【走，去做个农民】 一个农民走在田埂上

　　你也许会问我为什么做农民？我有很多答案等着你。但最真实的原因也是最难以启齿的，因为我什么都不在行。不过，栖息在东山农场安静的一隅，日出而作，日落而息，我在耕种中收获了意外的自信和欣喜。也许你还在繁华的城市中疲于奔波，也许你厌倦了现在喧嚣的生活，也许你像我一样，觉得自己什么都不在行，那么不妨换个方式过日子——去做个农民吧。
　　Sometimes people ask me why I farm. I tell them different things. To some I say that, biologically, we are meant to be farmers. “We’ve been farming for thousands of years. Why stop now?” I say.
　　To others (seeing an opportunity to shorten or end the conversation as quickly as possible), I say that I farm because I like good food. “Can’t argue with that1),” they say, thankfully.
　　To a third group of people, usually those most interested in farming, I explain that when I was younger I made a list of jobs I could imagine myself enjoying. I tell them the list included “small-scale organic vegetable farmer” and that I somehow fell into it. I add some esoteric2), overly idiosyncratic3) items to my fictional list of self-actualizing professions in order to make them laugh or to distract them. I say that besides farmer, on my list were rapper, astronaut, lonely graduate student, writer, playwright, lonely history professor, and lonely Civil War reenactor4). I explain this maniacally5), with eyes wide, until whoever asked the question starts talking about himself or loses interest.
　　To the fourth group—those with whom I’m most honest—I shrug and sadly mumble something about not knowing what else to do. “I could probably be a good janitor6), maybe,” I say, almost inaudibly7), “but I don’t know what else I’d be doing. I’m not really good at anything.”
　　I grew up in somewhat urban New Jersey, about 20 miles outside of Manhattan, and didn’t have a lot of interaction with nature. My dad kept a small vegetable garden in my aunt’s backyard until I was nine or 10 and then he stopped. I remember helping him in the garden a few times and liking it.
　　I ate a lot of processed food. I liked Toaster Strudels and Pop-Tarts. I liked bread. I put ketchup8) on most things. Most of the time I felt really awful. I wondered why my stomach hurt so much. In high school I went to a digestive specialist, who gave me a cup of high-fructose9) corn syrup10) to drink. I got sick almost immediately. He told me I had an HFCS allergy11) and “probably irritable12) bowel syndrome or Crohn’s disease13)” or something. It seemed that most of the food I was encouraged to eat was poison to my body. I was frustrated by my stomach and, though I didn’t realize it then, by the food system I was trapped in.
　　Being sick showed me that there’s a lot wrong with the way things are set up and maybe, I thought, if we do things differently, there’s a chance we could get it right. I discovered subculture14). I learned that there are alternative ways to eat, which, it turns out, is how most people in history have eaten. Sometimes I wished I’d been born 100 years earlier.