If you’d asked me what I thought my junior year winter break would be like a year ago, I would’ve guessed going to the beach or maybe touring colleges. I definitely would not have told you that I would be tucking rows of vegetables into bed with huge plastic blankets, or that I would be submerged in dirt digging purple sweet potatoes. Certainly, a lot can happen in a year.
Indeed, just within a month I’ve found myself in love with a tiny vegetable farm 20 minutes away in Mebane. As an activity, growing vegetables is not given nearly the attention it deserves.
I’ve never actually been that into gardening before. It always conjured dreary memories of my mom yelling for me to go water the lawn or weed a flowerbed. I didn’t really like getting dirty, and honestly, flowers were not very interesting to me (they look and smell alright, but it seems like an exorbitant amount of labor to maintain them). Still, somehow I ended up signing myself up to volunteer at a vegetable farm back in December, and since then it has only exceeded my wildest expectations.
First off, it’s not difficult to argue that pandemic life, with every activity online, causes us all to experience a glut of screen time. If it’s not school online, it’s socializing; if not texting, it’s watching movies. I suppose a main factor that drove me outdoors to the farm was the palpable feeling of my eyesight worsening and my mind clouding over. It was so refreshing to take five or six hours out of my day to be out in a field of fresh air and the sound of nothing but shovels in soil. Of course, going on hikes or spending the day out kayaking serves the same purpose, but for all of us who have spent 10 months in a pandemic, variety really brings some spice to life.
I’ve also never felt so much admiration for the produce in my fridge. Before knowing exactly the time, resources and work it takes to get a single head of broccoli, for example, I’m sure I was less motivated to use every bit and savor it. Coming face-to-face with food production makes you keenly aware of waste. Considering 80 billion pounds of food are wasted in America every year, according to the EPA, it is definitely good to be conscious of our own waste. No more neglecting that half bag of spinach in the back of the fridge. After seeing somebody spend months tending to that one broccoli plant, covering it every night from wind and cold, every vegetable I eat suddenly feels precious and beautiful.
Both figuratively and literally, farming brings you down to earth. In this society of ours where it seems everyone is pursuing championships and clout, focusing on a goal of simply taking care of a plant in order for it to take care of us is enlivening. Life doesn’t have to be all high-achieving academic accomplishments to be meaningful. As an East student, it often feels like what matters in life comes down to getting arbitrary A’s on tests and striving for a 5.0 GPA. While hitting these scholarly milestones feels satisfactory in some ways, in others it’s not tangible and especially so this year. The joy an activity like farming brings is palpable; each small task visibly making a change. Undoubtedly, millions of people live on agriculture or similar jobs and already know this well, and I am not trying to glamorize or simplify their lives. I also know how privileged I am to be able to spend hours volunteering at the farm. But in my brief and sheltered existence, I hadn’t experienced this magnitude of earthly satisfaction from my labor before. From the environment of competing to take as many AP classes as possible to instead sustaining little bits of life, the change of speed is absolutely welcome.
These are just some of the more-explicable reasons that I’ve found so much joy in farming. The overall vibes are exquisite too of course, from the feeling of unveiling a row of happy, plump kale to the gorgeous sunsets over the field as I leave. I now harbor a far greater appreciation for the world around me and I have been opened more to life beyond the sphere of grades and college. At the end of the day, I can look down and see the manifested products of the day’s work. Whether it’s that head of broccoli or a bunch of turnips, it’s real and I am happy.
Photo by Caroline Chen/The ECHO
