June,
2005. The funny thing about farming is that
things apparently never happen and always happen—just
that way, all at once. There is the same half-acre plot of
strawberries a few steps from the greenhouse. Except now,
the brittle, brown transplants we tucked into the earth about
a month ago throw out pert green leaves and shy little flowers.
There is the broccoli patch next to the compost pile—once
a jumble of spindly stems and frost-burned foliage, now a
respectable band of brassicas. And what of the annual flowerbed
hugging the fence of the horse pasture, that thin strip of
soil I pass twice daily on my way to chores? As if nothing
and everything has changed at once, dainty marigold heads
and feathery coreopsis leaves now nod to me from their new
home.
Where has the time gone? That I spent most of last week collecting
sweat under the brim of my sunhat would have seemed improbable
when I began writing back in February. Somehow the series
of days between then and now has blended into a collage of
light and color, or sometimes a single scene: a smoky landscape
of the Hudson River School. I’ve lived amid seasons
for the majority of my 24 years and yet still…summer
always takes me by surprise.
On the farm, our pace has quickened to match the vigor of
the strawberry plants and pea vines in the field. With classes
over and camp a few weeks away, John (my boss) and I have
been hard-pressed to keep our daily “to do” lists
from spilling onto a second (or third) page. The annual transformation
of North Country School to Camp Treetops is, like our flowering
strawberries, a seemingly small transition but a monumental
change nonetheless. In addition to planting carrots and beans,
transplanting the cucurbits, and clearing the greenhouse for
the tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants, we’re also cleaning
out student residences, amassing mounds of stray T-shirts
and barn boots, and turning the water on in the arts-and-crafts
building.
If the departure of the schoolchildren left me melancholy,
the constant momentum and hum of activity has kept my mind
elsewhere. I miss the students, to be sure. I miss seeding
lettuce with boisterous sixth graders and putting up electric
fencing with chatty ninth graders. I miss the occasional late-afternoon
greenhouse visits by Anthony, an inquisitive seventh grader
always interested in just what I had done that day. I miss
talking medicinal herbs with Aidan, an eighth grader with
a mop of blonde hair and a guitar habit. Yet, when I lay in
bed at night, exhausted and sunburned, I envision cotyledons,
not middle school children, and sometimes Elliot Coleman’s
soil block recipe. I dream of work so frequently, in fact,
that I am often unsure as to whether I have actually potted
up the cilantro and dill seedlings or if my subconscious just
wished (or decided) that I had.
When things around here change so dramatically and seamlessly
that a freshly-planted flower bed looks as if it must have
survived underneath a snowdrift all winter, one has to wonder
if there is anything less than magic taking place. That the
toilets flush again in the camp buildings after months of
pipe-freezing weather, that our chickens now graze on fresh
grass, and the horses roam around the lake hill seems nothing
short of miraculous. Miracles, at least on this farm, however,
are the stuff of hours of hard work. Hard work often completed
quietly, unobtrusively, and out of the public eye.
If I take anything away from this experience, it will be
an awareness of the incredible commitment required to maintain
a small community in all of its physical and intangible dimensions.
So thank you, Greg and Jeremy, for fixing the camp plumbing.
And to John, for watering when I forget to, for plucking the
boulders from the field, for giving me pep talks before 8
a.m., and for rigging up the chicken pasture. Kudos to the
kitchen staff for having breakfast ready when chores are finished
and for washing the bushels of lettuce and spinach I bring
in from the field. At the eve of this subtle and monumental
transition, I give thanks to all members of this community—from
the faculty and staff, to the counselors I haven’t met
yet, right down to the goats and pigs—who have helped
me seize each day in the quirky and marvelous place as if
nothing and everything might change all at once. 
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