Life on the Farm | 4

Reflective Essay Four

For the fourth week out at the farm we didn’t start off with a Wendell Berry quote so to continue on with that, I found one that captured the spirit of the day.” The care of the Earth is our most ancient and most worthy, and after all our most pleasing responsibility. To cherish what remains of it and to foster its renewal is our only hope.”. To me this spoke exactly what I was feeling.

Since weeding is not only pretty monotonous, it's also pretty difficult to write about as well, aside from that weeding your garden beds can be rewarding in many ways. To day we weeded the vineyard that's in the orchard but the process and meaning is the same. On the technical side of things getting rid of the weeds will help your crops grow better from the extra nutrition that's left in the soil when the weeds aren't their to steal it. I also noticed some of the vines were rotted towards the base from where the excessive weeds have been suffocating it, removing them will allow the plants to breathe and receive more sunlight helping to prevent this.

While this is beneficial for the plants it can also be spiritually helpful as you tend to ponder on deeper things while working outside in the beautiful mountain sunshine and doing work that doesn't require much thought. Its nice to have your mind slow down and unwind and soak up things you often don't in the everyday hectic life. I look at weeding to be like the work you constantly have to do on yourself, even if you come to a point when you have cleared all the weeds and the beds, or in this case, the vineyard looks perfect chances are tomorrow or the day after that another is sure to come up.

It’s a constant reminder that neither I nor my garden will come to a point of being a finished work of art but rather a work of art constantly in motion and being altered and changed to be better. One of the highlights of the day was finding out about comfrey and it's sort of a cohabitat with the apple and peach trees. From doing a little side research it seems comfrey has an organic nutrient that has the capabilities of restoring plant cells, while also being an organic fertilizer.

I am unsure as to how this plant does this but assume that it does this by either utilizing different nutrients than the trees in the orchard or it grows and then dies releasing those nutrients back into the soil. The best part about Farm Ops to me is finding bits of knowledge like this, knowing if my plants have blight or not could be the saving grace of your whole summer crop, I look forward to hearing more of what Ian has to share in terms of sustaining organic plant life but also how to manage the animals you have on a farm in a sustainable way.