Asparagus Season: 30 Years of Spears, Sweat, and Spiritual Growth

Welcome to asparagus season — or, as I like to call it, the reason my hips hurt from April to July. For over 30 years, asparagus has been growing strong here on the farm, pushing up through the earth every spring like it owns the place. And every year, I pick it. Every. Single. Day. Until I can’t stand the sight of it. And then I pick it some more.

Because that’s what farmers do. We suffer. We sweat. We snack. And sometimes we cry while carrying a colander full of freshly snapped spears and muttering, “I should’ve just lived in an apartment.”

The Good: Nature’s Overachiever

There’s a reason asparagus keeps its VIP status around here. First of all, it’s a perennial. That means you plant it once, and it keeps showing up year after year. I may not have the best track record in the commitment or attention realms, but there’s nothing I can do or not do to keep the asparagus from surviving. So far.

When it’s freshly picked, it tastes like spring itself — crisp, earthy, and just like a fresh green bean. It’s a farmer’s dream crop and a health nut’s best friend, packed with all sorts of nutrients and fiber. It feels righteous to eat. Not kale righteous, though. The enjoyable kind. And even better? People love it. I’ve had customers stop at the stand just for a few bunches, their faces lighting up. It’s truly their favorite veg. I personally thought it was terrible until I was almost 20.

The Bad: Asparagus Picking After 40 (A Survival Memoir)

Let’s get real. Picking asparagus every day sounds all cute & “fun fact about me” until you hit a certain age and your body starts holding subtle — and not-so-subtle — protest signs.

There’s the deep, squatting kind of movement that makes your knees sound like they’re auditioning for a horror movie. There’s a thing I like to call “Stabagus Elbow,” which is what happens when you spend hours snapping stalks and then wonder why your arm feels like you arm-wrestled a bear. There’s also “Farmer’s Squat Lock,” when you bend down to pick and your body simply refuses to participate in the standing-back-up part of the transaction. This year, let’s add the lock part of that happening while I am SLEEPING?! Oh my. Was I dreaming about picking asparagus?!

Add in thumb boo-boos, shoulder tension from flinging overgrown stalks into the compost like they personally offended you, and the bugs — always the bugs — and suddenly this spring ritual starts to feel less like a quaint pastime and more like an oddly agricultural yoga class. But with more mosquitoes. Always behind the knees and on the ankle bones.

The Ugly: Smell Ya Later

You knew it was coming. Let’s talk about the very real, very strange side effect of asparagus — the smell. Yes, that smell. If you know, you know. And if you don’t, consider yourself either blessed or biologically unique. Asparagus makes everyone’s pee smell. Your genes determine whether you smell it or not.

There’s also the burnout. At first, you’re excited. You’re cooking it, roasting it, adding it to pasta and eggs (my favorite meal!) and grilling it in foil packets like a joyful spring chef. But by week two, you’re hurling bunches into bags and telling your kids, “Dinner’s green. Don’t ask what it is.” You dream about asparagus. (This is a new and upsetting addition.) You grumble about asparagus. You start to resent people who ask for more of it. Then you remember — you pay the taxes on these lands. This is your doing. And back to the field you go.

The Beautifully Unhinged Truth

And yet… I love it. I really do.

I love the rhythm of it — walking those rows in the early evening when the sun is getting low and the birds are louder than your thoughts. I love the surprise of seeing new spears pop up overnight (and sometimes just when I turn my back) a tiny miracle with green hats. I love knowing that these plants, most of them older than my children, just keep coming back. Year after year. Like hope. Or laundry.

This little patch has been here for over three decades. And with every stalk I pick, I feel connected — to the land, to my family, to the past and the future. It’s backbreaking and hilarious and holy in its own weird way. And it teaches me things. Discipline. Patience. How to stay present even when you’re sweaty, bug-bitten, and slightly annoyed at the angle of the sun.

Final Thoughts from the Asparagus Trenches

So here I am again, deep in asparagus season. Picking every day until my back hurts, my thumbs sting, and my brain is composing asparagus-themed country songs just to pass the time.

And I’ll keep doing it. Because there’s something sacred about these silly green stalks. Something beautiful in the routine. Something satisfying about growing something that pushes through the dirt without needing to be convinced.

If you swing by the stand this spring and grab a bunch, just know: it was picked by someone tired, grateful, likely over-caffeinated, hungry and definitely wondering how on earth she’s still doing this.

But she wouldn’t trade it. Not for all the hours of sleep in the world.