I am guilty. As a matter of fact, an obnoxious amount of us are all guilty and I didn’t exactly accept this until the first day of class. A large majority of us have absolutely no idea where our food is coming from, who is benefitting from the sales of the products we are consuming, or how much the production of said products is impacting the environment. We all are consciously trying to better ourselves and make better choices that will, perhaps, positively impact the world we live in but who is to say which choices are the right ones?

Our first trip to the farm was eye opening. Nancy’s operation seems so small but the fact that it supports her and her needs is amazing. Of course, not all of us have green thumbs nor do we have the knowledge to start something similar but it does go to show that it isn’t as difficult as one may think. I look forward to actually getting my hands dirty and helping out on the farm, not only to help out for the farm’s benefit but also for my own.

As an employee at Newark Natural Foods, I am familiar with organic products but not necessarily how they are produced. Every week, we receive multiple shipments in our produce department of beautiful, fresh, and uniform fruits and vegetables. This is obviously expected because who wants odd shapes, sizes, or even products with a little bit of character? Definitely not the customers. It struck me during one of my shifts after the farm visit that the products we were receiving all looked spectacular (with the exception of few) but at the farm, most of the vegetables had variable colors, sizes, and even textures. The potatoes, tomatoes, and peppers all showcased these differences. With that being said, what happens to all of the ugly ducklings that are grown on the larger farms that we purchase our produce from at Newark Natural Foods? Do they get thrown away? Donated? Do people on the farm take advantage of them? This whole topic hits a few different issues in this society, one of them being that consumers have high expectations and this drives the disconnect between the environment and themselves. The farmers that we purchase of products from wouldn’t profit from blemished produce since consumers would push it to the side and choose another piece to indulge in. Another issue is the amount of waste that is created by humans, even if it is biodegradable. At Newark Natural Foods, we are constantly feeding our spoilage bin with blemished and rotten produce that is taken home by the employees or customers who often use it to feed animals like goats and pigs. Buying organic and shopping at places like the Co-op support local farmers and producers that are also trying to better the environment but there is still a middleman here- the stores we shop at like NNF.

I do not buy directly from the farmer and I also do not eat completely organic food, but lacking the knowledge and finances to do so make it impossible as a college student. I believe that this class will help me develop a bank of knowledge regarding these topics that I can carry fourth with me as I graduate. I am ignorant to many of the environmental issues that I am surely contributing to on a daily basis but taking baby steps to changing the way I live is definitely a start. From working on a farm and raising goats a few years ago to working at Newark Natural Foods, I have gained a ton of knowledge and hands on experience that could be very beneficial when working with Nancy and even in class. Fortunately, I have been asking myself tons of questions since the first day of class that have made me more aware and curious of my choices. I look forward to answering these questions and most likely many more throughout my journey this semester.

I walked onto Fair Weather Farm almost expecting to encounter some small place which would strike me as particularly special, a type of place that feels to possess some natural aura that infuses your soul immediately. That usually doesn’t just happen…and it didn’t. In retrospect, it almost seems arrogant to have expected to experience nirvana in only an hour. I’m slightly ashamed now that I realize that I have come to expect satisfaction to come so hastily in everything, that I rush through nearly everything I do just to get to the next task. And I know I’m far from the only one. But why? Why does society today demand immediate results?

Personally, I’m going to blame the air conditioner. In The Bulldozer in the Countryside, Adam Rome vilifies the homebuilding industry’s post-war practice of mass production and the building of houses as if they were Model-T’s on Ford’s assembly line. The air conditioner was the enabler. It enabled the builders to cut corners, to leave out design in architecture previously needed for ‘natural’ climate control. It enabled the large contractors to tightly pack together houses into “units” devoid of trees and vegetation which provided shade. However, it also enabled us to change our surroundings to fit our needs with the press of a button. I don’t think we today can truly understand how it must have felt back then during the post-war electricity boom. Up to that point in our history as a species we had always been subject to the varying environmental conditions of the Seasons. Now? Boom, press of a button and you’re adapting your environment to suit yourself instantly.

That’s why I don’t like the air conditioner now after reading Rome’s work. I realized we’re changing our environment so we are immediately comfortable. We’re almost breaking the natural order of life. Over the course of decades, we’ve managed to permanently alter the face of the Earth just so we are happy. One could say we’ve successfully made ourselves the center of our own tiny little universes in homage to the geocentric philosophies of our past.

It’s been refreshing to write and think for the past hour while I sip my coffee on a hammock strung up on my porch, recovering from the night before. The air already beginning to fill with early afternoon heat. The natural wildlife happily going about its way; the scavenging squirrels, the industrious hornets in the nest in a bush next to me, and the neighboring brotherly organizations already engaging in their ritual known as the “dage”. I feel relaxed and completely at ease as a light wind gently rocks my hammock back and forth. This is the type of feeling I was searching for on the Farm. Only when I took the time to completely take in my surroundings did it come naturally to remove myself from the center of my personal universe and to become comfortable with how miniscule all of my problems seem.

I feel making a conscious effort to simply take a moment of the day to go outside and just exist, completely taking in the surroundings, would be beneficial for anyone. We spent so much time inside of our cookie-cutter houses that as a society we grew distant to Nature, only recently have the masses started demanding change… change which can’t happen immediately as we’re used to. We need to adjust the way we operate ourselves, not adjust our environments for ourselves. We need to start putting the welfare of everyone as a whole in front of our self as individuals. We need to slow down in our hectic lives.

When I was younger I only thought about food as much as any child of a scientist and botanist would—the food in our house was “healthy”, “natural”, “organic”. We often had fresh fruit and herbs that my mom would grow in our garden. I never thought further about what these terms actually meant for my body and the environment, where they came from, and how they differed from the food items that never entered our home but were abundant in school and grocery stores.

My eyes were finally opened during a trip to Honduras (2009 coup) when I was 15. Driving to visit family in their small village on the Caribbean coast, hours away from the closest city, we passed hundreds of acres of orchards. Palm trees. Coffee. Bananas. The banana fields owned by Chiquita stretched for what seemed like forever. Once at our family’s home I was told that Chiquita owns all the land in the area, including where the house was. They worked the land, harvested the bananas for export, were paid very little money, and didn’t own a single banana to eat for themselves. Banana export plays a large role in the Honduran economy, yet the workers are exploited and can’t own the land they live on.

Since moving to college and being on my own, I have changed the way I think about what labels mean, where the product comes from, and what companies I support. Once away from my Greek household I was able to embrace vegetarianism, which I completely love and have no intention on going back to eating meat. I would ideally buy myself fresh, local, organic produce and other foods, but unfortunately I am on the broke college student budget, which does not allow for such commodities. Every time I buy a product because it’s the cheapest option I cringe from feeling like a hypocrite—I know I should be supporting the local organic farmer right now, but it costs $2 more… WHY? Why should myself and other Americans not have access to healthy, safe, sustainable, local food because of something so unevenly distributed as money?

And thus has begun my journey through the world of climate injustice, food security, and environmental conservation. It is hard to ignore how social injustice is often a direct result of climate change. There are nearly a billion people throughout the world who do not have access to safe, clean, potable water due to pollution, drought, and water privatization by Big Business. Local Delaware farmers close to the coast are losing crops (and their livelihoods and homes) to salinized soil caused by sea level rise. I was also shocked to learn in class that 40% of our food is thrown out pre-sale, while there are people starving everywhere in the world.

I am looking forward to this semester of sharing experiences, hearing what my peers have to say about these issues, broadening my knowledge of different topics, learning how to literally feed myself while taking care of the earth. Not only will the time at Fairweather teach me about sustainable agriculture, plant-human-earth interactions, and caring for the crops and animals, but will also provide a much needed break from the school environment allowing me to spend therapeutic time in nature, doing physical labor to relieve stress. Working on a farm has always sparked interest in the back of my mind, and I am excited to have this opportunity to dive into the dirt and put the potatoes where my mouth is, so to speak.

As I arrived at Fair Weather Farms this semester for the first time, I was going over a final check list in my head: Sneakers? Check. Water? Check. Hat? Check. Phone?

And at that point, I was faced with the love-hate relationship of having a smart phone. I love taking pictures of nature, and without my phone I couldn’t take pictures to show off to my friends and family or to make a clever post on Instagram; however, I didn’t have pockets on my running shorts big enough to hold my phone, and bringing it meant having one more thing to be responsible for. For once during my stressful first week of dropping and adding classes and getting back into the swing of life at school, I just wanted to be outside and give myself an opportunity to clear my mind. So, I ditched my phone, locked the car, and headed towards the first adventure this class would bring me.

Once we began the tour of Fair Weather, I found the best way to escape from the hectic reality that surrounded me at school was to listen to Nancy Bentley, the owner of the farm, speak about everything from the history of the farm to healthy and invasive insects affecting different plants and vegetables. She could point to anything on the farm and tell us things I’ve never heard of, or even thought about before. I let my mind wander as we walked from the fields filled with potatoes, kale, pumpkin vines, weeds, and flowers towards her home situated just beyond that, looking at everything around me in awe and amazement that this was all right in front of me, and how glad I was that I didn’t have an annoying notification vibrating my phone to distract me from that moment.

It was then that I truly decided deep down how much I dislike having a phone with me at all times, distracting me from living in the moment and paying attention to the things around me. Sometimes it feels downright ridiculous when I’m focusing more on getting an amazing picture of a sunset than just looking at the sky and appreciating the moment for what it is, or when I’m hanging out with a friend but hung up on the conversation I’m carrying via text with the next person. I’m no longer being present with the person I’m spending time with, and suddenly my mom saying, “Stop texting at the dinner table. It’s rude,” doesn’t sound as unreasonable as I once thought.

Do we ever take a moment to disconnect from technology, even from friends and family, and connect with ourselves? Sadly, I think most young adults, and even teenagers (hell, probably some adults that know how to navigate Facebook), would answer no to this question, just because technology is so vital to the way we communicate with each other, but would you consider it more vital than being fully aware and in-tune with yourself and your own personal needs? If more people stopped to think about it like that, I think more of us would find time to disconnect and take a walk, visit a farm, or sit by a river to focus on the physical, intellectual, spiritual, and emotional aspects of ourselves.

Further, I believe if more people got into the habit of being alone in nature with no phone reminding them of their responsibilities, obligations, or stressors, we would be more secure with ourselves mentally and physically. If we spend time outside taking in the sights, sounds, and feelings of nature it becomes possible to be more aware and respectful of it. People seldom think about the fact that we are mammals and that we have the same basic needs as all other creatures on Earth. We are biological beings surrounded by a biological world that we are directly a product of, and the artificial world we have created through social constructs. The more in tune with the biological aspect of life that we live, and less so the artificial part, the more we will understand our place within that physical world that we are a part of.

I didn’t put much thought into my decision to take my shoes off at the farm, so it surprised me when so many people ended up remarking upon it. I’m not sure if I’d even call it a decision. If there’s an opportunity for me to go barefoot anywhere, I jump on it. The rest of my day had been remarkably unpleasant: my computer’s hard drive crashed without chance of revival, I arrived in my first class only to realize that my homework was still sitting in the printer of the Smith Laboratory basement, and my water bottle, my elixir of life on this scorching day, was still sitting where I had left it at work the night before. It also registered to me that I had so thoughtfully decided to schedule myself to work that day as well, at 3pm, fifteen minutes before my class was scheduled to end, my class that would be taking place further off campus that day, on a farm. Fantastic. By the time I parked my car, I was feeling irritable, sweaty, anxious, and exceptionally dehydrated. Despite all this, I was eager to forget it all just for that hour, and deal with the fallout when I had to. I put on my shoes, stepped out of my car, and said to myself, “what the hell am I doing? I’m on a farm, it’s hot, and on the off chance that step on something that hurts me, it’s just another thing on the long list of things that will make me want to forget this day entirely.

Of all of the things I remember about the farm, my feet still stick out to me most. Perhaps it was the constant reminder that it was a noteworthy thing that I was doing, or the fact that it really just felt so damn good to be able to do it, the fact that I was doing something that I haven’t done in far too long. The first step into the soft, somewhat crunchy grass. I could tell that it hadn’t rained in a while, enough for the plants to show signs that they were as thirst as I was. As I heard the professor’s encouragement to touch all that was around us, I couldn’t help but concentrate on the fact that I was constantly touching and feeling the world below me. I felt the uncomfortable sting of thistle as I creeped over it and told a classmate “I’m used to it, I barely feel it now anyways.” It was true enough, I’ve gone barefoot so often that I at I’m at least somewhat accustomed to the pain. I tiptoed cautiously around the beehive, anxiously awaiting a sting on (one of the) worst possible places to be stung. I wandered up and around, attempting to see and feel all that I could in the short hour we spent there.

I left the farm feeling far calmer than when I had entered. My problems still remained, but seemed more trivial. I’m eager to return in the following weeks. I’m eager to allow myself to disconnect from the busy world for a few hours, working on producing and maintaining life. I’m eager to see the incremental changes as the season changes, and I’m eager to feel those changes below my feet. Although I was unsurprised by the demonstration in class that showed just how many of us were unaware of our food choices, it was still a grave reminder of just how disconnected we are from production of all kinds. It’s almost terrifying to delve into the actual impact of this fact, which is my it usually only lingers at the back of mind, where constantly push it as not to face reality. This week’s reading only furthered this thought- add “the development of suburbia” to the list of things behind which I now know the dark history.

As eager as I am to get my hands and feet into the dirt, I’m apprehensive to get further into the class. It’s hard to avoid getting overwhelmed by reality, hard to avoid getting angry at everyone responsible, hard to overcome the immediate feeling of defeat, harder still to think of ways to overcome the seemingly monumental hurdles we face. I’m not eager to look at all of these things head on, but I’m ready. One (preferably barefoot) step at a time.

It seems this class came to me with exquisite timing, for the sake of both my personal and academic growth. I joined without really knowing what it was, on recommendation of one of my friends, with hopes that I’d get to learn a little more about the environmental movement between the covers of Silent Spring and hour long lectures. Imagine my surprise to discover on the first day that this two-hundred-level English class was going to have me paddling the Susquehanna and volunteering on the very same farm my housemates have been working with for DTE. To say the least, it got my attention.

At the end of Fall semester of last year, I was in bad shape. I was quickly finding out that I was not cut out for the cold, fast-food style education the Biology Department had prepackaged for me. Spending the rest of my life as a lab rat simply was not worth going thirty-thousand dollars into debt. I developed an unrivaled sense of ennui and bitter resentment toward academia, and it was reflected in my .89 GPA for that semester. It took four classes outside of my major in the Spring to realize that the college experience, when done properly, was not supposed to leave one feeling gutted. In fact, some classes can actually provide one with the tools to craft a new sense of purpose in one’s life. This was my experience with Professor Carolyn Bartoo, the person who taught me that an unwavering reverence for Nature was healthy and it was okay to settle for nothing less than a life centered on it. For my final project in her class I made a short film warning against the dangers of monoculture and industrial farming practices. I asked a couple of friends if they could connect me with a nearby sustainable from that I could get footage of.

This is how I came to work for Dale Hendricks on his plant nursery in Landenberg for the summer. It was my first and only experience with manual labor, and I was absolutely enchanted with it. Workplace distractions included the distant screech of red tailed hawks and swarms of ants in soil bags. Bathroom breaks included imbuing a bucket of “biochar” with one’s nitrogenous waste. Protocol had not to do with talking down angry customers but making sure not to disturb the mycorrhiza in the soil. I got to meet biology in its own home.

As summer came to a close, work at Dale’s became scarce, and I haven’t since had the opportunity to express myself in that way. I am incredibly excited to start work at Fair Weather. I need a scheduled break from academia, and it’s a great reason to ride my bike in the snow. Moreover, it’s the novel experience I needed to put this new semester in perspective. It’s a chance to get back to work. I crave the sublime exhaustion of working in the sun for six hours. I yearn for the satisfaction of blood and topsoil under my fingernails. I miss watching something I helped create flourish. Only this time, I’ve upgraded from ornamental plants to food, and I am doing it purely for experience instead of capital.

On the first day of class I was asked to pay mind to the changes in the landscape over the semester. I intend to use my time at Fair Weather as an opportunity to check in on all the developments that have taken root in Nature, as well as all the new natures that have taken root in me. Over the summer, I learned to identify goldenrod. I’d seen it all my life, but never took the time to appreciate or understand it. My introduction to the farm last Thursday was the first time I have ever seen goldenrod in bloom. I can’t really express how that felt in the moment. It was a little like seeing that an old friend had done alright by themselves. I grew with the plants this year. It will be rewarding to watch myself once again turn with the seasons. I still don’t know exactly what I want to do in this university, but I took Engl230 intent on getting closer to finding out, and I expect that it will deliver.