Farm Steady: Week #1, June 10, 2020

Every week this season, I’ll be sharing with you a little sliver of my life here on the farm. Our culture has lost its connection to the process of growing food, to being deeply and daily tied to what sustains us. I share with you my experience of being a farmer to do a small part in retying that severed thread.

Everyone’s lives have been changed by the pandemic, but my life here on the farm has been left remarkably untouched compared to most.

The sun keeps shining, the heat keeps increasing, the rains keep coming. And so the crops grow and I work.

Starting in March, I began seeding work. Just myself and one employee did the vast amount of this through March and early April. Over the last few months this work has expanded into planting, cultivating, and harvesting work. More and more crew members have joined on to the farm. It is a slow and steady ramp up of the fields demanding our attention… this morning there are 13 people working on the farm in addition to Mike and I.

All the seasonal changes are still here…. the garlic starting to send out scapes, the strawberries flowering, the zucchini starting flashing its first fruits, snap peas starting to develop.

I am tethered to the seasons and the land. And so through this pandemic, I have remained anchored. The work of farming has remained steady. It’s been a source of calm and purpose.

I am so incredibly grateful.

Like everyone else, I miss things. I look forward to hugs, listening to my kids laugh and play with other children, hanging out with friends, and seeing my crew’s smiles as we work together in the fields.

I feel for so many of you, including my own kids, whose lives have  been altered in much more drastic ways. May you be well in body and mind. And may this box of veggies give a calm, a connection to the patterns and cycles that remain unchanged through this time of unsteadiness.

Farmer Cassie