Cowabunga!

Hello all! Well it’s been a while since I’ve written (this is Cat by the way). It has been a week since we returned from New Windsor, MD after 3 weeks of BVS orientation. I’m still trying to wrap my head around the fact that those 3 weeks are over and that yes, I am sitting at my desk in the office writing this blog post about the 28 wonderful people I met and who are a part of the gemeinschaft (community) of Unit 295. We had a lot of laughs as we learned and weaved through each other’s lives to understand all the differences and similarities among us that made our group unique and beautiful. And of course there were the moments where we would all get down in the dirt and work together to prepare for our year, or years for some, of service.

On one particularly fine sunny day we were leaving the Arlington Church of the Brethren to spend a day on Clagett Farm. Clagett Farm is responsible for growing produce for DC inner city projects such as the Capital Area Food Bank. When we arrived at the farm we all did some stretching as we awaited instruction on what we’d be doing. We then walked to arrive at a field and learned that we would in fact be harvesting sweet potatoes.

A word about harvesting sweet potatoes: it ain’t easy. First you find the vine that could be sometimes 5 ft in length; trace it back to the plant; use a pitchfork to loosen the dirt without spearing the potatoes; and then yank those potatoes right out of the ground. We all broke into teams of about 2 or 3: one person to ‘hunt’ for potatoes, one person to pitchfork it, and one person to carry the very heavy containers filled with the finds. As we worked it was obvious some were better at jobs than others. For example, I found myself on my hands and knees in the dirt trying to distinguish between the vines and weeds without much luck. And then there was Rachel who was like the potato whisperer and found potato clusters every few minutes. I eventually became pitchfork girl: when someone needed some dirt dug they called me over and I dug till I hit potato.

While we worked, one of the German volunteers kept saying, “Awesome!” every time we found potatoes. He asked us what other expressions he could say in addition to ‘awesome’ and being a fan of the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie, I taught him to say ‘cowabunga’. So for the rest of our digging time together if we found potatoes, he would yell, “Cowabunga!” with a German accent that made it sound so much cooler.

We finished off the day and as we walked back to the vans covered in dirt and some rotten potato parts, I couldn’t help but feel that our community had grown even closer. Because, really there’s no way to bond better than by sweating together and learning a valuable lesson for our time in BVS: just as there are good potatoes and rotten potatoes, there will be the good days and the bad days. But as long as we remember that we have each other to help ‘dig’, we will have a more than bountiful harvest.

“Cowabunga!”

-Cat