Is it on? Is this thing on?
I sat down to write about how it felt to climb down off the tractor and to know I won’t be climbing back up. There is so much in this for me. I tried paper and pen but couldn’t bear it. The beauty the beauty. Unbearable.
It was heavy. My whole chest was physically constricted. And I know it has to be done, is being done, but I still have not come to grips. I cannot believe it.
I’ve gotten a job, a grown up job that has benefits and the same hours every day and a salary, and possibly sick days and things like that that i haven’t even considered.
And I’m starting tomorrow. And it precludes/excludes the ‘squeezing in of hours’ that my life before allowed.
And I’m in mourning. For the woman who started there, as a way to fill in the times when the kids were with their dad. It was really like that. They were young, i was always there. Always.
I started there probably seven years ago, my eldest would have been 13, and the youngest just six. It felt like a lot of money because it was farmwork and when i did it in high school, i was just paid $7 an hour, under the table. So it was way way more than that, and I would start having references again. It was a step, a little one, an it got me talking to people in the world again.
And I helped people pick out the good veggies and the farmers washed and harvested and put everything out at the beginning and away at the end of every night.
Now i harvest (only a little bit but i do.) and wash, and set up, and break down, and make the board and think about next week’s setup and keep it all stocked and i know so many of the customers intimately. And I seed the baby plants and run the plant sale and I take care of thousands of eggs and chickens per week and I drive the goddamned tractor. I’ve watched the farmer’s kid grow into a really cool girl, and i love my farmers isn’t just a bumper sticker over here.
And I worry that I’ll lose my connection to the work and the joy and pain of being outside year round. And what if my dad stops being proud of me? Or Grammie, or Joel, or Kate Crowley? Or the goddamned farmer? What if they move on like i was never there? I WAS THERE. (From heaven, three of them, because i have issues and need therapy. Always.)
And then, there is the beauty. I don’t think you know how beautiful it is out there. The dirt in a tractor tire, the lean of a fence post, the water sluicing the dirt off the carrots, the shocking color of the Swiss chard. I don’t think you know the wild variety of egg. Shells and breakage and boxes and delivering the food to people, feeding, knowing that what is happening, the exchange of energy is pure goodness. Pure.
Dirt is the way. The beginning and the end. And I WAS THERE.
What? I was.
