Number 1

Eaters of Grassroots Produce and other Kind People:

            Hello. My name is Teddy Marino. Some call me Ted. Some call me dirt. You can call me anything but late for dinner. I’ll be here all summer folks.

            Aside from Lindsey the Farmer (Lindsey Morris Carpenter), I am Grassroots Farm’s first official farmhand. A historic moment if ever.

            Lindsey’s mom, Gail, is the official keeper of books, and Lady of the nascent apple orchard. Sometimes she also feels like a mother-in-law. I wonder what she’s wondering: Who is this young man? Is he good enough for my daughter’s farm? Is he really committed? Is he just along for a tractor ride? Of course, only time will tell.

               Back in August ’09, I had just begun a job with an educational non-profit on the Southside of Chicago. The whole business was strange, disorganized, and chaotic. I am strange, disorganized, and chaotic. And I was hired to manage people. A match made in purgatory. Nonetheless, bread on the table, clipless pedals on my bicycle.

            My first week as Lead Learning Facilitator, during a training session, I asked one of my co-worker friends (whom I had known before coming to the job) for advice.

            “You really want the truth?” he asked.

            “Yes, of course,” I said.

            “Get out,” he said. His eyes are blue and his skin is pale. “Get out as soon as you have the chance.”

            Seven months later (right about now) I have the chance.
            My introduction to Grassroots Farm took place last September. Lindsey hired me to work a few of the Andersonville Farmer’s Markets. I worked the late afternoon shift.

            The tomatoes were beautiful. They were gigantic. Mythic. Paleolithic. Contemporary. Shee-shee. Hearty. Wild. Miraculous. Juicy. Sweet. Full. Plump. Exotic. Homey. Fantastic. Viney red like the blood in your heart. 

            Exchanging these tomatoes for dollars brought a deep thrill to me, it rung a chord with the primal capitalist inside: I give you, you want . . . you give me, I want. The beauty was the simplicity. And the beauty was the freedom from some of our world’s most common poisons – worker-exploitation, land abuse, self-abuse, animal abuse. Poison. It was a clean and sweet feeling to sell these tomatoes. And the buyers felt like they were glad to be there, at the least.  

            I forgot to mention: Potatoes! Beets! Orange flash summer squash! Basil!  Eeeerrrr looooom tomatoes!

            What would it be like to sweat for these things? To sweat for the food? Such a romantic notion! Why not move to a farm, get hitched, work the land, make babies? So far it’s good without the hitch, or the babies.

            And what about the apocalypse? If the apocalypse comes and Cermak Produce, Trader Joe’s, and the rest of our industrialized society collapses beneath our feet, yet the sun still shines and rain still falls, shouldn’t I know how to eat? This is not a smart reason to be a farmhand. But . . . I was wheel hoe-ing the garlic today (I forgot to mention garlic, oh yes: Garlic!) my shoulders were tiring and a single sweat droplet fell from my nose, and the wheel hoe and the apocalypse became tangled together like a garden hose and a wad of rusty barbed wire.

            Bombs. Earthquakes. Children bleeding out their shoulder sockets. Steel chimneys and black clouds. The amazon to pasture . . . countryside to suburbs . . . mountains to mines . . . anhydrous ammonia . . . soil of no worms, Earth of no life, hills hairried with  feedcorn, cows munching in puddle of feces, a sideshow freak ground up into a hamburger patty. Happy lunchtime. The apocalypse is always happening.

            Me and the wheel hoe, and the garlic, in the afternoon: a pair of hands in the grand chorus of fists that rise against the sun, the mammoth, behemoth, pulsing, inching old glacier of greed, and antiquated habits.

            If Lindsey Morris Carpenter, my friend/boss/role model, were in this business for the money, she’d be stupid. She’s not stupid. She’s hungry like an artist. Organically farm-fed, yet always hungry. These tomatoes are undebatedably inspired, and desirable.  The art of the hands and knees, tractor and soil; the sweat of the love. Achoo. God bless you.

             I’m working this season through and through. Makes me feel like a man. I mean, a hu-man. A hu-myn. A farmer! Damn, it feels good to be a farmhand! Sickle-slicing away the thistle. My appetite is strong! ‘Till soon, eat good!

Teddy