Feeling for the Farmers

Back in the late fall, I planted some winter-friendly plants in my plot in our community garden here. I already had parsley going, and I'd picked that in other years when snow was on the ground, so I figured no problem there. The local garden guru gave us brussels sprouts, bok choy, and garlic to plant, so I was looking forward to some fine eats over the winter—fresh, local, and most of all, for free.

And things went well for a while. The parsley flourished, the bok choy and brussels sprouts grew with pluck and fortitude, as if they liked the chill of the season, found it refreshing, good sleeping weather, and so forth. I'm that way myself, and had some fellow feeling for them.

Then we had a phase of serious cold, when we had multiple days where it was below freezing all day, which is rare around here, and we also about fifteen inches of snow one weekend. I wondered how the plants were doing, but I figured shoot, they're winter plants, they know the drill, it freezes and snows in the winter, right? That's why they call it winter, right?

Well, I went over there yesterday, since it finally got warm again. The sight was quite depressing. The parsley was stone dead, pale tan like dried corn leaves. The brussels sprouts seemed to have retracted halfway into the ground. I know, it doesn't seem possible, but that was sure what it looked like. And the bok choy's formerly wide green leaves now laid on the ground in histrionic distress, the way a ballerina will curl into herself and slowly crumple onto the stage to indicate deep suffering.

The weather is back to normal and I suppose it's possible that the plants could come back again. But even if they might, they've lost a lot of ground, and when something like this happens you have to feel for the farmers. You kill yourself all day for the whole season to get a crop growing, and then a thunderstorm boils up, hail falls for twenty minutes, and there's your crop, on the ground, ruined. "Nothing personal," the fates seem to say. And that's how you have to take it. You're dismayed, but it's just life, really. There's no anger or sorrow. And there's no helping it. Things grow in their own good time, no matter how hard you're willing to work. You can rebuild bombed cathedrals and so forth. You can't rebuild a dead bok choy plant.

OK, OK, I'm only imagining what it's like to be a farmer. it wasn't like I lost the fruits of an entire year's work, and it wasn't like my kids will go hungry or any of that. I just went out later and bought some greens and sautéed them with garlic and olive oil. The thing is, as a cook, I thought they were delicious. But as a gardener, I thought it wasn't the same as when you eat food you grew yourself.

But hey, life goes on, right? I'll talk to the gardening guru, discuss the latest developments, and at the very least go into next year's winter gardening with a more realistic understanding of what I'm up against. And I happen to still have four containers of pasta sauce in the freezer, made from scratch with my own tomatoes. The next time it snows hard, I'll make it a point to have a nice pasta supper. And I'll reflect on how sauce is pretty much literally a concentrated form of summer sun. And while I'm eating it, I will encourage the snow to fall just as much as it pleases—raise a glass of wine to it, and toast it sincerely.