The sun is just cresting above the row of trees on the upper meadow, swelling the ribs of the greenhouse with golden light. Small veins of condensation streak the taut, plastic hides as I walk slowly past on my way to greet Fabian, who has no doubt been in the radish and salad beds since dawn. The cold earth bites my wet, bare feet. He simply nods to me in greeting, handing me a green plastic crate as we silently kneel on either side of glistening, sagging sugar-snap peas. His seasoned fingers flit in and out of the plants as if it were second nature; I’m pushing myself to keep up, eyes straining for ripe pods yet eager at the challenge. Although we don’t talk much, it’s okay, as the popping sound of peas pulled from their stems consecrates the ritual—it is mornings we harvest.
***
After graduating from college, I had the romantic vision of working on a farm for a summer. I was born on a farm, so daydreams of idling about a garden in golden afternoon light, or bumbling along on a tractor have become a nostalgic form of homeward bound for me. After a period of travel, I found a small “Demeter” farm in northern Germany where I could work in the Gärtnerei (garden). I was excited by the notion of getting onto my hands and knees and getting dirty, and, as my father is German, of a return to the roots in more ways than one.
Established in 1924, and named after the Greek goddess of the harvest, Demeter is an officially recognized brand of bio-dynamic farming based upon the Anthroposophical philosophy of Rudolf Steiner (of “Waldorf” fame). It is organic farming rooted in holistic and mystical practices—filling a cow horn with manure then burying it, and sowing according to the phases of the moon included.
Given the rigid stereotypes generally applied to Germans—rational, efficient, and, well, rigid—the acceptance and support of these practices might seem contradictory. Yet Steiner, who arguably fathered modern organic farming, rigorously attempted to apply a clear, western-based thought process to spiritual questions. While no mystic himself, he forged a path of “spiritual science,” a systematic approach that allowed him to apply his philosophy across almost all aspects of human life, ranging from child development to medicine to architecture.
In regards to farming, his doctrine treats the myriad ecosystems found on a farm—soil, plants, animals, humans—as a harmonic whole, a self-sustaining organism. While Demeter regulations are stricter than those of standard organic farming, Fabian, the head gardener, explained that what essentially separates the two is Demeter’s required misting of a fertilizer concocted from one's own cow manure over the fields. On this farm, the mystical practices were obsolete while the brand remained. There simply wasn’t enough time to work in accordance with natural cycles, and still succeed economically in the shadow of big farming’s deflated prices.
During my first week on the fields, I felt a strong sense of purpose—that I was doing something important, albeit slightly beyond my comprehension. I took to the work earnestly, and there was plenty to do—the 22-acre plot required the four of us (Fabian, two apprentices, and me) to pull at least ten-hour days. And even then, there was the lame tractor gathering rust in need of repair, stretches of fence sagging and porous, and weeds swallowing up the pumpkins, all of which we simply couldn't attend to. This was no patch of grass in the backyard between the sandbox and tree house where you might attempt to hoist a few rods for tomatoes to climb; no place to whisper to your favorite green pepper on weekends. No—this was beds upon beds, three rows per, of neatly sown vegetables and wild flowers (the seeds of which would eventually be sold to construction companies for roadside re-beautification), distinguishable only en masse by color, their ranks wavering sprightily in the omnipresent wind and tapering off into the distance.
While the weeds between rows could be plowed with a tractor, the crops still called for some pretty arduous weeding. I ultimately came to enjoy spending afternoons alone on the upper field crawling my way back and forth along the carrot beds. But the carrot beds, all 12 of them, were accompanied by the peas, red beets, shallots, onions, pumpkins, tomatoes, cucumbers, green and red cabbages, leeks, green beans, salad, radishes, zucchinis—the list goes on. Fabian had bitten off more than we could chew. But when Manuel, one of the apprentices, told me that he ran the entire operation alone one year, I began to realize what type of company I found myself in. Instead of the often entertained vision of tranquilly dawdling about in a small garden, I had just stepped into a wholly other world—this was the “cowboy” side of gardening.
Fabian was rough. In observing him, my first impression of gardeners was that they were burnt and curt and played all hard on the outside—no filters on their cigarettes, no time to talk about anything other than what the fields demanded that day, nothing but dodgy eye contact and busted knees and if they were to shake hands you’d get mostly dirt and some root threads. They drank coffee instead of water, ate fast so they could get back to work, and spent more time looking for rain clouds than women.
These cowboy gardeners were the odd recluses that, through the industrialization of food, we’ve figured out how to live without. They were hermits. They trusted the almanac, their experiences, and maybe another gardener. And they were frustrated at the system—customers were too picky, the organic label had sold-out to big industry, and no one understands.
Because they were loners, they lived solely for their work—their “vacations” during the winter consisted of drinking more coffee and drawing plans for the summer twenty times over and waiting; in the summer, they cared more for their fields than their families. And they were definitely a little bit crazy—while driving the tractor, Manuel would scream out lines from Moby Dick and cackle madly in pursuit of a phantom white whale.
I quickly adopted their approach. I began tearing through the day-to-day operations; my hands became accustomed to whirring in front of me like blades freeing the choked cabbage, and I started scoping out the fattest sugar snap peas a plant ahead while stripping the plant at hand. A day was no good if it didn’t end with me being sunburnt and completely exhausted. I wanted to prove myself— wanted to saddle up with the rest of them.
While gardening is generally a forgiving process, a hands-loosely-on-the-wheel-of-the-seasons endeavor, I was new to this world , and sudddenly living solely for it, which resulted in internal unrest. My ideal of a simple, meaningful life, lived solely within the heart of the present moment was being tested by the toilsome nature of the work. Ironically, I couldn’t grasp the cyclical nature of what I was taking part, which actually lends itself perfectly to cultivating ones awareness. Someone to confide in might have helped, but outside of the garden crew (which was more likely to shrug and spit than talk), the rest of the farm was not the “community” that the sign on the front gate proclaimed. Additionally, I was still grasping for a sense of closure which I had become attached to during my studies (whether it be turning in a paper or receiving a grade), one which doesn’t necessarily apply in nature. I would excitedly weed the beans one morning, but find myself frustrated at stooping over the same bed a week later.
For Fabian, this wasn’t as much of a problem. Sure, he often bit off more than he could chew, but that was simply because he couldn’t get enough of it all. He was deeply passionate, and to the point of having a few screws loose—0ne night, he turned the tractor's flood light on and tilled the earth until well past midnight. Yet it wasn’t the pursuit of financial success that drove his ambition for more knowledge and experience—the bottom line generally straddled red and black—but the infinite variations of plant types to experiment with that spurred him onward, the succession of failures and triumphs that thrilled him.
Thus, Fabian took to each endeavor with monkish focus (and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas-like chain-smoking). While the apprentices tended to wear knee pads when weeding, Fabian preferred the old school of bare contact; while there is something vitalizing about getting some bone to bone with mother earth, his practices will surely cut short the lifespan of his gardening, causing me to view his stubbornness with somewhat skeptical admiration and awe.
Over time, I came to see a different side of this wild, warrior-like archetype. In The Education of a Gardener, Russel Page writes that “green fingers are the extension of a verdant heart.” While that might seem sentimental, it also corresponds to a certain type of empathy that I witnessed in Fabian—he was very good at recognizing what a plant needed. For adept gardeners, I presume this is intuitive, and based upon experience. For me, well, it wasn’t—propping a newly planted and depressingly listless cabbage in my hands one hot afternoon, I felt as though I was handling a crying newborn without a clue as to what might be aggravating it. Sensing my dismay, Fabian wandered over, and took up the drooping plant next to mine, before smiling and calmly explaining that I shouldn’t worry—“just limp, but they’ll be alright.”
But it’s not all feelings. One day I found him scratching his head, his cigarette hanging limply like a fuming piece of grass between his lips, staring at a field of Indian cress that simply wasn’t coming up. After work, I found him nose deep in one of the thick volumes of gardening kept in the tool shed; I don’t know what he did, but the cress eventually flourished.
Harvesting carrots one morning, I yanked out three all wound around one another, like lovers playing an underground round of twister. I generally find carrots downright hilarious, and laughed aloud, presenting my trophy to the rest, upon which Fabian stormed over, cursing the apprentices who had apparently failed to till the earth deep enough, and who had sown the seeds in too close a proximity, yet again. After calming down, he surveyed the swaying, seemingly grinning green tops like a cook contemplating his next move after tasting a stew—one who knows not only which ingredients compliment one another, but also exactly how they chemically react in order to achieve the envisioned taste. Fabian’s carrots were generally long and straight because he integrated the wisdom of the tomes with his own instinctive touch.
And maybe that’s what makes gardening unique, even beautiful—it demands the simultaneous application of the head, hands, and heart. It is also one of the few human endeavors that calls for one to maintain a balance between the force of nature (“green”) and the power of man (“thumb”). And while our rapid technological domination of the planet might argue otherwise, nature is still a vast mystery to us; gardeners, while never quite satisfied, are more capable at living with such uncertainty than others.
What I initially interpreted as a certain toughness—the cracked hands, rough voice, squint in the eye—only masked Fabian's intrinsic tenderness. I saw it in how he gently scooped up his children when they came to visit him on the field. I saw it when he smiled—that slight curve of the thin lips and crinkling of the skin around his eyes. It was as if he couldn’t help it, but also didn’t quite know how. In such moments, his face revealed his odd mixture of physical vigor, maternity, and boyishness, which coalesced into a character not unlike what Gretel Ehrlich once attributed to the cowboys in her life—“Their strength is a softness, their toughness, a rare delicacy.”
***
In coming to the farm, I was seeking a sense of clarity. After the über-stimulation of university and travel—running from one course to the next, head buzzing with ideas; diving into the chaos of an Asian market to fraternize with the locals and take pictures—I hoped to allow the swirling motes of thought and experience to naturally settle and crystallize into a stillness within me. I wanted to be outside. Go slow. Be in my body. Maybe eat some strawberries.
In retrospect, I realize that I have a budding curiosity for gardening (which I hope remains a part of me for the rest of my life), and that I associate two primary feelings with the Gärtnerei. First is suffering, which I experienced due to a mixture of the “communty’s” unwelcoming social atmosphere, and my inability to calm down and untangle my thoughts before the next round of work. Some mornings it felt as though I was pulling out my conviction along with the weeds. Second is the reverence and wonder that I felt toward the teeming beauty I encountered daily: the autumnal flare of peeling shallots in my hands, how July smiled and the apples blushed, and the way the clouds reared and flexed before rupturing into an afternoon thunderstorm. In moments like these, I felt alive and deeply grateful.
That summer I wasn’t a gardener yet because I couldn’t find the right balance between hands, heart, and mind. I was fulfilling orders rather than acting from my own initiative, and struggled to find a sense of inner peace, thus it was mostly hands, and a fair amount of heart. I’ve learned that I prefer a sense of intimacy with a few plants instead of a greenhouse or football fields’ worth, and thus belong more to the school of thought that Michael Pollan, in his wonderful collection of essays on gardening, Second Nature, espouses—“So simple: grace in the garden but a form of puttering.” I’ve learned that I’m no cowboy. A sheepherder, maybe. But no cowboy.
During my last week on the farm, I laid beneath an apple tree, coming down from another day’s work. I was sifting through memories, and savoring the final warmth of a fading rose-chamomile light. Reaching into my pocket for my knife, I found a number of seeds that I had absentmindedly scooped up while tidying up the shed. Thumbing them in my palm, I was tempted to plant them in the soil directly at hand. I thought about it for a moment, then had to smile, and returned the seeds to my pocket. No, these—these, I would carry with me, wherever I go.
