At the beginning of Pumpkin Patch, my daughter asked to bring some friends over for a wagon ride. They wanted to see behind the scenes, she told me. They wanted to see what was behind the curtain of the farm.

I’ve been thinking about that impulse ever since. We live in a perpetually front-facing world. What we put out onto the internet is curated, carefully selected for social media. We choose our words and organize our wares. We take every photo from an intentional angle, of an intentional display. Like nesting birds, we want to show off our best sides.

But when people come to the farm, they see what happens between those moments picked out of the stream of time. Maybe behind the scenes isn’t the word for it, exactly. Maybe a better word is looking for what happens among the scenes. Here, what that means is sitting with reality, or pausing with the intention to consider.

We all have the impulse to dig behind what we’re presented with. We want to know what makes things work. Here, everything is part of the machinery: an ecosystem that is so much more than the sum of its parts. Everything is, in a way, behind the scenes. It reflects our most fundamental wants, needs, and truths. It’s all right here for anyone who wants to look.

Your Farmer-
Luke