What is a Farm

What is a farm, really? Itʼs a question hidden in plain sight, and a question that has bothered my consciousness for the past few years, ever since I first entertained the idea of becoming a farmer. Like a small stone lodged in my boot or a scrape that doesnʼt bother you until it is once again reopened, my awareness of it comes and goes, even as the call awaits my response. What is a farm? (What is a farmer?) 

A farm grows food and/or raises animals. Obviously. But… not really. As Ben Hartman writes in The Lean Farm, “It is not really accurate to say that farmers grow food or raise animals. Farmers alter environmental conditions in such a way  as to maximize a plantʼs or an animalʼs innate ability to do its own growing.” A  subtle shift with profound implications. It signifies to me a common life shared between the plant and the farmer, between two intelligent and purposeful creatures. I, as a farmer, want this plant—let’s say a tomato plant—to grow strong and healthy, to flourish and produce much fruit. The tomato plant wants, well,  basically the same thing. (The difficulty is when those desires diverge. For example, I want the tomato plant to grow up nice and straight and tall but the damn thing just wants to shoot out a thousand suckers and sprawl out like a teenage boy on a couch. I’ll return to this divergent desire difficulty another time.)  So, I can trust the tomato to do its thing. It is relying on me to do my thing: “alter environmental conditions,” which in my role generally involves laying down appropriate amounts of compost and fish fertilizer, incorporating these into the beds, watching out for intrusions of pests and disease, and just generally paying attention to its growth. Before that, we take into account such factors as seasonality, sunlight, temperature, and hardiness of the crop to discern where and when to plant. That may sound like a lot (and …it is) but still. Lord knows I donʼt know how to turn sunlight into food. I canʼt eat light. But every individual plant living on the farm—crop, grass, weed, or otherwise—does know. Photosynthesis is pure magic to me, and yet this little tomato start, a babe just taken from the nursery (and before that merely a tiny seed!), contains all the intelligence of life in its very form. This is its “innate ability to do its own growing.” It does a disservice to the plant to discount this; more than that, it is an insult to the very life of the farm, for a farm is alive. It is emphatically not a machine. 

What else is a farm? 

Itʼs a place. Another obvious point. But, fundamentally, it is a place. A farm is not in any other place—it has a locatedness that is irreducible. Even the farm down the road is a different place; hell, even the field block at the bottom of the property is distinctly different than the field block at the top. The soil structure is different, the crops we plant are a bit different, even the eyes of the farmer see these two blocks differently (sorry, and youʼre welcome I guess, encroaching weeds at the  bottom of block 5). A farm is a place, truly, of baffling complexity and granular change. Perhaps living in Maui itʼs easier to see this because the island is a mosaic of microclimates; you need simply drive around for an hour to get a sense of how vast and variable the terrain and weather can be. Even on such a tiny landmass  there is a near-infinite gradation of forms of life. It makes a certain sense, then,  that the farm is its own particular entity and ecosystem. Its requirements for flourishing are its own, as are its challenges, as are its elements of ease.  Importantly, its past is its own too. The land remembers, and it carries that memory in each stratum. How was the land used before now? What care or abuse did the previous farmers show to this place? Before it became a farm, had humans cultivated the land in any particular way? How did the epic story that is geologic deep-time shape this land to be this way? And what wildness and recalcitrance does it still reveal to us now, today? A farm is a unique and singular place, thus requiring a unique and singular attentiveness.  

Which means another aspect of what a farm is—part of the farmness of the farm— is that it is a relationship between the human and the other. There is no escaping the reality of this paradox: (1) the land does not need a farm, and (2) a farm desperately needs its farmers. If we pack up and leave Lapaʼau tomorrow, the land will recalibrate, it will swallow our constructions and imitations and it will spit out something new. Our pretty rows of well-tended flowers and baby salad greens will return to the earth under the crushing weight of what we, when we were in charge,  once called weeds. Our (relatively) well-groomed tomato plants will sense a newfound freedom and escape with vigor the confines we once called trellising.  The barn, the wash station, the high tunnels and mushroom house all will fall.  Soon, the victory will be complete, Mother Nature and Father Time once again crowned regents: The land does not need a farm. But once a farm is there, once a human has decided to transform the nature of the place into a farm, well boy  youʼre looking at a spot of earth that will require your relentless attention, effort, vision, and concern. A farm is, possibly above all else, a site of responsibility  (responsibility being inherently and definitionally the crux of any authentic relationship). Everything we plant has been domesticated, its qualities and characteristics nudged this way and that, all to meet our own particular desires;  this crop bred for better disease resistance, that crop for earlier harvesting, yet another for its striking coloration. We are responsible to these plants because they are in our care, and they are in our care because we chose that to be so. As much as they are able, the crops will hold up their end of the bargain—their innate ability to do their own growing—if we hold up our end, which is offering them our intelligence and our senses and our care. It is as simple, and as complex, as that.  

Thus: How attentive can we be? This is a core question a farm asks (is always asking, always inviting, always insisting). How much of ourselves are we willing to put on the line for the life of the farm, and—crucially—can we do so gladly? A  healthy farm is a place of abundance as much as (more than) it is a place of sacrifice, a place of great beauty as much as (more than) it is of great struggle; I  have found that in general there exists a reciprocity between the effort I put in and the peace I receive. There is a deep joy that cannot be bought, cannot be extracted, can only be given. If that is not love, I donʼt know what is. 

About the Author

Matthew Rock is the Field Manager at Lapa’au Farm. He holds a Master of Divinity. While he did not pursue a career in a vocational ministry and instead pursued farming upon moving to Maui, his passion for literature and love of the written word still inspire him today. Matthew lives with his wife Grace in Kihei.