I was once asked what my favorite vegetable is to grow. I remember quickly replying carrots and beets. The feeling of my hands grabbing hold of the carrot’s mane or the beet’s top and gently but firmly encouraging it to free itself is a feeling I find remarkable on so many levels, even erotic.

I couldn’t say that this is better than picking a perfectly tree ripened peach, still warm from the summer sun, biting into it and its sweet nectar dripping down my chin, or splitting open a crisp, exquisitely ripe, deep red watermelon in the field on the hottest day of the summer, knowing that nothing on Earth could satisfy me more than just to eat the heart and leaving the rest of the carcass as an offering to the microbes.

And my world now of walking rows and rows of ripe glistening colors, aromas of terpenes dancing in the air, contemplating the power of this plant we call cannabis, listening to it speak an ancient language with such beauty and intoxication, knowing that once dried and cured properly, whomever consumes this flower will be transported to realms that only the initiated can appreciate before the act takes place. 

This is the beauty of farming for me, a continual connection to the rawness, vulnerability, awe and beauty, the reverence for my job, the stewardship, the art and craft and education of being a farmer on this incredible spaceship within the cosmos we call home–planet Earth.

M. Dolinar / Pilot Farm(er)