Recently I spent an hour at Peter and Magdalene’s Tree Eater Farm and Nursery, following Magdalene and her niece around as they harvested such beautiful things.
A Summer of hard work blooming on into the cool days of Fall.
The Three Sister’s Garden was beginning to bow back down towards the ground, the corn stalks heavy with cobs and wound tightly with winding beanstalks, while the squash flowed around underfoot like waves and currents of vines, hiding the ripe fruit among all the browning and wilting leaves.
We pulled the ripe corn, unwrapping it from its protective wire casing (an attempt to rescue at least part of the harvest from the ravenous rats) and peeling back the husk to peek at strings of purple/blue pearls. Other cobs hung empty from their stalks, chewed to the quick by rats, some of whom lay dead underfoot, victims of a peanut butter laced trap.
The squash looked beautiful all piled up, and we filled a wheelbarrow to take back to the house, picking handfuls of beans and kale along the way.
A trip to the orchard found us eating persimmons, a few last raspberries, our favourite Purple Spartan apples, and picking autumn olives for seed for the nursery. I haven’t been on the farm much over the summer, and the growth of all of the trees was amazing to see.
When I shared these images with Magdalene, she wrote,
“I'm delighted with these photos because they capture what is mundane-dirt and work and food-and show the inherent beauty in this life.
There's so much shit work to do in farming but it's so worth it.
Obviously. I'm grateful to have access to land and resources so I can experience this wealth of shit work and beautiful food.
May all beings be fed.
And get to engage in the beautiful shit work of the growing and harvesting.”
So much shit work to do in farming. It is true. Literally turning shit into food. Also, doing the shitty work of dealing with rats, or broken pumps, or water shortages. Needless to say the list is long.
Tending to living things is swimming with paradox and contradiction. In doing so, one must necessarily tend to death and dying. To enjoy those luscious poppies in June is to work with their dry brown husks in October.
Shit becomes food. And flowers become husks. Coming to terms with this in a garden is but a small reflection - a reckoning - about our own lives.
It is impossible not to witness the abandonment of the natural world for the endless modern roll-out of sterile suburbia, mobile apps, online shopping, social media…far removed from the source. I think our fear of death and discomfort may have much to do with it.
Get back into the dirt! Back into the garden! This is the antidote to that detached and fragmented world of products and consumers, to get into the source, where living and dying are happening side by side. To get comfortable with the inevitable decay, and realize that even your own death and demise is the soil for the next flowering.
As I get older and grapple with my own aging, this seems to be one of the most important things to tend to going forward: The embrace of death, so that life can be fully lived and fully supported by the good and healthy dying of what came before.
This is the antidote.
To see the rats in the corn field and rejoice in the harvest nonetheless.
To see the rats in the cornfield and say yes, that is part of the harvest too.
To see the cornfield. To see the cornfield.
To see the entire cornfield.
For without it we are truly adrift.
https://treeeaternursery.com
