A CHILD ’ S WORLD
| by Kristin Berger
Alice the Farmer
This little girl is not just playing gardener. She is one. And she’s got the shovel and potatoes to prove it.
The peas are in.
Trellises waver along curly willow and plum branches, ready to be climbed, waiting for another sunburst between hail and sideways rain. The compos- ted beds are ready for more seed. My children and I want to play in the dirt, but instead we take advantage of the wet weather and head out of our fir-shaded yard, to a trendy Portland boulevard. Easter has come early, and so, too, has a grandparent’s gift of money. A small toy shop’s doorbell welcomes, and as soon as we enter we are over- whelmed by a rainbow of choices—fairy dresses and train tables, puppets and play cookware, butterfly kites hovering overhead. We weave through the rows until my daughter, Alice, spies what she wants hanging on the wall—a red- enameled shovel and hoe to match her red rake. There are no tantrums about all the other toys, though she does com- ment on how very, very beautiful the fairy dresses are. We pay for the toys—the fact that they are actual tools appeals to my thrifty nature. In my arms, my son, James, contentedly chews on a hand-grubber’s
46 mothering | May–June 2010
leather strap. Alice hops down the street, carrying her tools high on each shoulder. She wants to get home and dig. It’s not that Alice wants to be a farmer
when she grows up— she’s a farmer in the here and now. At the age of two, she informed the neighbors of this fact as— in blue underpants, birth-curls trailing between her shoulder blades down her back like runner vines, dirt clinging to her knees and elbows like a second, baked- on skin—she hefted a basket of potatoes up to the fence to show them her haul. That summer she also helped manage the planting and growing of peas, spin- ach, cucumbers, squash, beets, tomatoes, beans, and corn (our backyard lot is small but packed). My young farmhand widened my understanding of gardens in unexpected ways: Nearly anything grown can be eaten; we can grow almost anything; and almost everything that blooms is fit for a handheld bouquet. For Alice, seemingly born (under
three earth signs) to the farming life, digging is instinctual. She has become a great hole-maker for seeds, some- times so lost in the job she ends up
with a hole she could fit into. Helping out in the garden often becomes an adventure in Mud World, but such is the distracted focus of a four-and-a-half- year-old. Worms and roly-poly bugs are honored citizens given grass-clipping sanctuary. Sixteen-month-old James fol- lows her, grasping the three-foot-long shovel and bolting like spinach for open ground.
When I had my first child, I was
unprepared for the seemingly incompat- ible tasks of tending a garden and caring for a curious, mobile baby. We joined a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) group to let someone else toil in the soil. The farmer’s house and pickup point was just three miles away (the farm itself is within walking distance of our home), and there we met other families, many with children—children running wild in the strawberry patch and raspberry canes, playing hide-and-seek under the shelter- ing leaves of fig trees. They ran with dogs and chickens, helped weigh their families’ shares of weekly produce, and snacked on beans and carrots still warm from the sun. Baby Alice sat in the grass and traced
ISTOCK PHOTO
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