Patience is a virtue, at least that's what they tell me. I don't come by it too naturally, but then again, I suspect, that very few of us do. For a decade, I waited to buy my own farm. Then, once I (we) bought that farm in the rough, as it surely is, I waited 3 years to get to the point I could sell my own produce...slowly carving a market garden out of the forest, out of the scraggly meadow, out of the soil that was/is more of a sandbox than a sandy loam. I ran pigs through it, seeded it in cover crops like buckwheat, phacelia, clover. I started a small egg CSA, capturing the laying hens most coveted (to me) byproduct, -nitrogen, and enjoyed that other well known export of chickens, the egg. I (we) built a fence, a website, garden beds. I sold my first produce, lettuce, and it was grand! And this little experiment of an online farm shop continues to build. I continue to deliver this local, organic, garden goodness weekly to my community and it FEELS SO GOOD. All those years, months, days, hours of waiting....I have ripe tomatoes, for sale, just a few, just the beginning, but tomatoes none the less. I'm not sure why this feels so monumental, so full of gravitas. But up here, in the northcountry, on the shores of Lake Superior, where growing seasons and heat are often meagerly rationed, having for sale field tomatoes, naked to the winds and rains and appetite of mice without the sweater-like comfort of a hoophouse, feels damn good.
I'm here to tell you, much like a watched pot doesn't boil, a pale orange slicer is loathe to burst into crimson when repeatedly badgered. As I have been monitoring the tomato beds, sometimes multiply times a day, I'vebeen ruminating on patience and timing and the way of the universe and lunch. And today while out in the field, after a successful tomato stalking, I was graced with a huge Monarch swooping and diving and alighting all around me. I thought about how the Monarch caterpillar doesn't get antsy as it munches along the milkweed, it simply nourishes itself and then one day, somehow, perhaps in the vibration of a dewdrop, or the whisper in a west wind, it knows to spin a chrysalis. And after its appropriate time spent incubating inside its green bivouacked home, without peeking or testing, it knows to break free. And it knows to slide minutely and gracefully out, and unfurl its much adorned wings, letting them dry in that intense summer sun. And so on into its life, its purpose. And it knows and trusts, just as the tomato knows and trusts that it (with luck and blessings) will ripen on the vine. And so, maybe too, I should trust and know, that all is happening on this farm, in this season, in this day, in this hour, as it should. That the ripening and unfurling and accomplishing is happening just as it should. So I am learning the virtue in patience, in trust, and in tomato sandwiches.
