harvest

ok, i'm doing whatever i want. which, right now, because i can, is...reading. max watman is funny. his book "harvest: field notes from a far-flung pursuit of real food" chronicles his mishaps with hunting, raising beef (how to lose a steer in three easy steps), making cheese, keeping chickens (see also rage against racoons), gardening, fishing and pretty much everything that leaves him flummoxed in regards to sustainable eating. you've gotta respect the man's renaissance hands-on approach. he reminds me that i come from that long--and i would like to think effectual--line of teachers, pastors and farmers. and that each profession, having tried them all in my own small ways, have moments that make you wonder why it is, exactly, you do what you do? and moments--many more, i might add--of remembering why. gardening, like using watercolors, renders us a bit out of control. for a gal that likes her ducks in a row, i have to also admit that i do like not knowing exactly how things will turn out sometimes; for the same reason that i don't want a smart phone because i know that taking that wrong turn can actually end up finding a really great restaurant or being lost for a while can help you discover a great view you would otherwise have missed. so i paused after chapter five to go outside and survey the fruit of my own endeavors. farming, he says, is not a backyard picnic. he writes, for example, that you haven't really raised chickens until you've moved their lifeless body from the hen house with a vengeance for their predator. how could he have known that BEFORE i read that chapter, i had done the very same thing?! (although in our poor chicken's case it looked to be from natural causes. i made sure to double check that their coop door was tightly shut after sunset, though, just in case.) same with surveying my garden. after raising careful starts from seed in pods and transferring them to the ground, fussing over them for just the right balance of everything that makes carrots happy, i realize i have no idea what makes carrots happy. instead of three beautiful rows that i can share, i have three carrots. or, rather, three weird mounds of carrot-like things. this brings up the need to thin. thinning is the hard but necessary part of gardening shared only with the seeming brutuality of predator-prey in the wilderness that keeps species naturally balanced. while some rows show nothing where flourishing plants should be, in other places such as the sunflowers or cauliflower i have to pull up scores of perfectly good seedlings so they don't crowd out the others. ironic, also given that neglected compost can sprout volunteer plants healthy enough to rival jack's beanstalk while the expensive organic seeds sometimes don't come up at all. i get up and brush the dirt off my knees thinking it would be easier just to go to the farmer's market. but, like max writes, if i just went to the farmer's market, i wouldn't have dirt on my hands now would i and having dirt on my hands is and always has been a satisfying element of doing things myself since i was a little girl. i can't let someone else have all the fun of raising my food. it's, well, fulfilling. the tomatoes and spuds are doing fine, so i comfort myself with the fact that i will, at the very least, be able to cook and share those with people i love. which is why, i decided, i bother to do anything at all. pastoring? teaching? playing at being a farmer? because i love people. so yes, the rain falls and crops drown or dry up and some seeds take while others don't. maybe farmers are just reformed gamblers with seeds in hand instead of poker chips. there's no way to know and that's the beauty of the whole thing and the risk of what may come that's always worth it to me: harvest.