I am a tomato unbeliever. In Montana it can freeze in August, so two summers in a row my tomatoes froze before they ripened, turning into green mush, and I stopped believing in tomatoes. I’m a raspberry unbeliever as well. My sister-in-law gave me a twiggy little raspberry bush, which I plopped in a dry corner of the yard and watered once or twice. It turned out to be a good-for-nothing plant. I became a strawberry unbeliever after a neighbor gave me strawberry runners with cute little knuckles that I pushed into the dirt, but something went wrong there too.
I believe in thistles and thyme, but thistles are donkey food and it’s hard to live on thyme.
I live across the street from believers, though, who don’t give up on tomatoes, raspberries, and strawberries, but tend to them all day long. At first, at Bear Canyon Farm, there were two big Harrises and two baby Harrises out there all day and then there were two big Harrises and three baby Harrises out there all day. For five years I walked my dogs past their farm and saw them ministering to tomatoes and peas and spinach and itty-bitty ginger sprouts. I have noticed that ginger shows up in its own sweet time: ginger grows gingerly. I’ve also noticed that believers get dirty, especially baby believers.
Then all those Harrises went north and got replaced by another Harris, a Heidi this time, herself a bean believer, a tomato believer, a strawberry believer, a carrot believer, whose fruits and vegetables nourish and strengthen us all summer, through the Bear Canyon CSA. I’ve seen all the carrot-washing and garlic-peeling and pea-harvesting involved in being a believer. Also the snow-blowing: I’ve seen her in October blowing snow off of the dirt so she can get those last garlics in the ground before it freezes over. I’ve also seen how under the influence of her belief, raspberries don’t give up like my sad-sack raspberry plant, but turn into a jungle. I live in Bozeman, Montana, across from a jungle.
So when my heart is losing heart, growing wilty and pale, I have only to walk across the road and look at the farm, at Heidi’s bean-rows and pea-rows and rhubarb-rows—so much leafy, twirly, jungly bounty, such evidence of the power of belief, leafy as spinach, twirly as pea tendrils, and sweet as a strawberry.
