April 18, 2025Seth FriedmanTrenches

The leeks look so scrawny now, weak, vulnerable. But he knows they’ll survive—most of them. They’re a stalwart crop, tougher than they look. It seems like a long ways off … but the day will come, perhaps an overcast November morning, when he’ll bend to pull them from the dark soil, when he’ll stack them in crates, a day when midway through the harvest, it will start to drizzle; and, when it turns to rain, he will smile; and, in the pouring rain, he will open wide his arms, turn his face to the sky, laugh out loud. Later, in the open-air processing area, under the roof he built a few years ago, he’ll wash off the muck, the sand, the clods of dirt, large and small … He’ll wash crate after crate until the evening light starts to fade, until the whites of the leeks are so unsullied they almost seem lit from within.