Toronto. I don't have pictures of Sisters Hill; I was too tired to lift my camera.
"Did I tell you about the ticks?" my friend Maureen asks when she picks me up at the Poughkeepsie train station.
No. I was not told about the ticks. I would definitely have remembered ticks.
Maureen suggests that I put on long pants. And bug spray. I change into my dirtiest jeans in the train station bathroom, next to a toilet bearing a printed sign that reads, "This is someone's work area. Please respect it and keep it clean." This too sounds upsetting, but not as upsetting as the ticks.
I have come to visit Maureen, an apprentice at
Sisters Hill organic farm in Stanfordville, New York. Maureen and I grew up around the corner from one another in a comfortable southern California suburb. Now Maureen has a graduate degree in environmental education and understands things like drip irrigation and crop rotation. When armageddon comes, Maureen will be one of the hardy, self-sustaining people that the rest of the community looks to for food, and I will starve to death in the Home Depot aisle while trying to eat the seed packets. She's invited me to spend a night at Sisters Hill and work at their harvest the next morning, and I am so excited. And now a little freaked out about ticks.
Our first stop is a monthly meeting of other farm apprentices throughout the New York area. We gather in the greenhouse and the wiry farmer asks if anyone has questions about organic fertilizer. I have never in my life had any questions about fertilizer. These people have all kinds of questions about fertilizer. The apprentices are tan, with thick forearms and ruddy cheeks. The farmer makes a joke about crop transplanting, and everyone laughs. I don't know what crop transplanting is.
This month's apprentice meeting is held at a farm that I soon learn is considered the red-headed stepchild of upper New York organic farming. The farmer explains to us that he used to be in the tech industry, but that then he got into some money problems and had to "lay low" for a while, so he bought this farm. Of the few reasons I have ever heard for becoming a farmer, this is by far the worst. He then explains that he and his wife lived in a shipping container and pooped at the edge of their fields for four years until he managed to build them a house. Fortunately for consumers of organic produce everywhere, Maureen quietly explains to me that this is Not Normal.
The farm is short-staffed, and so Farmer Lay Low and his wife have decided to use the meeting as a shot at free labor. They organize a Tom Sawyer-style "contest" to see who can pull the most beets. The apprentices grumble and settle in along the rows. In two quick minutes, giant mounds of dirty beets form by the apprentices' knees. I pull one beet from the ground, a small, sickly-looking root. It looks familiar, and I realize where I have seen it before. It is the same vegetable that Vivien Leigh ripped from the earth of Sherman-scorched Tara, just before she devoured it and declared she would never go hungry again. Suddenly, I like this contest more.
****
By the time I leave the farmhouse at 7 a.m. the next morning, Maureen, her fellow apprentice and the farmer of Sisters Hill have already been in the field for an hour. In contrast to the overgrown mess of the previous night's farm, Sisters Hill is a place of exquisite beauty and orderliness. It is a leafy 5-acre stead owned by the Sisters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul. It is also a CSA farm, or Community Supported Agriculture. This means that once a week community members come to the farm and pick up their "shares," batches of produce they have pledged in advance to purchase. Every year the fields at Sisters Hill bring forth 60,000 pounds of fat, glorious produce, from basil to onions to eggplants. The whole operation is overseen by Farmer Dave, whose masterful knowledge of all things crop-related has earned him, in my head, the nickname "Produce Whisperer." He is wearing overalls, which I thought happened only in plastic sets of Fisher Price farmer figurines.
Today is pick-up day, which means that we need to harvest, clean and pack about 75 tubs of produce by 1 p.m. When I arrive in the fields, they are harvesting beets. I strap on mud-caked knee pads and kneel in the dirt, following Maureen's instructions about which beets to seek out. Immediately I discover there are few things in the world as satisfying as harvesting beets. They pop out of the ground in a smooth motion. As opposed to last night's anemic veggies, these are luscious, bulbous beets. We pull and pull and pull beets, then wheel them - in actual wheelbarrows! - back to the truck, where we wash and pack them up. Then it's time for carrots, which are equally as satisfying as beets. Then fennel. Then dill.
I read Michael Pollan and all those articles exposing how Whole Foods organic vegetables are actually mass-produced in coal-fired power plants in China. I have forgotten that this is where food is supposed to come from. Each vegetable we pack looks like the perfect one at the grocery store. I realize that every vegetable or fruit I've ever eaten started in the ground, and was pulled out by somebody. What's in our hands now could be recognized by residents of any era or nation as FOOD. It smells good, it feels good, and it looks like it is going to taste good.
But oh man, is it tiring.
By 11 a.m. I've been at it for four hours - everyone else for five - and every muscle in my body, particularly those concerned with kneeling and pulling, is throbbing. By the time we get to the leeks I can't form a sentence in my head. I'm too tired to think. Farmer Dave corrects my leek-trimming technique, and I just stare at the root in my hand. The next two hours pass in a blur. I just know at the end that the harvest is done, the produce is packed, and I've learned how to use a root washer.
Half the tubs get picked up at the farm in Stanfordville. The other half Maureen and I drive to the drop-off point at a convent in the Bronx. Cheerful elderly nuns in tennis shoes greet us and point to where we put the cases for the soup kitchen. We unload the Rubbermaid tubs to a crowd of eager shareholders, who open them up and exclaim over the size of their squash. Maureen drops me off at the subway with a bag of fresh vegetables that comes up to my hip. I offer it to a homeless woman begging for money for food; she spies the carrots and shakes her head in distaste. Oh well.
I ride back into Manhattan, clutching my bag of vegetables like a body pillow. I'm dirty, tired, grateful for food. And so happy to have been a farmer for a day.
