You wouldn't end up here without intention. In fact, you wouldn't be able to find us at all unless you knew we were back here. Obscured from the road, only the bravest continue down through mud, deep holes. Those wiser than us complain at the state of the road, assuming that since we grow our own food we also possess the knowledge to grow money on trees. Little do they realize this road is stubborn and has seen too many lives to listen to our wishes. We've tried to fix her but somehow more rain and mud always seem to win out in the end. But I don't mind, not really. I've heard many a lecture from well-meaning souls about how I should really fix our road, pave it, fill in all the holes. I listen and smile my polite, forced, no-teeth fake smile that my husband knows so well. The one where I bite my tongue all the while ruminating on the fact that we have no money for such silly luxuries as paving our long dirt road.
Old-timers who've passed their whole lives here exclaim in astonishment that we exist. The farm itself is a hub for our community. Friends, neighbors, strangers forever dropping by unexpectedly, unannounced. Most often unaware of the small house tucked all the way back, around the bend, down the disheveled dirt road that we one day promise to fix. Or not.
The cows know we're back here. Paw paws and wine berries line our edges, hedging us in, protecting us. Quail and deer greet me at dusk. Occasionally we emerge to greet the world but most often this is where we retreat. After a long day's work outside. After farmers markets and longer days off the farm. After butchering animals and stuffing our freezers. After visiting family. After the mud and sweat have encrusted our skin and we're not sure where it all ends and we begin. Then round the bend we head, legs heavy, arms laden with vegetables or something more precious, perhaps a feast for the eyes.
And then, I catch sight of the loblolly planted with my dad when I was barely taller than the tiny sapling it was, now tall, now towering over a very particular spot on this earth. The spot that I call home.
Home. It's my safe place that encompasses the fifty acres of land I care for, as much or more than my actual indoor abode. I turn the corner and there I am, muddy dirt road, ginormous puddles, food forest, acres of trees I planted myself, years ago, nurtured and grown into a beautiful orchard. Time is a funny thing. How many years had to pass before this odd, funny parcel, too flat for my liking finally became home? Was it just a few weeks, months or was it years? I honestly can't remember when the line was crossed. Was it that time we captured a swarm of bees with our bare hands or maybe it was when the love of my life planted a field of flowers just for me? Was it when we got eaten alive by gnats and cursed our chosen profession? Was it the thousandth time I complained about the state of my kitchen or the weeds in the garden? Did it happen quietly or was there a sudden, very loud pronouncement when the universe bellowed out: NOW YOU ARE HOME. What is that intangible feeling that is hopelessly impossible to put into words?
Home to me isn't entirely sublime either. It's messy and annoying and sometimes you resent it for having such a stranglehold. What can you call that visceral reaction that grips hold of your entire being? Is it the smell of spices and dogs and wool that provokes it? The delightful odor of the garden after a perfect summer storm? Or maybe it's that special silence when you have the farm all to yourself before anyone even realizes you're there. That moment between existing and not, going away and coming home. And the peace! Oh that peace, that you're finally in your safe space once more. When every muscle and fiber throughout your body and soul simply relaxes and just lets go. Returning as if you'd never left at all. That's the feeling that grabs hold of me throughout my home, my farm, this land I care for. The feeling I hope I always hold onto, wherever life may carry me.
What a blessing, what a privilege to have my home. Yes, I constantly grumble about fixing it up with money we do not have. The endless projects, the leaks, the rot, but how lucky I am to have this old home. To be another inhabitant, another ghost in a house that has housed so many over its two-hundred-plus year history. I see the houseless that fill our headlines and our cities. Daily I read of the destruction in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon and I think how grateful I am to have an intact home. I see people forcibly expelled from their homes, crops and trees burned and devastated. I watch as hurricanes wreak havoc on the land, forcing people to flee, only to return to a landscape entirely changed, their homes gone. The guilt overwhelms me as I realize I am safe and they are not. What did I do to deserve such riches? Nothing, absolutely nothing and yet here I am. I won't pretend to hold answers, but I can hold space while I attempt to continue my work and cultivate community where I am right now.
Farming can be a very isolating profession but at the same time, the farm is the hub of the community, drawing people in with a siren song of nature, food, and life itself.
What would a world look like where we leaned on each other? To depend on another is a radical act. When we choose to reject modern prejudices, reject the status quo and reject everything we've been taught, we are finally liberated. Freedom is not being free from each other. Freedom is recognizing how we are all connected and tied to this universe. How liberating, but at once terrifying too. When we rely on one another, we make ourselves vulnerable, open to pain as well as joy. But when we do, we take our place in this beautiful, intricate web, entering a realm more mythic than our own. Our ego dissolves and we come just a bit closer to eternity. This is why I farm. This is why I continue the work even though the world around me is falling apart.
As I slice the Palestinian heirloom eggplant I grew from seed, as I prepare it with olive oil, salt and pepper, in my cozy kitchen, my thoughts turn toward all those without a home, without safety, across another world, yet never out of sight or mind. Too easy to forget, yet the consequences if we do are impossible to live with. So I do what I can here, in the relative safety of my own home, as my prayers go out across oceans toward all those living without home or safety.
Each night as I drift off to sleep, I walk the borders of my farm, putting her to bed as I go. Navigating her by moonlight, I sing a lullaby of sorts, soothing away worries as I tuck in the farm for the night. Between waking and dreaming, I check in with the farm, the animals, the plants: sealing up our perimeter as I soar along her boundaries, so that she is safe and sound for the night. Depending on my mood and the events of the day, some nights I build walls around her edges, concerned for her safety, or I specifically check an animal that I'm worried about or feel needs my particular attention. Sometimes its a crop that needs to be put to bed until sleep is wrapped safely around her. Other nights a quick jolly jaunt around suffices and then I'm done.
Dependent on the circumstances and feelings, this rhythm I've developed into habit just seems necessary and right. To farm well, to farm justly, to farm with feeling and care requires an ongoing dance between the farmer and the land and animals and plants she cares for. To be a farmer you must remain at once relentlessly stubborn and independent, yet at the same time wholly reliant upon the cycles and seasons. I am her fierce protector because she is my even fiercer provider of food and shelter and life.
And so each night as I fall asleep I participate in this dance, tapping into the land and the ancestors and spirits who dwell here. I have received revelations, warnings, prophesies, sorrow and joy from this nightly ritual. Sometimes it is as simple as remembering that a crop needs a specific nutrient or wants to be trellised, other times a birth or death comes to me.
As night follows night, so my own spirit becomes interwoven with this spot of earth I inhabit. I begin where she ends. And she is endless. Earth, air, water, sky, fire, moon, sun: life sustainers of all. And so, I tend to her, as she daily tends to me. And along the way, in those moments between waking and dreaming, I come to know her just a bit better each night, just a bit better than before. Moon and stars above my head, wet grass beneath my feet, floating weightless around her borders. She is home. Only then can I sleep.
xxxx Natalie
What's Happening
We're having a workshop here on our farm October 18-20, and I hope that you can join us for a weekend of community spent outdoors, working and learning together. It's sliding scale in order to make it accessible to as many folks as possible, with work trade options available too. Camping is also available on the farm as well. I'm in charge of food and they'll be lots of vegan and vegetarian options available with the majority of the food sourced directly from our farm. These events are really about community and I love getting to meet new people and see old friends.
Dear Natalie, as an inveterate gypsy who has finally been captured by my home, I really appreciate your description of what home means to you, warts and all. It wasn't until I created a garden in the tenth home I had lived in in Virginia- that it began to feel like home. We just asked the landlord if we could buy it, and he said it is spoken for by his children. Hope being stubborn as it is, we are still hoping they will lose interest and sell it to us someday.
I love how you walk the farm each night, how you sense its needs while it senses yours. I particularly appreciate this line, and the thoughts you offered with it: "What would a world look like where we leaned on each other? To depend on another is a radical act." Your house is bright and beautiful. Your HOME is, as you say, endless.