“Textured vegetable protein. It’s great.” Josh set to work mixing a huge bag of cornflak-y looking things with water. I had never heard of TVP, so I took a look at the bag. I read the ingredient list and saw a mile long list of preservatives, with soy at the top. I watched Josh mix the concoction with Kraft barbeque sauce, French’s mustard, and Hellman’s mayonnaise.He fried up four patties and placed one on a hamburger bun for each of us. In my head, I had to laugh at the irony. I would never. EVER. Eat that back in Boston. Now here I was on an organic farm, consuming perhaps one of the most processed meals I’d had all year. Of course I said nothing except “Mmmmm!” I mean, how nice was it of him to make Travis and me lunch?

By 4pm, we had gotten all the flats potted. Betsey returned home from work and asked what we accomplished that day. We told her and she looked at us, amazed. “You did…all the flats?”

“Yeah!” I said with some pride.

“Well, you guys are a riot.” Betsey smirked. “We didn’t need all the flats potted; just a few for the farmstand. I thought you guys would be done early and just wait to get to work tomorrow.”

I immediately felt my stomach turn.  I was an idiot.  I hadn’t even thought to question the utter inanity of the job — spending 8 hours doing one task.  I figured it was normal–farm work is repetitive and monotonous, right?  But if I had had any frame of reference for how a farm runs–how to make money, why we were potting transplants, how each day is an integral part of a whole growing season, I probably would have guessed that Betsey didn’t need 300 pots of basil for her quiet roadside farmstand.  Instead, Betsey had said “pot,” so I potted. And potted and potted.  Rather than the efficient worker bee I thought I was, I had actually just created more work for us later.

I went back to my guesthouse feeling defeated. I had been sore, eaten weird stuff, and done pointless work all day. Where was the communing? The communing!

What I didn’t realize at the time, but would later learn, is that farm work isn’t about communing.  The images I had in my head — of organic country meals, repetitive zen-like work, birds and rainbows and unicorns, all that oneness with nature stuff — was a fantasy.  In reality, farm work is sore muscles, inclement weather, strict efficiencies, bottom lines, makeshift fixes, math, management, and massive amounts of organization.  And many farmers, I’ve found, don’t eat the fruits of their labor. Either because they’re so damn busy or because they’re not all that interested in food.  Not every farmer is an ideologue, but that’s not to say that none of them are.  It may sound obvious, but I had to learn through experience that farmers are just people, not magical keepers of nature’s secrets.  In pigeonholing farm work as some sort of Edenic fantasy, rather than a wide set of concrete skills that takes years, maybe decades, to perfect, I had done farmers a disservice.

Okay, I thought as I lay in bed that night.  This isn’t exactly what I expected, and even the small amount I thought I knew about farming turned out to be wrong.  I was going to have to change my expectations if I wanted to last the six months.  But if farming wasn’t about a certain relationship to food and nature, then what was it about?  Would I even like it?  More unsure than ever about my decision to leave school, I set the alarm for 6am again, closed my eyes, and fell asleep.

Neysa is currently farming an acre of organic vegetables in Austin, Texas. For updates on her farm, visit www.dissertationtodirt.com or follow her on twitter @farmerneysa. View last week’s post.