Limbo

Although I've just participated in the undergraduate graduation ceremony, I've still got one more fall semester to go before my degree is finished and the university spits me out into the rest of my life. As of one week ago, the spring semester is over and I'm in a bit of a limbo until I start farming for the summer.

This will be my third season out in the field picking vegetables and learning about vegetable production. Since I first set foot on a farm, I've transferred universities twice and found my way to western massachusetts to finish school in the Sustainable Food and Farming program at UMass Amherst. After lots of moving around over the past few years, I feel remarkably settled here.

In addition to field work and farm-store retail, I've had jobs teaching gymnastics and acrobatics to gymnasts and dancers. I think my past as an athlete is one of the reasons I fell in love with farming so quickly- the physicality of the work is intimately familiar to me. I'm always on the move, always using my body. There's a constant creak in my knees, perpetual dull ache in my lower back but I don't mind it because this exhaustion comes along with a certain happiness and mental brightness that I can't seem to find through any other avenue.

Farming dichotomized my life: my life before my first day of farming feels so dramatically different than it does now. During a time in my life when my biological family fell apart, my farm family fell into place around me over early morning circle-ups, hours harvesting in the midday summer sun, quickly paced organized chaos at the wash-up tubs, and cold beers once the whole harvest was safely in the cooler. There are so many beautiful people I've come to know while harvesting sunflowers, exhausted at the end of the day, each of us reduced to just arms and voices as we make our way through immense rows of seven-foot-tall flowers.

Here in limbo, I'm resting my body in preparation for the months to come, lounging in my bed as I type, listening to a lawnmower up the street and the muted voices of my housemates on the other side of my bedroom door. I'm anticipating how the experience on this summer's farm my be different from the last as I reminisce. I feel a bit aimless, but this week of limbo is a nice deep breath before I dive in, a time to take stock and settle into my self for the season