Mud and Magic

Subject: Ernie

“So your potential date [Ernie] stopped in at the farm today. Drunk.  Before 9am.  Dave says to let him know if you’re still interested.  (btw, he still has as many teeth as he did 2 years ago)  Hope you’re well!” ~Janaki

A message from Janaki, friend and farmer at Food Farm, CSA, in northern Minnesota, showed up in my inbox the other morning. It has been over a month already since I started driving west so it felt great to get word, however brief, from a friend in the middle of the country. Is it a good sign that Ernie (still) has as many teeth these days as he did two years ago?

I have yet to meet the mysterious subject of Janaki’s email although I’ve heard a share of intriguing stories about him. Some went down like this: Dave, who has worked at the farm for over 15 years, was enthusiastically proposing that I meet one of his single guy friends in Duluth, with whom I’d be a “perfect” match, (and therefore consider a longer stay in that part of the country – aww, sweet Dave). In the middle of this proposal, however, he jumped instead into telling me more about Ernie… an interesting character like so many others I’d get to know, or just have the privilege to hear about, in Wrenshall, MN.

Once Ernie traveled by foot from 20 or more miles away to a party that Dave and his wife were hosting in Duluth, was already drunk (as is his style, I guess), and proceeded to make things interesting for the waning late night crowd who considered themselves P.C. and what not. He goes missing for months at a time but is always spotted walking or hitching rides when he decides to appear again. Apparently, he is missing enough teeth that his smile often scares children that he meets along the way, he is an expert fisherman, and shows up to work at the farm when he’s moved to (or needs cash?), often unannounced.. I couldn’t help but think about how these are the kind of details that must fuel Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon Minnesotans. There were others, in addition to Ernie, like Uncle Dougie the strawberry farmer who visits and talks with a toothpick just hanging precariously, constantly, from the corner of his mouth who grows beautiful red things one month out of the year, Karola & Rick, the super cute Buddhist-Christian farmers who live close by and love Minnesota with a vengeance, the elderly woman looking to buy a cheap heap of dill for her son to make pickles with, the Vietnam Vet who wears this fact on his baseball cap and just wants to find a good tomato. These people envelop you quickly into their stories and histories – all tied to the land they live on and know in some way – and you can’t help but want to hunker down, stay a while to hear more, or forget that you had anywhere else to go at all.

The stories become farm news, gossip, a version of the same magazine-type stuff (maybe better) that I’ve been known to pay $3.99 for at the airport to stay loftily fixated on (anything but the fact that I’m 37,000 feet off of the ground, traveling hundreds of miles an hour to get to faraway places).

Without lively exchange we may have found ourselves lonely scattered souls in a field pulling things out of it. The fun banter, the friendly people, the gossip and rumors, all fueled what turned into thoughtful conversation and then, at times, some beautifully concise and genuine advice, much of which I’ve scribbled into notebooks and still reference. Harvesting together brought out a real desire to connect and engage: with the land, with one another. For me, this was an introduction to a whole new work environment and one I could find myself getting used to. Of course, there were times when this labor was just plain backbreaking, hot, and difficult, but I found myself caught up, happy, in love even with the work itself.

There is something magical about the process of pulling carrots from dirt. Each and every time I harvested them I was surprised to see how consistently beautiful these organic vegetables could be, heaving themselves just above ground, full of nutrients, color, and life. What’s not magic, but science, is that organic farming can transform the world. Check out the Rodale Institute’s good news with a glimpse into how, here

“(the) growing organic movement is proving that we can not only feed the world with healthy food, but also reverse global warming, by capturing and sequestering billions of tons of climate-destabilizing greenhouse gases in the soil…” ~Ronnie Cummins

Food Farm CSA harvested 32,000 pounds of potatoes this year. Despite cold and wet weather they are still in the midst of harvesting many thousands of pounds of carrots, parsnips, and rutabagas, too. The amount of people they feed with this organized place in Northern Minnesota is another kind of magic. Again, not wizardry, probably not even science. It’s this extraordinary thing that is the result of hard and smart work on behalf of a totally dedicated, small staff and volunteer crew. With speed and efficiency, stories and jokes, there is also an important place for complete and wonderful silence. The process is like an entire field of onions that we work steadily along, pulling each one out of the ground and leaving them to cure there: round bulbs resting in the dirt while the bright green stems turn yellow, dry, then brown, all toppled over on top of one another until – alas! –  they are born again in our kitchens as the days get colder and shorter and we need that onion-cooking-in-the-cast-iron-smell to warm the air, soup on the stove, to keep us going.

I look forward to visiting my friends in Wrenshall again someday, maybe meeting Ernie for real the next time around and certainly to check in on Catherine’s progress. Catherine is an amazing farmer, and person, who I had the privilege of working with at Food Farm. She has just purchased land to start her very own operation! She’s one to watch, for sure: part of a new wave of young people and women who are taking this work on and can hopefully benefit from the customer demand that Food Farm, after twenty years of operation, has helped cultivate.

My visit will wait until the winter’s over and soup’s no longer the first thing on my mind. Oh, and hoping that things work out with my car.. another story for another time, though.