I started out this morning in a fairly foul mood, not for any particular reason, other than just feeling low. Luckily the weather was nice, the air was fresh and I am one of those people that finds it difficult to be unhappy when I am outdoors. Still, my cloud of unhappiness was hanging over my head, even if a little more distantly.
We spent the morning weeding and continuing to tie tomato plants. Normally I prefer to listen to music while doing these tasks to get into a good rythm, but today I preferred to be with my thoughts. It was during this time of contemplation that I had a sort of epiphany - I am feeding people!
This may seem like an obvious thought, since I have been writing about growing food for weeks now, but for whatever reason, the idea of growing food here and actually feeding people had never really clicked in my mind. Until today, the work I have been doing on the farm has served much more selfish ends - I have learned to grow food for myself, family and friends; I have been learning how to operate a farm in order to potentially run a farm myself in the near future; I have been growing food as a 'product' to sell to 'customers' as a means of gaining an income and a living. The fact that I now realize I am responsible for feeding whole, nutritious and organic food to an inumberable amount of people, who would, in a more abstract sense, not have access to this food without me doing what I am currently doing, was quite a profound realization. I am now a part of the farming network of BC, of Canada and of the world. Without people such as myself doing what we are doing, humanity would not be able to eat!
This realization is as a result of a brief bout of Facebook jabs a friend and I have been having this week. He posted on Monday that he was glad his day was over and that it was a short week. I replied that unfortunately farmers do not get short weeks. Curious, he asked what farmers do on statutory holidays - this coming Friday is Canada Day, a national holiday for most businesses. I replied that farmers farm on statutory holidays, because the for some reason the plants never got the memo that they don't need to grow on holidays. His response was that the plants won't die in one day, and that farmers should get the memo to take a day off too.
My friends last comment made me upset. Though I understand where he is coming from, it shows a lack of understaning of the cycles of a farm and the livelihood sacrifices made by farmers to do what they do. First, just like cows get into a milking cylce, plants too get into a harvesting cycle whether it be a daily, bi-daily, or weekly cycle. For example, now that our zucchinis are producing, they need to be cultivated everyday. In fact, the growth that occurs in a 24 hr period is usually the difference between 'too small' and 'too big', so if we were to leave the zucchinis for a day, we would not only end up with a number of 'too big' zucchinis, but the plants will not have poured their energy into growing new zucchinis without the more mature ones being harvested.
Next, the farm is on a weekly cycle. If we were to take Friday, our harvest day off, then we would have to do one of two things - 1) harvest for market on Thursday, which means that our customers will have produce that isn't as fresh as they normally receive, or 2) not harvest a skip a market week. If we were to harvest on Thurdsay too, the normal work that would be done on that day would have to be omitted as well. If we were to skip a market week, we would be sitting on a lot of produce that would be bad by the subsequent week, we would not receive any income for the skipped market, we would not be able to deliver our CSAs to our buyers and overall the Klippers name would lose some of its reliability for not being present.
I really hadn't thought of all the consequences of skipping a day of work for a statutory holiday, until I mentioned this bout to my boss in the field. She said to tell my friend that we will take a day off, when he and the rest of the world start to fast because of holidays.
This comment is what made it click in my head, that I am feeding people.
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