Greetings from Against the Grain and welcome to the eighth week of the 2021 CSA!
Just like previous weeks, the customization period begins once this notification lands in your inbox (which should be around noon on Friday) and will end at 11:59pm on Sunday, July 11th. During this customization window, you can make swaps to your box and add extras. Pick up your box at your chosen location on Wednesday, July 14th. Just as a reminder, if you'd like to change pick up locations for the share that is currently open for customization, please email Harvie support to request that change support@harvie.farm. Always feel free to double check with Holly to make sure the change was made. It is so important to the farm that CSA members have flexibility in their pick up location.
If you'd like to donate your box, change your pick up location to the FARM Cafe and email Holly to let her know you'd like to share the love!
This week's newsletter offering is from Everette Young, one of our current farm apprentices. Ev has a background in journalism and offered to write a profile piece on Nicole Harris, another one of ATG's farm apprentices. We hope this will provide some insight to the people and faces who grow your food.
Nicole said she agrees she’s probably the most introverted on the farm. She won’t speak much during production meetings and spends much of the days on the farm by herself working in the greenhouse, as an integral part of the greenhouse team. But when she does spend time out in the field working with the rest of the crew you would never type her as such, as she offers a great atmosphere of lively spirit and effervescence. In this amalgamation of community life and an introverted disposition, she said she has experienced herself blossoming and expanding. “I can’t recognize the person I was a year ago,” she said.
In the farm community, her place is as a nurturer and peace-maker; her temperament is even-keeled and when you talk to her it’s easy to feel like she’s listening. Nicole especially holds the individual relationships she’s developed among the community in great regard, and in long, late-night conversations in the kitchen with others in the community, Nicole shows off her tenderness and immense willingness to give emotionally. And with her place in the farm community structure, she has discovered a new purpose and sense of belonging.
She gets a lot out of talking individually with people in the community. There are little things in the day: laughter, and the nuances which make the long days of work worth doing. In the potlucks and community gatherings there are great signs of her comfortability with the rest of the group, and she has a great sense that she’s growing at this moment on the farm.
In those days working by herself in the greenhouse—seeding trays full of vegetables and watering seedlings—Nicole says experiences a sense of calmness. “It’s almost a state of meditation.” She said she has grown a lot in her special relationship with the plants: she’s the first one to interact with them; she’s the one who first imbibes them with water and starts the chain reaction for life. “It gives me a sense of pride,” she said.
Out of all the other apprentices on the farm she is the farthest from home, having grown up in a little town in upstate New York and majoring in horticulture in college. There she lived for about 25 years in total before coming to Against the Grain as a means of seeking spiritual growth and radical change. With the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, Nicole lost her job and says she felt out of place in the town she lived for most of her life. It became a year to re-evaluate her life’s purpose, and in this space of grand new beginnings she found herself longing for community life and a place to fuse together her spiritual path with her love for agriculture. The biodynamic agriculture which ATG practices has resonated deeply within her for the way it creates a sense of mindfulness while working. Never has she felt that the work she does is without purpose.
In her free time, Nicole has found a love for exploring the Appalachian mountains through camping trips; she finds great joy in times of relaxation after a day of work on the farm, and after most days she can be seen taking walking laps around the fields at dusk listening to music. She especially loves the Grateful Dead; her favorite song is “Althea.”
Nicole said she’s not sure what awaits her after her season ends at ATG. She’s not too worried about it, though; she keeps coming back to how grateful she is being here at this moment. That state of mind—being completely in the present—has been developing for her since she arrived at the farm in the winter. And with it, her practice of patience, borne out of struggle, is something she is confident has changed her life forever.
Much love and happy eating,
Holly, Andy and the ATG Crew
