GROUNDING.

It has occurred to me over these last few weeks just how much I need the garden. Last Saturday, for example, and several of the previous Saturdays, when I came home from market I found myself physically compelled to spend the last few hours of the day in the garden. And not because I had something specific to get done––I was simply in need of some grounding.Because it can be polarizing and contentious, I rarely talk about religion on the blog. We want this to be a place for anyone to come and not feel preached to (about religion––no guarantees when it comes to food ethics), and I will not fully betray that here. But I must address religion in order to talk about my relationship to the garden––to grounding––because it is unlike any relationship I've had before. With work, with church, I have never felt about a place like I feel about the garden. I go there to think and, in my own way, to be with God.For most of my life I have been more or less agnostic: never fully comfortable with the idea of believing in something inherently intangible; never fully comfortable believing in nothing. But the garden is a place where my feelings about religion resolve themselves. In the garden I have no need for faith in something greater than myself because, come Spring, I rapidly find myself almost buried in the proof of it. I spend most of my days just trying to keep all the proof from swallowing the carrot bed, from pecking the tomatoes, from grazing the sweet potatoes.I've written about this before, about how as the farmer I work to create an environment in which food can grow, but something else altogether does the growing––something I can't see. And when I go to the gardens on Saturday evenings, or any day really, I feel as if I am connecting to that force, and working alongside it. As I work I can feel my body calming, my anxiety slowing and with each row I cultivate, I become more and more at peace.I love going to market and enjoy selling food, but I need the garden. I need the garden like some might need Sunday Church or to have The Bible or The Koran or The Torah or The Big Lebowski at their bedsides. I go there for answers and I go there for grounding, which for me simply means to re-connect to the land, to Nature, to a force I cannot explain. And most Saturdays you can find me in the garden, trying to keep my perspective on why we do all this, dirty, sun-burned, sweat-drenched and working alongside God, taking care of this bountiful paradise we inherited. It feels funny to say, but I am without a doubt the most religious I've ever been, and all that has changed is that now I listen to the garden.- Jesse.