all i want in life is to be a farmer.

Here’s why, in the words of Gene Logsdon in his book The Contrary Farmer:

 

The garden is the only practical way for urban societies to come in close contact with the basic realities of life….To feel the searing heat as well as the comforting warmth of the sun, or to endure the dry wind as well as the soothing breeze; to pray for rain but not too much rain; to long for a spate of dry weather but not too long; to listen to the music of nature as well as the rock beat of human culture; to know that life depends on eating and being eaten; to accept the decay of death as the only way to achieve the resurrection of life…these are all part of an education that the industrial world hungers for but cannot name.

 

i do hunger for reality.  and for roots.  i want to buy a little place far away from the Grid, and buy nothing but oil.

i am alive.

i just had one of the best mornings that i’ve had maybe ever.  after my first work week (i loved it…feel a little like a fish out of water…but i think it’s going to be good), i got up this morning (since when did 7:00 am become “sleeping in”?  oh yeah.  this week.) and drove out to Johnson’s Backyard Garden, a local 120-member CSA, where i was going to do a work-share, which means i work and they share. 

produce, that is.  lots of veggies para mi.

 

as i picked little, stickery cucumbers off their vines, smelling the cantaloupes on the next row, i wondered, how have i lived without doing this? 

i love the dirt.

 

then i got to pick squash and zucchini.  (i want to open a restaurant called zucchini’s.  what do you think?)  then eggplant…  so beautiful.  like glossy purple jewels hanging thick on green and mauve plants.

 

then i rode a tractor!  will and jeff, two interns who work 6 am to 4 pm on the farm Monday-Saturday, recruited me to help them plant some little eggplant plants fresh out of the greenhouse.  i got to ride on the sweeeeeeeeeeeeetest tractor, called a transplanter, and drop little plants into the holes that the tractor poked into plastic and then filled with water.  it looked like this:

only i was where the guy in the picture is and jeff was where the girl is.  but it was so fun.  and i got to pick jeff’s brain about horticulture, agriculture, and austin culture.  good times.

 

then i got some amazing veggies i’m going to live on all week…squash, onions, cherub tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers…

 

and THEN i went to mandola’s with aunt chris and camille!  aunt chris treated me, even though i was dirty from working, and we ate eggplant-zucchini-goat cheese pizza and talked for two hours.  aaah.  thank you, Jesus.  for everything.

germinate.

I want to farm. 

I can’t help it. 

I want A farm. 

This season is just too much for me…everything coming up green, spring showers, warm sun again.  There’s something in my heart that can’t be content with urbanity.  I’m hungry for the soil.  I’m sick of pretty fingernails.  I miss puppy skin, warm eggs from the henhouse, the smell of a horse, Texas mud, big trucks, bluebonnets, mockingbirds.