It is with much fear and trembling that I file my taxes each spring. This year, I e-filed my federal return on Easter Sunday, a practice I’ve never done before (and can’t say I recommend—though there is something perversely satisfying about it). While my seminarian colleagues were celebrating the risen Christ, I was cursing at my computer screen as I manually entered yet another W-2.
(I don’t think this is what my mother had in mind when she asked if my partner and I had Easter plans.)
Since I’ve been the one to file our taxes for as long as Sam and I have been married, one would think that the yearly ritual would be well enough ingrained that I would enter tax season feeling confident, documents collected nicely into a folder, filing plan in place well in advance. And even in a rare year when we do have all our documents ready to hand, I can’t help but feel that this is the year that something is going to go horribly wrong and the IRS will come after me—or worse, secretly owe me money that the return didn’t catch.
Like true twenty-something millennials, Sam and I haven’t had consistent life circumstances. We have moved, changed jobs and health insurances, been domiciled and residenced separately and together, been full-time students or jigsawing full-time hours from part-time work, been variously paying off student loans or in deferment. Every time I sit down to do our taxes, it’s a completely different animal. The uncertainty never dissipates. When I finally hit “send” on this year’s return, I felt defeated rather than triumphant.
As my former boss Emma likes to say, practice makes process. Though this is my second year working at the Farminary, there has been enough transition during that time (and before I joined the team) that there isn’t a clear sense of established processes. The practices have continually changed as the farm has changed. Currently, we have a new farm manager, learning the ropes and directing workflow from four states away, and a handful of student garden workers who have been trying to hold things together through the growing pains of leadership transition, future planning, and piloting a new degree program. Maybe it’s because I spent a year working in a warehouse where each process was SOPed within an inch of its life, but it’s frustrating to not know what the plan is, or even feel confident that there is a plan. My coworkers and I do what we can—and our supervisors are grateful—but nothing feels certain, whether it be the tasks, the scheduling, or the future of the farm.
My coworker Ryan and I spent the morning of Good Friday on the farm, direct seeding and watering transplants. Arugula, tatsoi, hakurei radishes, kale, and turnips all went into rows in our A quadrant, facing the garlic planted last fall and next to the onions planted earlier this spring. After watering in the rows we seeded, we’ll wait for the seeds to sprout (or not), not quite confident that we used the right seed plates in the Jang seeder or prepped the beds sufficiently. I’ll feel reassured once the transplants are hardened off enough to plant, and I can immediately see the outcomes of our efforts. At the moment, the garden looks mostly dormant, with the quadrant we didn’t tarp or plant in winter crops covered in purple deadnettle and garlic pennycress—“weeds” that are both tasty and nutritious. We’re hosting a forage-themed potluck today in honour of these and other crops that we did not plant.
If I had been trying to be more liturgical about it, I might should have done our taxes on Friday and gardened on Sunday—though one could likely argue for theological appropriateness both ways.
It wasn’t a bad Easter, all around. Sam cleaned the apartment while I wrangled with the tax return e-filing service and eventually realised that, even after entering in all our information twice, we still were going to have to pay a filing fee. We took a walk. I began mentally cataloging the steps for constructing my funeral service (the final assignment for my Dying and Grieving in Pastoral Care class) and tried to recover from the disorientation of an unintentional Easter vigil (read: insomnia).
Our return was rejected yesterday; there was one missing document that I’ll have to track down this week before I can resubmit the return. I don’t feel too bothered about it, surprisingly. I suppose it’s the reassurance of having had the other shoe drop.
Jack Kamps (’16) has been paid to do many things, such as teach preschoolers, pastor youths, schlep things in warehouses, bake pastries, design curriculum, serve coffee, maintain gardens, and fix computers. Jack is currently a student at Princeton Theological Seminary—though they tend to spend more time working at a few local farms, plotting a future cheesecake business with their spouse, and listening to/talking about the latest Material Girls episode than doing their homework.
