Have tea with it
If you tell Daisy (who is here for the season from Kenya through a J1 exchange. Some of you have met her at market) that we we have a job to do (maybe pulling covers for the arugula, kale and radishes) and it’s going to kind of suck, she’ll just tell you “I’m here for it! I need to be open to the experience.”
There’s no wallowing on her part. Maybe a little on mine before I straighten up and stifle my inner whine.
Pain is the thing on a farm, and maybe the hardest thing to learn. She’s getting there fast. If you are going to farm, you have to be okay with the knowledge that it’s kind of going to…suck.
I should quantify the work “suck”.
By “suck” I mean to say “this is going to be very uncomfortable”. Or, “this is going to take sustained effort that you would rather not make and will feel unreasonable”.
The discomfort is the heat, the cold, the rain, the effort, the flies, the sore knees, the tight back, the aching hands, the fatigue.
I tell her, “Supposedly, in the military, when things get really hard, and you want to give up, the drill sergeant yells at you “What is pain” and you have to reply “Pain is weakness leaving my body!!”
“Oh my God! You are all crazy”.
The discomforts are sometimes balanced out with little pleasures. When the sun beats down hot and a little cloud blocks it for a minute, everyone breathes a sigh “OH! Thank you cloud!”. When it’s cloudy and cold and the sun breaks through for a minute to warm the bones, everyone relaxes “Wow, thanks Sun!!”.
When it comes to discomfort, we do all we can to reduce it, but in the end, if the job is to get done, you have to cozy up with it and realize that you can’t get the job done without it.
When you farm, you have to sink into the pain, and become it’s friend. You live in it. You make it your home. You invite it for tea. You talk to it and it always replies. It’s the only way.
Daisy and Mar have certainly taken the pain on this last week. We made early starts to avoid the hottest parts of the day. They showed up, and sunk into the heat. Everyday, we move the irrigation, pull weeds, plant, seed, harvest, and prep for markets. It ain’t pretty, but we’re getting it done. It hurts. But sometimes we dull he pain with some custard or ice cream. For what is pain, but a perfect excuse for custard.