Connection

The herbs and botanicals are getting into their summer swagger this morning at the farm, and I’m feeling it: Grateful for my collaborative journey with this old Hudson River estate, and for the reciprocal bond we share. 

A small farm is as much a proposition, a cultural idea, as an actual place. The idea of organic farming, of sustainable environmental stewardship, is a model for responsible living, for doing something necessary and grounded with your time. There’s nothing facile or superfluous about it, so there aren’t a lot of neurotic farmers out there: you just can’t be when you’re working with all the vexing unknowables of the natural world.

The work you do is purposeful and real, removed from the virtual ether of ones and zeroes. A hoe hitting the dirt resonates in ways that a finger swiping a track pad or screen never can. Farming will change how you think and will reorder your values and priorities.

“The fatal metaphor of progress, which means leaving things behind us, has utterly obscured the real idea of growth, which means leaving things inside us,” said G. K. Chesterton, and despite all the admirable gains of technology, the carbon universe that lies within all of us wants a connection to realities that are meaningful and deep, beyond progress, beyond ourselves, even.