Down on the Farm

So finally, I’m here. On the farm. I’ve been planning to do this since November, when I met the family on my drive down from San Francisco to LA. I found their website on a database of organic farming internships and I was impressed with the organization of the apprenticeship program. I remember driving through the windy oak-lined road and opening their gate to drive up their long driveway. They won me over as soon as I met them, and as I looked out onto the beautiful valley from their house, I totally started imagining myself there.

So far, it’s been pretty amazing. The day that I drove up, I was suffering from a massive caffeine withdrawal headache, but it fell to the background as I met past interns who stopped by to visit and toasted my own arrival. Dinner was a full and tasty meal; different people having a hand in the dishes. Finally, I knew the family was pretty special when they moved all the furniture out of the living room, turned up an ipod mix, and the kids began break dancing.

And this is not even mentioning the food!

Today, for lunch, one of the guys made cheeseburgers. The meat was from a family raised steer named Eddie, (which I just found out is a castrated bull). The bun was baked RIGHT before lunch (some type of ciabatta-esque bun) from flour that was milled (basically ground up from wheat berries) in the garage the day before from wheat that I had gone through and cleaned. Salad, from the garden….arugula and iceberg. Sauteed onions, from the farm. Potatoes, from the farm. Pickled cucumber and asparagus, made at the farm. Pretty much the only things offsite were the cream cheese (that was the only cheese we had in the fridge) and the ketchup.

I mentioned to Ron, the owner of the farm today, about how it’s so amazing that everything here is made from scratch. And his reply was that they have been doing it this way for so long….

“Is there really any other way?” He asks.

What’s funny is that the farm is peppered with food movement and farming books. The ones that talk about evil industrial agriculture and about how the small family farmers don’t have a chance and are dwindling. But I AM ON ONE. And LIVING on one. And WORKING on one. It still blows my own mind. And it’s not just any farm. And it’s not just with any family. It’s a family that has chosen to live a certain way, which is as sustainably as they can, dedicated their lives to doing so, and even going a step further and teaching others in the process. True, they need help working their homestead, but the pure act of inviting people into their home (and they really do open up their home) is truly rare. What has been amazing is also listening to them discuss and ponder how to best work their land. They have an incredible amount of knowledge and a guy here said it well; although farming has been around for ions… no one still has it perfected.

Being here makes it plain that we, normal average Americans, even ones who care so deeply about their quality of food, are so truly divorced from our food production. There are so many steps where things can get added in, where we just don’t know what is going into our food, or how many trucks it was on before we bought it. I feel that I am truly blessed to be able to take time out of my life, and be able to learn so intimately about how food is grown and raised , from vegetable to fruit to animal. Watching plants, from tiny tiny seeds, start sending up miniature shoots is awe inspiring. Feeding little chicks that will one day be my OWN arroz con pollo makes me appreciate that life so much more. I witnessed a chick die the other day, writhing in pain and then eventually becoming limp. I held it for a long time, it was still warm, I couldn’t quite believe that it was actually dead. That we have any control over life is a somewhat strange concept and I’m still wrapping my head around it all.