VII
Put your hands into the mire.
they will learn the kinship
of the shaped and the unshapen,
the living and the dead.
VIII
When I rise up
let me rise up joyful
like a bird.
When I call
let me fall without regret
like a leaf.
IX
Sowing the seed,
my hand is one with the light.
Hoeing the crop,
my hands are one with the rain.
Having cared for the plants,
my mind is one with the air.
Hungry and trusting
my mind is one with the earth.
Eating the fruit,
my body is one with the earth.
– Wendell Berry, from “Prayers and Sayings of the Mad Farmer”
As we continue to turn the fields this season we continue to turn the wheel of life and death: each new seeding brings the miraculous emergence of the living from the inevitability of the dying. As farmers we are blessed to practice this truth with our own hands.
Recently our apprentices joined a long human tradition and tried their hands at direct seeding, a technique of planting seeds into the ground we do with our trusty little Earthway seeder, pushing spinach, cilantro, dill, radish, turnip, beet, and carrot seeds into prepared earth. A seed is a true miracle, proof of magic we may easily overlook: the form of each vegetable (let alone a tree) emerges from so tiny a package… sort of like the big bang.
For millennia we have planted seeds–by stick, by clay seed ball, by hand, sprinkling this magic across the earth and participating in the great unfolding dance of life. Many peoples have sang over the sowing, or prayed, imbuing the seeds with the highest vibrations of reverence, gratitude, and prosperity. Such foods are surely medicine!
These days on the farm we are busy harvesting and harvesting: a bounty of freshly dug potatoes, plumping bulbs and fronds of fennel, the tomatoes beginning to ripen on the vines. As we harvest the gifts of the earth we join again the circle in death, honoring the life that has been given and will live again in you, in me, in each of us as we eat the fruit of the earth. And again we turn the field, turning our lives, and, in glimpses, understanding better our place in the great brocade.
Jordan Gardner, Farm Manager
