I managed a little tomato farm years ago. I planted thousands of seeds and saw those babies through to harvest. I spent days under the still sun picking bugs from leaves, smooshing neon orange eggs, filling jars with beautiful striped beetles that I would eventually step on. I spent days weeding, pruning, staking. I spent days hauling a wagon down bumpy rows, the tomatoes flashing red, orange and yellow as I walked by.
I started out at the farm a few years prior. I was in college, teaching ski lessons in the winter, looking for fall and spring work. My friend told me of a farm that needed help with tomato picking a few nights a week. I showed up, eager and starry-eyed.
I worked in the field, picking picking picking next to Ivan and Natalya. Ivan and Natalya immigrated from Russia years ago and speak mostly Russian. Tomatoes is their second language. The pair moved through the field like turtles — slow, sturdy, steady, armored in wool and head kerchiefs.
There was a crummy little radio that I always tuned to NPR and Natalya always urged Neeeeki! Chreestian stayshaun! Sometimes we did listen to the christian station and she’d ask me in stacattoed english why I was living with Andy without being married and why I didn’t have children. I’d laugh and she’d show her closed-mouth, dry-lipped grin. Her eyes always looked watery in the most loving way. She’d seen and experienced hard things and those things poured right out of her eyes when she talked.
Ivan mostly smiled, wiped sweat from his brow and nodded in agreement with whatever Natalya said. They taught me a bit of Russian and applauded when I rolled my Rs correctly.
I worked the farm again the following year, still unwed and unpregnant much to the disbelief of Ivan and Natalya. I graduated with a BFA in painting and printmaking and was offered the full time job of managing the tomatoes from sowing to dehydrated tomato chip production.
I loved the work although I was lonely so I only did it that one season. In the afternoons when I saw the Russian silhouettes wandering down the path, I felt so happy for their company. They’d get right to work, talking mostly to each other but I never felt left out. I did sometimes think they were talking about my clothing which was barely there. It was so damn hot in that field. I wore the ittiest tank top and shorts. Next to Natalya in her knee highs, blouse and wool skirt, I was naked.
The farm experience lit a fire in my belly. I wanted to grow my family’s food. Like, really grow food. I had experimented with seed sowing and container gardening since I was a child but the education I received on the farm pushed me from hobby to passion. It was in my bones.
Connie and Andy are the farmers and they remain dear friends. Years later I married Andy just next to the tomato plot. Well, what once was. Turns out organic tomato farming is just plain hard. Hard to recover from a few seasons of the Colorado Potato Beetle, hard to turn a profit, hard. Connie and Andy also grow grapes (quite successfully). Neat rows of vines tied upright like soldiers at attention had replaced my tomato jungle.
Connie understood my green enthusiasm. She had been there once. She is a writer, a cultured beauty from the east who moved west, took off her shoes and called it home. Every day she downloaded information to me. How to finesse carrot seed sowing, how to maximize greenhouse space, how to identify disease, how to infuse love into the food you grow.
I have had three different garden plots since I left the farm, each larger than the last. I still see Ivan and Natalya at the farmer’s market. They sit peacefully, quietly at a small card table covered in cucumbers. Natalya smiles when she sees me and laughs heartily while raising her hands overhead when my daughters lean into my legs. Ivan nods in approval. You have more kids soon? she always asks with a wink.
Sometimes, a lot of times, I imagine our family having our own farm. We looked at a few two years ago and I laid in bed at night wide-eyed at the possibility. But we landed just right. A farm wasn’t Andy’s dream. He indulged the exploration for me, but it was never for him. He let me understand that in my own time. He knows I can romanticize the shit out of being farmers. He let me figure out that in order for us to pursue other life goals — like travel and art-making — a smaller, able-to-be-left-for-a-week homestead was for us.
Growing food has always been my thing, not ours. Andy helps but it’s not his thing. I’ve had moments of envy over other couples who garden together, wishing for a garden buddy, remembering that lonliness I felt on the farm. But I quickly grew to love the solitude, the nurturing of tiny plants that would heave pounds of food straight into my palm.
I enjoyed several years of oneness with my plot and then I grew my very favorite thing. Daughters. Daughters who love soil, worms, sun-warmed tomatoes, perfectly harvested peas, dirty feet, the miracle of beets and digging around with me.
You might also like
34 Comments
Nici, I’m right there with you on this one. I can fully romanticize the farm and I do. In fact, my sister-in-law is getting ready to buy a farm (outside of Missoula no less!!); but as for me…I could do a commune, but I want to be able to leave for two weeks. I LOVE growing food, hunting and gathering too. I am working almost non-stop in our yard, planting berries, fruit trees, dreaming of expanding our garden even though it’s the largest garden we’ve had yet. Going to build a greenhouse, maybe this fall, maybe next year. LOVE it. I’m right there with you. Lovely post.
I could have written this. Growing food is not my husband’s thing, but it certainly is mine. My son is only 13 months, but I try to get him in the garden a little each day and am hoping he grows to love it as I do.
I love it all! Some of my most precious memories in my life include a baby sitting in my garden, not crawling or walking yet, bound to one patch of dirt, and me working around him.
possibly my most favorite post you have ever written.
I can feel your love of gardening through your words and although mine is muted compared to yours, I see a bit of myself in this.
I think your Russian friends are so cool.
I love that you have fairies running around your garden.
The toes over the pitch fork and that huge honkin’ carrot.
Last year I couldn’t plant a garden because I just physically couldn’t.
This year, right now, I’m packing. Selling my house. Tomatoes from seeds are growing, slowly now, in the little pots that I transplanted them to. They are waiting for real dirt. Straight up Earth.
I thought I wouldn’t, but dang… I think I will go ahead.
If the house sells, I reckon the new owners can have fresh tomatoes.
Happy Gardening!
And a most excellent job growing those daughters of yours.
-Angie
Beautiful post! And the montage of your girls in the garden – growing food, and doing their own growing seriously brought tears (of joy and awe) to my eyes. You are such an a great mom and your words and storytelling, as usual, are so inspirational to me.
really really lovely.
Oh thanks for the neeeeeeeeee laugh. 🙂
I cried looking at those photos. Such history. Such deep abiding love. Cheers to you! And a reminder to leave that section of our garden I’m still mulling over to the girls’ shovels and play area. Dirt, it’s what’s for dinner. (for my 16 month old at least)
That photo of Ruby in a onesie with a skirt and that baby budge belly? That’s what tipped me over. Time is flying by eyes and heart.
Yep – I get the “it’s my thing, not ‘our’ thing” thing. Bubba gets into different parts of the garden – making boxes to ‘square’ our watermelons, constructing the perfect bean tepee, building the best trellis for our grapes, etc – but when it comes down to it, it’s definitely MY thing.
And that’s OK. The solitude and peace of the garden is one of the best parts of it. And then there’s all that gorgeous food RIGHT THERE.
Love this post, Nic. And I’m coming to Missoula this summer…
SHUT UP. We are pretty much here all summer except one week in July. Yay! Look forward to seeing you and talking gardens over gin!
3rd week in July? Please…
Oh Nici, this was so great to see all the different evolutions of your garden (and your girls!) I actually found your blog (when Margot was just starting to walk!) by searching for Montana garden blogs 🙂 Growing food still seems completely miraculous to me, it’s where I feel faith the most strongly. Oh, and my honey likes to garden too…which is great…except when be both want to do things a little differently…so yah, there are times I wish it was MY thing only…:)
This post just made me crazy excited and nervous all at the same time. You see, next friday, we’re set to close on an almost 7 acre plot (with a stream!) in central jersey. We’re uprooting the 3 littles (ages 4,2,6mos), packing up, and getting out of our super busy (read: insanely crowded, dirty, and loud) corner of the tri-state area and moving an hour and a half south to central Jersey where we’re hoping to start a little homestead/farm. I’m excited because I’ve wanted to live on a farm my whole life and I’m looking forward to a nice big garden, some chickens, and hopefully one day a dairy cow. But holy hell am I nervous because the only thing I’ve ever grown in my entire life has been a small patch of tomatoes and some flowers. Oh yea, and I won’t know anyone and did you read the part about 3 small kids? phew. Any tips on how the heck you do it would be more than appreciated 😉
Anyway, thank you for this post. I’m still super nervous, but your beautiful pictures have tipped the scale closer to just freaking excited haha
Wow! Yay you. What an adventure. Tips? Hmm. Follow your bliss. xo
YOU just get better and BETTER….this post goes down as ONE of my all time favorites Burb!….the photos of our girls growing with each of your gardens….Margot in tutus with purses, Ruby’s little belly, bare feet….
I agree with Natalya “You have more kids soon”? WINK!
I adore you….xo
ps…Connie’s Chips were to die for!
Oh Nici! What a beautiful post! Our little homestead was MY dream and JF followed me in that dream… We did it for 2 years and he grew to love it more than I did! Life can be full of surprises sometimes! I am the one who started to feel stuck and to resent not being able to leave the farm… We ended up selling it 2 years ago… Good for you for figuring out the perfect plan for your family!
We just came back from a year-long road trip and the first thing my girls wanted to do when we arrived home was to start planting a garden! Love that!
OoOoOoOoh those pictures!!! Incredible. Farming is my dream as well and I’m still hopeful I may find a studly man to work the soil along with me. Until then, I forge ahead on my own. Just curious…how big is your garden? I rented a 20×30 plot this year that is feeling much smaller and I’m wishing I’d made it an even two. Anyways, love this post.
Gee whiz. Just browsed through these photos again. So awesome. Reminds me that I need to slow down a bit when I’m out there and grab the camera. My kids are learning to dig and plant and water and it’s so damned beautiful. Growing daughters, indeed.
I wish I could say gardening was my thing but I don’t think it is , so I dabble in it, grow carrots, strawberries and globe artichokes . I want my daughter to know where food really comes from. Second best to growing is wandering up to the corner Saturdays to buy organic fruit and vege from the little van that travels the district. Just a little envious of your lovely plot and the fantastic feeling you must get from growing your own – your garden really rocks!
You write so beautifully. Your passion for growing is inspiring. I live in an urban area and have a grey concrete garden. I hate that it’s so grey and get out into nature as much as possible, but we can’t move right now. I haven’t been green fingered before, but I really want my daughters to understand where food comes from, so this year I have planted two apple trees, a pear tree and a blueberry bush. I also planted some thyme, but the birds stole all my seedlings! (lesson one: don’t plant out until seedlings are a bit stronger!). We’ve also been planting flowers. I long for a day when we have more green around us.
How precious is your beautiful family to all of us across the country!
I just loved the story of working with Ivan and Natalya, and all the pictures through the years!
I garden more for the flowers than food. I got to sit outside today at breakfast for just the second time–I’m sure you’ve heard the Minneapolis spring’s been cool and WET! The garden is sanctuary.
The history of your rooted education. And then to watch your family and plants grow together? Simply inspiring.
You helped push me from designing perennial gardens into planting veggies. My daughter and I are on a similar learning curve of what to do (or not!), learning year over year. And now I’m thinking bees more than ever because an older couple from church is willing to help me learn. And that just makes the adventure so much more enticing.
I laughed at your “romanticizing the shit out of farming” pun because no matter how much you romanticize farming, the shit is still there. 🙂
true true! ha.
I love the pictures of kids holding chickens. I love pictures of anyone holding chickens. I love growing food and I love this post. 🙂
alove love love Lydia’s gardening outfits — especially the one with her purse slung over her shoulder as she hoes. If she becomes a farmer, it might be a very stylish one like Eva Gabor on Green Acres.
I have read your blog for many years, and having just moved into our own home again I can’t wait to start growing our own food. Your blog is such an inspiration for both general life and parenting. Thanks for being so grounded.
This reads like the first few pages of a really good book. Lovely!
I love growing food! My husband does too, we have a small farm and we are getting everything going and hope to add chickens soon. I love your girls and their chicken stories! And I like you love to garden in my flip flops but my feet are always looking stained, any ideas on how to get them clean??
You didn’t tell about the BEES SWarming around your head!! I didn’t know you were lonely, I’m sorry. You write so beautifully, love the Ivan and Natalya stories, it brings back so many memories. Also the photos are gorgeous, so fun. A great memoirist, you are.
It does sound like you and I are married to the same Andy. Mormons!
XXX
Let’s get together, this week is events every night, here, eeeek.
xxconnieoo
What a touching post. Your writings always inspire me to reach and be better. Thank you!
It was crazy for me to read this post and look at the pictures. It made me realize how long I have been following your blog… it’s certainly been a while, ever since Ruby was a wee little sprite. My how time flies!