Five Years Since

(Photo Credit: Seattle Times)

Five years ago yesterday, I graduated from Seattle Pacific University, with a BS in Ecology. A few months ago, I broke ground and started creating my own micro farm. I texted my professor from SPU yesterday; wishing her happy birthday, and telling her it took me five years but I finally think I’ve found what I want to be doing. Gardening. Growing cut flowers and vegetables.

When I think back to five years ago, I was terrified. I was graduating from college. I had spent the past 16 years in school. I was about to face the world. I also felt alone, lost, and scared.

A week before graduating there was a shooting at my school. One of my classmates was killed, two others were shot, and another student stepped in to prevent more people from being shot. Even though I was not in that building. I was down the street rock climbing with a friend. Our phones were blowing up, professors and roommates, asking if we were okay. No matter where you were that day, it was terrifying. Heartbreaking. The celebration of years of hard work was abandoned and an entire campus was in mourning.

That summer I stayed on campus to work in one of the biology labs. I would often find myself alone. The university nearly abandoned for summer break. It felt so eerie. I would go up to the top of the stairwell of the science building and cry. Pull myself up and go back to the lab. I did enjoy other parts of the summer. I nannied, I saw friends, but I was still heartbroken.

After the summer was over, I was afraid to go back to the school’s career center and ask for help finding a job. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I spent a very long time afraid to ask for help.

I moved back home. I nannied for a year. I worked at the farm I grew up working at in during fall seasons, which led to interning on a dairy farm, and led me into a cycle of accepting seasonal work.

Two summers ago I started working on a farm with a friend, owner of Roots and Shoots Organics. The first day he told me, “the kind of farming I do is, well, gardening.” I accepted the farmhand position saying, “yes, I would love to be learn all the things.”

I finally started to connect back to my degree in ecology. Learning about how plants responded to their environment. I started to learn about sustainable agriculture. I enjoyed pruning hundreds of tomato plants, even though I also discovered I was allergic to them, I could not stop sneezing and I would get little red bumps on my arms. I really enjoyed it.

Less of my nights were spent breaking into tears. My fears started to go away. I was becoming more comfortable breaking away from the comfort and cycle of working with family friends.

I started work the following winter at a market that sold products from local farmers, where I got to create chalk drawings for the entire store. I also got to help the store connect with new farmers, one of which became a great friend and mentor. I went to work on his farm a few days a week in addition to working at the market.

Radicle Roots Farm quickly became part of the community through the local farmer’s market. I started asking as many questions as I could while we were out there harvesting carrots, kale, and snap peas. Ideas and dreams started flowing to start my own farm.

I fell in love with working outside. Something I had wanted to do when I started studying ecology at SPU. In some of the classes I took we would spend several days collecting field data, and I called it my degree in playing outside.

It took me five years to discover I wanted to start my own farm. It will probably take me a lifetime to create it, but fear is finally starting to break down. I am still working to become more confident in my own abilities, but it is getting there.

Five years since I graduated. Five years of learning how to live with in my own head of fear, and anxiety. It will always be there. I am just learning I can do things in life that make a positive impact on the environment around me. Whether it is a smile, a bunch kale, bundle of flowers, growing food without chemicals, or spending time in the community.

Everything has an impact on the world around it. Ecology is the study of interactions between organisms and their environment. I suppose studying ecology was a good entry for me into the practice of sustainable agriculture and its interactions with the community. I hope to one day have an impact on my community. Overcoming fear, and developing faith is not easy. I am not sure if I have enough faith in myself yet, but for now, I have enough hope. Hope that I am able to grow a enough in the garden to share with the community and bring a bit of positivity and health to my community.