Friday, July 12, 2013

May: I like to sweat!


On the other hand, in a family whose women prefer lace curtains to dirty jeans, I am an anomaly.  I like to sweat.  I like the feel of sweat oozing from my pores and stinging my eyes.  I like the fine crust of salts it leaves on my skin.  I like the way sweat coats my scalp, give body to my hair and makes it curl.  I like the brackish taste as it drips toward my mouth, and I lick it from my lips.  At the end of a farming workday, I am content and satisfied as I wash the effects of my efforts down the drain under the welcome cascade of a hot shower.  I groan, content like my cat as she scratches her back on the cement patio, actively seeking her pleasure.  

There is, alas, yet another icon of the farmer.  This vision is a slightly embarrassing, older, rumpled, country bumpkin who talks kinda funny and tells tall tales.  None of the above pictures convey the entire truth.  Thomas Jefferson called farmers “cultivators of the earth.”  I have come to understand that each of us has our own tale to tell.

The small farms I’ve visited are far from picture postcards.  The farmers are more intent on growth and harvest than on aesthetics  Consequently, on a Friday afternoon, neat squares of squash -- green, yellow, orange -- checker a front yard like a bright quilt as field hands pick vegetables and sort them for tomorrow’s sales.  But a rusty van sits in the drive, and a coil of unused irrigation hose is stashed under an apple tree.  It’s a picture of priorities rather than a sentimental photo opportunity.  The rural reality is this: necessities of getting a crop to market trump the niceties of neatness. 



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