Unidentified

(first blooms on the eggplant)

The sun is setting in a light pink and lavender beyond the newly cut hay fields. Behind the trees and hills and raised beds in the far west fields of the farm. And it’s already 8:30pm. At 4:30am the sun will rise again lighting the endless sky.

…

It was as if 5:00pm would never come today. And it wasn’t even as if the labors of the day were that wearing. I’ve had more brutal days. There have been days of more pain and more sweat and physical exhaustion.  I was just not feeling it today. Soft pink daydreams of a previous life, of grandiosity; of living where I was three months ago kept spinning through my mind. I’d have rather had my hands around a Starbucks latte and a department store handbag instead of in potting soil and reeking of rotten fish.

I’m here for a season. For the honk of the geese and the breeze in the evening and the butterfly that lands on my shirtsleeve just as much as I am here for the first chard I’ll eat. Just as much as I’m here to learn about squashes and cukes and peppers and cilantro, I’m here to stand at the gate of the pigpen and watch Amadaeus and Megaton eat avocado rind and banana peels.

I’m here for the way I feel when I stand in the herbs panted between the two greenhouses: thyme, rosemary, lemongrass, lavender, and oregano

To see the six goslings living the first days of their lives near the pond by the potato patch

To drink Love My Goat red table wine- Bully Hill Vineyards

To live rent-free

To inhale bright green, tender basil leaves

To learn names of various watermelon- sunshine, new queen, sweet little flower

I have yet to taste my first Poc Choy, Arugala, Artichoke or Strawberry of the season, but I know that all this hard work will be worth it. Not that I ever doubted that, or think that living in Manhattan makes me, as a person, any more important or any more valuable- but on some days it just feels like that life- right now, in this moment- would be easier. I knew that life. That Stefani. That commute and church community and vegan restaurant and neighborhood coffee shop.

Here, at The Alleged Farm, I don’t go further than a mile most Monday- Fridays. I talk to more animals than people. I eat three meals a day with my husband and entertain myself with books or movies or puzzles or by writing letters to people I love.

I just don’t want to feel like I’m wasting my time, wasting my life. I guess it’s a state of mind. I could feel like I was wasting my life Anywhere, USA. I could feel like anything any day of the week, I guess. And today, I longed for something else. Something that Merlot and a hot shower didn’t bring after a hard days work.