And you?

We rolled through the end of summer, carried in the current of harvest under a relentlessly beating sun. Tumbling fast in the momentum of this dry and dusty September, the world outside of the farm blurred. There's good and bad in that. Current events fall out of focus, nearsighted as I am in the summer with farmwork. It's easy in September to keep to my intention of living in my own reality, rather than in the news cycle, where I am helpless and bitter. Our typical clockwork goes as follows: wake up, make the kids' breakfast and lunches, feed the cats and dogs and Crystal Geode Wickham (Jack's fish), help Jack with his morning routine, drive the kids to school, get the irrigation moved and turned on and then harvest the tender crops, move the irrigation again, and then onto harvesting the fruiting crops. Break for lunch and then in the heat of the day it's time for seeding weekly microgreens or salad mix, fixing the original cooler whose ceiling was falling down on us, administrative duties, roasting this week's squash for the pumpkin pies, or else finally doing all the laundry which tells the tale of the week's activities. And after some family time and dinner together, we head outside to pick up where we left off until dusk tells us it's time for bedtime stories. We fell into the sun's slipstream way back in May and are riding it out until it heads for the next hemisphere.

I come up for air every day around three when I drive over to school to pick up my favorite cargo and realize that a conventional work day has passed. I simply stand still for five minutes until the bell rings and the kindergarteners stream out of the front doors. Finally a still moment, and I'm among a sea of other idle parents who maybe also haven't stopped all day. It's very evident that I'm a farmer with a smudge of soil on my arm, hair askew, and the scent of physical work on me. I so rarely take the time to disguise myself this time of the year. Jack materializes, ornery again after another "whole day was taken from him because of school". School's breaking him like a wild horse. We're sad to see him tamed, but ultimately know it'll immerse him in the ways of the world so that he can discover how to plug his fierce self into it and make a life for himself. May, cool as a cucumber, meanders out with her fellow esteemed third graders, the oldest class in the building, underwhelmed by the subject matter in class. "When can we start learning divisionnnn?" Did my third grade self yearn for the teacher to move along in the curriculum? I'm pretty sure I was just concerning myself with secret handshakes and watercooler news. After we ramble up the long gravel driveway, we're back in the tumbler. We unpack, and then head back out to the farm, two for work and two for play or finding frogs until it's time to brush teeth. Of course our hallowed dinnertime comes like a deep inhale and exhale sometime before then.

The harvest season hustle is real. But on Saturday mornings we surface in Oakwood to put it all out on the market table. And, like lifting your head breaking the water's surface, the life aquatic slips away and we are surrounded by the sounds of life ashore. The market teems with people who perhaps are coming up for their breaths too on this, the start of their weekend. They have been whirling in eddies of their own. At market we find ourselves sharing a different kind of energy and space together than what we've had all week. This time is oxygenating: catching tidbits of people's lives and thoughts and anecdotes. So many ask us, "how are you?"

"We are good!" I say, "tired" I say, "dancing for rain" I say. There's not enough time to elaborate to them that we are feeling grateful for being in the business of basic needs right now. With spending being down, and too many independent businesses hurting, growing food is giving us security. We have had substantial loss in the field this year due to a combination of the most challenging weather conditions we have seen in a single season and deer pressure, reaping less than we sowed. But we have managed to fill our market table and wholesale orders every week and continue to have more demand than we can fill, even if we reaped it all. A sage vegetable farmer named Ray once told us, "you won't get rich farming, but you'll always be okay, no matter the recessions".

Our bodies are still young enough to handle most of the beating we put them through in the high season. Rich bears the burden of a lot of hyper physical and repetitive tasks around here and so, come this time of the year, his body's feeling it enough to warrant shopping around for semi automatic walk behind transplanters and daydreaming about self propelling laydown weeders. Yes, he and I would lay side by side on our bellies on this machine as if we were on the massage table, which would slowly drive us down the vegetable beds while we weed veg (see the De Jongh weeder below). At this stage of our lives, he maintains his body as he does the farm equipment, feeding it well and greasing the wheels as needed, strengthening exercises too. But the dogged days of summer certainly have him weary and his body sore. Pregnancy triggered autoimmunity for me, and so I now manage my Hashimoto's which suffers with chronic stress or overtaxation. My underperforming thyroid can't keep up as well when I'm this physical and so by this time of the year, I battle fatigue and I'm inflamed. After ignoring it in the past and getting so off-kilter that it took months and upping my dose of thyroid hormone to compensate for my depleted little endocrine gland, I have learned my place. I don't push as hard and I say "no" to my ambitions more often to keep it chugging best as it can. I'll rebound sooner than later and there are rainy days and cooler temperatures ahead that promise recuperation for both of us.

How are we? We are satisfied with our life on the farm, bettered by our awesome kids, though sentimental about them growing up, tired by the season, pleased with what we're pulling off in a tough growing year, eager for tomorrow's fall equinox and the season's change, heartbroken about the state of the world, worried and ready for positive change, souls satiated by the good people who ask us how we are. And you? How are you?

Thank you for reading.

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