In honor of my parents, Edith & Richard Stevenson, on their 27th wedding anniversary today -– may the next 27+ be just as full of joy and adventure!

It’s the end of our fourth week here at Adamah. We’ve marked time with Shabbatot, a Rosh Chodesh, and yesterday, the summer solstice. And so, I’m stepping back to consider what it is I’m doing here, what it was I was hoping to learn, what in fact I have discovered.

The most important realization has come around what I am actually doing. I wanted to work on a farm this summer because after talking so much about CSA, farmer’s markets, eating locally, supporting organic agriculture, on and on about the benefits for health and community — I had never actually experienced what it was like to do the growing, the actual agriculture itself. I told everyone – I’m going to grow food all summer! I can’t wait!

Well, we’ve been busy dawn till dusk, doing and learning all kinds of things, but in four weeks I realized I’m not doing the one thing I came here for. I’m not growing food.

I am manuring soil, and feeling my arms and sides and legs grow stronger from shoveling heavy black compost onto the beds to add nutrients.

I am weeding around the plants, pulling out lamb’s quarter and amaranth and yellow dock (all edible/medicinal) and a few other weeds. Weeding keeps the nutrients in the soil available for the plants you want to have them, and makes sure the sun can get to the right leaves and photosynthesis can occur.

I am mulching, covering the soil with hay to keep out weeds and keep in moisture. I have heard about the sweet smell of hay, but I never knew what that was; here I have carried armfuls of hay the size of four pillows clasped up against my chest, nose peering out over the top so I don’t step in the plants, and breathed deeply the honeysweet smell of fresh-mown hay, and positively swooned!

I’ve understood why farmers might have been so lured by the promise of mechanization that revolutionized the farming system in this country. Farming is hard work! You’re bent over, you’re weeding, you’re shoveling, you’re shlepping a wheelbarrow back and forth, trying to keep it from teetering into narrow beds where you’ve just laid out a fresh new crop of cucumbers, stems the size of pencils, as fragile as straw. If I was doing this for a living and someone came and offered me a better way, I can see why I might take it.

And I’ve understood in an incredibly personal, visceral way, the dangers of agricultural chemicals to farm workers. After a day at the sadeh I am filthy. My feet and legs are covered in dirt, my nails are dirty, when I blow my nose my hankerchief is dirty, and when I sweat I smear a muddy streak of dirt and sweat across my brow. I love it! BUT – if that dirt was full of toxins? Carcinogens? Chemicals that could bioaccumulate in me and harm my unborn children? I have seen how closely the farm workers and the farm interact, and I have renewed fear about the health and wellbeing of people who work in those toxic places.

And I’m also understanding the wisdom of preserving. We’re about to make pickles and pickled onions, because we are about to have two beds full of pickles ripe! There is only so much tzatziki one can make at one time ;0) There are so many ways to preserve food (without a lot of crap) that people have been using for ages…I’m excited to start learning this process and can appreciate it so much more when I can see in front of me the way the farm doesn’t always let off food in a slow trickle.

But growing food?

The plants are doing the growing. The plants are drinking the water and absorbing the sun and soaking up the nutrients. They’re putting out beautiful flowers (eggplant flowers are purple!) and tiny little fruits, and then bigger fruits, and they’re doing it all on their own. I’m making a nice environment for them, perhaps, keeping them safe and well-fed, but the growing — that is something holy, mysterious, sacred. Life itself unfolding on our field – it’s an awesome sight, humbling and inspiring. I’m not growing food this summer. If anything, because I’m eating it and learning from it, the food is growing me.

Shabbat Shalom!