The Case For Farming: The Big Red Farm is not a gimmick—it’s a way of life

Whenever I tell someone that I’m a varsity farmer, I say it with just enough self-deprecating sarcasm that they know I’m kidding. The joke is not lost on me—it is funny because varsity athletes work tirelessly day in, day out, and I’m just a guy who spends a few afternoons every week planting lettuce. Many varsity athletes win competitions with the hope of perhaps one day pursuing the sport professionally. On the other hand, there is no upcoming match between the Hill School and us in the event of the 100-metre cabbage harvesting (at least not yet). However, I have come to embrace that label and come to embrace the reality of the self-proclaimed “varsity” farming.

In total, the Big Red Farm covers over 25 acres of land. It is a ten-minute walk from the main campus, one that cuts through the golf course. Along this walk is a bridge that passes over a small creek, shrubs of flowers that bloom when spring comes, and patches of woodland where foxes, deers, and woodpeckers reside. It’s a walk of immense beauty—beauty that is further exaggerated after a day of staring at tests and essays and whiteboards. When I walk along this path on just the right spring afternoon, I take a deep breath of the air, allowing it to fill my lungs. 

Once you arrive at the farm, the trek turns from sand and rock to one of dirt and mud—the even and smooth path turns bumpy and potholed. More than anything, the smell of sheep and of hay permeates through the air—smells alien to me, someone who was raised in a city. At first, I found this smell to be rather nauseating, for sheep manure still smells like manure. In fact, it was not just this smell that I found myself apprehensive toward, but of sludge seeping through my shoes, of my hands caked in mud, of the dirt, and occasional sheep dropping that stains my clothing. Sure, if you want to be dainty around the farm, you can get by; without your hands covered in mud or bits of tiny rocks jammed between your fingernails—but if you want to accomplish any real work, the farm forces you to dig your hands deep into the Earth.

That is part of the point of farming, though, that most of us go through life without acknowledging the land that we’re standing on—the land that selflessly gives yet asks nothing in return. The Earth needs to be cared for, and to care for it requires us to understand it. On the farm, you are forced to understand how plants germinate and grow and how weather patterns influence them. In a way, this is what the farm is all about: understanding the Earth, the ground we stand over. If you listen close enough, you might even hear it pulsating under your feet, alive with trillions of microbes and mycelia and microorganisms.

The farm is often hard work—bending over the seemingly endless rows of bok choy in the sweltering heat or in the freezing rain. It is being cut by farm equipment and by stray pieces of wood embedded deep within the soil. It is watching hours of work go to waste as seeds fail to germinate. In a more practical sense, the Big Red Farm is an acknowledgement that the food we see at the hot food line at Tsai or our own dinner table back home did not appear out of nowhere. The first place at which we come into contact with what we eat is at grocery stores—at the display of organic vegetables and a refrigerated aisle packed with pieces of filet or tenderloin.

It’s easy to forget where our food comes from, to forget that the radish was once deep within the Earth, to forget that the ribeye was once a muscle contracting inside a cow. We are as far away from the origins of food as we can possibly get—the experience of obtaining produce has become almost clinical in a way. It’s comfortable to forget about where the food on our table comes from: the amount of resources and work that goes into a single head of lettuce, the backbreaking work of harvesting behind a single bowl of rice, and the sentient animal capable of enjoying both pleasure and pain behind a juicy hamburger.

Once you begin working on a farm, it becomes almost impossible to turn a blind eye to how the food on your table got to your table. When you scrape into the trash an unfinished salad, you realize that the lettuce exists partly because of you—that you spent time, with your back hunched, planting them, harvesting them, and washing them. Then comes what the farm manager, Mr. Macdonald, shares with every visitor to the Farm: as you pass by the sty where piglets oink with delight, where they run through the wooded area, following you, you’re told that these will become the bacon you eat in the morning. Once you look a pig or sheep in their eyes, it becomes difficult not to see them as mirages while you enjoy pork chop or a leg of lamb.

This, of course, is not to guilt-trip people, but simply so that people understand food is not magic. To quote Anthony Bourdain, who is part-chef and part-storyteller, “Good food, good eating, is all about blood and organs, cruelty and decay. It’s about sodium-loaded pork fat, stinky triple-cream cheeses, the tender thymus glands, and distended livers of young animals.”

It is easy to live in the kind of oblivion afforded by privilege—it is hard to confront your dinner face-to-face. Yet, I posit to you that the discomfort one feels on the farm is not only important, but necessary. We live in a time when the planet is slowly dying. This planet was a gift to us—a gift we must cherish and a gift we must protect. Understanding the Earth and the miracles of plants and animals is more important than it ever was. Just as this Earth was gifted to us by our ancestors, we must gift it to those who come after us. We do not get to keep this gift, at least not forever, for we are only guests on this planet. We must do what all good guests do—care for this, our only home.

When you get a chance to, thank the Earth, for we are only guests enjoying this—this indescribable experience of ecstasy and beauty.