Just in Case, We Are Sort of Prepared

A few days ago a friend shared with me the weather predictions he has been finding for the upcoming winter months.  Mind you, my last word on this subject was the Old Farmer’s Almanac which I recall predicting a milder than average winter — winter, to be sure, but above normal.  They attributed this likelihood to to the expected arrival of a weak El Niño and “blah, blah, blah.”  Cutting through all the technical rationale which I don’t understand anyway, the bottom line for that venerable publication is “mild.”  

Not so, says my friend.  According to his sources we could experience the coldest February in fifty years.  “It’s literally terrifying,” he added in case I wasn’t grasping the gravity of the prospects.  

When I probed further for details about what could be in our future he responded, “On the high side, temperatures 10 degrees F; on the low side -30, with precipitation up to 40 inches of snow.”

I can’t explain the disparity in the predictions.  There is a big difference between “above normal” and “the coldest in fifty years.”  I don’t know where my friend is getting his information, but he is a seasoned academic and no stranger to diligent, careful research.  As much as I respect the Old Farmer’s Almanac, my friend is not given to wild theories and hyperbole.  I’m inclined to listen to him.

As if to drive home the point, he adds for emphasis: “Not a single day above 15.”

We all have our own personal thermostats, of course, but I’m guessing most of us would likely adjudge that to be cold.  It’s easy to imagine broken pipes, downed power lines, a scarcity of heating fuel, frostbite, and chapped lips.  OK, the truth is that I will get chapped lips no matter what the weather is outside, but the rest of those prospects sound dire.  

“What,” you wonder with concern, “about the chickens?”  It’s a reasonable question.  Everyone in our flock is a cold-hardy breed, but still.  Even with their self-equipped down jackets, this kind of weather could be deadly.  There isn’t auxiliary heat in their coops, though their huddled community generates an ordinarily sufficient amount of heat to fill the relatively few cubic feet of enclosed shelter.  They can’t, however, spend both day and night all winter literally “cooped up.”  

The coops in which we have invested are designed with a self-contained coop and run.  The coop portion is that enclosed cabin in which the chickens sleep at night.  The run is a wire-enclosed open space down the ramp where the feeder and heated waterer are maintained.  It’s sort of a protected play area.  The roof of the coop extends over the run, but the wire-wrapped sides are open to the elements.  As I do every year, I had already stacked straw bales on the northwestern side of the runs to block out the worst of the wind and potential snow.  Given my friend’s bleak forecast, however, I picked up additional bales today and finished the job on the opposite side.  It’s part insulation, part weather break, and, in the meantime, part jungle gym.  They are as protected as they are going to be.

As for us, we are feeling smug about our addition, last summer, of a whole house backup generator with a 250 gallon propane supply tank.  We, I suppose, are as protected as we are going to be.

All that being said, lurking in the background is that contrarian Almanac.  As if to emphasize the fact that this is weather we are talking about, my friend concluded his dystopian forecast with this parting observation:  “Of course, the prediction could be wrong.”

Of course.  Lucky for us we have alternate uses for the straw.

Tasks Within My Pay Grade

The morning chores are complete — later than usual, but not by my procrastination.  Daylight didn’t invite the work until almost 8 a.m., a dramatic shift from the 5 a.m. wake up call only weeks ago.  Even allowing for the seasonal shift, it’s been interesting to note the more granular variations.  Within the last week chicken bedtime has varied from 4:30 pm to 5:15 — incrementally later as we approach the winter solstice, rather than the earlier I would expect.  Similarly, the morning release.  Recent days have varied between 7 a.m. and this morning’s bugle blow almost an hour later.

The girls don’t seem to mind, neither SamtheRooster.  Perhaps between the bitter cold nights and the persistent possum problem they are simply delighted to be alive and moving around at all.  That delights me as well.  Every morning I hold my breath when I release the latch and look inside to assess what price the flock might have paid for winter.  Every evening I hesitantly, cautiously peek inside, bracing at the prospect of coming face to face with gray fur and egg-coated bared teeth rather than coos and feathers.  So far, so good.  The birds are cold-hardy breeds and shouldn’t have a problem, but still.  It’s cold.  I wouldn’t want to trade places with them.  As for the possums, they are generally more interested in eggs than meat, but hunger has a funny and predictable way of tamping down our preferences.  And I notice the distance the chickens maintain anytime one is around.  Smart girls.

And so it is that I keep the feeders filled and the waterers topped off and plugged in to keep from freezing, and we collectively relish the absence of snow that keeps the flock sequestered and me frost bitten.  As it is they are free to roam the range — inside the fence and, for the adventuresome, beyond.  As long as they willingly return in the evening I don’t really mind.  They never go far, and their exploratory forays somehow make me smile.  After all, I enjoy a new patch of ground every now and then, so I don’t begrudge them their wanderlust.  One of these days I’ll get around to repairing the breach in the fence, but I’m really in no hurry.  And who knows?  Maybe all that extra exercise will shake loose a few more eggs now and then.

Snow will inevitably come, and the daylight hours will continue to shift one way and then the other.  Each of those eventualities brings blessing and hardship.  We will manage them as they come.  Life in the country, after all, is more response than control — a kind of holy submission to forces infinitely larger and beyond us.  Try as I might, I’ve so far not managed to move the sun.  Or move the mercury beyond my walls.

Somehow I suspect the world is thusly better off.

Feeding This Circle of Things

 Yes, it’s cold — 22-degrees according to the thermometer in the window.  Balmy compared with some of the mornings we have already experienced in recent days, and nothing compared with the depths of winter to come.  Chilly, though, nonetheless.  And yes, I forgot to wear my gloves — a careless mistake that will become more and more costly as the season progresses.  But despite the discomforts I rather like feeding the chickens on mornings such as this.  They need me, after all.  The feeders are empty and so I scoop the mash into the bucket and distribute it into the various tubes and boxes from which the girls — and SamtheRooster — spend these chilly days nibbling.  They are increasingly dependent on my handouts as the austerity of winter descends.  Their free-ranging, these days, affords little enough nourishment; the worms and bugs long-since having descended or departed to warmer climes.  And so I am attentive.

There are other ministrations.  In recent days I have unloaded the annual supply of straw bales and stacked them around the runs, creating a compostable barrier against the wind and eventual snow.  That, and they love climbing the towers and enjoying the elevated view.  Just in time I stretched the extension cords from the sockets at the solar panels to the warming waterers inside the coops.  The “winterizing,” in short, is largely done.

It’s the daily work that remains and is ongoing.  Repetitively resupplying the food and water.  Stirring, refreshing, and occasionally replacing the bedding.  Reconnoitering and repairing the fencing.  Retrieving, perchance, a gifted egg.  It is a rhythm.  A life-sustaining discipline, along with releasing in the mornings and securing the hatches every evening.  Clock work.  Because if they are to survive, what I do matters.  The fact of it -- the concreteness of it -- unlike in most other pursuits, is readily, viscerally, apparent — quite literally before my eyes and at my fingertips.

There is no appreciative feedback.  There are no clucked “thank you’s“ or nuzzlings against my leg.  SamtheRooster rather stalks around me, making clear his opinion that I am a nuisance intruder.  Well and good.  They have their work to do; I have mine.  Theirs is to go about their living.  Mine is keeping them alive.  And the thanks I receive is not their mindful gratitude, but my own for the privilege of having a part to play in this great circle of things that purposes my getting up in the morning and paying attention throughout the day to basics like food, water, shelter and warmth and the lives that depend on them.  From me, whether those lives are conscious of it or not.

And so I get out of bed because I am conscious of it, and with numbing hands scoop the mash into the bucket and distribute it among the boxes and tubes all over again, suddenly and gratefully conscious, as well, of the other lives of which I have a part in keeping alive within this great circle of things.  Cold hands and all.

It’s Not Easy Being Green

The grass is still green — brilliantly so; Irish emerald green. This, despite the multiple nights we have already seen the temperatures drop below freezing. The leaves have long since autumn-hued and dropped, carpeting the ground below with their red/bronze/gold mottle. It wasn’t until yesterday’s mowing — almost certainly the season’s last — followed by Lori’s sweep of the clippings into the compost pile, that the lingering green was rediscovered. 

It’s a little disconcerting. The cornstalks in surrounding fields have long-since crispened and browned; for days now the typically quiet countryside has growled with the mauling mouths of combines hurrying to gather in the crop before snow flies. The garden looks more dormant and drab by the day. The firs, pines and cedars — by now expecting to assert their verdant monopoly on the season — are confused and jealous.

What, then, to make of this persistence? After all, though Kermit the Frog of Muppets fame had other reasons for confessing it, it can’t be that easy for the grass either — “Bein’ Green.” There is little enough sun these days to encourage it, the hours becoming briefer with the changing season. More and more frequently we wake to frost on the ground and the sight of our breath in the air. Inside, the fireplace has helpfully added warmth by day, extra blankets encourage closer snuggling by night, and flannels and corduroys have replaced linens and cottons throughout the hours between. Is it willful pride — the turf’s smug resolve to hang on as long as it can, like a rebellious toddler refusing to go to bed?

Or is it nature’s testament of resilient grace — that though winter is coming and will surely blanket and paralyze us for what will seem to be “forever”, spring will be reliably and close behind.

Let’s go with that. Generally speaking, I’ve come to trust that, whatever the alternative options, grace is reliably the preferable choice. If the grass wants to assert it as well, who am I to argue?

Whenever winter chooses to arrive, then, I’ll welcome it for the temporary shiver that it is, having heard it on good authority that it won’t be the final word.

To Repel and Also Attract

Looking back from an afternoon's perspective, perhaps the dawn had a premonition.  Even at 7:30 a.m. the sun was reticent to rise, as though it, too, felt a lethargy that would be difficult to overcome.  Even the chickens were slow to descend once the ramp was lowered and the hatches raised.  It is, after all, the ebb of October, before November has found its flow.  Chilly but not quite cold, with a dank heaviness that more alluded to rain than promising it, the day has unfolded quietly and dimly.  Clouds have sobered the hours.  

There have been bookends.  This morning I connected with a community nurse to avail myself of a flu shot.  This afternoon, after weeks of unrealized intention, we spread manure on a few of the garden beds.  Twin actions:  one, forestalling a dreaded pestilence; the other, enriching a desired harvest.  Spent egg yolks in the former; spent digestion in the latter.  

I know nothing of those vaccinating eggs.  I have, however, had the flu and choose to take whatever steps I can to sidestep its approach.  I know there are naysayers on this subject, and while I respect their convictions, I will leave them to their vulnerability.  I take this other course.  

As for the manure, I am more acquainted with its provenance.  Almost daily my generously kind and long-suffering neighbor Art lugs buckets of the stuff he has mucked from his alpaca pens and deposits it in a pile near our garden.  I know he shakes his head at the labor, but I appreciate his solicitude and the contribution to our fertility.  In the best of times our soil needs all the help it can get, and at this time of year, post-planting and post-harvest, it is hungrier still.  It aches for organic matter and nutrient replacement, and I can only imagine the smiles of the microbial lives teeming beneath the surface.  But their nourishment comes at a price -- paid by the alpacas, I suppose, but certainly Art.  And then Lori and me.   Even after weeks and months of curing in the sun, shoveling the stuff into the cart is physical and aromatic work -- trip after trip.  Our garden beds are long; each demanding multiple loads which, once dumped, Lori spreads with a mixture of artistry and raking force while I return to the pile to repeat the steps.  

We are silent through the course of it -- each headphoned and attending to podcasts on the enneagram, a tool for understanding human "being" and "behaving" into which we are digging anew.  It is a topic fit for a day like this -- framed by weighty clouds, stuck with a preemptive needle, and laden with aged manure.  It's not that deepening one's self-understanding and those one loves is depressing; it's simply that it, too, is a weighty and subterranean work that is simultaneously clarifying, instructive, and sobering.  "Clarifying" and "instructive" because the study is enlightening; "sobering" because, so enlightened, it is easiest of all to become clearer about your darker dimensions.  It is insight that weighs a lot.  It feels good, somehow, to be strenuously physical in pursuit of it as a kind of counter balance, even if I look forward to the ibuprofen tablets surely in my future.

We manage to complete the three beds recently planted with garlic and then park the cart.  There are plenty more beds yet to go, but at least it's a start.  There will be other days.  We shifted our labors to the piles of spent plants and vines uprooted on a previous day, gathering them by the bundle and hauling them into the woods.  Detritus of a different sort.  

And then, as if on cue -- as if it could wait no longer -- it quietly, darkly began to rain.  The freshly covered soil will appreciate the soaking, as will the nascent cloves beneath the surface.  And taking a cue of our own, we move inside to continue our quietness.  Nothing is finished.  As the horse-drawn passenger in Robert Frost's memorable poem acknowledges, "...I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep."  But even as it has been good to move and to strain, it is good just now to pause for a bit and consider the miles we have already traveled since the dankness of that dawn...

...repelling...

...but also nourishingly attracting things deep within the soil...

... and ourselves.

Sunday Quietude As the Day Begins

Sunday morning dawns with a particular enchantment.  Especially this time of year.  I can no more account for its difference from the days that ride on either of its shoulders than I can defend the assertion.  I simply find myself in the midst of it — a kind of reverie.  There is a stillness ; a quietude illuminated by the flames in the fireplace, an open novel in my lap, and first light above the eastern horizon glistening off the overnight frost.  It is a stillness made all the more dramatic in contrast to yesterday’s wind that swept leaves into some distant pile, overturned deck chairs and upended the sawhorse perches in the chicken yard.  This morning calm has returned to the largely naked branches, and all the earth — at least our several acres of it — seems to have exhaled, relieved and relaxing yesterday’s tense muscles.  It’s Sunday.

The experience of it is all the more peculiar at this stage of my life when one day is largely undifferentiated from another.  “Work weeks” are a thing of the past, stripping weekends of their prior charm.  We don’t watch television, so the broadcast schedule no longer drops orienting breadcrumbs to guide us through the week.  Everyday is largely one to be constructed according to our own initiatives and the claims of our household rather than the constraints or rhythms of the faucet from which drips a paycheck.  In the words of the pop Christmas song, everyday pretty much does feel like a holiday.  

Nonetheless I feel it as I raise the hood of my sweater against the chill, step into my boots and trudge out to release the chickens for the day, right the upended pieces in the yard, and smile appreciatively at the nascent sun.  I internalize it as I step back inside, strip off my sweater and release myself back into the flickering warmth from the hearth and the coziness of the snuggling dog.  

The spell won’t last forever.  There is breakfast to prepare, dishes to clear away, church to dress for and the busyness of a full afternoon beyond its benediction.  

But for now, even with the smell of bacon frying in the kitchen and a kind of murmuring of the stirring day, there is a quieting stillness about Sunday morning that suspends me.  A reverie that is different from other days.

And I’ll not hurry past it.

Because All Of Us Need A Rest

Yesterday there were two; the day before only one.  It’s going that way.  It doesn’t take long or a very deep basket these days to gather eggs.  Intellectually — and historically — I know that chickens require ample hours of light to produce eggs, and light is increasingly offered in diminishing doses as autumn leans toward winter.  Nonetheless, the annual scarcity of these egg runs always leaves me feeling deprived; impoverished, even though I know that the myth of perpetual fecundity is a lie.  Resourcefulness has its seasons.

It’s not only the stingier light.  The molt has set in among the coops — the chickens are losing their feathers; their usual colorful comeliness scragglified by bare patches, exposed quills and a pathetically bedraggled appearance.  It’s a natural, normal process of renewal and replenishment, but not an attractive one.  And whatever energies and resources the hens might have retained for egg production is redirected to refeathering.  That’s of pressing importance as temperatures fall and frost settles.  Their semi-nakedness currently provides little insulation.  I’ll never understand why nature doesn’t cycle molt through the summer when the girls would likely delight in a little nakedness, rather than the chilling close of the season more prone to shivering than sweating.  But maybe there is a symmetry between falling leaves and losing feathers.  It’s all about renewal.

Before long they will all be fittingly replumed and ready to settle in for winter’s differently paced assignments.  Which is to say that fallow time is settling in on more than the garden and gardeners.  Just as is the case with a high tunnel in the garden, it’s possible to thwart the barrenness of the nesting boxes by adding artificial light to the coops.  That’s what the commercial houses do, and I’m content with the findings that the sustained production does the chickens no harm.  It simply uses them up faster.  Burns them out, so to speak, in a matter of seasons, and I have little interest in or incentive for that.  

After all, if the image of the Taproot is to be more than a name on our sign — if it is to inspire and signify our intentions and practices — then encouraging us all, humans and hens and humus alike, to exhale fully, reach more deeply, drink from more remote and mineralized reservoirs rather than the surface waters that run and evaporate, and gather in the subterranean nourishment only available to those who give their roots the time and space to grow longer and downward is simply the blessed course of things here.  More than a discipline we practice, it’s a natural but essential rhythm practically forgotten in our culture’s frenetic addiction to productivity that we are determined to counter-culturally model.

And so we will not be selling eggs for the next few months.  The hens — along with the rest of us — have deeper, more important work to tend to.  We’ll all be better for for it.

Until Next Year

We hustled to gather peppers and green tomatoes into harvest crates amidst the light sleet and flurrying snow.  Already we had stowed the last of the rain barrels in the shed for the winter, rolled up and stored the miles of hoses from around the property, and retrieved the plastic waterers from the chicken yard.  The first real freeze of the season was on its way, and while we could delay harvesting the hardier greens beyond the overnight frost — the collards and kale — the chard and chicory, cabbage and radicchio would need our immediate attentions.  Once inside, the blanching and bagging and freezing would consume the rest of the evening.  Able to keep awhile, the tomatoes and peppers will have to wait their turn for whatever means of preservation might come for them.  We know the mercury will fall eventually, but somehow the first autumn frost always catches us ill-prepared, and we have to rush to beat the freeze.  

It’s not that the garden is officially put to bed.  There is yet plenty to do.  The spent stalks and vines must be removed to the compost pile — a scratchy, tediously unpleasant chore.  Composted manure must be spread over the empty beds for the soil’s renewal, and the garlic is yet to be planted.  That, plus various root vegetables to dig and the cutting of those last greens.  But we are winding down — a bittersweet time of year that is part relief, part satisfaction, part melancholy.  

When we attended our first Practical Farmers of Iowa conference 8 years ago, and it’s “beginning farmer” workshop, the leaders distributed large sheets of blank paper and markers with the instruction to draw out our imagined farm.  Together we talked, we scratched our heads, we dreamed, we drew.  We still have that paper, and it’s amazing how closely Taproot Garden has approximated that fantasy sketch — with one glaring exception.  Drawn into that original conception was a hoop house — a plastic skinned, season-extending building that enables ground cultivation under cover. There has always been something romantic to us about the idea of growing vegetables inside an environmentally controlled space when the weather outside is forbidding.  And we had our opportunity.  There are government grants for such projects, and we had applied for one to underwrite the construction of a 30’ x 60’ structure.  We could have had it, too — the money was only a formality away — but the preferred location adjudged by the inspector was untenable to us and we set the project aside.  “Besides,” we acknowledged, “we rather like taking the winter off.”

I thought of that aborted transaction as I shoved the last bag of peppers into the last remaining corner of the refrigerator, and how nice, indeed, it will be to spend the next several months not worrying about weeding and watering, getting the bugs off and keeping the rabbits out.  The seed catalogs will come in due time, whetting that fresh appetite, and soil blocks and grow lights in our small greenhouse won’t be far behind.  In the meantime, however, it will be satisfying to reflect and draw lessons from what grew well, what performed poorly, what we can improve in our attentions and systems, and what other topics of interest might occupy our imaginations between now and then.  Yes, all that, and rest awhile.

But still, I’ll miss the feel of the earth, the promise of blossoms, and the miracle of harvest.  And the magical, almost intoxicating, rhapsodic flavor of those fresh tomatoes.  

Until next year.

Aspiring to More Than Results

“Do not depend on the hope of results…[Y]ou may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect.  As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results, but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself.”——Thomas Merton

We have been answering this still-somewhat baffling call to the land for seven years now.  We have become well-acquainted with a handful of preferred seed purveyors, and increasingly familiar with particular varietals of vegetables. We have become attuned to the pitch pipe of the seasons, bending our schedules and timing our tasks to harmonize with the seasons and their particular needs and opportunities.  Garlic, we have learned, goes in the ground in October and is harvested in July, a few weeks after we have harvested the scapes from the hardnecks (all terms that were meaningless to me just a few short years ago) once we see the foliage yellow and die back.  Fruit trees are pruned in late winter, just before we start the early seeds in the greenhouse.  I’ve learned that we live in growing zone 5 and the relevance of average last and first freeze dates.  I’m still internalizing maturity patterns of the myriad vegetables we plant — a task that would be made routine if I would simply take the time to note on my calendar the growing days commonly referenced on seed packets — but my internal calendar is gradually finding a general calibration.

We are, to put a point on it all, getting better at it.  Our objective in moving to this expanse of soil with a shovel in hand was to learn how to grow food on simpler terms than those employed by the larger, now conventional food system that I deem to be unsustainable.  And we are learning.  Along the way we have necessarily expanded our course of study to include soil microbial activity and organic matter content, pollinator attraction and habitat, naturally beneficial eco-system development and enhancement, climate fluctuations, and more.  We have grown familiar with the reproductive patterns of deer and rabbits; the predatory hours of raccoons and possums; the sunlight requirements for laying hens and the value of the preserving “bloom” that naturally coats a freshly laid egg.  We have observed how rainfall moves on our land, prevailing wind patterns, and the value of “edge zones.”  And we have experienced the joy — and the burdensome responsibility — of harvest.  After all, having invested time, energy and months of attention we want nothing to go to waste.  And our freezers are full — the plural-denoting “s” on that noun being intentional.  We have lots to smile about, and happily and routinely do.

All that being said, we are no stranger to the grocery store.  And it can be depressing.  Passing through the produce department, mentally comparing the softball-size bell peppers, the foot long carrots, the shoe-size potatoes, the spotless apples with my punier, more blemished counterparts, it’s hard to feel like a success.  Our results feel…paltry.

And then I remind myself that there is more involved than our inexperience.  We have consciously chosen to use older, typically heirloom seeds rather than the modern, proprietary hybridized varieties.  We have eschewed herbicides, pesticides, and synthetic fertilizers that function like steroids in athletes — all choices that we fully realize mean harder work, smaller and fewer and less beautiful expressions.

Why, then?

I suppose it's because we have come to believe it to be important.  Something deep down has persuaded us, along with Merton, that some things are more important than results. I know that sounds heretical in 21st century America, where “bigger, faster, cheaper, more” is our real national anthem.  But despite the drumbeating mantra of the marketing forces at play, we have learned the hard way that “new and improved” are not synonyms.  While there are certainly and blessedly beneficial innovations, today’s breakthrough solutions have a nasty way of turning into tomorrow’s intractable problems.  We have developed an aversion to the idea of eating food that has been bathed in toxic sprays; a bias for vegetables that have been selected for flavor rather than appearance and durability for long-distance shipping; and a principled preference for open-pollinated seeds over patent-protected hybrids, believing that something as fundamental as fruits and vegetables should be the common “intellectual property” of us all.

I suspect I’ll always feel some measure of “pepper envy” while passing through the produce aisles of the grocery store, admiring the size and the visual perfection.  But I wouldn’t trade our smaller, gnarlier harvest from our own garden.  Fresher, healthier and tastier, it ultimately digests as something yet more:  our own determination to concentrate, as Merton implored, less on the results, and “more and more...on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself.”

And that tastes pretty darn good.

Lessons From A Different Way of Knowing

We drop a seed into the ground,
A tiny, shapeless thing, shrivelled and dry,
And, in the fulness of its time, is seen
A form of peerless beauty, robed and crowned
Beyond the pride of any earthly queen,
Instinct with loveliness, and sweet and rare,
The perfect emblem of its Maker's care.
——-John Oxenham

Time, I have always known, is constantly moving.  I once knew this primarily on the surface of my skin by winter’s cold and summer’s heat, and by the shifting wardrobe that responded to those changes.  I knew it, too, I suppose by the eruption of color in spring and the turning of leaves in autumn.  But the farmstead teaches a different way of knowing — a slower, more careful reading.  I know, for example, that summer is incrementally ebbing because I now close and secure the chicken coops at night a full 45-minutes earlier than I did a scant few weeks ago, and release the hens a full 30-minutes later in the morning.  I know it because, though weeding remains an unfinished claim in the garden, the more clamorous demand is harvest — the eager, jumping up and down, hand-waiving attention-claiming of reddening tomatoes, blimping zucchinis and stretching okras begging to be picked.   Which confirms a deeper lesson than the mere change of season.

Gratification delayed is not gratification denied.

As the poet reminds me in those scraps of verse at the top, what now seems like eons ago we carefully, methodically dropped those tiny seeds — “shriveled and dry” — not literally in the ground but into carefully prepared soil blocks and nestled them in the greenhouse.  There, warmed and protected from the lingering winter and consistently sprinkled with stored rain water, they swelled and stirred and sprouted.  Eventually we transplanted the seedlings into the garden where they continued to grow.  And now...

“in the fulness of its time, is seen
A form of peerless beauty, robed and crowned
Beyond the pride of any earthly queen...”

In the fullness of its time.
When it is ripe.
When that gratification can finally be indulged.
Today, because yesterday was too soon and tomorrow will be too late.


And the truth is that it wasn’t that long after all.

I’ve come to value these twin knowings — both the incremental tick and the broader sweep of time — that at once grounds me in the pregnant nuance of the moment and orients me with the season’s larger perspective.

Time is, indeed, moving.  The days are getting shorter, which feels like foreboding loss.  Meanwhile the garden, shouldering responsibility for what Parker Palmer describes as “the promissory notes of autumn and winter and spring,” is paying off its debts.  Lugging into the kitchen the heavy harvest crates, wondering what we will possibly do with all this bounty, it is indeed hard to remember, as Palmer confesses, “that we had ever doubted the natural process, had ever ceded death the last word, had ever lost faith in the powers of new life.”

Rooted, then, in this different — closer — way of knowing, I step into this day to harvest whatever may be ripe, and to use fully and productively, with the chickens, however much daylight it offers; trusting, as they have taught me, that there is always, somewhere, a patch of shade in the heat of the afternoon.

The Sad Quietude of an Empty Egg Basket

There are no eggs.  

OK, that's not literally true.  Tonight there were 2.  It has been that way all week.  There was a one-day high of 5, but otherwise the daily retrieval has been light duty.  This, when a more typical collection would have been 18-20; a dozen on a bad day.  These from our 34 heritage breed chickens. Truthfully, that number is deceiving.  One of that number is a rooster with very dubious prospects of ever laying an egg.  Three of the girls are pre-pubescent.  And a few — some indeterminate number — are slowing down as they age out.  

But 2?

There is yet one more numerical revision that must be factored in.  We had a massacre.  We don't know the specifics — we were out of town — but sometime a week or so ago a predator claimed the lives of six of the flock.  That, in addition to one that apparently and unrelatedly simply died in the coop.  So that 34 has tragically and suddenly been reduced to 27. 

But still:  2 eggs?

I did some research.  Trauma is likely to blame.  The girls are off-balance.  Their minds — along with the rest of their bodies — are shaken and they will need time to heal.  They are significantly off track.  Several of the girls have, ever since the attack, even taken to roosting, as darkness approaches, on the roof of one of the coops.  Darkness, they have experienced, is when the bad stuff happens.  They've never done this before.  It's the trauma talking.  This, according to the literature.  This isn't simply me anthropomorphizing -- projecting human reactions to my feathered friends.  It is, according to the experts, the nightmare that keeps recurring.  They don't want to sleep, and they aren't able to lay eggs.

Because trauma stays with you.  It's a stain not easily laundered.

I've been thinking, of late, about the children of war, the children separated at the border from their parents, the children of abusive parents, and all the rest of us who are forced to see what should never cross our field of vision.  

And the paralysis that results, and lingers; the stain that never quite fades away.

The inability to bear fruit.

And the myriad ways we try to climb out of harm's way.

There is a sad and silent numbness to the empty basket…to the exploded heart…that perhaps time will heal.  Or not.

In the meantime I stand amidst the chickens each evening well before dusk settles, to reassure, to calm.  I talk to them.  I move among them.  I attempt to counter the darkness.   I don't know if it makes them feel any more secure but it makes me feel better — like I'm doing something.  And next week a few new hens will be arriving from a happier place.  Perhaps they will be able communicate something to these shaken girls of a better way, a better life; a happier prospect for the days ahead.  

For now we will simply ache, and grieve the empty, chasmic space that remains — the chickens, me, and the basketed void.

Nature’s Call for Respect and Responsibility

Nature.  

It is…well…so natural.  It is the "what is" of all that surrounds us.  As essential as it is precious, nature has nonetheless gotten short shrift in recent years — indeed, recent decades — by we "superior beings" who presume to know better and routinely manipulate it to serve our higher priorities.  Nature, we have deduced, is simply one more benign raw material for us to variously plunder, ignore or bend to our will.  "Respect" is, of course, conspicuously absent from that characterization, as is any recognition of the simple fact that we are necessarily but one constituent part of it.

Since arriving on this farmstead almost 7 years ago we have tried to maintain a different character of relationship with this small expression of the nature of which we are a part.  We have resisted quick interventions on the land until gaining some observational experience with it so that whatever we do is more evocative than coercive.  We have sought to emulate its patterns and cooperate with its contours rather than strong arm it into the shapes and behaviors we might imagine or even prefer.

But it isn't always easy.  There is a ruthlessness to weather patterns, a relentlessness to growth, and a Darwinian cruelty to the natural prunings, predations, and witherings.  

I've tried to be philosophical about it.  Nature is, indeed, "red in tooth and claw" as the poet observed.  When the worms attack the apples or the bugs destroy the squash or the storm breaks the fruit-laden branch or a chicken dies in the coop I have swallowed hard, taken a deep breath and reminded myself that "this is nature," right along with the blossom, the harvest, the waving prairie grasses in the sunset, and the eggs.  But I am coming to realize there is an element of "cop out" in my repeated refrain.

Gravity is surely a fundamental element of nature, but when I clumsily step off a curb and twist my ankle I don't hear myself cursing nature.  When two cars collide at an intersection, playing out certain loud and tragic laws of physics, no one says, "well, that's nature."  No, we openly weep and think what might have happened differently.

And so it is that we live and thrive here in the midst of — indeed, as part of — nature, constantly discerning how best we can effectively, respectfully and responsibly play our part.  We honor the patterns and the forces, but we don't simply acquiesce.  Yes, it is the nature of rabbits to eat leafy green things, but that doesn't stop me from surrounding the garden with preventive fencing.  Yes, in a perfect world rain would satisfy the thirst of all our fruit and nut trees, but just in case nature's watering schedule doesn't match our needs I have assembled an irrigation system to fill in the dry spells.  

And yes, I am fully aware that chickens are nature's snack food — at least when viewed through the eyes and appetites of foxes and raccoons, among others.  Nevertheless I am constantly relearning the painfully hard way that 99% of such predation happens after dark and is easily preventable as long as the vulnerable birds are secured inside before the light fades.  I know that once inside they are completely safe.  Outside is a different story.  The six dead hens, victims of just such a recent intrusion, are reiterating the lesson.  They count on me remembering.

There is one more part of nature I've been lately observing:  terror leaves an imprint.  In the past few days, as darkness has approached, four of the surviving hens — all related to those that were lost — scramble up onto the roof of a coop and crouch down...

…as if to get above harm's way down below…

…where terrible things happened after dark…

…as nature took its course.

The surviving hens remember.  

Hopefully the rest of us will, as well.

The Cacophonous Order of Bearing Fruit

"It's a jungle out there; disorder and confusion everywhere..."  ---Randy Newman

  The weather has been a study in polarities -- flooding one week followed by drought the trailing two; scorching heat for days on end followed by sweater-worthy evenings.  In the garden we delayed reworking two beds because of muddy conditions, and then overnight it turned to concrete with all the heat.  Even the power harrow was panting from exertion.  And while our bodies shift into slow motion from the peaking mercury, the weeds and garden grasses have been very happy.  Couple that with a few days out of town, several days of relational distractions around the death of a dear friend, and a day or two of the "blahs", the overgrowth has been very happy, indeed.  We hoe for awhile; we hand pull for awhile; we lean on the hoe for awhile and then work it a little more.  And if the mosquitoes don't kill us, the ticks surely will.

Meanwhile, the good stuff has been growing, too.  The tomato plants are inching toward the height of an average middle schooler.  The squashes have overtaken any and every available space, and the okra is patiently, steadily stretching upward.  The peppers seem quite content as well, although I have yet to see any blossoms portending the spiciness in our future.  It's increasingly difficult to differentiate the beds.  It all presents as a cacophony of viney green.

"It's a jungle out there; disorder and confusion everywhere."

At least by appearance; on the surface.  The truth, closer to the ground, is a more complicated story.  Everything was planted in rows, in 30" raised beds.  The spacing between plants was precise.  The distance between each row on the beds was intentional.  True, as the stems grew and the leaves spread the inevitable sprawl of vitality ensued.  That's not a sign of chaos; it's a sign of life.  Some things grow up; others grow out; still others do a little of both.  Some fruit hangs down like droplets beneath high leaves; others sprawl on the ground.  It is the glory of diversity and its very manifestation.  What was precise in its nascence has become precocious in its growth.

You may call it a mess; I rather call it a vegetative frolic.  Everything has a personality, and I rather encourage its expression.  It will make it a little challenging to harvest the squash, but that will invite some kind of a dance of my own, stepping lightly over stalk and leaf to tiny patch of clearing.

It is, in other words, less than it looks like -- and more.

I consider that horticultural example as I read, with deepening concern, the paper each morning and follow the updates throughout the day.  It IS a jungle out there.  As the Randy Newman song goes on to note,  

"People think I'm crazy, 'cause I worry all the time.  
If you paid attention, you'd be worried too."

It feels increasingly like chaos -- social, moral, political and intellectual anarchy.  We are constantly at each others throat, and we aren't much kinder to ourselves.  We are committing murder and suicide in what feels like record numbers.  Increasingly, those who manage to stay alive lubricate the effort with more and more antidepressants.

It could be, however, that this snapshot is largely the view from the garden's edge -- from Facebook chatter and special-interest mailings and outlets for the 24-hour news cycle that constantly need high-octane stories to churn and burn what would otherwise be benign white noise.  It could be that it is not a jungle out there at all; that closer to the ground an ordered and civilized pattern is more apparent.  Maybe all this sprawl of leaf and limb, this splash of blossom and bud,is, as it is in the garden, merely the evidence of vigor and reach.

I'm not astute enough to say.  I only know it's likely to be more complicated -- more interesting and maybe even more fruitful -- than we are prone to think.

I suppose we'll see.  In the meantime, I'm going to go dance among the vines and check for squash.

Finding Our Summer Stride

I deftly unlatch and slide the plow blade off  the wheel hoe shaft, exchanging it for the large stirrup hoe attachment.  We now include two such stirrups in our arsenal of weed fighting equipment -- a narrower, 4-inch one suited for inter-row action and this larger 8-inch alternative for working between the beds behind the steel wheel of this long-handled garden marvel.  I have commonly heard the wheel hoe named as the favorite tool by professional gardeners, and though we had purchased one several years ago it wasn't until we adopted the new layout and cultivation system that I realized why it never really fit in to the old one.  It has quickly become one of my favorites as well.

And so, attachment changed and secured and wheeled out of the shed, it's time to lean into the weeding.  That's the work calling my name this morning.  Our few days out of town and consistent intervening rains have spurred the development of new weeds since my last clearing passes.  As for those interlopers encroaching on the beds themselves, hand weeding will be called for much to my chagrin.  We are determined this season to keep more attentively "on top" of weed control, but it's clear we have some catching up to do.  Having devoted our recent efforts to transplanting into new beds, the spaces planted earlier have been left to themselves and will require significant remediation.  That, plus the aforementioned absences.  It doesn't take long for weeds to gain a sneering upper hand.

But we are finding our rhythm.  And we are catching up -- slowly, but steadily.  Yesterday, while restoring breathing space to one of those neglected rows I discovered turnips ready to pull, with dozens more on the threshold.  There is no more delectable dinner than one integrating fresh harvest sprung from seeds that you have planted!  Somewhere in all that thick morass I will no doubt find beets nearing the time of their own star turn at the table.  The collards are holding their own, along with the curly kale.  It's hard to know what's going on beneath the surface, but above ground the potatoe plants are thriving and filling out.  Soon I will need to try out the new hiller attachment we acquired for the potato rows.  And if even half of the sweet potato slips I planted yesterday thrive -- eight varieties in all -- we should produce enough by season's end to fill an ample root cellar.  It won't be long before the garlic is ready to pull and cure, and the various squash plants spreading out over the beds and the tomato stalks already reaching high into the cages portend good things arriving later in the summer.

The next round of transplants -- various chicories, for the most part, and a few additional brassicas -- are readying themselves in the greenhouse, waiting their turn for time and space in the ground as it becomes available.  Maybe yet today I'll nestle the melon seedlings into their intended home.

All of which is to acknowledge the many moving parts that animate and busy our days.  The rains have given us a break from managing the irrigation, but there is plenty else to demand attention.

But as I reach the end of another weed-cleared row I can't help but smile.  It will take a while, but we are finding our stride.  It is, after all, for this that we have planned and ordered and patiently but eagerly prepared.

A toast, then, to mud-encrusted pant knees, and dirt beneath the fingernails, and the satisfaction of watching -- and assisting -- the earth produce.

Waiting and Working for What’s Ultimately Beyond Us

So, now we’ll see.

After a lingering winter that all but squeezed out spring, the garden is essentially planted. Yes, there is more to do.  We intentionally shifted, this season, away from direct seeding as much as possible, opting instead to transplant seedlings started in the greenhouse. Transplanting helps us get ahead of the weeds, enables us to more precisely space the plants in the rows, and the greenhouse’s limited real estate helps us stagger plantings so that everything doesn’t mature at once. All of which means there will be waves of planting for several weeks to come.  The “three sisters” project — an ancient companion planting concept integrating corn, beans and squash — is ready for the second phase now that the corn has emerged from the ground on its way to offering itself as a trellis for the beans.  All that, and the sweet potato slips ordered months ago are just now being shipped by the supplier. 

Those provisos accepted, however, the garden is essentially underway. The fencing has been mended.  The irrigation system, simplified by the addition of a new hydrant and made urgent by the premature advent of 90-degree days, has been reassembled. The beds, thanks to the new implements and design, have been created and largely filled.  Weeding, the incessant pastime of summer, is underway. 

And though it always feels like we are behind — the obligatory neurosis of farming — the reality is that we are right on schedule.  At least our schedule.  In the rarified environment of the greenhouse we have, since early March, sown, we have watered, we have managed the temperature and the timing.  In recent weeks we have opened the garden soil and nestled the juvenile plants into place. And now we’ll see.  We’ll see if anything grows or fruits, despite the odds.  “Odds” because it’s all a major gamble. Its not, in other words, smooth and confident sailing from here to harvest.  Indeed, the bean leaves already look like Swiss cheese thanks to the appetite of some early pest.  We’ve replaced half a dozen tomato plants because some pernicious varmint helped itself, never mind the fence.  And the berry canes have taken it upon themselves to invade anywhere they so please.  And already, barely into the season, we are trimming and hoeing and pulling, alternating between hope and despair.

We watch the forecast for rain.  We spread a little more composted manure.  We pull a weed.  We wring our hands.  We pray.  Ultimately, we dig deeply into ourselves for the patience and larger view this kind of endeavor teaches and daily demands.  I think of that biblical admission from the Apostle Paul — in a rare moment of humility and in the midst of one of those early church rivalries — that, “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gives the growth.”  Which is to say that none of us is in charge of it all.    We do what we can do, and then let go.  And wait.

And so, we’ll see what might grow — through our efforts and all those which are beyond us.  We’ll see what might happen because of us, in spite of us, or coincidental to us.  

We will do our part, acknowledging that the bigger part is out of our hands. 

Which is humbling, of course, but the truth about most things in our life.  

We sow a seed.  Someone else waters.  Something else — something marvelously, mysteriously, ineffably beyond us — gives it growth.  

It’s maddening, I suppose, to good bootstrap-pulling, self-reliant delusionals reared to believe we can do anything and all; 

…but it is, quite simply, the actual way things work.  If I quiet myself enough to hear her, I hear the earth gently and lovingly chastising and coaxing me with the simple invitation:

“Get over yourself, take a deep breath, and simply participate in the wonder of what is transpiring.”

Well, we’ll see.  Listening just now to the thundering rain that simultaneously nourishes, drowns, washes away and keeps us out of the garden, we can do little else.

An Annual Protuberance of Grace

I’ll confess at the outset that I haven’t been an attentive steward.  All the guides I read stress the importance of keeping asparagus beds “clean” — as in weeded and free of herbaceous encroachment.  Soil amendments wouldn’t hurt either, like compost or other nourishing organic matter.  I’m sure it’s good advice, but I have neglected to follow it.

“Neglect,” of course, is the proper description because ever since planting the two varieties of asparagus the first spring of our residence on the farmstead I have been well-intentioned but poor-performing.  There are always other, ever-pressing garden tasks this time of year that assert a higher priority.  Always.  There is greenhouse management, repositioning of rain barrels after winter storage; there is bed prep for the seeds we directly sow and transplanting of seedlings started indoors.  There are irrigation lines to run, and interrupting rains and...

Like I said, “always.”  The asparagus always gets neglected.  Perennially through these past six years this gem of spring has essentially had to fend for itself.

So it is this grace-filled marvel that, inexplicably, it somehow manages to do so.  This year in particular.  Out of the morass of last year’s detritus and this year’s early weeds; despite creeping competition from nearby berry brambles and grass from the pathways alongside emerge these purple and green stems, at once delicate and sturdy.  So pessimistic am I — along with inveterate distraction — the protuberances practically have to wave and shout and jump up and down to attract my attention.  Gratefully, moreso than in any of the previous years, they have succeeded.  We have happily taken notice.  Almost daily, with knife in hand, we navigate our way to those remote reaches of the garden to admire and avail ourselves of what growth the overnight has afforded.  Even still I find it amazing, this tenacious generosity of soil and crown and time, made all the more miraculous by my neglect.

We have not taken this beneficence for granted.  We have roasted it, sautéed it, grilled it and consumed it raw.  We have included it in pastas, in frittatas, and as the frame around steaks.  We have, in a word, enjoyed it.

I suspect all blessings are like that — testaments to unmerited grace.  They simply present themselves unbidden and undeserved.  The tomatoes and peppers, I dare say, I expect to harvest — along with all those other roots and fruits I so carefully coddle and tend.  Indeed, I get annoyed when their output is sub par.  Harvesting them is my due, after all, given all I have invested in their growth.  But the asparagus?  By all rights those crowns I buried as a neophyte farmer all those years ago should have laughed at my fecklessness before lifelessly withering into the soil.

And yet, nonetheless, it appears, year after delicious year.  As if to say, “I forgive you. Eat well.  I’ll do the best I can.”

If I have any measure of gratitude, I will do all I can to do the same.

Because Everyone Should Have the Right to Puke

Here in Iowa our esteemed legislators recently passed — and the Governor signed into law — what I affectionately refer to as the “Big Ag/Industrial Egg Welfare Act”.  Shoving aside less pressing concerns confronting the state and the world like climate change, pesticide resistant weeds, peak oil, trade standoff’s with China among others, this initiative tackles a problem on everyone's mind by requiring retailers who participate in the subsidized nutrition program know as WIC to carry industrial eggs (AKA “conventional eggs”) if they also commit the heinous atrocity of carrying “specialty eggs” — or “good eggs” as I like to think of them. You know, eggs produced by chickens whose chickenness is honored with good food to eat, good land to freely range, and plenty of room to flap their wings.

I can sympathize. God knows it’s hard for me to make a living selling dozens of eggs. I can only imagine how hard it must be to thrive selling millions of them.

But this new law has an oddness to it that intrigues me.  On the one hand, our Legislature never misses an opportunity to suckle and succor Business Interests in general and Big Ag in particular -- and this law unapologetically guarantees the latter a sales stream -- it is unusual that our lawmakers have opted to elbow their way into meddling with how retailers stock their shelves.  Meanwhile, though this and recent Legislatures demonstrate resourceful creativity in conceiving new and imaginatively paternalistic ways to punish the poor, this law imposes no requirement on what must actually be purchased; rather it reserves its muscles for coercing merchants into a specific mandate for what must be sold.

Like any good and concerned citizen I wrote my two legislators -- one, a Democrat, and one, a Republican.  Only the former deemed this constituent's query worthy of response so I can't speak to the motivations and/or logic of the latter.  The response I did receive defended his support of this bi-partisan bill by asserting the importance of using government monies wisely (though I can't discern how this measure accomplishes that) and lauding the fact that conventional eggs are inspected.  That last argument, of course, is almost too circular to engage.  Hypothetically, inspections sound like a good thing -- if we were to actually accomplish them.  These same legislators and their colleagues at the federal level, however, so routinely cut the budgets of such inspection programs -- in part through the protestations of the industry lobbyists who, let's face it, don't really like inspectors snooping around, alongside that elusive, Holy Grail-like quest to "reduce the size of government."  In my response to my legislator's response, I allowed as to how I had never -- ever -- heard of a "specialty egg" recall, and that he has more confidence than I do in our vaunted "inspection" system.

As if on cue, this weekend we woke to reports of yet another salmonella-tainted corporate egg recall.  Rose Acre Farms of Seymour, Indiana is recalling over 2 million eggs produced in their North Carolina factory farms and sold in nine states under numerous labels because...well...because they were making people sick.  Fever, diarrhea, nausea, vomiting and abdominal pain.

Thank goodness these things get inspected -- although it would probably be more helpful if they were inspected before they were sold.

And thank goodness we now have this helpful law signed and on the books.  It would be a terrible thing if the poor of Iowa were deprived of their own fair share of salmonella.  Everyone, after all, should have the right to puke.

We Can Wait, or We Can Start to Bloom

I no longer recall why I ordered them.  I was reading something, no doubt, that extolled the virtues of Nanking Cherries and something apparently clicked.  I do, after all, love cherries.  Never mind that we had planted several cherry trees last year that should eventually supply more than enough fruit to meet our needs, these were different — a bush, for one thing, moreso than a tree.  Requiring less space than trees and therefore more versatilely sited, they are reputed to be easy growers, not especially finicky about their surroundings, producing fruit— albeit smaller and therefore more difficult to harvest —comparatively fast.  Gathering to myself all these compelling attributes I seemingly tracked some down through an online nursery and placed an order.

I’m not proud of this horticultural impulsivity.  I'm aware that one really should be more strategic and thoughtful about such considerations, as in thinking through where such new arrivals might actually be planted, and if, despite their attractiveness, they actually "fit in".  But that said, neither am I terribly penitent about it.  We have space, we are curious and experimental, we value perennials and their fruit -- for ourselves and the wildlife and pollinators -- and we will find for them a place.

Unfortunately, they arrived during the recurring aftershocks of winter.  They would need to camp out in the greenhouse.

Cutting the tape on the shipping container I gently lifted away the moistened packing mulch and separated the bare root plants from each other.  It was then I realized that not only had I been impulsive, I hadn’t paid close attention to what I was doing.  I had ordered three — already more than we needed — but it turns out that the “three” I had ordered were bundles of three.  I’m not very good at math but even I know that adds up to nine.  Nine bushes.  We are really going to need to love Nanking Cherries.  I settled the saplings into potting soil and tucked them in to the greenhouse.

Winter has been a wearisome challenge this year.  Let me just clarify that I happen to like winter.  I will not willingly be one of those who packs the car, forwards the mail and heads off to warmer climates in an effort to bypass Iowa’s harsher months.  I like the snow, the fire in the fireplace, sweaters and flannel-lined jeans. I like snowshoeing the trails around and through the farmstead.  Heck, I enjoy firing up the tractor and clearing the driveway after a heavy snowfall.  But even I think it’s time to move on into spring.  There is a time and a place for winter which expired a few weeks ago.  Enough is enough.  We have other things to do.  It’s the middle of April, after all, and we not only had snow last Sunday, more is predicted for the coming days — never mind the 70-degree days in between.  All this back-and-forthing makes it impossible to move things into the garden, and even those sprouts in the greenhouse are yet timid about sticking their necks out very far.

Taking advantage of today’s sunny respite I accomplished some plowing and garden bed preparation while Lori spread mulch and whacked away at some dying shrubs we will be replacing.  We may or may not be able to squeeze more such preparations in tomorrow, depending on when the weather starts to deteriorate.  Weary, with afternoon hours waning, we opted to water before going inside.

For the past month or so we have been sowing seeds in flats and settling them in the greenhouse.  Thirty-six trays have so far accumulated there with likely that many more to go — trays of peppers and tomatoes, herbs and greens, flowers and leeks and now Nanking Cherries. Almost by rote now we fill milk jugs with rainwater stored through the winter, and tray by tray give everything a good dousing.

It was then that Lori noticed the Cherries.  The nine stems a few days ago had swelled proud buds, but tonight there was one thing more:  a blossom.  The glory of Washington, D.C. in miniature.  One lone blossom among nine budding stems. On the one hand there is nothing special about that. Fruit trees bloom, as apparently do fruit bushes.  But parked there in a drink cup stuffed with potting mix and stowed in the greenhouse it seemed, nevertheless, almost bankable:  a promissory note of spring, born of an impatience equal to my own; as if to say, “winter be damned, we are moving ahead with life.”

And so it was that I decided to move forward with it, living rather than waiting; blooming, which is to say making way for fruit.  Because for too many things to count...

...in the garden...
...in my aspirations...
...in this crazy, "stuck" world...

...it is simply — if not past —time.

So, yes, we will be finding a place to plant the cherries.  All of them.
As soon as the next round of snow melts.

Whipped Between the Beckoning and the Forbidding

The radio, of late, has been set on the '70's channel.  I'm not quite sure why.  I haven't been in an especially nostalgic mood.  Nonetheless, I've been enjoying the music.  I hear plenty from The Eagles, Jackson Browne and Earth, Wind and Fire.  There is an ample number of "one hit wonders" -- songs that I readily recognize by performers whose name I've long-since forgotten.  But I have especially enjoyed revisiting those early R&B sounds -- songs by groups like the Temptations and the O'Jays and the Spinners with their finger snaps, matching suits and choreography; groups I didn't really pay that much attention to back in their day, but whose music today I can only describe as "fun." 

I've been especially resonating in recent days with one of those songs in particular -- "Rubberband Man" by the Spinners.  The song is actually about a novelty musician, but it's the elasticity I've been feeling lately, stretching in one direction only to be boinged back in the opposite one. 

We are, I'll readily admit, still firmly within the embrace of winter.  Having begun in earnest some time in late November, our last average freeze date is April 26.  Sitting here in early March, we still have several weeks to go.  But weather is a mercurial phenomenon, especially in these climatically challenged days.  This winter we have gone from 50-degrees above zero to double-digits below overnight.  We've had no snow, only to be buried beneath blankets of it several days running.  It's been hard to know what to expect.


But last week we had a stretch of mildness.  Coats drifted away into the closet.  We soil blocked and sowed seeds in trays and nestled them in the greenhouse.  In the chicken yard and field, residual snow melted away into mud that, itself, eventually dried.  Unable to resist the sunshine and anxious to make garden progress, I gassed up the walk-behind tractor and went to work on a targeted piece of ground adjacent to the existing garden.  A plot something like 20-feet by 72-feet, I tilled and plowed my way into 5 new raised beds and eagerly ordered additional seeds to populate it. 

And then yesterday it snowed. 

All day. 

Multiple inches.

The temperature, though colder than prior days, was yet tolerable; but having stretched our way forward into spring, we have rubberbanded back into the throws of winter with gloved hands and coats retrieved. 

Looking at the forecast ahead, we will see still more of this slingshotting rhythm -- whipped between the mild and the mess, the beckoning and the forbidding.  I am, indeed, the "rubberband man", stretching back and forth between the seasons. 

But that is nothing new.  I routinely ride that rubberband between hopes and memories, imaginations and recollections, passing through present reality on the way and pausing just long enough to drink in the wonder of what is...

...and to plow a little more fresh ground.  It can be a little dizzying, but all in all, it's not a bad trip.

Blown Snow in the Face and Other Exhilarations

The temperature is in the single digits again, and though I knew what was in the forecast I was still surprised by the blanket outside the front door.  After three fresh inches of overnight snow I once again scraped clear the front porch, then fired up the tractor to clear the driveway.  It is only the second time this winter I have whirred the massive snow blower into service — the first being only yesterday after its prior snowfall.  We have shoveled the front porch, walk and garage entrance dozens of times — indeed, seemingly dozens of times this week — but the driveway, the long gravelly stretch out to the main road, never seemed to demand that same attention.

Until now.

I don’t mind the work.  In fact I rather enjoy the rumbling engine behind me, the billowing stream out in front of me, the cleared path beneath me, even the cold powdery blowback on my face.  Unlike so many exertions in life, with the snowblower you can readily see your accomplishment, even if a stiff wind or a renewed storm can undo what you’ve done.  No worries; I’ve got plenty of diesel.

The accumulating drifts have hemmed in the coops, so I slog my way to the chicken yard to shovel out clearings to invite a little avian activity.  It’s not only us, after all, who are prone to too much sedentariness.  While we sit on the sofa in front of the fireplace, they nestle on the roost or under the coop in the warmth of each other.  But we all need some movement and sunshine, and mine comes by clearing the space for theirs.   When my fingers numb from the cold beyond function I wag the shovel back to the garage and me back to the couch in front of the fire...

...to thaw out, yes, but also to remind myself that even this — even this week’s 10-12 inches of cumulative snow and the bitter cold — is garden preparation, albeit not of my doing.  It's always useful to recollect the humility that fruitfulness is not solely about my agency.  There are essentials beyond my doing.  The cold and the snow are winter’s contribution to fertility on which spring and summer depend.  Which is to say that important work is underway, even if it isn’t as sexy as blossom and bud and harvest.

I suspect the same can be said about the garden that is “me” in these quieter, stiller days nestled near the fire.  Who can say what all is breaking open, ruminating and germinating deep beneath the surface...

...while more visibly on the surface I wait impatiently for the temperature to warm, the snow to melt, and that more profligate season of spring to begin?  Waiting, that is, until the next snowfall dislodges my lethargy in service to the whirring, rumbling and shoveling labors outside.