I recently spent a month working on a farm in a remote region of Chilean Patagonia. I found myself there by volunteering with Conservacion Patagonica.
It was November. Springtime in the Southern Hemisphere. It wasn’t the warmest spring, but it was quite possibly the most beautiful. The Patagonian winds are notoriously strong, the stars are unbelievably bright, and the vistas are otherworldly. Most days I had to pinch myself.
I love to grow food and I love to hike. Camping and working in Chacabuco Valley, while sometimes a bit chilly, was pretty magical for me. I was there with five other volunteers. Every morning we would wake with the sun, hike down the valley, and spend the day working the land. We built beds, sifted compost, planted greens, and harvested radishes. We watered, transplanted, and weeded. We worked in the mornings when the sun was hidden behind clouds and the temperature was just barely creeping over 0ºC. We worked in the afternoons when the sun beat down on our backs with a humbling strength. We took breaks in the shade and drank tea all day long. Sometimes we worked side by side in silence. Other times we could barely shut up. We broke bread together, polished off bottles of red wine together, and rationed our limited supply of chocolate together. We shared books and stories. We debated and discussed our connected food systems, our shared planet, and our divisive politics. It didn’t take long for these strangers to become friends and neighbors. It didn’t take long for us all, in a place so far from our homes, to create a new community.
Since I was young enough to appreciate my mother’s cooking I’ve understood how much food can bring people together. How the table is a place for conversation and connection. For laughter and tears. But in recent years, on farms near and far, I’ve learned that the act of growing food does the same thing. Of course, sometimes when you are working with the land you are discussing how much a crop needs to be watered or when it needs to be harvested. You’re learning by doing. Quite often by trial and error. But there is something unique that happens when you are growing food. Gardening and farming can be intensive and exhausting. They require hard work and a great deal of knowledge. But they also grant the grower a gift that many other jobs do not. Working in a field, a yard, a garden, or a greenhouse gives people a place to work, but also to connect. When you’re growing food you can be productive and weed a whole row of carrots while sharing stories, thoughts, jokes, and dreams with your co-weeders. It creates a space for a natural community to form. It brings people together.
In a world that feels all too fractured and far too fast, I’ve been able to find solace in the field and the garden. In a time where it’s more common to have a conversation through the screen of your phone than with the person sitting next to you on a bus, I find it heartening that there are still spaces that give us chance to truly connect.
I’m grateful for my time in Patagonia for a lot of reasons, but most of all because it taught me that farming has a way bringing us together and reminding us of what matters.