I’m likely the furthest thing your mind conjures when you hear the word “farmer”.
I grew up in LA’s San Fernando Valley; actually I’m a second-generation valley girl. My first job was at Abercrombie, and I’d arrive at my shifts on the “borrowed” display window rollerblades. I’ve always had an affinity for city life and the busy pace: the entertainment industry, happy hours, fashion, brunch, knowing where the best strip-mall sushi is located. A hairstylist by trade, I spent my working hours indoors. I’m caught up on pop-culture and rely on my device for my business.
But this year, I’m also a farmer.
Like many others during the pandemic, I lost my job. I started volunteering at a local organic farm. My new life as an enthusiastic farm volunteer had me reading and watching and listening to all things “sustainable”. Sustainability is important, but often this type of engagement – all the reading and watching and listening – leaves me feeling so overwhelmed. Is there really anything I can do about them?
People around me seem to relate to this. This urge to connect and root and engage in these wild, meditative and perennial traditions that have been part of the human experience since the dawn of time, but not knowing how, or where, to start. In farming, I have at least found a shared community in which to engage with this.
I know this much: I want the seasons changing to mean something other than putting my sweaters in storage, or fretting about losing my tan. I want to feel like I belong to something bigger. I want to savor my food not only because the flavor is gloriously fresh and the nutrient content healing and revitalizing, but also savor it because I know its worth. What it took to get to me.
Volunteering at the farm led me to a local eight-weekend farm school program, and then into a seven-month apprenticeship with The Ecology Center. The Ecology Center is a community centered 28-acre regenerative, organic farm in the heart of Orange County with extensive programming focused on sustainable practices and co-conscious living. I’m getting to live out one of their mottos: learn by doing. I’m a farmer for 40 hours a week, and doing hair on some weekends and evenings. It’s required a pay cut, some schedule roulette and a little leap of faith. However, I’m learning that doing that thing (whatever your thing is) doesn’t always require blowing up your life and starting all over.
I’m in the Culinary rotation of my apprenticeship, so I’m spending my days in our indoor/outdoor container kitchen.
I check on the chickens first thing when I get to the farm. Open their coop, collect eggs, top off their water if need be and just observe for a minute. Are there many outside of the fencing? Do they look healthy? Are they pecking one another? I say a few sweet thank you’s to them before dropping the eggs off at our farm stand.
We make wood fired pizzas twice a week with fresh surplus ingredients from the farm. I’ve learned a lot about how delicious and nutritional a lot of plants are that we often consider weeds. Also, cooking with woodfire is badass.
Lately, we’re swimming in strawberries so I spend much of my time processing the “seconds” to make into jam. Taste testing is essential.
I know this much: I want the seasons changing to mean something other than putting my sweaters in storage, or fretting about losing my tan. I want to feel like I belong to something bigger. I want to savor my food not only because the flavor is gloriously fresh and the nutrient content healing and revitalizing, but also savor it because I know its worth. What it took to get to me.
It turns out that change doesn’t have to be drastic or dramatic. I’m doing what I can, letting my instincts and creativity play a bigger role in my future. As 2020 has shown us, everything as we know it can shift and we can still survive.
I see life thriving everyday on this farm. It’s taught me about persistence, nourishment and growth. It is the natural way. I’m realizing this with days spent in observation of, interaction with, and reverence for this place in which I live. Nature accepts change; it’s resilient and flexible.
Nature is unafraid.
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To find Rachel:
@heygreathair
To find The Ecology Center:
@theecologycenter
theecologycenter.org
