Not Yet Enough

Greetings to all of us awaking from the doldrums of winter.

Last Saturday I left the mitten and for once headed east instead of west. My tenure in California had expired long ago (or so December seems) and the future of food lay ahead. I was on my way to Maine. Sabattus Maine.

Earlier this winter I had been in search of farm apprenticeships that would give me an experience of working and living on a full integrated farm. I found Jill and her farm Willow Pond. Jill has been a mainstay in the Maine farming community since the early 1980's and in 1989, she opened the first CSA in Maine. I quickly realized that Jill had more knowledge to share than I could ever gather in one season, yet I would have to gather as much as I could in such a short time.

So it went, or should I say, so I went, through Canada onto Ithaca for a rousing weekend with James and then onto the only state to be bordered by only one other state. I arrived late on Sunday the 26th of April ready to begin a cycle of farming that has been thousands of years in the making.

The first day there was no wasting time, as time is only limiting to a farmer trying to make the most out of all that he or she has to work with. I meet the two other apprentices, Michelle and Meghan, (we will soon to be joined by a fourth, Adrien, in the coming weeks) and we got to the heart of the matter: wrangling chickens.

I will admit, I have never contemplated the delicate intricacies of chicken wrangling and yet dispite this two in a hand they went. We spent the better half of the day repairing and relacing old and worn parts on one of the two chicken coops, building roosts, getting hay, fixing holes in the fence (and yet they still find a way out...). Then Jill turned us loose on the chickens who were still in their winter home on the top floor of the barn. With her apropos directions, "Just bend over slowly and then quickly grab their feet and turn them upside down...", we were off to the races. 65 hens in total and half way through we were beaming with confidence at out great and nibble chicken catching skills. Then they caught on. And comedy ensued. In the end we managed to get them all wrangled and into their new home, outside in the cool Maine air.

This was to say the least, one of the more eventful happenings of my first week here in Maine. The life of a farmer, or in my case a farm hand working on becoming a farmer, is hardly so exciting. There is weeding. A lot of weeding. Mundane tasks that are ever important to the growing of food and to our ability to feed and sustain ourselves. But there are moments that arise, like when one looks back on beds of newly planted onions and sighs with content or when one eats food so fresh it tastes more of the terrior than supermarket.

I live rustically, no electricity, no running water, but every night I sleep heavy knowing that I am the originator, the designer of food, however small a role I might take in the grander theater. And so with that I will do my best to use words and pixels to not only relay my personal experience of learning to farm to you, but to spread word of how we get food, from soil to plate.

Wendell Berry writes "We learn from our gardens to deal with the most urgent question of the time: how much is enough?" Here at Willow Pond we will grow food for hundreds of homes, who will in turn take that food (hopefully enough) and feed themselves on what we have provided. But no farmer, and no person for that matter can ever know what enough is until on has indeed had enough. And I for one, have not.