My first summer out of college, I knew nothing but that I needed to spend some time working outside. The structure and confinement of school had been hard for me. I’ve never done well with work that requires sitting still for long periods of time. It was the early 2000s, and the internet was not what it is now, so, when I decided in my senior year of college that I wanted to work on a farm, I found a website and mailed them a check for $15 to receive a printout of farm apprenticeships around the country. I applied to farms in several different states but ended up settling on a summer field worker job at Wheatland Vegetable Farms in Purcellville, Virginia, right outside of my hometown of Washington, D.C.
Prior to Wheatland, my gardening/growing experience was limited to the handful of tomato and cucumber plants I planted each summer through high school and the impatiens and geraniums that my sister and I picked out with our mom each summer at the garden center and planted in the borders of our side yard. I had no idea what I was getting into at Wheatland, but I fell almost instantly and fully in love with the work of farming.
At the height of the summer, there were about 12 of us living and working at the farm. We were mostly college students or recent college graduates, and we all lived in a large old barn, our rooms cobbled together with plywood out of converted animal stalls. At one point, I lived in a room directly above the chicken coop, and I would read my book at night to the sounds of chickens lowly cooing below me. Eventually, I had to switch rooms because tiny chicken mites traveled up through the gaps in the barn floor and covered every surface in my room. We shared an old fashioned outhouse a few hundred yards away from the barn and ate our meals in a screened-in camp kitchen at the base of the main farmyard.
Work began at 7 every morning and often stretched into dusk. Each day we were sent out onto the farm, six or seven of us riding in the back of an old white Ford pickup truck, to harvest and plant and weed and mulch and do any other number of countless tasks to keep 25 acres of vegetables happy and healthy. It was exhausting and all-consuming, but to me it was heaven. I loved the solidness of it, the way that after two hours of transplanting, gulping down water out of a gallon jug to stay hydrated in the hot Virginia sun, you could look back and see clear evidence of your work in the long parallel rows of freshly planted tomatoes. These same tomatoes we would later trellis, mulch and spend the rest of the summer and fall harvesting. I loved the way that weeding or transplanting left my mind free to roam, or the space to dive into long conversations with my coworkers about art, politics and the dreams and plans we had for our lives ahead.
My life during that time was hewn down to the true essentials — there was no time outside of the farm to live a complicated life. I woke up, ate breakfast, showed up to the farmyard and then worked all morning, ate slices of tomatoes on hunks of bread we traded for at the farmers market, worked all afternoon, and then collapsed into the kitchen at the end of the day to a meal shared with some of the most interesting people I’ve ever lived and worked with.
The work of growing food at Wheatland gripped me and forever shifted the course of my life to one focused on plants and growing. Since then, I have worked on production-scale vegetable farms and hand-tilled gardens, and now I work in a greenhouse. I have grown produce, fruit and flowers and tended bees, goats, pigs and chickens. I have farmed and gardened in Virginia and California, and, almost a decade, ago I helped co-found Crimson & Clover Farm in Florence. Through this time and this professional work as a grower, I have also lived in apartments and houses both on and off the farms where I’ve worked, and I’ve kept various scales of herb, flower, decorative and vegetable gardens on the side.
Through all of this time, my own journey as a gardener and grower continues to evolve, and in many ways I still feel like a beginner. As I’m sure any gardener can relate to, one of the joys of growing is the almost endless opportunity to be a student — of plants and horticulture, in general, and of our own gardens, specifically. The ability to work in relation to the seasons, the weather and the plants themselves is humbling and deeply gratifying. I still love the feeling of getting lost in weeding the garden or transplanting in the greenhouse, my mind free to wander and daydream. It is the closest I come in my life to losing myself in the present.
All of our paths through gardening and growing by nature change and evolve depending on our own resources of time, interest and the space we have available. I’m sure this is as true for most of you as it is for me. Regardless, the practice of growing, whether on a farm-scale or in a backyard garden, has the power to ground us in the places where we live, to teach us endlessly about the world around us, and to bring us a little bit closer to our own present moments. I would love to hear about your paths through gardening and growing, and I hope to include some of your stories in future columns. I can be reached at jenskillmansmith@gmail.com.
Winter Solstice Celebration & Forest Luminaria Walk at Arcadia Wildlife Sanctuary
Dec. 21, 2019, 5:30-8:30 p.m.
FREE
Gather to celebrate the shortest day of the year on the winter solstice with a bonfire and luminary walk through the winter woods. There will also be live music and crafts for kids. Attendees are encouraged to bring a nonperishable food item to donate to the Food Bank of Western Massachusetts.
No registration necessary.