Members of the Urban Farm team Matt McFarland and Amanda Staples are doing an internship out in Lancaster County so that they can learn some skills from people who make farming their livelihood, and bring them back to Philly to start a farm. They are saying hello to you:
When we first got out here to the farm, we were waking up at five or six, depending on how much baby lettuce David, the farmer, promised to pick for various people and companies in Philadelphia that day. Back then (in April) I could cut three pounds of baby lettuce in no less than an hour and a half. Matt wasn’t any faster. Or any slower for that matter. We’ve matured here really about the same, which is nice. David later admitted at having started me out on the weediest patch in the greenhouse just to see how I’d manage, or react. I did little of either. There were so many weeds I wanted to cry. Each handful of lettuce has to be sorted through meticulously for any weeds, aphids or really any sort of spot that someone might think looks gross. When there were really bad aphid problems we just dumped all the lettuce into big tubs of water (miserably cold water, as it was wintertime until may this year). The aphids would float off the leaves nicely and we’d go about drying and packing the lettuce. Matt and I would joke about how it’s better to leave a few weeds in there, a few aphids for that matter, so people would know it’s really organic. And even though now it can take me only a half hour to get 3 pounds of the really good stuff, I still sort through it all just as meticulously.
(As a side note I just now looked out the trailer door in time to find the white barn cat digging in our little kitchen garden for a good spot and settling in… I made quite a spectacle screaming “No! No! in a Pee Wee Herman voice for some reason, and clapping my hands so loud they sting now. I thought I’d left city cats in the city).
In the beginning we would start those early mornings with a scripture reading and end the day with lots of good stretching. Now we get out of bed 20 minutes before we have to be in the field, an hour before the sun gets up. We force a bowl of cereal and make our way up the path in the dark. At the end of the day we plop down on the couch and don’t really move until we have to cook dinner.
The work itself proves pretty meditative though, and it can be prayerful, if you let it be. I expected my mind to wander all over the place, and it does often enough. But there are some times I’m thinking about nothing but the lettuce in front of me- this leaf looks good, this leaf looks gross, this head is passable, this head I can’t believe we’re putting in the box, one, two, three, four…. Etc. Other times, mostly when I’m feeling sort of grumpy and it’s really hot out and the lettuce is starting to get wilty, I send each head into the box with a little baptism of cool spring water and a prayer. This lettuce has passed through my hands, and I want to feel the connection with the person who will eat it, and I want them to feel that with me. Still other times life and our place in it all becomes terribly confusing out in the field, as Matt and I go around flicking yellow and black beetles and all of their larvae into buckets of water so that we can have potatoes to sell and eat. What about these little guys? Are we just killing them in a competition for resources in the same way certain other people in the world are doing right now? Not to be dramatic, but seriously. No wonder people think they’re the center of it all. We decide which plant we want to grow and which we want to pluck out; the insects that help us we keep around, the rest of them, we slowly drown or stomp to death on the driveway. It’s a big responsibility we’ve been given. To participate in the animal kingdom and also rise above it; to subdue the earth enough to stay alive, all the while watching a plant get all the life it needs no thanks to us. Jesus told us, “Consider the lilies. They do not labor or spin, yet Solomon in all his splendor was not dressed like one of these.”
Two things are clear to me. First, as city dwellers, we need to see more lilies in order to be reminded that God takes care, so we can learn how to better take care of the things we all depend on for life. And second. as a country dweller, I need to move back to the city and live with people in a system that brings all of creation closely together. There is too much government subsidized feed corn separating everyone from their neighbors out here. How about instead we have food crop gardens between our row homes and we come out to work God’s newly restored land together? Or you meet us in the afternoon on your bike and pick up a box of fresh veggies that we grew for you? See you in the fall. Thanks for all your prayers. Come for a visit.
