Hard Work

Six weeks into the apprenticeship and the harshest curve of learning has passed. With the warmer weather, our days have begun to fall into a steady flow of harvesting, processing, planting, and cultivation. In other words, we are working our butts off.

I've noted in recent days the degree to which people comment on the hardness of farm work. I have myself often remarked on how hard our farmer works, or in darker moments, how not so hard I've worked in the recent past---afternoon coffees and crosswords come to mind. But I've also remembered, as I crouch to pick spinach, bunch kale or cultivate yet another bed, the words painted on the wall at the student center of my college: "I go to the work I love--with no thought of duty or pity." The purity of such a philosophy inspired me then to research with attention rather than compunction. It inspires me now to cringe when I catch myself calculating the hours we have been out in the fields. I've never liked the phrase "hard work." Too often, the words raise up one discipline and knock down another. The phrase feels irrelevant as I try to rise each day and rest each night with no thoughts of duty or pity. Yes, we are working hard. Yes, moments pass in frustration, fatigue, angst. But we work among ancient, green mountains that reflect their stillness back to us. We work among tiny seeds that will bust their way through their hard exteriors, muscle up through soil and rock, and pull and pull and pull for water and sun. Hard work means nothing to a mountain, or to a seed. The weeks pass, my arms burn in the sun, my shoulders get stronger, and I aim for the same silent, thriving existence of the seeds we plant.