After School
by James Duquette
It feels strange to not be going to school anymore.
I only graduated university about three years ago; I’ve been in school or college the majority of my life. I still have dreams where I’ve signed up for new classes or the like. The other night I had a dream where I was having to leave an extra half hour early to commute to the farm because I was leaving from my university instead of my home. Some days it feels strangely like I never really left.
And yet, I have done so much learning during my time at the farm.
My job as the writer is very different from most of our apprentices and staff, who spend the majority of the day working directly with their hands. My job is to watch, to listen, and to ask questions.
Discussing a writing project.
Why do we press the autumn’s newly fallen leaves over our dahlia beds? What is a broad-fork, and how is it used? How do we store our flowers when they become ready for harvest too early? When does a flower become ready to harvest in the first place? Where do we get our nutrients for the field from? Who is going to get the wasps out of the cottage? *
Broadfork being used to turn up soil.
Who, what, where, when, how, why. My English education coming back again. I’ve even been told I look like an English teacher a few times. This job- getting to work in a writing job, while working outside and occasionally touching plants- is a combination of what I know, what I’ve been trained in, and what I still have so much to learn about.
Over the course of a day, I spend some of the time at my computer, taking down my findings and editing drafts. Yet I do not remain fully stagnant; instead, for a good part of my day I end up watching the work done by our apprentices and staff and learning such things as why and what and how.
Dahlia Tubers with Sprouts. Photo by Ethan Roe
Have you ever seen a Dahlia tuber? I hadn’t before working at the farm. I’d never given it any thought; I’d always just assumed that most or all flowers grow from seeds. Yet only some of the ones we grow actually do- the tulips of spring are famous for growing in bulbs, whereas we grow the dahlias of autumn from tubers- almost like potatoes.
They do look sort of like potatoes. That is, if a potato was lumpy and had leathery, wrinkly skin. I heard a staff member say he thinks they might be edible; I am not brave or reckless enough to test that theory. But just one of these almost-potatoes splits into many, many almost-potatoes, almost more than we know what to do with; Dahlias do not grow, they propagate.
I didn’t know any of this before going to the farm. I still don’t know everything. But that is learning, isn’t it? Learning is as much realizing what we don’t know as affirming what we do.
In a way it feels as though I’m still in school. I’m learning about the roots of dahlias rather than the Greek roots of words, and yet I’m still being taught so many things that I will take into the rest of my life. I didn’t stop growing after school.
* (The answers are, respectively: 1) To form a sort of blanket against the cold. 2) It’s a big metal contraption you stand on and press down to break up tight soil. 3) We put them in a big walk-in cooler, we may or may not put them in water depending. 4) When it’s tall enough but before it opens. 5) From compost and cover crop mostly. And 6) Temple Hall’s park staff, most probably.)
Dahlias in Bloom. Photo by Ethan Roe