Читать книгу A Bushel's Worth - Kayann Short - Страница 8

Each day, we are the beneficiaries of farmgiving, the boundless and bountiful generosity created by placing our lives alongside the land.

Dreams of Plenitude

“How about a few herbs for our salad? Do you like herbs?”

“Sure. Whatcha got?

“Let’s walk out and see.”

Years ago, when I first met John at the university where we both taught, I was delighted to learn he owned a farm. I had fond memories of summer vacations gathering eggs and playing with baby kittens in the hayloft at my grandparents’ farms, so when John invited me for dinner at Stonebridge Farm to celebrate my birthday, I accepted. I would get to know more about John and I would get to spend time on a farm. Not a bad date.

The sun was still warm as John showed me around Stonebridge, a charming ten-acre farm outside of Boulder, Colorado. Tucked just off the Ute Highway that travels west into the St. Vrain Canyon of the Rocky Mountains, Stonebridge is lush with lofty willows and cottonwoods that line venerable irrigation ditches trisecting the land from north to south. As the farm’s name suggests, a stone bridge arches across the lower Palmerton ditch that curves around the back of the house. Wooden bridges built from massive timbers span the middle ditch, named the Rough and Ready after the pair of brawny horses that plowed the steep banks, while the third, wider Highland ditch marks the eastern boundary of the property. With its 1911 farmhouse, weathervaned barn, and double-doored tractor shed, Stonebridge reminded me of my grandparents’ farms in North Dakota, farms that even in my childhood felt like stepping back in time.

But on that late March evening I was thinking about the future, not the past. While dinner cooked, John and I walked out to the gardens to pick herbs—marjoram, chives, and tiny green onions—for an early spring salad. Touring the fields as the sun slanted behind the foothills, we looked for the hopeful tips of fall-planted garlic breaking through the moist soil. In another bed, newly emerging pea shoots whispered a season’s promise, as if to say, “With care, something might grow here.”

In the many years we’ve been together since that first visit, “walking out” has become a routine for John and me. “Do you want to walk out to the garden?” I’ll ask. “I need some spinach for dinner.”

“I’ll walk out with you,” John grins. Crossing the first wooden bridge by the flower garden, we listen for the splash of a startled muskrat diving toward its den in the muddy bank and note how high the ditch is running as the water, each drop owned and accounted for, rushes by. Taking our time, we scan the sky for red-tailed hawks while we chat about the day’s events. We wander under the arching branches of the century-old cottonwood tree that leans alarmingly closer to the flower garden each year, and through the roses to note which are blooming. We pop a few raspberries in our mouths and pick a few more for dessert, and plot the next season’s garden, all before we pick whatever vegetables we need for our evening’s meal. On the way back to the house, we stroll across the farthest bridge near the herb garden, looping past the lush meadow and the sunny greenhouse before crossing the stone bridge back to the waiting kitchen. “Walking out” each day gives us a moment to catch up with each other as we ponder our future and plan the evening’s homegrown meal.

Walking out, too, is part of living on the land. As we go through our days, we have chores to do, chickens to feed, gardens to water, and crops to gather, just as my grandparents did. As I cross and re-cross our ten acres, I think of my grandparents on their land—my grandmothers gathering eggs and tending their gardens, my grandfathers milking cows and working in the fields. When Henry David Thoreau wrote, “Half the walk is but retracing our steps,” he could have been talking about farming, with its trips back and forth from house to field to house again. The steps I take each day also repeat my farming past. In walking out, I retrace my grandparents’ steps with my own.

When John and I first met, we each had full lives with teenaged daughters to raise and teaching careers at the local university. We joke that after we met, I got a tetanus shot and John bought a watch, acknowledgments of the changes necessitated by our pairing. Even that first meal together involved some negotiation of our differences: he had made pork chops and I am a vegetarian, something that had not come up in our coffee shop conversations. In this first of our culinary collaborations, he ate a second pork chop and I enjoyed the roasted potatoes, homemade bread, and salad with fresh herbs.

As we adapted in those early days to the rhythms and demands of each other’s lives, the farm became our meeting place, not just as a geographical location, but as the site where our dreams could be joined and together fulfilled. The farm is now our home, but it is also much more. Each day, we are the beneficiaries of what I call farmgiving, the boundless and bountiful generosity created by placing our lives alongside the land. Farmgiving teaches us lessons about how to live with reciprocity in the natural world of which we are a part, drawn together by a sharing of gifts given freely and with love.

One of the lessons we have learned from farmgiving is to make the most of what we have. From abundance, we also learn thrift. If we waste what the earth so generously provides, we not only fail to appreciate those gifts, but we miss an opportunity to be generous with the earth’s abundance. We need to think about what we can do with what we already have, whether it is a few vegetables that could create a delicious dinner, or a whole farm that could raise vegetables for many, many dinners.

Our farming friend says that the biggest crop we grow at Stonebridge is community. That’s because, as a CSA, our farm grows for members who join the farm in the spring and receive a weekly share of the produce during the growing season, which for our farm is from the second Saturday of May until the last Saturday in October. Each share is held by a family, household, or group of members who collaborate on how those vegetables are used. Most of the members are subscribers who pay a fee at the beginning of the season, while others are barterers who exchange weekly labor in return for their share. Within CSA, people organize community around the desire for fresh produce, as well as a concern for food security in the form of local access to organic, non-genetically modified, and seasonal produce.

Although CSA seems to have several roots, the one from which we trace our farm started in Japan following the environmental and economic devastation of World War II. There, women consumers approached farmers to grow crops specifically and personally for them to ensure food safety and security. This concept is called teikei, meaning “putting a farmer’s face on food.” In this mutually beneficial arrangement, consumers share the risk of production by paying farmers at the beginning of the season and sharing the bounty or losses of the fields. Subscriber members share an interest in the farm that is social as well as financial because they have a personal stake in the survival of their farm. The teikei concept was given the name “Community Supported Agriculture” in this country by farmer Robyn Van En in 1985 at Indian Line Farm in Massachusetts.

In 1992, Stonebridge became the first Community Supported Agricultural farm in Boulder County when John, who was renting the farmhouse with his daughter, started the CSA with a farming partner of the farm’s owners, an older couple who were retiring from farming. After a few years, they sold the farm to John and some partners, who later left to pursue their own endeavors. Soon John and I became co-owners of Stonebridge, and many seasons later, the CSA continues to thrive.

At Stonebridge, we like the idea of putting the farmers’ faces on food since we believe people who know their farmers will support the farm each season, despite the ups and downs of farming. Stonebridge’s slogan—“When the community feeds itself, the land and the people prosper”—means that not only does the community support local agriculture, but that the farm in turn helps create and support a community that cares about each other and the earth. Our subscribers pay their share in the early spring to help purchase the seeds and equipment we will need for that season. Other members barter their time and labor for their shares and take part in the decisions facing the farm each year. The relationship we are building in our community is a reciprocal one that challenges the anonymity of food systems today by placing those who eat food face to face with those who grow it.

While all CSAs are built on the idea that members share the bounty and the risks in variability and volume of crops each season, Stonebridge is a “share-the-harvest” CSA: instead of selling a portion of the crops to farmers’ markets or grocery stores, all the food we produce is shared equally among members. Our members get first choice on what comes into the barn because it all goes to them, with the exception of bumper crop vegetables we sell to our friend’s natural foods market in the small town nearby. Another way we’re share-the-harvest is that we don’t base the shares we give on the market value of each week’s vegetables. In fact, we don’t even keep track of weekly shares in a monetary way. Rather, we grow for abundance and divide the harvest each week between all the ninety shares of our farm. We prioritize our members and their vegetable needs and they appreciate the value they’re getting for their subscription, while supporting the farm as well. With share-the-harvest, Stonebridge members know they’re getting the best and the most that our farm has to offer.

Each spring, we love touring new subscribers around the farm on opening day and greeting our returning members in the barn. They tell us that just walking up the long driveway to our old, red barn feels like coming home. The air smells different here, they say, and they suddenly forget about the stresses of their daily lives. They like visiting the barn with its tables of bright vegetables to pick out their own rather than receive them in a box. Members have even told us that opening day is their favorite day of the year or that coming to the farm is the high point of their week.

We know that community supported agriculture is not going to replace industrial farming, but as fossil fuels become scarcer and food integrity is threatened, food production is one area where re-localization efforts can have an impact. By creating local markets for organically grown food, food dollars stay in a local economy, people eat healthier, fresher food, and pesticide and fossil fuel use are minimized. Amid these changes, CSAs can provide knowledge and practices on which to base future food policies. In this globalized economy of disappearing farmland and “Fast Food Nation” of diet-related health risks, CSA offers new ways, in the words of Joni Mitchell’s iconic song, “to get ourselves back to the garden.” Putting our faces on food allows us all to grow together through the seasons of our lives, renewing our friendships, shouldering our losses, and celebrating our accomplishments.

On a typical Saturday afternoon during the farm season, I’m hanging laundry on the line next to the house as members pick up their vegetable shares from the barn. I hear children jumping on the trampoline down by the bunkhouse and others laughing and tossing sticks into the creek with attentive parents watching nearby. I see a mom holding a curious toddler who is eagerly poking blades of grass through the hexagonal wire fence to the chickens scratching in the hen yard. Just past the greenhouse, a couple of middle-schoolers take turns hanging upside down on the swing that sweeps thrillingly over the creek. Earlier that day a teenaged girl volunteered with her mother picking spinach in the garden. As the children, like the crops, return to Stonebridge each spring, we remark on how tall they’ve grown over the winter, as one season yields to the next.

As far as we can ascertain, Stonebridge has been organic as long as it has been a farm. Stonebridge has had several owners since it was established in 1911 as a dairy farm, but all respected what the land offered and looked to natural methods of growing. We don’t know all the details of Stonebridge’s history, but we can tell from the careful maintenance of the original structures and preservation of spaces for wildlife in the meadow, woods, and ditches that previous owners farmed as stewards of the land.

Given the development pressure in our area, the fact that Stonebridge is still a farm and not a housing development or part of the nearby cement plant is somewhat miraculous. Instead, Stonebridge has been farmed for over one hundred years in much the same way. Despite technological innovations, the basic rhythm of farming has changed little over the last generations: crops still need to be planted with the seasons and the weather in mind, the fields need to be watered in the dry Colorado heat, and crops must be harvested before the soil freezes in winter.

John and I both come from farming backgrounds: his from working on farms in Oregon during summer breaks; mine from visiting my grandparents’ farms in North Dakota each summer while I was growing up. Once I was on my own, I planted vast gardens, canned my own produce, and dried my own teas and herbs. Loving the feel of our hands in the soil gave us a head start on farming since we already knew a little about how food grows. Still, we both had more to learn from books and seed catalogs and magazines, other gardeners and farmers, and, mostly, from trial and error. We want to farm better, not just bigger, to meet the vegetable needs of our members as best we can in our summer-dry and winter-harsh climate.

One of Stonebridge’s guiding principles is to keep our agricultural land in local production because just finding the land to farm on today is increasingly difficult. As Marion Nestle wrote in Food Politics in 2002, “In 1900, 40% of the [US] population lived on farms, but today no more than 2% do.” In only two generations, families moved away from farming and farms, including my own parents, who couldn’t wait to get off the farm to join the new, urban landscape of the post-war 1950s.

Stonebridge is not exactly a “family farm,” at least not in the way we would traditionally think of that term. It has not been handed down to us from generation to generation, nor are we certain it will continue in the family after we are too old to farm anymore. We are not sure what will happen as we age, but we are committed to making sure the farm continues as a farm. We are hopeful that as people realize the benefits of growing food within their own communities, farms like ours may have a chance to continue for generations to come. For today, we will make the most of what we have by tending the land in the best ways we can.

“Are they ready yet?” Sweet red Jimmy Nardello peppers stuffed with Manchego cheese are roasting on the grill, one of the first delights of the pepper harvest. We saved these heirloom seeds from last year’s crop, seeded them in April in our greenhouse, transplanted the young peppers in June, trellised them in July, and watered, weeded, and watched over them until the first August fruits glowed carnelian amid the emerald foliage. Our mouths were watering as we awaited the blend of sweet peppers and salty cheese in one bite, our anticipation months in the making. “Are they ready yet?” could have been asked, though, about any number of endeavors at Stonebridge, from building projects to community events to the harvest of a wide variety of vegetables, fruits, herbs, and flowers. On a farm, we wait, we work, and the earth gives again.

And because the land here at Stonebridge gives to us so generously, we can give in return. “I don’t think I could share my farm like you do,” a friend once remarked.

“But,” I replied, “I don’t think of it as just my farm.” In fact, if I did, I would probably worry a lot more about getting everything done. I rarely refer to Stonebridge as “my farm.” Instead, I think of it as “The Farm,” because I know it has a life of its own beyond anything to do with me. John and I own the land, but it takes all of us—the barterers and interns who work with us, the subscribers who support us, and the friends and family who encourage us—to make this farm a viable, productive, and bountiful place for growing vegetables and community. Beyond that, the farm exists as a part of the natural world that shelters and nurtures us all. The land and the life that it harbors make this farm possible by giving us more than we will ever begin to know and more than could ever be tallied.

Farming is never easy. The relentlessness of the work and the unreliability of conditions can take their toll. Often, there is too much to do and not enough time to do it. Farming demands constant attention to some things within our control—what to plant and when and where to plant it—and many things that aren’t—the availability of water and seeds, and weather, weather, weather. Each season starts with a variety of factors that farmers must weigh in their decisions but always with a flexibility to change when necessary. If one crop fails, plant again in hope of better conditions. Or try another variety, different field, more water, less water . . . or again next year.

It’s all a gamble. Sometimes, even the tried and true doesn’t work. Even with our combined farming experience to draw on, each season begins with questions that we do our best to answer and then stake our hard work toward ensuring we are right. Each season carries its own risks of drought that threatens the fields, of machinery that might break, and of injuries that prevent the physical labor demanded each day. The worry of accident is constant in a life that includes tractors, chain-saws, old buildings, and heavy lifting. We’ve both made trips to urgent care for tetanus boosters and stitches with farm injuries like smashed fingers and rusty nail punctures. “Safety first,” we remind each other as we go out to work, meaning take necessary precautions, ask for help when needed, and keep our eyes and ears attuned to each other in the fields.

Relationships are not easy either, and John and I have had our bumps along the way. That first fall together amid stresses of work and family as I drove back and forth from town to the farm, I wondered whether I would be around to reap the garlic we were planting in October in anticipation of a spring harvest. I wasn’t sure that this farm could be my farm too. When the flower garden I planted outside the irrigation pattern dried up and died without me there to water it, I felt discouraged. I didn’t know yet whether I could fit my life into the cycles of the farm or whether my dreams could be joined on one piece of land with John’s. We were both so busy with our daughters and our jobs that finding time to spend together, let alone farm, looked unlikely. Making a commitment to something as simple as garlic seemed a risk I wasn’t sure I wanted to take.

But like relationships, fall crops demand faith. You cannot see their growth until the earth warms again. As John and I placed each clove in the dimpled field, we hoped that, like the garlic, our love would send down roots to nourish and protect it through the cold, dark winter. If we could imagine a time when new shoots would emerge, perhaps the winter wouldn’t be so long.

Promisingly, the garlic did come up in the spring, and John and I made it through the dark winter as well. With each day, we discovered that farming was the perfect way to spend time together. We renovated the farmhouse so that each would be comfortable there. With a sledge hammer and a pry bar, we tore down old walls to open the rooms to light and make a larger space for meals with family and friends. We planted a new flower garden where the irrigation system could reach and we planned projects that combined our interests at the farm. Working day by day, we began to see how we could join our lives on the farm.

One June day, John and I walked hand in hand over the wooden bridge of the irrigation ditch as a muskrat paddled by. In the flower garden we had planted together, he in his handwoven shirt and I in my grandmother’s navy blue wedding dress, we promised our commitment to each other and to the land on which we stood. As a cousin strayed close to the bank of the Highland ditch that marks the east edge of the farm, our minister friend Priscilla Inkpen reminded guests that nature offers its own kinds of gifts: in this case, poison ivy. We laughed with friends and family gathered in the old apple orchard to celebrate our vows as a few drops of rain fell, blessings from the land that would now encircle our lives.

Under the canopy of the leaning cottonwood tree, John and I listened closely as our musician friend Coyote Joe sang “The Stonebridge Wedding Song.” The lyrics he wrote then still ring true:

There’ll be toil, and sweat by your brow

But the challenges you’ll answer somehow

And through it all you’ll grow stronger

And closer on this land.

None of it—the crops, the friendships, the community, and the deep love and respect we have for each other—will come without hard work, but by walking out to the garden together, season after season, we hope to reap a harvest beyond our wildest imaginings.