Body and Soul in Different Places

All the storms had been wreaking havoc on the farm.  One nascent row after another had been washed out and replanted, blown over, or beaten up by the wind.  When I arrived Monday morning to volunteer a few hours of labor, those already at work looked forlorn, but philosophical.  "This is farming," they mused with a wry smile.

We set to work pulling onions from a field that looked more like a rice paddy.  A tug on the stem produced a "schlook" of a sucking sound; the hole left behind filling immediately with water.  More than I might have predicted were salvageable, though the compost pile swelled with a sum of rotten ones.  We laid the firm ones out in the sunniest place we could find to dry.

For a change of pace we moved to the raspberry patch, where we moved along on either side of the rows; taking hold of the leaves to avoid the thorns and lecherously pulling them back to examine underneath for ripe berries.  More than once I quietly eased a branch back into place in deference to a wasp that already laid claim to the red ones on that stem.

My final assignment was a row of tomatoes -- "garden peach" tomatoes, to be precise.  "How do you decide what to plant," I asked Angela, the owner. With tomatoes alone there must be a hundred different varieties.  And how many kinds of squashes and egg plants and onions and beans?  "Trial and error," she responded; "experience, and talking with other farmers about what has done well for them.  Every year I experiment with at least one new thing."  She called attention to a couple of expressions of cucumbers -- one sort of "tried and true"; the other one she had tried by request.  The requested variety had produced a fraction of the time-tested one.  "It has to be economically viable," she added, which this one hadn't proved to be.  That, and she hadn't been all that crazy about its taste.

Finishing my row and filling my boxes (four I was proud to say), I joined the others who were breaking for lunch.  I was on my way to the day's other pursuits.  There was a camaraderie in the shed only born from shared labor, purpose and sweat, and I regretted that I had to leave.

That night, I felt almost physically ill.  The temperature at the farm had been close to 100-degrees, and the humidity had been about as high.  By dinner time, the heat was still working on my insides, and still emanating from my skin.  Despite a cool shower and countless classes of water; no matter how long I sat beneath the fan I couldn't seem to cool off.  Which is just to acknowledge that I can't remember when my body has felt that bad.

Paradoxical, because thinking back over the onions pulled and the berries picked and the tomatoes carefully selected and placed gently in the boxes -- the soil joined and its generosity received and the tasks completed -- I can't remember when my soul has felt that good.