The Garden of Eve Apprenticeship Experience and Other Fine Intricacies
By: George Nomikos
PMA# 001
Since coming back home from my 3 ½ month apprenticeship from the farm I’ve
had some good kick back time, time to re-organize, relax, focus on the year
ahead and stuff like that; but it felt a little uneasy to me, it was sort of
as if I were trying to re establish myself into my regular environment after
being away from, say, the Himalayas for some time. A lot of my buddies and
folks would ask me “So what did you do? What was it like? How was being a
farmer?, usually in that order like as if there was some type of a feeling
or a tangible thing that you got after working on a farm and I replied with
a nonchalant “pretty good” but really I wasn’t too sure on how I felt and I
couldn’t exactly explain to them fully what it was really like working out
there.
“So when did it hit me” I was asking myself a few days ago, “why, don’t I
feel a sense of great fulfillment or gratification” something that people
reckon followed a long period of hard work such as farming, especially
organic farming. I mean I did accomplish a lot and learned a whole bunch
about the profession but it was true I couldn’t put a time frame on a
specific moment where I felt fulfilled or gratified and this made me feel a
little disappointed, perturbed that “darn, I didn’t get to feel that way.”
After being a bit disconcerted I sat and thought about my stay at the farm
for some time to myself, the thoughts trickled in slowly but soon after they
just began flooding.
“So… I worked my tail off for 3 ½ months the only summer that I had free
since I was like 12, way the hell out east, with people who I never met
before some of which who are from other countries like Melissa whose from
Buffalo???, in weather conditions of “biblical proportions”, just about
every pair of shorts and undershirt I own have perpetual mud stains, I lost
my good knife and about 3 hats, ran over my brand new cell phone with the
box truck, rose and worked from dawn to dusk every Saturday, lifted crates
that belonged in a gym, moved piles of whatever to wherever, mucked out
chicken coups unfit for man nor beast, attracted poison ivy twice, stung by
3 bees, found ticks on areas I don’t usually see, more mosquito bites than
stars in the sky, dug about a year’s worth of ditches, stopped wearing
underwear, started wearing a farmer’s tan, caught not one darn fish,
accumulated calloused hands, stepped on a nail, stepped in manure, got
stepped on, hauled hay, stacked hay, stored hay, cut flowers, cut fingers,
cut potatoes, slowed traffic with tractors, learned how to drive a tractor,
learned about John Deere, Alice Chambers, New Holland, Internationals,
Oliver 1650, post hole diggers, rotary mowers, bush whackers, combines,
front end loaders, how to back a trailer up, use a manual tranny, connect a
hitch, I pulled a field of garlic, lifted leeks, lifted potatoes, lifted
refrigerator panels, drip taped, pushed wheel pipe, connected irrigation,
spread lady bugs, crushed beetles like I was making wine, hand cultivated,
wheel hoed, mulched, harvested, transplanted, bunched, trestled, reared
chickens, cooked for dozens, ate a jalapeno pepper, bogged the dodge, and
scratched a truck(I still feel bad about that), learned about diseases,
funguses, bacteria, blight, powdery and downy mildew, flocculation, soil,
loam, clay, vetch, rye, clover, herbicides, pesticides, nitrates, garlic and
neam, copper spray, fish emulsion, composting, disking, spading, plowing
fields, when to harvest wheat, when to roll down fields, what a broccoletti
is, what brassicas, cucurbits, nightshades, and root vegetables are, ate
fresh off the vine, ate fresh from the ground, ate a half dozen eggs in the
morning, bit into raw onions, beets, carrots, celery, for the first time
tasted kohlrabi, fennel, ground cherry, radicchio, bok choi, pea shoots,
Fava beans, Chioggia beet, chard, and chicken feed, learned about
phosphorus, nitrogen, potassium, and that bok choi grows insane with a lot
of nitrogen and that nightshades and corn can’t live without it,
inter-planting, companion planting, green housing, hoop houses, cold frames,
sheep, goats, pigs, Heritage Turkeys, Road Island Red hens, Maremma
livestock dogs, roosters, raccoons, deer, ground hogs, rabbits, red winged
black birds, barn swallows, dog birds, dog ticks, deer ticks, lone star
ticks, the difference between a ewe and a ram, the meaning of organics, CSA,
green market, just foods, NOFA, local agriculture, Tom Stock and his drums,
Peak organic beer and that without farms there is no food.”
The list went on my head, and by just writing them out, it became very
apparent to me that in the very midst of it all, the fulfillment and
gratification was probably felt at the time when I learned and experienced
all those things. At the end of it I guess the real beauty in growing things
is the absolute present not the past. I couldn’t tell you how good it felt
in the cool evening breeze when after the hum of tractors stopped and the
dust settled, the ground pump turned off and the harvests were brought in
with the fridges packed and the hot summer sun laying low in the western sky
over the hills, yea I was covered in good clean dirt from head to toe but
there is no way to express that moment in time to anyone unless you were
with me or worked there, those moments are owned by me.
You see I found farming an incredibly humbling profession. Now I’ve only
worked it for 3 ½ months and I am in no way an authority on the subject of
farming, but I can firmly say that no self respecting farmer is above it
all. If anything he is below much of it, at the very mercy of nature and
man. In a discussion with Browder on our way back from the Mt Sinai market
one Friday evening I asked him what he thought was the most prominent
feature a farmer needs to survive and he replied that being steadfast, a
disciplined tenacious character was paramount. Being as it is organic
farming or farming in general is a constant battle against the natural
world, and the world that man created, and without a tenacious steadfast
mentality the farmer will not prevail.
Now I am no regular long Islander, I have figured that out way long ago.
When on the farm, I’ve gone back many a day to my old colleagues in the vast
metropolis stalwart citadel of lawn land Nassau County and have felt uneasy
being there. It is rather startling to see how very much Long Islanders are
disconnected with not just their food but with their everything, their
environment, their reality, and even their God. To them they would expect a
feeling out of many things they do or it’s deemed worthless to them, and to
many they would rather not know where their food source come from.
I am undoubtedly a changed person for the better on how I look at things in
the natural world today. Coming from a military background with absolutely
no interest in agriculture or even a hint of an existing relationship
between man and his source of energy, I have come a long way in a very short
period of time in the understanding of not only responsible agriculture but
what directly keeps us alive, and I hope to urge others to find their own
way, for everyone in many ways must work their own land.
To Adam: “Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will
eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for
you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you
will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were
taken, from dust you are and to dust you will return.” Genesis 3:17-19
I hope George doesn’t get mad that I “published” him. But this recap is just so nice and I love reading it and hope that others do as well.
