Nourishing Bites | Stacking Benefits Part III
Sweet Harvest | Young AJF CSA members and their sweet peppers.
In early September, a CSA mother and I had a conversation that lodged in my heart. She shared a story that brought into sharp focus the power of stacking benefits - across time, geography, and human experience. It reminded me, once again, no matter what the intended benefits are of our work, we can never truly know the ultimate ways in which we impact the lives of others. The beauty of stacking benefits is that for every single benefit we can see, there are no doubt more hidden in the hedgerows and hearts of our community.
As this mother picked up her share, she looked in my eyes and told me how much the Farm to Heart food has meant to her family. “And these sweet peppers,” she said, “we’ve never tasted anything like them.” She then told me that her sixth grader has been saving the seeds from some of our produce- most especially the peppers.
While this may seem like a simple, ‘neat’ thing for a kid to do, the reality is much more complex. She went on to share that her family experienced homelessness for three years. Now that they have settled in our community, the mother tells me, on some mornings, her daughter is nearly late for school because she’s determined to get her garden watered thoroughly first. When she grows up, her daughter tells her that she wants to have a farm. “We finally found a small bench to put out back, because our daughter just likes to go and sit and be with her plants.”
There have been moments in my farming life in which things come into alignment in unexplainable ways. Mostly this happens when I am kneeling in the field, working at a repetitive task, alone but not lonely. I set down my guard and become permeable with the land. I am part of the farm and the farm is part of me. In these moments, connections come into sharp focus with such power and clarity and depth of emotion there is not a way to speak of it. I just have to remain still, steeped in a sense of wonder and knowing that transcends the present and past and future.
And so, too, standing with this mother, sharing the reality of her experience, I could not put words to the moment. But I will try to explain... benefit by benefit, what her story meant to me.
First, can you understand the sheer conviction of hope it must take for a child who has experienced homelessless - for whom the land beneath her feet has felt not stable but transitory - to hold the seeds of a sweet pepper and know with all her being, she belongs to the land, and the land belongs to her? What immense courage to claim out loud, “I can be a farmer when I grow up.”
Then, can you understand the serendipity of her love for not just any vegetable, but our sweet peppers- these particular sweet peppers- given the incredible survival story of this year’s crop? Entirely unbeknownst to her, weeks earlier, I was brought to near tears, holding the first harvest of these precious peppers in my hands, knowing all that tumult and crazy unpredictability they endured, understanding the strength and resilience embedded in the precious, precious seeds. These valuable, irreplaceable seeds made more valuable by and because of their difficult struggle. And valuable not just to the pepper plant itself, but a gift in the feeding and tending of the greater surrounding community, for years to come. Close your eyes. Imagine a sixth grader and a farmer, connected by a tenaciously determined plant. They are miles apart, holding an extraordinary gift from this plant. Sweet pepper seed from the same uncertain harvest- unique in all the world. Yes. Holding sweet pepper seed and a mutual conviction of hope.
Finally, can you understand how meaningful and symbolic all this is given that these particular varieties of sweet peppers have been bred and cultivated right here in our bio-region, by passionate organic seed stewards? These are peppers with a profound, deeply rooted sense of place and of home. Can you imagine how that benefit of belonging, that sense of connection, nourishes us in ways we cannot fathom?
I sure can.
Ever since I was a kid, I have loved sweet peppers- so much so I would have eaten a dozen at a time-- raw just like apples-- if I could have. Sweet peppers were not a crop we had in our garden, and I remember knowing very clearly they were extremely expensive, so I tried my hardest to not ask for them.
But magically, every once in a while, I’d open my lunch sack and lo and behold, one beautiful brightly colored sweet pepper would be inside. It was better than any napkin love note a person could write a kid. My mother knew the power and the preciousness of this seemingly simple act of unspoken love. She nourished my connection to food in the very best way she could.
I can tell you straight from my heart that it does not matter how many years pass. When I plant sweet pepper seeds each spring? When I harvest sweet peppers, one by one by one? When I see kids arrive for CSA pickup and immediately go for the bag of sweet peppers, eating one after another after another?
I think of Mama. I feel seen and loved.
I feel home.
A Farmer’s Beginnings | One of my ducklings, Sidecar the dog, and Mama. Always Mama.
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Just like farming, most weeks at CSA pickup have a familiar routine. Families come and go, and while there is much goodwill and pleasantries, the richness of the work does not always surface. We do the work, and hope the work matters.
But as I previously wrote, “these everyday, ordinary seeming moments are actually extraordinary. It’s not just about a recipe here or a fun food fact there. Collectively, we are intentionally laying the groundwork for all future land and food stewards in our midst. These ‘ordinary’ moments are the genesis of lifelong associations with farms and farmers, with food and chefs, with cooking, and with a caring community. These moments mark a new beginning of how our families see themselves and their place in our world.”
My mother is the one who taught me to cherish plants and people. She taught me that it is my responsibility and my honor to tend and care for the community at my feet and outside my door. She is without a doubt a driving force behind my desire to become a farmer. Her brand of “ordinary” encouragement is the foundation of my life.
So, in that moment a few weeks back, hearing this new CSA mother and her daughter’s story, I realized with a brilliant clarity, in ways big and small, that my entire mission the last fourteen years of my farming career has been to pass on my mother’s stacking-benefits-sweet-pepper-kind-of-love.
Positive outcome, by positive outcome, our beautiful April Joy Farm and farm-to-heart-to-community relationships are manifesting in more and more creative ways, with more access and more curiosity and more teachers and more learners… and hopefully, ultimately, more stewards of our lands and our hearts.
Please understand this: you need not have a farm to make use of the concept of stacking benefits. Whether we know it or not, the seed of community stewardship is planted within us all. Our work is to do the work. Our work is to find ways we can leverage our talents and passions and resources to help, and then, with ordinary, sweet-pepper-kind-of-love and regularity, to help. ~AJ
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Many of you have asked about contributing to our Farm to Heart Initiative. Contributions are gratefully accepted, 100% of the funds are used to provide CSA shares. Checks can be sent to April Joy Farm PO Box 973 Ridgefield, WA. 98642. (Please write Farm to Heart Initiative on the subject line.) You can also contribute online.
First Foods | Our youngest CSA members test out the first solid foods of their life. AJF purple potatoes, tomatoes, green beans, and carrots make the grade. For every photo capturing this moment, there are no doubt tenfold more captured only in our collective memories.