finding your way to connect

In our group meeting the other week, we talked about spirituality and the need to feel a part–not apart—of this world. It is not enough to be just a worker, a student, a spouse, a parent. We need to feel connection to a larger entity. We need this so that we are not alone when we are alone, and so that we can find peace in the “not knowing”. We need to know that in this world, there is not only a place for us to be, but a reason for us to “be”.

My connection has always come from nature. In nature, whether it be the woods, the streams, the fields on horseback, the trails with my dog, I feel my place in this world. Now, working at the CSA, I am reacquainted with my connection to the earth-literally and figuratively. I have always had a love for the earth, even as a child. My father always gardened and even worked on a dairy farm for years. My love for the earth and for gardening is certainly from him, I know. And now I am back, playing in the dirt, muddy knees and soil-smudged face. Smiling. My hands in the soil, dirt wedged under my nails, the smell of fresh earth is, to me, like chocolate cookies to a child. Yesterday I spent my three hours harvesting the fruits of all of our labor. I picked 80 pounds of broccoli rabe, tender, and aching to be sauteed with garlic. I gathered 45 heads of the most buttery Bibb lettuce and picked the most purple radishes I have ever seen. Buckets of them!! Washing them in the big tub of water was like mindfulness meditation to me, as I rubbed the beautiful, purple orbs between my fingers to get the traces of mud off. I was in a heaven I had almost forgotten.

To top off my morning, I gathered up the cracked radishes and the extra leaves and such and made my way to visit the pigs. They love hand outs, and I love feeding them. When I asked farmer Charles what there names were, he told me he hadn’t really given them names. I decided that they should have names, and chose Gertrude for the quiet one (she’s very lady-like, actually) and Lucy for the noisier one–she reminds me of a German Shepherd we used to have that talked INCESSANTLY. And there you have it, a perfect 3 hours. Three hours of peace, fresh air, exercise, connection to the earth, to God and all his bounty, and 2 large pigs named Gert and Lucy.

may your day be equally blessed.

Diane