To Till and to Tend

Last spring, David Elcott tore up much of his front lawn to plant a farm.  Last we heard, he was just beginning to enjoy the bounty of his labor. Now, during Sukkot – the Harvest Festival – David shares his reflections as the season comes to a close. This has been a guest-blog initiative with jcarrot.org. To catch up or refresh, here are his first and second posts. 

Who would have imagined that from June until the middle of October, we would only be eating vegetables from our own garden: multi-colored summer squash souflee and barbequed okra, leeksand parsnips and carrots in a cabbage soup, eggplants in abundance, stuffed Napa cabbage, baby spinach and enough spicy greens and snap peas to feed an army, a cherry tomato tartine in gold, red, yellow and orange, a banquet of roasted fingerling potatoes, beans that never stopped giving, all flavored with garden herbs. I prepared cold sweet cucumber soup with the added tartness of rhubarb and ate beets for the first time as part of a root vegetable medley. We decorated our salads with nasturtium and zucchini flowers. And corn, corn, corn – much of which never made it to the kitchen but eaten fresh off the stalk.  A time for rejoicing indeed!

The pleasure was not just for the eleven of us in our family. I would look out my window to see neighbors and friends stooped over, harvesting from our farm. Olivia next door and the two sets of twins behind us, none over six years old, lugging a finally discovered zucchini almost as big as they are.  The repeated line of “is this all from your garden?” brings such enormous pleasure.

And here is an additional reality of creating a mini-family farm:  Once the clearing and tilling and initial labor of planting are over, with good mulching and a bit of hoeing and weeding, maintaining the garden throughout the season is not so much work.  These are plants that have developed over millions of years to want to grow, to soak in the sun and water, to resist disease and insects, to produce – just for our family.  So I sprayed the aphids with a soap solution and handpicked the beetles that wanted to eat the leaves of my eggplant, but really did not fight too much.  The garden seemed in balance and I shared with the rabbits and squirrels and birds.  None of us went hungry.

It is Sukkot now, the holiday of the harvest, the one holiday that is called “the time of our rejoicing.”  The crops are in, we will not starve, the world works, and all my hard work paid off.  The Rashbam, a Medieval Jewish commentator on the Bible, warns us to avoid the hubris of saying, “My power and the might of my right hand has gotten me this wealth (Deuteronomy 8:17).” He is so right. I had to control the ego that swelled when I walked by my little farm. Who am I kidding?  I am so dependent on the farmers that provided me with organic seeds and soil, the workers who mixed the organic fertilizer for me, the sun that warmed my plants and the plentiful rain that kept my crops watered, the bees and birds pollinated the flowers, even the wind which is necessary for corn to produce. Sustainable agriculture for me means that I remain acutely aware of this balance, that I am a part of the process and not its master.

We sat in our sukkah, that fragile booth open to the elements, decorated with corn stalks from our field, eating from the cornucopia of our little farm, and recited with great fervor: Blessed is the Eternal who has nurtured us with life that sustains us and allows us to celebrate this moment. This certainly has been a growing season of great rejoicing.    

Farmers’ Markets are great, but David Elcott has taken eating local to a whole new level.  This spring, he decided to tear up a section of his front lawn to create an organic community vegetable garden.  Through a guest-blog partnership with Jcarrot.org, we are excited to have David share his sacred journey towards sustainable farming with us.

 

 

I was going crazy today. Tech problems with my printer took hours. Nothing accomplished. A lousy conference call committee meeting. Exhausted. At five in the evening, I took the world into grip and, like Superman, ripped off my work clothes, put on my dirty sweats and headed out to the farm.

Okay, my “farm” is 50 x 18, torn from my front lawn which does not include my “cornfield” – a 20 x 5 plot ripped out from a different part of my lawn. I had my vegetable garden, berry patches and fruit trees in California when my kids were little. All year, crops flourished, beautiful. But New York is different – freezing cold, wet, snow – it never seemed worth it. Until I went over to the good side and realized I do not need to eat food I actually could grow that was being shipped from hemispheres and continents unknown. Michael Pollan added to my passion in describing the petroleum products I am ingesting. Strike a blow for energy freedom along with fresh produce steps away from my kitchen door. So I hauled in six cubic yards of organic topsoil, thirty bags of manure and some mushroom compost as well, spent two days with the pitchfork, the shovel, the hoe. Got everything ready to go.

 

The biggest hitch? I could not figure out when to plant. I had organic seeds that are kind of growing in my basement and some plants shipped from Petaluma (ouch, I just added a huge carbon footprint). Is it going to drop below freezing again? Is it safe to plant? Will my first New York foray into self-sustaining agriculture go bust?

 

But today, I was hungry to make something happen after a lousy work day. I checked the weather predictions and there was no sign of sub-freezing temperature (call that a weird faith statement in meteorology). So I flew out the door, took my fragile tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, a zillion different herbs, the radish, beet, basil and broccoli seeds, and dug my hands into the soil. Need I say more? Liberation of the soul; my personal revolutionary Tea Party that says we humans can no longer believe that carrots actually grow in bags at the supermarket. As I write, I am looking from my office window on to the dark soil and the beautiful green leaves—floppy eggplant leaves, small peppers, multi-colored herbs and fragrant tomatoes.

 

I hope to produce bushels more than I can eat. My plan is simple. I will invite neighbors and friends to harvest what they want whenever they want. I will leave a jar for contributions which will be given to our synagogue’s Fund for the Needy, a fair swap of fresh goodness for goodness “beyn adam l’adam” – from one human being to another.

 

The sun is about to set over the farm. My soul is content.

 

Stay posted for Part II of Sustainable Farmer, coming soon….

Last night I stayed up much past my goal bedtime because I was gardening. You may be asking yourself: “who gardens at midnight?” The simple answer which, admittedly, leads to more questions is: someone who lives in a 3rd floor NYC apartment! How does one garden in a NYC studio apartment? Instead of a shovel I use a large spoon, instead of lush gardens that flow into each other I have potted plants (beautifully and lovingly made by my father), instead of a compost pile I have a mini bag of soil…. I think you get the point.

So there I was, past midnight, my fingers deep in soil and dirt all over the floor; throughout, an incredibly satisfied smile was planted on my face (sorry that I don’t have a picture for you).

There are some technical bonuses to my craziness: plants increase oxygen levels in a room and they are aesthetically beautiful.  But my excitement did not come from these secondary benefits. Real earth may have been three floors down, yet, in the simplest of ways I was connecting with the source of life. 

In Leviticus (19:23) we are told, “When you enter the land of Israel you shall plant all kinds of trees for food.” My apartment is not in Israel, nor are most of my plants edible. My own interpretation of this passage suggests that when you find your dwelling place, connect physically with your land and plant that which will sustain you. For those who may not have a green thumb – it’s hard to kill a cactus.