Dear farm shares. The food you eat from our farm comes from the soil. We, the farmers, are the human care-givers for the soil. Soil care is our primary task. The food you eat is the yield from plants living in the soil we nurture. As with anything, (in order to be able to care for the soil) we have to first care for ourselves.
As you may imagine, the care we provide for the soil includes a lot of heavy work. The work is hard on our bodies. Of course, we are made to work the earth, but even so, the work we do - digging, lifting, spreading, raking, hoeing and so on - takes a toll on our bodies. It wears them down. And, being farmers of small stature working the soil on a small farm, the work wears our bodies out in different ways, and to a greater degree than, for example, working in a more mechanised or larger farm context.
In order to improve the chances of us being able to farm from age 30 - when we started - until we retire, we employ strategies to be as gentle as possible on our bodies. And, we find the most effective way to do each job. The brain work is often tool selection, task prioritization, ensuring systematic chore lists and so on. And, we shift positions, stretch, switch hands, fill smaller containers with heavy items and large ones with light, and so on, to reduce physical strain.
For example, when harvesting beans we would emerge from the rows bent over and unable to stand straight. Ham strings might feel tight, back permanently curved, head a little dizzy, eyebrows and temples tense from the long focus on tiny beans behind big leaves. To avoid that result we need to stretch beforehand and during. We change positions from bending to kneeling to squatting, even to lying down (especially useful when thinning carrots or working with tiny details / weeds at the base of plants).
We hope you might be able to use appropriate strategies in your context to improve your body-work relationship. Thanks to those of you who, over the years, have encouraged and even advised us in self-care. Enjoy the fruit of our labour!
And, welcome to our two new farm shares - keep spreading the word as our Winter shares are now on sale and people can join now for the rest of the current season!
Tim & Tracy, your urban farmers
