Soil for the Soul

“When despair for the world grows in me, and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be -- I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought or grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.”
- Wendell Berry

Today I am looking out my window into bright greens and blues, procrastinating on a CT project I'm working on, and dreaming about our CSA which will start sending goodies soon. What is a CSA? Perhaps all those who would be reading a blog are savvy enough to know that CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture, but perhaps not. I only learned about it a few years ago. Twenty minutes south of us there is a small holdout organic farm that is sustained by early spring member donations. Each year those who choose to join pay out a lump sum at the beginning of the growing season to provide capitol for the farmers. As soon as plants are ready to harvest we start lining up weekly to reap our bounty.
This ties us into the land and agricultural community in a small and yet powerful way. We make the sacrifice financially with the growers and thus we share the risk with them. If its an amazing season our fridges and freezers and pantries will overflow with the goodness of fresh, locally grown, organic, veggies. If its a bad season for our crops we take the hit along with the farmer. Ben and I found ourselves actually praying for rain for the first time last summer (yes, there were a few Christian rain dances included). It felt so wholesome, from our suburban, apartmented, vantage point, to have a place where our nails could get black with beautiful, rich soil. I know, for those of you out there who actually live on farms this might seem rather pathetic and synthetic, but for those of us who can't for whatever reason right now, this is salvation! Saturdays we drive down and pull weeds with abandon, and chase our lil rascal through the rows of our meals to be; eggplant, zucchini, kohlrabi (no we didn't know what this was either until we joined up!).
And then we return home grateful, souls refreshed, ready for another week bricked into our home, with no soil but that in our potted plants to call our own.