Of Mulching and Turnip Blessings

By Holly Wren Spaulding
Sun contributor
We move back and forth between stone walls under a low ceiling and even lower light. The root cellar is musty, dark with odors of long-stored root crops, new onion starts and leeks, seeds ready for planting. Field maps, shears and clipboards clutter the spare nooks and crannies.
Robert and Nick load in the fresh cut mustards, bok choy, senposai and other cooking greens. Jennifer brings down the asparagus (the weeds are digging in their heels and the early drought was hard on this crop). We shift the baby beets to make way, and stow the harvest knives. Beside the red door, white turnips like fist-sized pearls. We compare recipes and agree that they are good, especially the little ones; better than any turnip I’ve ever eaten.

We divvy the vegetables into boxes for the 40 families who have subscribed to the “early-spring share” at this CSA (Community Supported Agriculture). This means that members pay a fee in deep winter with which seeds are purchased, and the hoop house and greenhouse are planted. By March, Jenny sees to it that all are happy and well fed for the duration of the season. As the soil warms and the frost leaves the air, workers begin returning for the big plantings which amount to dozens and dozens of crops, many of them heirloom varieties. By June we’ll be filling 125 boxes with whatever is coming on in the fields, and the summer members will receive bountiful vegetables, flowers, fruit and eggs up into late October. This system has been working well for us; the farm gets the support it needs to keep working, we workers are grateful for a means of “right livelihood” — work that reflects our values — and more and more people have access to affordable, delicious produce grown near to their home.
Outside, the sun is giving us a little break in the rain, and gratitude prevails; our soggy skin craves this time of year when the whole of life can happen outside, under the sky, among the elements. In truth, we’ll work in a downpour as equally as on a perfect 75 degree day.
There’s time yet to do more mulching in the front gardens. Eight of us set to tearing apart the big round bales of hay that we use to suppress the weeds, promote biological activity, and maintain moisture in the soil. It sticks to every part of us and soon we abandon the facemasks and just let the dust and mold swirl as it will. If we do this now we won’t have to come back to these beds for a few months while the spuds do their thing underground, and we keep track of the early crops. By late July and well into September, we’ll be pulling back the mulch like a big blanket, and Kueka Golds, Russets, Cranberries, Purple Vikings and Russian Blues will emerge with the digging fork.
At lunch we are 10, gathered around three tables with whatever we can find to sit on. Ben has made us brown rice and two big pots of turnip and mustard greens with Indian spices, last year’s tomatoes, asparagus. Having worked his usual magic on the portable camp stove, our bellies are eager after a full morning of work. One pot has local pork mixed in and even the non-meat eaters are intrigued. We fill our bowls, and then we fill them again, eating until we can’t eat any more. The teapot goes around with Jon’s black brew; we’ve been hinting that siestas under the walnut trees would be a desirable farm policy, but for now there is plentiful caffeine.
In the afternoon we settle into hand weeding in the garlic patch. Last year we pulled around 16,000 head and this year’s crop may be larger yet. The plants are shaping up nicely, having enjoyed their long winters rest under the earth. We extract quack grass, and smother the lambs quarters before they can root too aggressively. We work across from, and beside one another, moving on hands and knees along the 300-foot rows. These are the jobs — predictably repetitive — that give way to our more philosophical conversations. I tend to think that the mental health of farm workers, at least on this piece of land, is exceptionally good, what with all of the time we have to discuss the small and large matters of life. No topic is off limits. Relationship crises are resolved, business plans are hashed out, politics is debated and a good deal of time is spent rapping about this work that we do: this caring for the land and fostering of clean, healthy food. A lot of us are interested in the long term: how this project and others like it, will unfold in the years to come as land in this county gets more expensive, or is replaced with second homes.
We all have in common that we want to grow safe food with a minimum of dependence on machines. Many of us who work on this farm are artists and cultural creatives. There are several activists, moms, a couple teenagers, a few elders. We could be somewhere else. We could maybe even be making a living wage if we changed fields. But we’d rather be here. We are clear about this. Even with the hardships that this kind of work entails — the early mornings and long days; the unaccommodating weather; the cut worms and squash bugs and corn seed maggots and other critters who come and undermine our work if we are anything but totally vigilant.
When people ask me “what I do” and I tell them I work on an organic farm, it is the rare person who does not make at least a passing comment about “how hard that work must be.” I’m not sure what they mean. Perhaps that it is hard on the body, after all, this work involves using muscles many of us wouldn’t otherwise know we have. Or hard on the psyche, as stress can be high when there is risk of failure: there are so many uncertainties when working with nature. Or hard on the bank account: farming in this century, in this place, means an economic reality that for most farmers is consistently discouraging.
Yes, often what we do can seem really hard. But it is so satisfying too. The light coming up over the east ridge as the dew rises off the perennial beds. Or the way your ear tunes to other living things which have settled this place: song birds mostly, and chickens and barn cats and the occasional snake. The wind. Or the smell of lemon balm or rosemary as we pass along a row of thriving herbs, bushy and adamant.
We eat well and we know others do too because we showed up to take care of those plants, the soil, the water in the well and the bugs who are sometimes a help and sometimes a hindrance. The little community that has formed around this common project does regard the growing of food as an effort of prime importance as we create the world we wish to live in. We like being where we are, surrounded by green living things, and we like with whom we share this occupation: the people who make a stand for open space and for productive land that is not tied to subsidies or industrial agriculture; people who make a stand for a relationship to the earth and food that acknowledges we need to take care of what we do to it, and to ourselves.