Artful Work
“It is not possible to imagine a farmer who does not use both science and art.”
~Wendell Berry, Life is a Miracle
It’s that time of year again: our greenhouse tunnels are filling with tomatoes and cucumbers! When I began at Lapa’au, we had four tunnels; now there are seven. We reserve one for peppers but the other six will be evenly split between cucumbers and tomatoes. The tunnels get transplanted in a few successions over the course of several weeks; this gives us a chance to spread the labor-intensive trellising work out over time, and it also allows for the opportunity to harvest these crops for as long as possible.
I’ve been pretty fascinated with our tomato and cucumber operations since I started working in the tunnels, and that intrigue has over time turned into something like affection. Most of what we grow is pretty self-sufficient; of course we irrigate and do a bit of weeding and pest-prevention around the crops, but for the most part once something gets seeded or transplanted we kinda just wait for it to do its thing. Seed a bed of carrots or transplant a bed of lettuce starts, water and weed it, and (provided nothing catastrophic happens) voilà—eventually you’ve got harvestable carrots and lettuce. The cucumbers and tomatoes, by contrast, require a much more decisive hand. Or rather, what we ask of these plants requires direct and consistent intervention. If left to their own devices, we would simply have chaos, for these species are opportunists: any chance to throw out a side shoot, they’ll take it. And the side shoots (aka suckers) will eventually turn into branches, and these branches eventually produce fruit. That’s good right? Maybe for a home garden that’s fine, but here we need a bit more orderliness—we have too many plants, in too close proximity, to allow them to go rogue. Additionally, there is a finite amount of energy that each plant has, and if we let them blow it all at the beginning we may get a bunch of tomatoes and cucumbers right off the bat, but they’ll probably be undersized and the plants will die quicker. They want to sprint, but our job is to turn them into marathoners.
We do this by pruning and trellising. Every plant will be attached to a trellising line that is affixed to a cable running the length of the greenhouse. As each plant matures and grows, it’s our job to add another clip to keep them climbing up their trellis rather than simply falling over and atop each other. We prune off the suckers so that the nutrients and energy go only to the main plant and crucially its fruits; this allows for bigger fruit as well as a healthier plant overall. Once the plants get several feet high, we begin to prune off the lower leaves to allow for greater airflow and prevention of disease transmission. Eventually the plants will reach the top cable, at which point there are two options: ‘lower and lean’ (letting out the trellising line a bit and moving its hook further along the cable) or position them to waterfall over the cable back down towards the walkways.
We’ve been pruning and trellising a couple tunnels for a few weeks now, and with any luck we’ll have at least a couple still pumping into the fall. This longevity combined with the attention necessary for their (and, in turn, our) success means that we invest quite a lot of time caring for these plants. These are among the most important crops we grow, in terms of farm economics. During this summer season we spend a whole lot of our hours in those greenhouse tunnels—a pretty significant proportion of our labor will be in service to the tomato and cucumber plants.
This is where my mind turns to the Wendell Berry quote at the top: “It is not possible to imagine a farmer who does not use both science and art.” Farming is a creative vocation, and the artistry of the farmer is readily apparent …as is an absence of artistry. On large-scale monoculture farms, the standards of work are necessarily based upon a mechanized version of farming, and so artful work is devalued. (You don’t need much art, I assume, with a massive GPS-guided combine.) But particularly on small farms that have been minimally industrialized, farmers use art, and for me this is embodied most in the work with our tomatoes and cucumbers. All the trellising and pruning and harvesting, week in and week out, requires an artful touch. You cannot just set it and forget it—pretending they will take care of themselves naturally—but neither can you treat these plants as machines nor the tunnels as factories. You must have a mind and an imagination for what will be shaped by your hands, making adjustments on the fly and administering your judgments without a manual.
There are hundreds of plants in every tunnel, and each plant is in some way different from all the others. They were all seeded at the same time and transplanted at the same time, they all are watered and weeded together, and yet some may be more vigorous or less, more unruly or more compliant. The distance between branches on the main stem can be variable, and the production of suckers is uneven. The way they bend and move as they grow and as we trellis changes over time. And these are only the most obvious differences. This all adds up to the need for good artistry. So, we might reasonably ask, what is good artistry? Wendell Berry again: “A good artist is one who applies knowledge skillfully and sensitively to the particular creatures and places of the world.”
I have the knowledge that the pace of growth of our cucumbers requires trellising work about once a week, and our tomatoes every ten days or so. I know that the clips should be attached with a correct amount of tension in the line and under an appropriately strong leafy branch so that the plant will remain upright without undue stress. I know to take care while clipping and pruning to avoid troubling the flowers and fruits as they are growing. This sounds straightforward, but if you read it again you’ll find that some of these words are doing a lot of work here: about, or so, correct, appropriately, undue, troubling. Could somebody just waltz into the tomato tunnel after merely reading this bit of knowledge and do a good job? It would take many, many more words to flesh out what I really mean, and that still wouldn’t get us there. It takes time, attention, instruction, practice, failure, repetition. It takes seeing them as fellow creatures in the world to whom you are responsible, for whom you perhaps even have some affection. There is an interdependence between the being doing the growing and the being doing the caretaking—I am shaping its life in a quite literal way while it is offering sustenance for my own. This, to me, is a skillful and sensitive application of knowledge to a particular creature in a particular place. This, to me, is good art.
As an aside, I would never be so arrogant to claim that a tomato or cucumber plant is itself the farmer’s art. That claim belongs exclusively to the earth and its continuous ongoing creation. I mean rather the contouring of the plant along the trellis line, the organizing of these many plants into a coherent and cohering group, the pruning and the harvesting - the skilled, sensitive application of hard-won knowledge within the specificity of this farm. That is our art, and it is never done in a vacuum or in theory. It is enacted—incarnated—within the material world, the alive world. Which is to say also within the constraints of mortal existence. Of limits. These plants are living beings, and like all living beings they will die eventually. Farming comes with the understanding that death is really quite natural (if undesired). We understand they will inevitably get powdery mildew, probably some blight, some will just run out of steam early and give up the ghost; Lord willing, no serious disease will befall a whole tunnel. Until they meet their end though, we will be doing this dance together and hopefully for months; clipping, pruning, harvesting, shaping and organizing their bodies in the ways we trust will most encourage their productivity and be most beneficial to their health and longevity.
A hopeful implication in Berry’s definition of a good artist is that the more time you spend with particular creatures and in particular places, the better your art can become. By the end of this season, if I have paid attention and offered to these plants my focus and curiosity and the good work of my hands, I will be a better artist than I am now. And certainly I am more improved relative to previous seasons. There is an accumulation of knowledge that comes with time and experience, especially if settled in one place, and this is knowledge not only of what to do but how: skillfully and sensitively. For me, that latter word evokes both a compassion or tenderness for the particular creature I am working with as well as the usefulness of my senses - I am using my brain but also my physical perception. This art necessarily engages me in this world of elemental forces. I cannot see without sunlight, I cannot touch this cucumber plant without being touched back in some way by that very plant. (To walk the length of a cucumber-filled tunnel and not experience the plants as actively sensing and reaching and grasping, a person would have to be almost totally desensitized to the world around them.) I stand upon the ground that is feeding them and within the sunbeams they are drinking in. The very positioning of my body is determined in large part by the plants - I am stooping down to add the first couple clips to a baby tomato plant, I am craning up and out to add one more clip to a cucumber plant while trying to avoid knocking off the flowers of the next plant over.
Art, in this understanding, is never merely an imposition of one’s will or knowledge upon the world. It is responsive, fluid, flexible, a conversation or even dance. You must offer yourself to ‘the particular creatures and places of the world,’ on behalf of them, and not merely for your own sake but for the world at large. Art is never really about the art itself; it’s never really about the artist either. The important thing is the participation—enlarging your circle of concern, widening your attention, opening your eyes and your heart to ever more fully be a part of this earth, most especially in your local community. As Berry writes later on in the same essay, “Good forms confer health upon the things that they gather together. Farms, families, and communities are forms of art just as are poems, paintings, and symphonies.” At Lapa’au, one result of this artful work is being able to bring fresh, healthy, delicious and deeply-cared-for heirloom tomatoes to a restaurant or grocer or CSA customer within a day of harvesting, and from just a handful of miles away - hard to beat that. (You’re welcome.)
In a tunnel full of healthy mature plants you can almost feel the exultation in the warm air. It’s like you’re breathing in plant happiness. It is encouraging and life-giving to be amongst them, to offer your art—the skillful and sensitive application of your knowledge—to these creatures, in this place. I recommend it.
