copping a feel for ripeness [farm recollections]

i love picking peas because i love copping a feel. to harvest a pea, you have to pinch is for pressure and pea size. it's really quite sensual having a pea straight off the vine. sweet and delicious. juicy and cool popping in your mouth.

farming is squeezing potato beetles with your bare hands, tasting fresh lettuces in the field, weeding in the rain, watching zucchinis grow in the greenhouse, suffering through 90 degree mugginess, earning muscles in places you didn't know you had muscles, and realizing that your fingers are now twenty shades darker than your bum.

farming is also puking from weedwacking during the heatwave and sleeping like a baby every night. basically, i've wanted to quit plenty of times. this is not a idyllic walden-esque setting. this is gritty, dirt-y work. (i've come to love the feel of dirt) i mean, we're only five interns feeding sixty families! i came here with the intention of feeding only my hungry stomach.

when i first got to the farm at the end of may, nothing was ready to eat. very disappointing to have to buy lackluster and overpriced produce at hannaford's. but now we've feasted on peas, lettuces, bok choy, basil, arugula, tomatoes, tat soi, cucumbers, zucchini, mulberries and mustard greens. oh and also the fair trade chocolate we have at the farm stand.

the transition from city to farm was terrible. i had city withdrawal. driving 20 minutes for groceries? i haven't done this in years. people still do this? so after seven weeks and the a dramatic fainting in the potatoes, i am back in new york.
i appreciate the city so much more now that i'm back. brooklyn, here i come.