apprenticeship

     Tomorrow I leave for North Carolina. What are you doing now? my friends and family ask. Living on a farm? I say, shrugging my shoulders. I mean, working on an organic farm? It's easy, for me and the people around me, to categorize this move as a lark, the casting off of a post-collegiate world of grad school applications, wearing grown-up clothes, fiscal responsibility. It's easier still to imagine it as an adventure, a summer spent in the great outdoors, meeting farm wanderers, becoming closer to the earth. And while embarking on this apprenticeship merits both of those designations, to me, and I think, to organic, sustainable farmers nation-wide, it means something more. 

      I read this morning that an apple eaten today contains five times fewer nutrients than a comparative apple from 1965.*   It reminded me just what this apprenticeship is not: it's not a lark. It's the first step in a commitment to fighting injustice, to reaching into the dense, bankrupt morass of industrial agriculture and coming out with an apple that will do more than just sit in your gut. 

     An apprenticeship is something further still. It's the chance to figure out the earth and how it works. I know that as a young person interested in the sustainable agriculture movement, I can find vital, fulfilling work that does not require muddy boots. The work of making films, raising awareness, researching soil, networking with schools and farms is just as important as the work I hope to do. But it's not the same. I found an old screed on organic farming called "Grow It!" The1972 book guides an urban dweller through the ups and downs of farming one's own land. I'll leave you (and my excited, nervous heart) with the words of the author, Richard W. Langer. In the introduction, he writes: 

"Apprentice yourself to nature. If we really mean to return to the land, let us not return empty-handed...The purpose of the so-called organic method is simply to work hand-in-hand with nature, to avoid using destructive chemicals. More properly perhaps it should be called natural farming. But the name of the game isn't semantics, it's the healthier, saner, more rewarding life that comes of making your own way in the world and knowing that you've done a day's work that counts. So bring a small house gift when you come to the land--two hands full of willingness to do right by the land, the hands of nature's apprentice."*

Here I go. 

sources:

*http://realfoodcampaign.org/food
** Langer, Richard W.Grow it: the Beginner's Complete In-Harmony-with-Nature Small Farm Guide--from Vegetable and Grain Growing to Livestock Care. Saturday Review Press/E.P Dutton&Co., Inc. New York: 1972.