It was late one Saturday night and the lights were still on in the Farm Kitchen, even as the hour hand passed the one o' clock mark, and the only sounds outside were those of owls hooting in the distance.
If, at 22 years of age, I had been going strong into the wee hours of the morning and living in a city, a stranger would suspect that some combination of alcohol, drugs, boys, and strobe lights were at play.
But alas, I was shelling beans, needle felting, and listening to pagan music.
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As Autumn runs her fingers across this land, delicately brushing leaves from the Alders and Maples and breathing frost onto the ground in the night, I find myself more grounded, more confident, more prepared than ever. The cold reminds me that Winter is coming, that my apprenticeship here will be over soon, and that in my remaining few weeks I must savor and store all I can from a season of plenty.
There is a mental calm and quiet I often experience when Nature become chaotic. It is as if the fast pace of the world around me is at last greater than that of my busy mind, and I can focus with intention.
Inspired by the Northern California Women's Herbal Symposium, the wonder-women of Roots Apothecary, and a persistent skin condition, I spend much of my free time harvesting, drying, and tending to herbs both wild and cultivated, and have several tinctures and infused concoctions transforming on the counter top.
And as I prepare to leave farm life and drag myself back to Academia, I am preparing for the garden that I will have wherever I settle. I can't help but prod Tarry and Alysoun for the how-to details of seed-saving. How do I dry tomato seeds? Should the eggplant be rotten before I cut into it? How likely is a pod of kale seeds to produce identical plants? The questions are endless, but I am affirming for myself once again that just doing it is the best way to learn.
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When I look back on my half a year here, I see myself arriving here, unsure if I was physically capable of the demand of farm work, aware of how little I knew about plants, and inexperienced in long-term remote living. I see the cycles of my emotions during my time here, the ebb and flow, the tides of the Pacific, the Moon above, the decomposing leaves below. I watch as I open up to new friends, challenge my beliefs, learn to play with children and communicate with trees, observe the waxing and waning of la luna, discover that "Maude" the wood rat stole my phone to decorate her nest under my tent floor. I see myself fearfully driving the manual farm truck on the 1 for the first time, handling a Kombucha mother, dancing in a tutu, pushing a wheelbarrow full of carrots. I see myself crying in confusion, crying in understanding, singing on top of a hill. I see mistakes, corrections, clarity. I see vegetables and a river. And apples, apples, apples.
I feel like a different person, like a tree with a new growth ring, the memories and history at my core, hidden by new perspectives and a stronger sense of self. I will carry with me the knowledge and skills I have acquired here, perpetually learning and teaching wherever I go, always with the mission of being in service to Life.
My deepest gratitude to each of you for playing a part in my growth, because each box of produce I filled, each bag of potatoes I dug from the Earth, each bunch of Rainbow Chard or beets I admired in the field as together we rotated around the Sun, the more I learned how to live well in this world.
May your health and happiness soar, and may you never cease to appreciate the beauty of everything around you.
Love and moonlight,
Farmer Moss
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