Now At A Farm

Fresh, loamy air enveloped me.

My office has gained a new purpose. Part office, part reading room, part music room: and now part seed-starting room. Our temporary greenhouse-on-wheels is up, heating pads plugged in, grow lights on, seeds in the soil.

My morning ritual is richer, now. I check how moist the soil is, give it a little water, and watch tiny sprouts burst out.

They are so courageous. They leave a safe, warm environment only to emerge weak, spindly, and bent over. Slowly but surely, they unravel, gain strength, and reach. As I watch them, I’m constantly reminded to take courage.

My journey to gardening was a bit more circuitous than a single seed popping out of the ground. We didn’t really garden growing up. Once in a while, Mom would plant a couple tomato and basil plants, but I never helped. Our home was surrounded by acres and acres of farmland. How could a measly little garden compared to the industrial scale of the miles of corn I could never quite see the edge of?

In college, I had friends who were avid gardeners. I liked watching them gently wash the dirt off their carrots and cradle their bright red tomatoes. I liked eating the fresh produce even more.

I fell in love with cooking, but produce was bought at the store. It was so convenient! Why try so hard to grow a couple of broccoli when you could pop down to the corner market and buy four heads at once, in a single moment?

My lack of interest in gardening irked my partner at the beginning of our relationship. Even in her small gunshot apartment with a tiny patch of yard, she squeezed in a patch of strawberries, herbs, and few tomatoes. I would smile and bite into the fresh strawberry with delight… and that’d be the end of it.

When we went house hunting, we chose our home because of the 25 by 50 foot garden plot in the backyard. My partner squealed (read: straight up yelled and probably scared the realtor) when she saw it. That garden was the tipping point. Our first Spring we filled up sixteen yard waste bags full of all of the weeds to clear the plot. I helped, but I wasn’t engaged. It was another Thing to do around the house. It was her Thing.

Fast forward a few years—years where she tried every thing she could think of to convince me gardening was cool to no avail—to a book a friend recommended me. I was becoming interested in how my body worked. I didn’t really believe in mind-body separation. I thought it was all one whole system, but I wanted to understand why I thought that way and how it all worked.

So I slogged through “How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain.” Slog is definitely the right word, as it’s about 300 pages of dense neuroscience, all made worth it with the final conclusion. It completely changed my perspective on movement, food, and sleep. We’ve all been told to “Eat healthy, exercise, and sleep.” It’s a mantra at this point. Now I understand WHY.

Good or bad, I’m someone who wants to understand the context, history, and science behind most every big decision I make. If I understand the ‘why’ of it all, I’m bought in 100%, no hesitation. “How Emotions are Made” brought me to more books on whole-body support, which eventually led me to “Farmacology: Total Health from the Ground Up.” The author spent a whole chapter explaining the health benefits of gardening. She went far beyond Wowwwww, it’s really good to be outside, ya know?

Gardening is making a thousand tiny decisions every second. Do you water? Do you pull that weed? Do you thin that plant? Do you harvest yet? Do you start another round of plants? Does that plant look sad and what does it need? Oh look over there, a radish! It’s unbelievably good for your body.

It’s also ‘natural movement.’ I wouldn’t call gardening exercise, but it is moving your body in all types of directions. Squatting, bending, pulling, stretching, digging, hauling, patting, pinching, craning your neck to gaze up at the sun as you wipe the sweat off your brow… your body is in constant motion.

Constant decision-making.

Constant motion.

But the most important thing of all?

Gardening is community.

Even if you are the most misanthropic grump on the block, if you have a garden you are going to have an overabundance of something. You will not be able to can it, preserve it, or cook it all. You need someone to give it to!

Gardening communities start in the Fall in the act of sharing.

Or do gardening communities start in the middle of Summer, waving hello to neighbors as you water and weed?

What about Spring, when you’re one of the first people outside and your neighbor spies you out the window and realizes Oh hey, maybe I should get a breath of fresh air?

What about late Winter, when you step in to the local nursery to buy seeds and soil?

What about mid-Winter, when you start planning what you want to grow and invite friends over for a garden planning and seed exchange party?

Gardening is a year-round community building activity. This post would stretch for miles if I started to go into how deeply beneficial community is for the body, soul, and spirit. Maybe that’s a post for a future time.

My deep dive into neuroscience and learning how my body works convinced me that gardening was good. My partner rolled her eyes that some nerdy book was the thing that convinced me, but at least I was finally convinced!

I was fully in. And I fully fell in love. I built us twelve raised beds, got the juiciest smelliest compost ever, and our garden really took off.

I’m still learning the craft of gardening and learning what I like and don’t like. Most people relish the act of planting the veggies into the ground. I don’t really care either way if I plant them or not. What I like is the day-to-day nurturing, the checking in, the watering, the weeding. The ritual.

So when I walked into my office and got enveloped in the smell of wet fresh soil, my whole body relaxed. It was garden time. Last year we struggled to keep up with our garden, as our beloved dog Birch was in his last Summer. This year, we’re here. We’re all in. We need something beautiful to be growing amidst all of the pain and fear.

Go plant something today. Go put your hands in dirt. Go start a seed.