The Dirt on Aches, Pains, and Tim's Fall Philosophical Farmer Brain
There's no hiding under expectations and hopes come late fall. By now, the planter has been sitting still for more than a month, the greenhouse has fully transitioned into a cold weather packing shed with nary a seedling to be had, and most of the hard work for the year is in the past. Late fall is a time of reckoning. Some of the best planning ideas for 2014 must come out of the farming process now, for soon it will be too cold to get meaningful shop work done, or test out new cultivation techniques in the frozen fields. Let alone the fact that much of the time it is too cold to think, let alone do. Applying oneself to these hands-on tasks at this juncture in the season can indeed be an uphill task.
The season takes it out of you. Even a pretty good cropping year like 2013 has left behind its scars, bumps and bruises, and aching joints galore. The heart attack of our skid loader, and our garlic fleeing the scene of a thistle invasion, are by far the worst wounds inflicted in 2013, but when compared to the 199 sprains, cuts, twists, hyper-extensions, and jams of toe, finger, wrist, knee, neck, and especially back, these past tragedies that we raked our eyes over in warmer times, are barely visible on the horizon. Perhaps we raked too hard.
Our crew of produce warriors don't have that spring step anymore, nor do we expect it. It is cold, wet, and dark in the fields and barn for much of the work time, with only colder times ahead. Our spines have developed more pronounced forward arches from all the bending, stooping, crawling, and lifting. This allows us to speak to one another without having to get our feet closer to each other.
As the body gives way, the psyche adjusts too. The cooperative brain of the workers and owners of LotFotL Community Farm are by this time of year not what they used to be. Decisions that were once made with zip-line tightness are now mulled over a bit, pondered even to the point of contemplation. We are as the Sun's appearance in the winter sky: not quite so upright or high minded anymore, but rather oblong and waning. As sharp as a cabbage. This "lapsiness" will come with some futile regrets in mid-winter when real laziness is fully achieved, and cabin fever impossible to shake. "If only we would have thought about that in late November....." will surely be uttered in an ice fishing shack on Phantom Lake by one or more of us this February, hopefully followed by a 38" northern waving a tip-up flag our way.
So be it, says what's left of the spirit of summer! Soon, we will tap dance over ashes of great brush pile and pallet fires, celebrating with renewed enthusiasm the great rest ahead and the seasons to follow. Books will not just be what you hold in order to fall asleep, but actually interesting objects one holds all day just for enjoyment. Time will be had to develop things like social skills, housecleaning techniques, and a tolerance for that second pot of coffee. How excellent the feeling of having wasted an entire January day doing as little as possible!
That's putting the cart before the horse.
For now, determination is the fuel to our fire. We slog on, and on, and on, stretching our capacities, and deepening our ruts. It takes a gritty sort of fool to press on in these conditions, it is true. Or maybe, conditions like these make mere mortals into hardened, gritty almost demigods, capable of harvesting 500# of tomatoes an hour in a 110 degree mosquito den, or crawling through the permafrost's version of mud to scrape golden beets free at a clip of 40#/hr. Whatever the cause, we keep on, like the winds of Quinney farm or your favorite stream, enduring,eroding whatever lurks in our path, tuned in on this low, dull, distant drumbeat of time, riding a wave that is not of our own creation, but riding it well all the same.
