A Summer of Spinach

Annie Mesa

Whenever I drive past the rolling pastures sprinkled with the occasional cow, I remember seeing them through Max's car window. I picture the many different backdrops that unfolded that summer. Like those few pale gray mornings when a fog crept over the pasture's surface, tickling the cattle's ankles. Or the early evening drives home with the silhouette of Max's arm resting on his windowsill, a dark shape against the pale pink sky and the glowing sun that dripped warm amber onto the grass.

I first came to the farm on a rainy June day carrying a backpack full of insecurities and lacking a rain jacket on my back. Immediately I was offered a variety of rain protection and ended up wearing an eclectic collage of clothes from the crew I had just met. During my initial ride to the field I was wedged in between Max and Kelly in the front of a Kubota vehicle, with Tyler and Sarah bouncing in the back. As we climbed the pebbly path and entered the field through the wooden gate, Max turned to me and said loudly over the engine, “Welcome to your new home.”

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My home was in between the rows of vegetation where we would spend hours kneeling in the dirt, our hands weeding the emerging carrots and beets. It was gently feeling plump Black Krim tomatoes with the hot yellow smell of tomato pollen coating our arms, in the winding labyrinth of hoop houses. It was bending over the sprawling tentacles of spiky summer squash that scratched our forearms when we unearthed zucchinis the weight of newborns. It was cutting the limbs of fennel that looked like spritzes of pale green paint and whose delicate aroma lingered in our fingertips.

The first job I did with the crew was harvest deep green spinach. We each planted our knees in the ground and cut the leaves with our respective red handled harvest knives. Despite Max's clear instructions, I still had to scrupulously observe the rest of the crew in order to understand, and even after that I was still slow. Yet Kelly kept pace with me, and we soon bonded over horseback riding and the artist Sally Mann.

Kelly was known for sharing her midmorning fruit, separating a segment of her tangerine and offering it without a second thought. Max offered robust vegetables grown from the ground with pride. A slice of apple, a dollop of sunscreen, a great white tomato, a hand to finish your job, or an excerpt from our favorite book Good Poems. It seemed as though nothing was enjoyed alone.

My summer passed not in weeks or months but in the life-cycles of carrots and tomatoes. Each morning the field yawned, rubbed her sleepy eyes, and opened them to find that her figure had again changed its form overnight. Despite their longer experience on the farm, the rest of the crew seemed to share my awe at how rapidly the buckwheat surged through the ground, or how the two carrots we uncovered romantically twisted in an embrace. Dew drops fell on new bean sprouts like diamonds. Tie dye streaks of yellow, orange and red enveloped the Striped German tomatoes as they ripened up in the hoop houses on the hill.

I felt myself changing simultaneously with the field. My skin tone deepened as my hair lightened. I gained a few cuts on my hands, tiny wounds of initiation. The knees of my jeans became permanently caked in mud, and sepia stains sprawled across my shirts. But it was more than these physical alterations. It was the way my hands, like Kelly's, began to naturally carve my peaches into segments. It was the way my hiking boots seemed to bounce and my chin no longer pointed towards the ground. And it was my words, my words that finally came.

With beads of sweat rolling down my back, and my hands digging into the rich earth, I seemed to excavate my words, and ones that felt as simple and honest as the Yukon gold potatoes our fingers were searching for. Memories of Charlotte's words from Charlotte’s Web drifted into my mind, “Humble has two meanings: it means 'not proud' and it also means 'near the ground.' That's Wilbur all over.”

Usually being the one to dodge eye contact and avoid unfamiliar people at all costs, I slowly began to facilitate conversations with people I didn't know. I was able to talk to strangers, what a concept? It was as though dirt and sweat were the catalyst for me to actively relate and talk to others more effortlessly than before. Digging my fingers into the mud filled me with the brilliant confidence and curiosity of childhood that seems to get buried in adolescence.

During my summer routine, Wednesdays were particularly strange. I had painting classes in the city those evenings. I would step off the dirt field onto a concrete train platform and wait to sit down inches from somebody who could not feel farther. Before those evenings, I had never felt the urge to interact with anyone on a train. Yet little offerings of conversation escaped from my mouth before my mind could realize. Was this me? In the crowded subways full of toxic grime I longed to return to the healthy dirt of the field. I missed the easy smiles and comforting nudges of the farm in contrast to the stressful grimaces and hurried pushes of the packed subway cars.

On my last day it poured. Skin soaked, we thinned the new spinach sprouts who grew with zeal. All of our hands were impeccably clean for once. When it was time to go I opted for the back of the Kubota. The bumps felt nice and I let my body sway as I said my silent goodbye to the field. I would be back, but I knew she and I would not be the same.