accidentally plowed them into the ground one
season. Another year they were infested with root maggots. The following season
we covered them with row cover to keep out the flies which lay root maggot
eggs, and the plants rotted in the humidity under there. But this year, there are bins of enormous,
bulbous, purple-yellow rutabagas at the farm. For these, my favorite of all
root vegetables. I am grateful. They are a simple gift, but the simplicity is
deepened with a counterpoint of complexity.
A farm
plunges us into the complexity of gratitude. To plant our hopes and livelihoods
in this particular place gives us – gives
us – so much to lose. To have so much to lose is a gift. As we plant and
tend and harvest with love, loss and abundance intertwine. Gratitude is not
turning one’s back on what is terrifying or what we have lost. It is pausing in
the perfect stillness in the world, to be sure, and it is also the tenderness
toward what we care about enough to be afraid.
Our
little family went to a performance by the Royal Frog Ballet recently, titled
“All Things Fall.” That the pageant on this theme played out on a neighboring
farm was fitting. The performance, like farming, was expansive and physical,
sometimes raw and inconclusive. The program included an essay, which asserted
this truth: “We realize that all things fall. The more life we have, the more
we have to lose, and we do, and we will.”
And
sometimes it is the abundance that is overwhelming. While immersed in life’s
waterfall of obligations – even when it is what we love – it is sometimes hard
to breathe. Farmer Jeremy, my husband, is coming home today from California,
from a board meeting of the Organic Farming Research Foundation, from another
loving task he does to engage with the world. I am making beef stew for dinner,
and proofreading a beautiful book, and wrestling with the compost bins, and
parenting my large and hilarious children. It is all so much.
The
refrigerator is overwhelmed, too. The vegetable drawer is completely inadequate
for the bags of greens and burly vegetables that march in from the farm. They
spill into the cheese drawer, crowd out the pot of leftover rice, push the
quart of maraschino cherries to the back (yes, even organic farmers have their
little red-dye-number-five secrets, which are quite tasty in manhattans). Yet I
take a deep breath and plunge in to find the potatoes, the carrots, the onions,
the celeriac, and the parsnips. Parsnips always make me think of Farmer Dave.
They are a favorite of his, and I think of how his eyes gleam with joy and a
dash of mischief as he describes how good
they are grilled, or roasted.
It is a
complex joy to share this farm with all of you. Running a CSA is a far more
personal, more complicated way to run a farm than wholesaling the goods we
produce. But it is because of that complex web of connections that we are so
overwhelmingly grateful to you. We hope you feel that nourishment of gratitude,
as you nourish us with your presence and your stake in the farm.
The main
season at the farm is coming to its pause. Most fields wear a green blanket of
cover crops. Yet – we keep at our work all year. The hoophouses are full of
greens, some just planted. The fallen leaves of this summer’s abundance steam
their way to compost that will build this farm’s soil. The walk-in cooler is
stacked with carrots, potatoes, and parsnips, and rutabaga. We look forward to
sharing our gratitude through the winter season ahead.
