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The good
earth
As a city
girl, I never gave much thought to the earth that I scuffed
beneath my sneakers. It wasn’t that nature played no part in my
daily life — I lived just a few blocks away from a beautiful
park and spent my happiest summers in upstate New York
surrounded by woods and earth. But the closest I ever got to
seeing someone plant something was watching my mom tend her much
loved plants. She’s always had a gift for growing things. I
would watch as she transplanted and watered and some of her love
of greenery must have passed on to me without my knowing.
Unfortunately, we had no family garden patch to tend, so it
wasn’t until I spent a summer on a kibbutz in Israel, knee deep
in vegetation demanding attention, that I was formally
introduced to the fine art of the growing season and I wasn’t so
sure that I wanted any part of it.
We were
woken at 4:30 in the morning and barely had time to splash water
onto our faces, gulp some coffee and take our bread and butter
with us on the tractors that took us out to the fields. The
first crop that I worked on was cotton and all I did was weed. I
don’t know if cotton weeds are always so ornery or if the
kibbutz farmers simply let them grow rampant knowing that groups
of idiot American teenagers would be coming over to yank them
out. All I know is that from five o’clock in the morning until
eight when we went back for breakfast, and then from nine to
twelve, we bent over rows of overgrown, evil weeds.
Once the
cotton fields were cleared, they sent us to the orange groves.
We were each given a canvas sack to hang on our shoulders and a
small pair of pruning shears to snip the oranges off the trees.
We had to climb uncertain ladders balanced on the trees, cut as
many oranges as we could to fill our bags, then empty our bags
into huge crates at the end of every row. And the lemons were
even worse. They had thorns the size of arrowheads. I was
learning quickly that a life in the fields was not for me.
It wasn’t
until I got sent to the banana fields that I found a crop that
wasn’t torturous to work in. There we simply bagged the bananas
in different colored and textured bags, depending on how quickly
they wanted that particular bunch to ripen, allowing the kibbutz
to stagger the harvest. For example: canvas bags allowed the
bananas a longer ripening period while blue plastic bags
hastened the process. The worst part was getting covered in
sticky, black, banana tree juice that never came out of your
clothes and sometimes not your skin either.
For years
after my kibbutz experiences, I no longer wanted to even look at
a philodendron, let alone raise one. My yearnings for the good
earth were effectively buried in it. But after Steve and I moved
to an apartment that was flooded with sun, I tentatively began
raising one little ivy plant. That soon blossomed into an
apartment overflowing with greenery. I happily tended my own
little Eden until a particularly horrifying infestation of some
white wooly bug effectively wiped out my green progeny. It
wasn’t until we began to tend a small vegetable plot in our
Canton home that I allowed myself once again to be seduced by
the good earth.
So when my
friend Roxy sent me an e-mail introducing me to Mass Audubon’s
Moosehill CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) Farm, it spoke
to something in me that recognized a good thing when it
appeared. I was hooked when I read their website:
Members
of the CSA buy shares in a farm and receive fresh, locally grown
food every week during the growing season. Shareholders receive
a wide variety of foods harvested at their peak of ripeness,
flavor, and vitamin and mineral content. Crops are planted in
succession to provide support for biodiversity, and a continuous
weekly supply of mixed vegetables chosen for flavor and
nutritional value. Moose Hill Community Farm grows many
different types of vegetables so shareholders can expect a wide
variety. This greatly diminishes the risk of crop failure while
enhancing soil fertility without the use of synthetic chemicals.
Organic growing techniques, such as crop rotation, companion
planting, green manuring, and composting are standard procedures.
Each
shareholder is expected to work six hours for his share, either
in the fields or distributing crops. For our first foray, Roxy
and I chose the fields. Remembering those nefarious cotton weeds
in my past, I was nervous until I learned that we would be
picking strawberries. That, I could handle. For two hours, on a
beautiful sunny summer’s morning, we carefully picked berries,
filling small containers for all the shareholders, and I was
content. This was personal, soul nourishing and intensely
satisfying. Literally enjoying the fruits of our labor and
working for the earth’s good reminded me of how lovingly my mom
tended her garden. And though Voltaire was poking fun at his
creation Candide when he had him say that the only philosophy he
believed was that, “We should cultivate our own gardens,” I
believe it. But not just our own gardens—we need to tend the
world’s gardens as well.
July 10, 2008
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