This blog is supposed to be about the farm and everything that goes into it and comes out of it. A blog, at its best, should be a chronicle of things that happen in real time, written by the one who sets them in motion. Since there's no lack of activity around here, I thought I would have plenty of content. But the challenge is one of perspective.
At a certain point this season, I realized that this blog was becoming much more exclusively about food and the things we like to do with the products of our labor. That's the fun part for me; that's what inspires me to do all this work. And also, I've found, it's what inspires me to write.
I am a bit surprised at how challenging writing about the farm has been for me this summer. Once the grind gets grinding, you just kind of get sucked in and go with the flow as best you can. It's very hard to have any perspective on the relentlessness of it all, like trying to contemplate the meaning and beauty of a wave as it crashes over you and pulls you down.
That's why I was so glad to read our friend Ben James' article in Saturday's Daily Hampshire Gazette. He poetically put into words what I've been either unable to express, or avoiding admitting for fear that no one wants to hear me bitch. Thanks, Ben.
Here's an excerpt. Follow these links to read the whole article, or to learn more about his farm.
Row upon row, repetition rules farm life
I try to squeeze a nickel out of a minute with each pint of cherry tomatoes I sell, but here's what will ultimately last: not the nickel but the flavor of those tomatoes in my sons' memories, so that even as grown men no other food will ever taste as good.
Time on the farm is not static, it's not a given. It's not like a ladder with all the rungs evenly spaced apart. Rather it's a substance, a material, that we try to manipulate just as much as we do the tilth and the fertility of the soil.
How many tomatoes can we harvest before the lightning storm arrives? How many can we sell before they rot? How can we get everybody out weeding the carrots this afternoon, even though there are all those watermelons to pick? And how can I get November to come more quickly, so that Oona and Wiley and I can take a nap together, and the killing frost will give me some hours alone to read?
Amen, brother.
The Vegetable Pages
C.S.A. Shares
Restaurants & Wholesale
Farmers' Markets
In the Press