I stabbed at the ground furiously. Covered in soil and sweat, I set down the old iron pitchfork to wipe away unruly strands of hair so I could better see the fruits of my labor. More accurately, roots of my labor—purple sweet potatoes smiled up at me through the vines, dirty but vibrant-skinned.
Since beginning to volunteer at an anonymous little vegetable farm in Mebane last winter, it’s come full circle; again a yam-rich December melds into the hardy season of cabbage. In the time between, I’ve learned so much about plants, but even more about the world. Every visit is a chance to absorb wisdom, just like the greenery absorbing photosynthesis around me. While my day-to-day experience was full of facts and multiple-choice, the farm taught me lessons that stretched beyond the school day.
Through a year at the farm, here are a few things I’ve taken away, and that I continue to remind myself.
Appreciating little bits of happiness
Within my first few visits, I tasted a sample of happiness. The rustic garden was so out of pace with my life in sheltered suburbia; the world of neat lawns and nice cars, where food comes wrapped in shiny plastic and where people measured things like Instagram followers, GPA and how many Lululemon shorts you owned.
Instead, as I kneeled in the dirt and uncovered cluster after cluster of purple gems, I thought of how Nietzsche wrote that “little makes up the quality of the best happiness.” While my freshly-unearthed sweet potatoes were more than the “lizard’s rustling” he considered joy, they were little enough for me.
Photo courtesy of Sarah Combs.
Stop being “productive” all the time
One day, beginning my garden tasks after discussing Daoist principles with my dad in the car, I realized what Wu Wei, the idea of alert inactivity, could be. Previously the concept conjured monkhood or, at any rate, some meditation deep enough to bore me, but as I meticulously picked through 50 feet of sugar snap peas, I felt a deep sense of satisfaction.
I felt like I could see a bird’s-eye view of my own thoughts, laid out like a city. Things clicked, and as I physically did little but fill a bucket with peas for an hour, my mind was free to think.
Photo by Caroline Chen/The ECHO.
Some races aren’t meant to be won
While picking beautiful flowering broccolini one afternoon after virtual classes were over, my thoughts were initially filled with self-doubt and insecurities. Gifted programs, academic olympiads and East Chapel Hill High School have trained me to be deeply competitive and to constantly compare myself to others.
Yet, in front of me the tall broccolini that reached up towards the sky were towering yet barren. The modest bushes, by contrast, were scraggly from afar but dotted with fat buds. Sometimes it takes letting things go to take a different trajectory, I thought to myself.
Photo by Caroline Chen/The ECHO.
Things go on
The row of carrots we were going to pull up had been voraciously assaulted by rodents. Not a single root was unscathed. I forlornly looked on as the farmer pulled a sheet of plastic over the row like a mortician pulling a sheet over a corpse. “We will plant again tomorrow,” was all he said.
Three months later, as I pulled out a perfect, tender carrot from the same row, I realized: even from the worst failures, the worst seasons, the worst mediocrity, beauty and life can come anew. Nature replenishes itself, and what we see as destruction can become another opportunity to flourish.
Photo by Caroline Chen/The ECHO.
Header photo courtesy of Sarah Combs.
