I wake up at 6:20, like usual, to jog the familiar four mile stretch between our
apartment and Kretschmann Farm. I can always drive to work if I want, and on
particularly tired or rainy days I do, but by the time I’ve gotten through the sleepy first
two miles of the route and watched the sun rise above the hills I’m always glad to have
come by foot.
When Annekathrin and I arrive at the farm at 7:30, Erasmo and Miguel are
backing the pickup truck up to the barn—they’ve already picked a full load of lettuce for
the CSAs that morning.
“Hola, mi amor!” Erasmo shouts out through the window to us in his standard
gregarious greeting.
“Buenos dias!” I shout back. “Como estan ustedes?”
“Bien, bien,” Erasmo replies.
“Donde esta tu carro, Kristina?” I smile at Miguel’s familiar question and tell
him what he already knows: that I wanted to jog so I left my car at home. He responds,
as always, with an incredulous “si?! Porque?” in a tone suggesting that anyone who
would actually choose to jog to work must be completely out of their mind. It’s not that
Miguel and Erasmo don’t know what it’s like to make do without a car—Erasmo, I know,
bikes to work at his farm every day in Mexico. But with necessity tends to come distaste.
Here they welcome the ride from Don (aka “El Patron”) to and from work each day.
“No se… solamente porque quiero hacerlo!” I tell Miguel, as I have many times
before, since I’m never able to come up with an explanation that’s adequate to cross the
language and cultural barriers between us.
I jog because I enjoy the steady exercise, I like having some time in alone in the
morning to gather energy for the day, because I don’t want to have to depend on a car,
and because Anne (who also gets up early to jog or bike to work) helps give me the
motivation to do so. But maybe equally as importantly I like to jog because I have no
real obligation to do so, aside from a self-imposed one. People tend to want what they
don’t have and, likewise, enjoy doing what they don’t have to do. If I had to jog to work
each day, rain or shine, I imagine I’d get tired of it pretty fast. Similarly, some of my
love of farming, I know, comes from the novelty of it all. Sure, I love farming over the
short term, juxtaposed against “la vida de la estudianta” or the equally sedentary office
jobs that often follow school. But I know enough not to romanticize it, and am still
trying to figure out if farming’s something I truly commit to as a lifestyle… something I
could find fulfillment in doing even when the novelty work off: when I had to do it day in
and day out, rain or shine. Working at Kretschmann Farm has taught me a great deal
about the day to day realities of farming. My experience there—as well as the
opportunity to see that experience through the eyes of several others—has helped me
begin to tease apart the aspects of farming I like and dislike, the parts that frustrate me
and the parts that inspire me.
One morning, when I’ve only been at the farm a few weeks, Hans (Don’s
nephew) and I unsuccessfully struggle to keep up with Erasmo and Miguel while hoeing
a field of lettuce. Erasmo finishes an entire row by himself before Hans and I together
near the end of our row. I see Erasmo glancing in our direction as he pauses to light a
cigarette at the end of his row, and as we approach him I smile a bit sheepishly and
comment in my broken Spanish that it’s not a very good sign when two gringos can’t
keep up with a single Mexican.
Erasmo grins and picks up on this right away, as I knew he would, asking
playfully in Spanish, “But why, Kristina? Why are gringos so slow?”
It’s a rhetorical question, so I just shrug my shoulders slightly indignantly and tell
him I don’t know.
He sieves the opportunity to tell me his point of view, informing me with a glint
in his eye, “Ahhh, it’s because gringos use their heads so much. Because they are very
intelligent and spend so much time in school that they aren’t able to use their hands.
What do you think—gringos are very intelligent, right?...way more intelligent than the
pobre Mexicans?”
His voice is dripping with sarcasm and I respond in kind with “Si… Por
supuesto.” Yes, of course.
I don’t think so, Kristina, “he declares jovially, as he hoes his way into the
distance. “I don’t think so!”
While picking beans, Miguel asks me what I plan to do after I leave Kretschmann
Farm. I tell him I want to find a job where I can work outside, get a lot of exercise and
try to do something that’s useful to other people—likely by continuing to farm or by
helping other people farm in a sustainable way. He considers this, and asks me why I
don’t want to go back to school instead. I tell him that I think people can learn as much
out of school as in school and that I really enjoy the sort of work at Kretschmann Farm.
For now, I’ve had enough of spending hours and hours inside, in front of computers and
books. Miguel tells me that if it was his choice he’d go back to school without question.
I know that Miguel and Erasmo don’t share my somewhat idealistic view of
farming (and likewise I don’t share their view of the carefree life of a student). Miguel
has said he doesn’t like the repetition of farm work. He thinks anyone could do it (with
the possible exception of gringos) and so his role isn’t really that important on the farm.
One of his brothers works in Florida in construction and Miguel has considered joining
him in future years. But he gets good wages here, far more than any job he could get in
Mexico and more than most jobs here in the U.S. I imagine he sees school as a way to
get off the treadmill of agricultural labor, to make a good living and do a job that’s
important. For me, farming is a way to fill an important societal role and make a key
contribution to the sustainability of our food system. In the contexts of our lives, I
suppose both our views make equally good sense.
One day while I give Miguel and Erasmo a ride home, Erasmo warns me that
every day that one labors in the field one gets a little more tired. “You’re young now, but
you’ll see,” he says. But when given the choice Erasmo never fails to choose fieldwork
over any less rigorous job indoors. It’s not the labor that causes me, and I suspect them,
to get tired. It’s more the occasional loneliness that comes with being in a new place and
so far working too many hours each day to be able to build a community of friends away
from the farm. Farming successfully is hard work, I know, and requires long hours, at
least during the growing season. I could see myself thriving in such a lifestyle, but only
if I could share it with a community of others I related to well. While my current
‘community’ of family and friends is spread throughout the country, Miguel’s and
Erasmo’s communities are cohesive and centered in one place: their hometowns in
Mexico. They call home every Sunday to catch up on the week’s goings on there. I’m
not sure which is harder: to lack a real community from the start or to be unwillingly
separated from one’s community and family for six months of each year. Miguel has a
two month old daughter in Mexico that he hasn’t yet met. Many weeks later, when our
conversations have become somewhat more informal, Erasmo says bluntly and
emphatically, “Spending half the year away from one’s family—this is total shit.”
But there are days when all of us get carried away with the appeal of farming.
One afternoon in August the sky is a sharp blue—the type that suggests the very
beginning of fall—and a light breeze has begun to take the edge off the summer heat. I
sit perched on the back of the pickup over several crates of red, yellow, pink and purple
tomatoes. It’s days like this when I realize that I feel healthier this summer than I’ve felt
in a long time. I’ve eaten more vegetables in two months (and such good ones!) than in
several years before. And my body has begun acclimating to a life of steady movement.
I can’t escape the feeling that this sort of thing is what my body was always meant to do.
Erasmo finds two bad cherry tomatoes in a crate and, as always, accuses me of picking
them. I fane a shocked innocence and return the accusation. Erasmo asks Miguel what
time it is: six o’clock—later than I’d thought. I comment on how often I lose track of
time here.
“Why, Kristina?” Asks Miguel.
I search for the words to explain in Spanish. “I guess it’s because I focus so much
on what I’m doing. I get involved in working and talking, and just enjoying the moment,
that I don’t think about what’s coming next.”
“That’s good,” Erasmo says. “It’s important to enjoy what you’re doing when
you’re doing it. To make the most of each moment. If not, tomorrow you might be dead.
Then, if you didn’t enjoy today, that would be a problem!”
As we unload the tomatoes and feed them through a machine to be washed, I pick
up on a conversation we were having earlier about the upcoming election. As I try to find
the words to converse in Spanish I struggle to keep my hands moving at the same speed
while sorting tomatoes. As these motions have become more automatic, I’ve become
better at this. It’s so easy to slow down while talking… but in this job, as in all farming
tasks, efficiency is paramount.
We all agree that the current administration’s policies are harmful to many other
nations and dangerous in their disregard for what other nations think. I ask Erasmo what
he thinks the United States should do to make its policies less harmful to other countries.
“So many different things,” he responds. “There is so much injusticia in the
world. The United States is a very rich country and so many countries, like in Africa, are
so poor and have so many problems. The president should do something to help these
countries.”
But I am looking for specifics. I am looking for how I fit into all of this. How a
career in agriculture—a field which inevitably influences people in and from other
countries—might fit into this. Miguel is constantly reminding me that I have much more
money than him, that I am very lucky to have education and security in my life (albeit no
big family or community). Part of me doubts whether these things have actually made
my life happier or more fulfilling than Miguel’s, but I do know that I am lucky to have
had so many opportunities. Do the opportunities and resources I have give me some
special capability, or responsibility, to help others in some way? It seems almost
presumptuous to think this. While I was studying abroad in Mexico a couple years ago a
professor commented that Americans are the only people in the world who have such a
strong sense of the superiority of their lifestyle that they feel the need to share it with all
those ‘less fortunate.’ But to ignore one’s impact on others seems to be an equally high
offense. I ask Erasmo and Miguel what they think people like me can do to help get rid of
the injustice in the world.
“What can any of us do?” Erasmo asks. “Solamente vivir y trabajar, nada mas.”
Just live and work, nothing more.
Perhaps he’s right. But, in farming or elsewhere, I will continue to search for
something.