Endings, Beginnings, and Returns

This month at your community farm, with tired shoulders and sweat running down our faces, we worked through rising temperatures and unexpected downpours. Degree by degree, the sun rose alongside the workload. Birds found their companions, while vegetables began their journeys — downward into the soil and upward toward the endless blue.

The days grew longer, giving us more time on the farm for work and for leisure. Somewhere between weeding and walking back to the bus stop, strangers became friends. Hallway acquaintances became besties. We found ourselves grateful simply to be here.

It feels good to have homies — to share the work of growing food, to snack on the peas we planted back when we still wore raincoats. Today we wear our hats —the umbrellas of summer— and carry our water bottles everywhere.

The Nohpalli (Nopal Cactus) rewarded us with tender paddles and vibrant fruit. Those are flavors one can carry around — of tastes that can only be enjoyed fresh. Crops bring us back to places some of us may never return to, and take us to places we’ve never been.

That is the magic of land work, of seed keeping, of community work.

—Many voices from the farm

After tarping the soil in front of the farmhouse during the winter, Henney planted seeds in the spring for an explosion of colors celebrating the solstice.