What was supposed to be a week of continued bountiful, 80-degree harvest has become smoky, yellow-tinted days, looking up at the strange sun. The wildfire smoke has reached far into the peninsula, as I’m sure you’ve noticed.
Nonetheless, we wake up, check-in with each other, and continue about our week. The farm provided us with a bunch of N-95s, and we’re doing our best to stay healthy in this smoke. We’re still in the part of the season where food is so plentiful, our walk-in cooler is filled to the brim. A lot of farming is timing and waiting, and it’s a beautiful dance to watch beds come ready with food, then later become a new crop, while the bed just across the way comes ready.
My heart breaks for those farmers across the West that have to abandon their farms, their source of livelihood and fulfillment. It’s truly a life-giving practice to be a farmer. There is so much joy in bringing good food to good people.
Farmers feel a calling to this work: a strong, deeply-embedded desire to grow food, to supply the essentials for human life at any cost. Dr. Mike Rosmann writes about this, that farmers feel a call to meet others’ need for food. Notably, he writes on the distress caused when farmers are unable to fulfill their basic desire to do this work. Farmers often express the sentiment of “letting down” their community, in both their families and their consumers.
We’ve known since the beginning of this season, with the phrase “essential workers” being passed around, that our work was needed. While many of our friends, and myself included, were let go from jobs in March, Persephone continued to prepare for the summer. We adapted our market booth, our CSA orientation – making it work.
So here we are, masked up in the yellowish, hazy afternoons. Most of all, we’re grateful for the ability to answer this call to the land and continue to bring good food to you all. Without it, I’m not sure what else we would do.
We wish the best for our fellow farmers affected more seriously by these wildfires along the West Coast, and hope that you all are staying safe as well.
As the gloominess of the smoke lingers, I hope that you find something that will bring joy and meaning into your life, as growing food does for us.
– Intern Caitlin
(she/her/hers)
