How to Harvest Cabbage

          When I was five or six, my parents bought a small sauerkraut-making business. I was already helping with planting vegetables on the family farm and selling them at the St Jacobs Farmers’ Market. I didn’t like the new business. The old building where the sauerkraut was made smelled like the rotting cherries behind the fruit-seller’s stand. The kraut facility was dim, and the floor was too uneven for me to push a handcart.
          Many cultures have some form of fermented food for improved digestion or to preserve food for winter months. Korea has kimchi. Fermenting grapes into wine is present in several cultures with ancient origins. Sauerkraut is shredded, fermented cabbage, a common food in German and Mennonite cultures, usually served with meat. Sour heads are the whole cabbage fermented. They are commonly used in Eastern European dishes.
          The equipment came home with us from that dark, smelly building, and I learned something none of my friends knew: how to ferment cabbages. First you remove the core—no, first, first you plant. Let me tell you about planting.

          In the city, much of life can remain in continuation from one season to the next; you change what kind of jacket you wear and go on about your days. But on a farm, the seasons define our comings and goings.
          While the snow piles up and winds howl around our nearly 200-year-old farmhouse, chilling the corners and ruffling the curtains through closed windows, we page through the seed catalogue and invite spring into our dreams.
          To usher in the change of season, I fill large, divided Styrofoam trays with a soil mix for seedlings. We press a small hole into the top of each small compartment, then fill each hole with a single seed. A vacuum attached to a tray first sets and then drops the seeds in place. Then I cover the seeded trays with a thin layer of vermiculite to promote growth. While they grow in a heated greenhouse, the snow melts, the fields turn to thick mud, and each year I grow impatient for apple blossoms. The seedlings grow from tiny pinheads to full, almost fluffy plants waiting for the fields. When frost is only a vague threat, we harden them off in an unheated greenhouse. When I was growing up, we grew broccoli, cauliflower, and carrots, as well as cabbages.
          I think transplanting is a synonym for joy.
          After gently removing a single plant from the tray by hand, we place it in an implement driven behind a small tractor that digs a channel, drops the plant in and sets soil back around it. We work in most weather until the wheels fill with mud and can no longer properly space the plants in the ground.
          This process—seeding, greenhouse, and transplanting—repeats several times. The earliest varieties of summer cabbage are harvested in July, the latest winter varieties can be harvested into November. We weed the planted rows, sometimes with the help of a machine or cultivator, sometimes by hand with a garden hoe.

          Farmers love rain in a unique way. They know rain can be a crop’s undoing, too little, too much, yet they rely on it none the less. I remember dry summers as a child, how we hoped for rain. I’d strain my ears at the slightest distant rumble in hopes the clouds would tear open. I’d smell the wind, searching for the scent of coming rain.
          In my memory (I’m not sure how accurate), rain always came in the end. Not enough to rebuild the shrivelled roots if we didn’t irrigate well earlier, but every rainstorm after a drought was memorable. Dad would throw open the large overhead door on the shed as the rain began to fall and let out a loud whoop that could be heard from the house or barn. The rain would draw us outdoors or into doorframes, standing on thresholds, holding the transition from thirst to mud.
          Some years too much rain fell. Dad didn’t go to the fields for two days; there was no point. He could not drain the floods, he could not stop the damage, so he took that time to rest and prepare himself for the work that came with a damaged crop.
          We can grow almost anything in our little corner of Canada. The quality and depth of our soil, alongside the temperate climate due to the Great Lakes that surround us, the (arguable) reliability of rainfall, and things like less extreme wind speeds than the prairies, all contribute to the farmland in southwestern Ontario being some of the highest quality farmland in Canada. It’s called prime farmland. Drive two hours north and they can barely get livestock feed to grow; they could never dream of something like carrots or even cabbages next to the Canadian Shield.

          I am hot.
          The sun will set soon but it hasn’t started yet. I am standing on hot soil in my bare feet. I’m not sure why Mom had me put on my swimsuit but I am in the field, the one behind the shed. The plants are small, not a month since they were transplanted.
          Dad is by the tractor. He has parked it by the pond and hooked up long rows of pipes to the pump connected to the back of the tractor.
          My older brother helps him. He is ten, I am six. My brother and my dad fuss over the pump for a while. Finally, it works.
          The tractor with the pump is noisy, but I’m far enough away that it doesn’t bother me. And the noise fades in my mind when it starts to rain.
          The hot, dry soil smells like dust and sun. But with the first drops from the sprinklers, the smell shifts.
          I don’t know that drought can destroy our crop, our livelihood. But I do know that I love the rain. Even rain Dad had to make.
          I put my toes in the puddles starting to form. I follow the finger-wide rivers as they collect and flow down the slope of the field.
          I let the mud collect between my toes. It crawls up my calves as I run, showered by the sprinklers, dancing between the little plants.
          They will become broccoli and cauliflower. And cabbage.
          We don’t have enough pipe to water the carrots. We will hope they grow anyway. They will be long and straight; roots seeking water.

‍          Mom told me not to pray for rain. God doesn’t answer in ways we understand, praying for rain in a drought only hurts faith.
          I prayed anyway. 

          Holding my bruised faith, I still do.

          As a first-time reporter, my initial interview assignment was with the Canadian poet Di Brandt. Her work spoke to me; our shared Mennonite heritage, our curiosity and thirst for learning, how she spoke truth as a woman in circles that hadn’t been interested in her voice. She is a force to be reckoned with; because of people like her, women like me now have a seat at the table, positions of leadership in our Mennonite organisations, many lead our churches.
          When I had finished the interview, she asked me about myself. Then she told me she hopes I’ll write about my cabbages. 

          Last spring, when I visited the farm, Dad sat me down and told me all the neighbours had been delivered threats of expropriation from the Region of Waterloo government. The land was rumoured for an electric vehicle battery factory, a “mega-industrial site.” Our farm was speculated to be added because of the hydro corridor that runs across our front lawn. At first, the neighbours didn’t believe it; how could they? These farms were not open for development, bylaws and provincial laws protected them. They’re a 20-minute drive outside the city, past nothing but farms. It didn’t make sense.
          Farmers build communities. We rely on one another when equipment breaks, when livestock gets out of the pasture, or when a crop fails. You don’t even have to like your neighbour to show up for them and to know they’ll show up for you.
          Our neighbours planted their spring crops anyway, the threat of expropriation hanging over their livelihood and homes. They worked with the seasons like we always do, this time planting without the certainty of harvest. They fed the community like always, milk and cheeses and corn and vegetables and meats. On our farm, we planted our cabbages.
          I live in the city. I work in an office in my house. But home is fields full of plants. It’s grit in my teeth from dusty days outdoors, and rain, not cold but cool, against sun-baked skin. What am I, if not the farm?
          I’ve been writing since I was a child; my narrative voice has grown clear and strong. But with this threat on my home, on the farm and community that have shaped who I am, my voice has been stripped away. My foundation has been soil and plants and the smell of rain. My writing is uprooted.
          No one else will write about cabbages, Di said, not my cabbages.

          Harvest is a celebration of labour.
          The fields change colour with the sky at sunrise in autumn. Mist and dew ignite in pinks and golds with the underlying green and purple of plants close to harvest. The best camera has yet to capture those colours. It cannot be held or kept. You must rise early, put on your rubber boots, and go out to see it with your own eyes.
          Our carrots are an old variety rarely grown because they are brittle and will break if harvested by a machine. So we bend over and pull them from the ground by hand. It’s hard labour, but they are worth it; no carrots taste as sweet as ours, ask any regular customer at the St. Jacobs Farmers Market.
          Cauliflower grows with huge leaves. When the cauliflower head is about the size of a baseball, we take twine and tie the leaves closed overtop of the head. Exposure to the sun turns cauliflower yellow, so they grow shaded by their own leaves to maintain their whiteness. It’s aesthetic: yellow doesn’t change the flavour or nutrients in noticeable ways but people want white cauliflower, so we grow it white.
          Cabbages grow low to the ground, with many outer leaves below the head of cabbage. Summer cabbage is a light green with a hint of yellow to it. Winter cabbage is a mid-green with a blue undertone. Red cabbage is dark, closer to a purple colour, but it can stain your fingers and clothes indigo. The outer leaves have a natural waxiness that helps prevent moisture rot. Cabbage ready for harvest can be as small as a five-pin bowling ball, or close to a basketball, though flatter in shape than a sphere. We like to harvest them around a dodgeball size. They average around three to five pounds when we harvest them, but they’ve been known to be upwards of nine pounds.

          It’s easy to assume there are farms from the Greater Toronto Area to the Rockies, and that Canada could never run out of farmland, but the vast majority of that farmland is very limited in what it can grow. Of Canada’s land mass, 0.45% is prime farmland. More than half of that is in southwestern Ontario. If we want to be able to produce our own vegetables and fruits, if we want to be able to feed ourselves as a country, we need to protect our high-quality farmland. The government of Ontario has laws to protect prime farmland from development. However, that same government has been eating away at the strength of those laws. We lose at least 319 acres of farmland to development every day in Ontario.

           How to Harvest Cabbage
           Cabbages have a tough stem and core, they require wrist and arm strength, stamina, and especially a strong spine.
         Place your non-dominant hand on top of the cabbage and push it to the side while your knife hand cracks down some of the outer leaves to create an opening to the cabbage stem. Your knife must be large and it must be recently sharpened. Slice it through the stem close to the base, while keeping a little tension leaning the cabbage away from the knife. Sometimes that tension will crack the last section of the stem, giving you a little less to cut. Do not saw the knife; pressure, sharpness, and a good angle will cut the stem better than brute force. Do not flex your knife while cutting; the stem is stronger, and it will snap the blade.
          Leave the stem, lower leaves and root. Lift the cut cabbage and set it on the conveyor belt in front of you.
          The fields are full; you will each repeat this motion hundreds of times today.
          Your back will tire quickly. Squeeze the muscles in your butt as you bend. Your arms and calves will tire as well.
          When your thumb or hand begins to feel numb, you’ll take a shift on the wagon filling pallet bins. At first, standing upright will shock your back and legs, but it will feel good soon. Pick the cabbage up off the conveyer belt as it moves past, before it passes and falls off the back of the wagon. Place it gently in one of the eight bins. Speed matters; there are four to six people cutting cabbages, and only two people filling bins.
          After three hours of cutting you will stop for a break. Even if you’re not hungry, you eat. Your body needs fuel to continue this labour. Also, sharpen your knife. You will be surprised what three hours of wear does to a blade.
          Don’t be discouraged when it goes poorly and you have to hack at a stem before it yields. You’ll never catch up to the boss, she’s an absolute unit, but you will fall into a rhythm. You may come to like how the world melts away, how the tractor rumbles a bassline, the steps of your coworkers a rhythm, and your own knife a melody. You may even come to love the work: your body a powerhouse, engaging in the strain and labour, your mind letting go of the chatter of everyday life.

          On our farm, we make sauerkraut and sour heads in their traditional German and Eastern European forms, using only cabbage, salt and water.
          The cabbage core is removed with a spinning knife that bites into the cabbage, shredding the tough core. A person must hold the cabbage and push it onto the spinning blade. I am still scared of this job and usually avoid it.
          Then we remove mud and outer leaves by hand. For sauerkraut, the cabbages are shredded with a set of large knife blades built into the floor of the processing room. The shredded cabbage falls into a large vat below, where salt is added in carefully calculated quantities.
          After several layers of cabbage and salt, the kraut must be stomped. Like grapes in Italy. When I was in middle school, stomping became my job. I’d wash my feet in soapy water in a basin right next to the cabbage vat. Then Dad would put fresh plastic bags over my feet and lift me into the vat. I walked around on top of those cabbage layers in a tightly choreographed dance, each step right in front of the last, pushing down with as much pressure as my little body could create. Once I had stomped the entire surface from the outside to the centre, I’d stomp my way in tight circles back to the outside. On the return trip, the juices of the cabbages would be rising and starting to cover my feet. The purpose of stomping is to bring that juice to the surface, mixing cabbage with the salt that has been layered throughout.
          When a vat is full, it’s covered with plastic and then water to create a seal. It ferments for 12-14 weeks.
          A sour head is the whole cabbage fermented in brine, like a pickle. They’re made in a similar process to sauerkraut, but without the shredding or stomping. We fill the emptied cabbage core with salt, then stack the cabbages, core hole facing up, inside large barrels. The barrels are filled with brine—only water and salt—then sealed with plastic and water like the kraut vats.
          They ferment for 8-10 weeks, then are drained of their brine for a day, packaged in vacuum-sealed bags, then shipped across the country. Ours is becoming the largest producer of fermented cabbage in Canada. Planting, harvesting, and processing are done on the farm.
          I didn’t like sauerkraut when my family first bought the business. I suspect not many children do at first; it has a strong taste. But Mom coaxed me. She started by giving me a soda cracker with a slice of kielbasa meat and a pinch of kraut on top as a snack sometimes. After a while, the meat disappeared. By high school, I’d eat it straight out of the vat when no one was looking. I never gained much appreciation of the taste when cooked, I like the raw crunch.

          It’s been over a year, and our farm never received a threat of expropriation. But it’s 19 steps from our fields, across Bleams Road, to the land the Region wants to take from our community.
          These farms were some of the most productive and protected farmland in Ontario. What will stop development from coming for other farms now? Our family farm, across the road, will inevitably be next, but so could any farm in the region. Farms are like any other business; they need some level of assurance that they can still farm for another ten-plus years in order to invest in their business. We regularly hear from farmers across the province, concerned on our behalf and worried for their farms’ future. The Region of Waterloo still won’t tell us why this land is so important to them. Existing industrial land never enters the conversation. Municipal officials don’t respond to our questions. They refuse to make eye contact with me when I address them.

          Farmers build community. When the threat came for our neighbours, they organised. They sent a unanimous no back to the region. No, they will not sell. No, this mega-site is not welcome on the land where we grow our food. Those of us not directly affected have stood by their sides. This fight belongs to all of us.

‍          How to Fight Threatened Expropriation:
‍
          Gather, organise. Become a group. Meet regularly.
          Research: What is expropriation? How does it happen? Consult with lawyers.
          Read the Regional Official Plan for development.
          Email and call regional and township councillors and MPPs (many times).
          Submit Freedom of Information Requests to the region and the township. Follow up when they refuse.
          Consult with the farmers in St. Thomas.
          Research farmland categorization and land-use bylaws.
          Delegate at regional council and township council (many times).
          Hold town halls to inform the public; hold rallies.
          Record the intentional destruction of 160 acres of immature corn by regional authority.
          Collect boxes of corn flakes for the Food Bank in protest of corn crop destruction.
          Protest with tractors on parade through the city’s downtown.
          Remain respectful: always follow laws regarding protests, no lewd language, no aggression, no personal insults.
          Research regional water sources. Note the land in question is dangerously close to the region’s water source.
          Film a mini documentary. Share it everywhere.
          Consult with regional planners from other municipalities.
          Research agriculture statistics.
          Write op-eds and articles for local media.
          Track disinformation, find its source.
          Research a Canadian National Food Plan.

          Our backs are strong from bending over, from cracking stems and lifting cabbages, from forking hay and loading crates; we will stand our ground. Like our Mennonite heritage, this is our community’s modern-day barn-raising. I cannot promise it will work.
          We have become a force to be reckoned with, speaking truth in circles that aren’t interested in an agricultural voice, standing before politicians and businesspeople to tell them this land is not theirs to take, that our food sources are vital, that Made in Canada starts on a farm.

          Each night, I close my eyes and pray. Don’t let them take our farms. It’s been over a year since this began, and my sleep is still fitful, filled with giant bulldozers tearing up cabbages, my grandfather (20 years dead) shaking his cane defiantly at them.
          And morning comes, my bruised faith remembering that always, the rain came, even when roots were shrivelled. Praying for rain in a drought only hurts faith.
          But last week the snow began to melt. And we begin seeding in two weeks.
          I page through the seed catalogue and invite spring into my fitful dreams.