"Come and Get Some Food"

Here is Rashid Nuri, one of the biggest names in organic agriculture in the state of Georgia, if not the country, if not the world. As it says on the About Us tab on the Truly Living Well Natural Urban Farm website:

Rashid managed public, private and community-based food and agriculture businesses in over 30 countries around the world. Travel has enabled Rashid to observe local food economies in the countries he has visited. He now lends his experience to urban areas where good health and nutrition are lacking. Rashid also served four years as a Senior Executive in the Clinton administration including Deputy Administrator of the Farm Service Agency and Foreign Agricultural Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture. He is a graduate of Harvard University, where he studied Political Science and has a M.S. in Plant and Soil Science from the University of Massachusetts.

Way back in March, in the middle of the Georgia Organics conference, I got an email from Rashid. He told me to come to his urban farm right in the city of Atlanta. It is about 40 minutes away from me, just a little ways off a major highway. I planned a morning to go, and then our unending yet very welcome rains this spring (so abundant that the state of Georgia announced our 3-year drought is over and relaxed all watering restrictions, even though now, in July, it hasn't rained for weeks) foiled my plans.

Rashid wrote back, "Peace, Pattie. Hope to see you soon."

I planned to go again a week later, and again torrential downpours grounded me. I canceled. Rashid wrote back, "Sorry you do not get along with rain."

Don't get along with rain? I love rain. What gardener doesn't? I had that van that broke down all the time, I'm not a strong highway driver . . .

Blah, blah, blah, excuse, excuse, excuse. I'm not an excuse kind of person, yet there I was, making excuses. Throwing away what was clearly an opportunity that was placed in my path.

For some reason, I was too embarrassed to contact Rashid again and reschedule. Months passed. I asked numerous people if they would drive me there but it never seemed to work out. My husband said he'd bring me there one upcoming weekend but you know how life goes, how something always comes up with the kids or someone gets sick, and weekends keep drifting away.

I was getting Rashid's enewsletter each week. "Come and Get Some Food!" it announced, along with the list of all the CSA box contents from that week, and more and more each week those words kept resounding in my head.

Come and get some food. Come and get some food. What food for my soul was I missing by not going? What nourishment had I forsaken? Something about the whole situation nagged at me.

And then, as life's journey would have it, out of the blue, I got an email from Rashid about two weeks ago, a full three months after the original email.

"You remain invited to see our work," he said, as simply as that.

At this point, my goodness, I think I saw the sky light up a bit and heard a voice shout down to me, "What do I need to do, Pattie, hit you over the head with a hammer? GO to Rashid's!"

And just then, of course (there are no coincidences), the phone rang. It was my friend Ashley. I don't think I've told you about Ashley. Ashley and I have become very close friends in the last year or two. She is the salt of the earth and a blessing to the world. Additionally, as Vice Chair on our new city's Sustainability Commission, she provides the perfect complement to my strengths and personality, and I barely make a move anymore in our city without discussing it with Ashley.

So I told Ashley about Rashid and said, "I don't know why, Ashley, but I just can't seem to get there." I knew it wasn't about the car or the rain or the distance or the schedule of my family. I was stuck somehow, for some reason.

And Ashley said, without a second's pause, "I will bring you there." And within the next ten minutes, that amazing woman (the kind of person who left a vase of hydrangeas from her garden by my door with a beautiful note after I posted that hydrangeas blooming again each year reminded me of my friend who died) proceeded to arrange to have her children sleep over someone else's house so they could get to swimming practice the next day without her and she was ready to go at 7 AM for as long as our outing would take. Now, that is a friend.

The second Ashley and I met Rashid at his gorgeous oasis of urban food, we all knew it. We were meant to meet, all three of us, not just Rashid and me, for reasons we don't yet know. The intensity of the feeling permeated the entire visit, from that piece of land to another one that Rashid farms, and beyond as the depth and breadth of our conversation dipped and danced through our minds for the next day and weeks.

I'm still trying to figure it all out, yet I realize I'm not yet supposed to know the answers. To why Rashid wanted me to come. To why I couldn't come until Ashley came, too. To why the three of us connected so completely. To why this meeting needed to happen in exactly the way it happened. To why it will one day make sense.

All I know is the one thing that Rashid says so simply and eloquently:

"Peace."

Here. Take a look at Truly Living Well Natural Urban Farms. Maybe you are meant to be part of this story, too. Maybe you are meant to meet Rashid. Maybe we are all meant to be part of a bigger story.

Truly Living Well Natural Urban Farm from Pattie Baker on Vimeo.