I usually cover real, sometimes difficult, news from the front lines of our food system. Today, this is a personal essay. Thanks for reading. Sign up here for weekly posts, or keep reading…
A few years ago, my children and I had the opportunity to visit a local farm to help with the bean harvest.
It had been a stressful week. A change of pace would help, I thought. Even if it was vigorous physical labor.
There we were, getting a moment of a different routine--helping with someone else's chores, as we contributed to our own food sources. The bean harvest is a multi-step, many day process. The first step--which would be this day's task--is pulling the whole bean plant out of the ground and piling them up in a row for the machines to pick up a few days later.
I'd never done this before. But I, and my children, were there and ready to work. The first field we worked on was bird egg beans. These are beautiful, pink and cream colored beans. One of my favorites. My youngest daughter found a small pod on the ground, picked it up and gave me the three beans from inside.
"Magic beans," I said to her a little whimsically. "Just like Jack from Jack and the beanstalk." She smiled at my reference and I briefly let my mind wander to the story of magic, a larger perspective, and a change in a boy's life brought on by his avid curiosity.
Back to reality, we commenced pulling.
For the first few minutes, I tried to keep my dignity as I bent and pulled, bent and pulled. Watching farmer Gabrielle and her girls work, I was conscientious (and perhaps mildly self-conscious) of my inefficiency. They were walking on their knees, pulling as they went and had neat stacks on either side of them. So I followed.
I didn't quite have the rhythm they had, and languished many yards behind them, eventually getting the hang of it and somewhat keeping up with them. Occasional patches of tall weeds made the going slower.
We made it to the end of that bean field.
I silently congratulated myself. "That wasn't so bad," I thought, pleased.
My children worked hard and I was both proud and grateful. The afternoon was pleasant, the work not too vigorous. It took 8 of us about an hour to tackle that field. And now we were assured of being one step closer to having these beans on our table the coming winter.
On to the next field.
We walked through the farm, past compost piles longer than football fields with beautiful, rich brown soil. We slowed down to great the rice fields on our left, to examine the grains, and smell the delicate aroma.
Now, we came to a new plant, unfamiliar to me.
"This is sesame," Gabrielle said of the perfectly symmetric pods atop the tall stalks. She opened one of the pods and the ripe sesame seeds spilled into my palm with a delicate flow. The field looked like enough sesame to feed a nation.
“How much actual food does this turn into?” I wondered, mesmerized by the beauty of it.
Moving along, the sorghum looked ready for harvest, some of the stalks bent all the way down to the ground.
But we were there for beans.
The next bean field we approached looked like infinity. Where the previous field was a neat patch, with clear rows, here, the beans were overgrown with weeds and I couldn't even see the end of the rows.
"This one is only about twice as long as the previous one," Gabrielle assured me. Nothing in what I saw convinced me of that. I felt my breath catch as I looked down the whole field.
Now, the pulling was slower. There was no other way than to drop onto all fours, parting the weeds as we went and selecting only the bean plants. We piled them in larger piles to be sure the driver of the machine could find them 2 weeks later through the weeds.
It felt daunting–this vast landscape of beans and weeds, beans and weeds.
On we went, ever so slowly.
My jeans quickly became as muddy as the ground beneath me. The hot afternoon sun streamed down on us as my sweat mixed with the soil beneath me.
On we went. Forced to move slowly, I felt those beans in my back pocket that my daughter had given me.
Looking down, I began to notice new things now. It wasn’t just beans and weeds…
Thousands of insects crawled through the soil, colorful, each one doing its job.
Spiders, worms, and arthropods—hundreds of species at my fingertips all participating in the vibrancy of diversity.
I saw the others plants, really saw the plants as if for the first time. This one amaranth, that one morning glory, another that looked like chickweed, several different grasses mixed in--each plant necessary for this intricate symphony beneath me.
The soil had seeped into my skin. My bare feet embraced the feel of that soft dirt. In these moments, there was only right then.
Somehow, crawling along, we made it through the whole field. Exhausted and muddy, yet jubilant, we all began walking back to the farm house. Once again past the mysterious fields of grain, the majestic stalks of sorghum, low, lush, green rice, past the compost piles and into the beautiful pollinator garden filled with flying life.
As we walked, the evening air draped over our shoulders, the heat of summer giving way to the chill of autumn, strong against our sweaty bodies.
The stresses of the week felt lighter now. I reached into my pocket once again feeling the three small beans. Just like for Jack, whose beans were a portal to another realm, so were these, I realized, as they reminded me that there is magic in slowing down and taking a moment--it is amazing what we can see when we are willing to look from a new perspective.
About Raw Milk Mama: I believe that we can reclaim our food systems through direct action. But it takes your participation whether you’re growing food, processing, or willing to support those who are. And sometimes, it takes taking direct action or calling on your state or federal elected officials.
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More of this please. Your writing is food for the soul
That was magical and amazing. Just reading it lifted me to a higher frequency!