Readying for Winter's Work

The garlic is in the ground, the pepper plants have been stripped and removed with the fruits of the former in the freezer and the detritus of the latter in the compost pile.  I had help -- the same extra hands that sowed the winter wheat last month that is well on its way these several weeks later.  In some ways this has become a "community garden" in ways I hadn't anticipated.  They dug, they plowed, they planted, they picked; in the end they carted and carried and, above all, encouraged.

   Even with all their help they did not exhaust the need.  There are still plenty of braising greens to harvest our way through, and there are enough stalks remaining from this and that, plenty of rows to clean out and plenty of manure to spread to still leave plenty yet to do before we can call the garden "winterized."  More than a few hours and sunny days will be needed to finally put it all to bed, but if the weather cooperates I am determined to get it done -- a first, if it happens, in the four years we have been here.  Planting in the spring turns out to be sexier work than cleaning out in autumn.

But the chicken coops are ready for colder weather -- repositioned, straw bales stacked to deflect wind and snow, power cords readied to supply the water warmers and interior lights.  The changes have created some confusion among the girls, but they will thank me for the adjustments eventually.  When the mercury plummets and dances on either side of zero they will be thrilled to sip water instead of pecking it; they will be thrilled to have some place to walk that isn't dusted in white.  In the next week or so I'll need to decide if the grass needs one more trimming or if the mower deck on the tractor can let go and give way to the snow blower taking its place. 

Autumn, which only yesterday seemed to color the leaves, is already stretching out its arm to pass the baton to winter.  Leaves carpet the ground beneath naked branches.  I am pulling on a jacket when only days ago a sweater sufficed.

Each season, of course, has its own important work to accomplish -- though winter's, for a farmstead, are subtler than the others.  To be sure, there are seed catalogs to dog ear, selections to make and orders to place.  Eventually, on the far edge of the season, we'll be straightening and filling up the greenhouse and whispering kind and beckoning words over seedlings.  But surely there is more to do than these.  In the soil, winter is the season of deeper things.  The cold is needed for over-wintering seeds to crack open in readiness for spring; soil and its multi-form lives, rest and renew as though taking a deep breath.  Sugars concentrate.  Some lives hibernate while others incubate; minerals and fungi, trace elements and organic matter integrate while worms and microbes aerate -- all completely out of view.

Underneath.

Deep inside the soil.

My guess is that there are analogs of the spirit that require their own winter workings -- renewals that will translate into a fertility of being for the growing space that is myself...

...if I can be quiet enough, mindful enough, to give them the space and the depth to happen.

Welcomed to be Herself

It's tempting to think of her as a replacement. And it's true that the only reason we have her is the loss of an earlier arrival.  Exactly one week ago we answered the call from the Post Office and brought home the box containing four 10-week old hens -- four little puff balls barely the size of a softball -- shipped from southern Illinois.  

Their route to our house had been a laborious trip -- first to St. Louis, then on to St. Paul, then across town in St. Paul and then back across town, eventually to Des Moines and finally Norwalk.  I tracked them.  Monday afternoon to Thursday morning, never mind the 2-day Express guarantee. If you are shaking your head, know only that I agree with you.  It's a baffling route for anything, but especially for four little hens nestled on a scattering of wood chips and sustained by a wedge of cucumber.  All that said, they did arrive and were finally liberated from their shipping box into the annex coop where they joined the other one already in residence.  

But one of them didn't seem right.  She stood around, lethargically; she kept her eyes closed, and only trotted around under duress.  At night I had to help her navigate the few inch jump up into the coop for bed time.  By Saturday morning she was still -- a feathered wisp where life had been but moved on.  

I had kept in contact with the breeder -- following her counsel about diagnosis and care -- and when she heard the news she promised to ship another one out.  Yes, if you are wondering, such things are guaranteed.  And today, a fraction more expeditiously if no less circuitously, the new little girl arrived.  She seems healthy and spry.  The other girls seem to have given her welcome.  I have every reason to believe she’ll thrive.

And I know she is “only a chicken”.  I don't mean to make of this more than is merited.  She is, on paper at least, a “replacement.”  But I refuse to view any life as merely generic -- as though one were as good as another.  As though we were all interchangeable. It is, I suspect, a distinctly human arrogance to view our own as the only distinguishable and appreciable pulses, and even we don't finally believe it.  Experience decries it as nonsense. Lori and I may have acquired another dog just weeks after the death of our first, but if we were ever tempted to see in his similar gender and breed and coloring a cipher, a fill-in, a mere replacement for the one we had lost, he was quick to disavow us of that fiction.  He would put forward his own personality, asserting his own peculiar mark.  We may have wanted him to simply play the prior part, but he insisted on writing his own script; starring the individual that he is.

As, I am certain, will this new little hen.  We didn't have her predecessor long enough to know her, but I am convinced enough about living, breathing creatures to believe that this new one will not walk or peck or cluck in her shadow.  She will cast her own.  

It will be my challenge -- me, the big, all-knowing, all-powerful Oz of a flockmaster -- to trust enough in the wonder of creation to let her.

A Beautiful, Serendipitous Mistake

Yesterday the sorghum came down.  By successive whacks of the corn knife the seven-foot stalks were relieved of their seed heads and then, with the loosening help of the broad fork, were uprooted and stacked.  It has been a small stand -- less than half of a long row on the east side of the garden -- but it's outsized height flanked the garden shoulder with Beefeater stateliness.

And it had all been a serendipitous mistake.

The plan for sorghum had revolved around making our own syrup -- that molasses-like nectar favored in certain parts of the country for drizzling over hot biscuits.  With only the thinnest background on the subject, I knew only enough to seek out seeds for the sweet variety rather than that destined for animal feed.  I planted in the spring, waited, watched and industriously weeded.  I was some distance down the row one early day in June before I realized that the encroaching grass I was meticulously pulling up was in fact the first expression of the very sorghum I had planted.  Thankfully, my “meticulous” is not ultimately that thorough.  Enough survived to lead to my next misunderstanding.

By August the stalks were towering over the other crops, crowned by seed heads like finials on a flag pole.  With anticipatory foretastes of sweetened biscuits playing over my tastebuds, I thought to start reading up on how to convert those bronze grains into syrup.  That's when I realized I should have started reading months earlier. It isn't, it turns out, the grains that are ground or cooked or fermented into goodness; it's the stalks that are pressed -- squeezed -- like sugar cane to extract the resident liquid. 

“Idiot,” I thought to myself.  “Now what am I going to do with this stuff?”

In dutiful due diligence I researched presses, only to confirm my guess that we would not be interested in making that level of investment. Meanwhile, we had secured a bag of hard red winter wheat seeds that we planned to sow in late September for harvest in early summer with an aspiration to grind our own flour for bread.  I'm embarrassed to admit how long it took me to break out of my compartmentalized myopia and make the tentative connection, but finally the cylinders clicked.

“I wonder if there is such a thing as sorghum flour?”

To abbreviate the story I’ll just say that the answer is an ancient “yes” with multiple nutritional and culinary assets to its credit.  Having already figured out the end-game of grinding, my next step is seeing what I can learn about those other ancient practices of “threshing” and “winnowing” this beautiful grain I now have in hand.

All that, and then inviting my taste buds down a completely different trail of anticipation -- no longer of a drizzled ambrosia from a jar, but a bready aroma of heaven wafting from the oven.

There is a country song I love that pays grateful tribute to "the trains I missed."  Standing here looking over my sackful of misbegotten sorghum, I'm thinking this looks like a pretty appealing platform at which to be left standing.

Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

Every reference I have ever consulted on caring for chickens warns that carnage is a question of “when” not “if.”  “Chickens,” they say, “are the snack food of the animal kingdom.”  That concern helps explain the electric fence around our chicken yard and our vigilance about securing the girls each night.  I don't have much emotional capacity for carnage.  We do all we can to keep them safe.  

Nonetheless, on Monday evening as I was gathering eggs I grew concerned that one was missing – one of the Iowa Blues that I had had such difficulty acquiring, and that had gone broody over the past few weeks.  That's how I missed her.  I had grown accustomed to finding one or both sequestered in a nesting box, trying valiantly but vainly to hatch one of these unfertilized eggs.  On this particular evening, the box was empty; one was scratching around the yard but her sister was nowhere to be seen.  We searched – underneath, around, behind – but nothing.  As darkness descended we shone flash lights into thickets and behind trees in the surrounding area, but nothing.  The next day, outside the fence, I noticed an abundant  clutter of feathers.  

I don't know what happened.  My guess is that, always an adventuresome sort,  she had fluttered over the fence in pursuit of greener grass and met a malevolent and hungry stranger.  

I will readily admit to grief.  Suspecting that her own initiative brought about her demise in no way salves the sadness.  Reaching under a brooding chicken to retrieve an egg develops a certain intimacy only deepened by the punctuating pecks, as counter-intuitive as that sounds; and I miss her.  Our  happy 23 has been reduced to a soberer 22.

I prefer to think of it as prudent protectiveness rather than vengeful bloodlust that led me last night to bait and reset the traps.  And I have no way of knowing if the raccoon I found this morning contained in one of them was the culpable party or not.  Regardless, I can definitively say this evening that he no longer poses any threat.  “An eye for an eye…”

Meanwhile, bright and early this morning the Post Office called to let me know that a box had arrived with my name on it.  With live birds.  Two 10-week old Lavender Orpingtons I had ordered from a hatchery in Southern Illinois.  A new breed for me, softly beautiful in their grey-lavender sheen.  Released into the Annex for a couple months of quarantine and bulking, they leaned first into the feeder after their 3-day journey, and then the water.  Only then did they explore their new territory before settling in for a nap.  

So, “sunrise, sunset.”  One step back and two steps forward.  Death and life in maddeningly familiar juxtaposition.  “Rest in peace, sweet Blue.”  “Welcome home Lavender beauties.”

And so it is that almost without blinking our sober 22 becomes a promising 24.

And seeds are sprouting in the greenhouse in the very days that tomato vines in the garden are getting pulled and composted.  

All of which counsels me to believe that life has more curve than trajectory --  more circle than line.  

And at least for the moment, soft and chirping with adolescent vigor.

But just in case, the traps are baited and set.  

A Satisfyingly Confirmed Transition

It's evidence enough, I suppose, of a confirmed transition.  

Taproot Garden has been our home now for 4 full years – “full” in more ways than one.  Some superficial remodeling, followed by unloading and unpacking, decorating and exploring and more than a little disbelieving.  All that, and that completely undefinable, indescribable process of “settling” – settling in, settling down; finding “home” within this house situated on these ten acres of ground five miles out of town. In subsequent months we tilled, planted, fenced and watered, weeded and fertilized, and eventually harvested.  Trees we planted are far enough along in their adolescence to begin to bear fruit.  Along the way we have fired up the water bath canner, blanched and frozen and dehydrated and picked and fermented.  Solar panels now keep the rain barrels company in our continuing pursuit of sustainability, and our ”livestock” holdings have broadened beyond our Corgis to include an  expanding flock of heritage breed laying hens.   It is consuming, it is satisfying and rewarding, but it can also be exhausting.  And we have kept our fingers in the work for which we have been trained – substituting, credentialing, reading, keeping abreast of current professional events.  We are, after all, city kids with exactly zero prior knowledge just sort of  “play acting” with this farm business.  Aren't we?

Despite our investment, despite the increasing depth of our rootage, I’ve not quite been able to scratch this itching sense of pretense.  

Until just this moment, sitting on a plane in seat 15C, heading home.  How do I know this?

We have just completed the most magical week of our life together this far.  Some might find that assessment hyperbole – we have, after all, been blessed with numerous magical weeks since marrying almost exactly 18 years.  We have traveled to exotic places, immersed ourselves in stretching and enlivening experiences.  Life, by any definition, has been extraordinarily good to us and most of the time we pass our hours in a stupor of gratitude.  But this week…  Wow.  I won't go into detail.  No one would really believe the facts even if I enumerated them; or believing them could not possibly assemble them into the glory they have actually been.  Simply said, the days have involved food, a wedding of friends, music, new and unimagined friendships, nostalgia, learning, and natural beauty.  Expansive welcome and hospitality; extravagant generosity; compounding depth and delight.  It has been like the grand finale of a 4th of July fireworks display that has lasted 7 days.  

And now it's over.  We have driven to the airport, returned our rental car, checked our bags, navigated security, shown our boarding passes and settled into our seats for the first of two flights home.  And that, I can affectionately attest, is the word I would choose.  

By all rights we should be melancholy at best for this trip to be ending.  If that has been the case at the conclusion of virtually every other trip of my life, how much moreso should it be true as increasingly we speak of this one in the past tense?  And yet as good and exhilarating, as memorable and benchmarking as this trip has been, we have smiled with the anticipation of driving up our driveway and, with the accompanying barks of the dogs and contented squawks of the chickens, being…

…home.  In our four-year-old life:  home.  

Which is to say, in other words, “Yes, I think we have finally made the transition.”

The Delicious Convergence of Time

I suppose it is premature to start imagining the scent of fresh bread in the oven, baking the flour we have ground from our own wheat from the garden; but one can always hope.  This week, with the help of friends, sections 1 and 4 of the garden were cleared, forked, and replanted with winter wheat.  “Hard Red” winter wheat to be exact.  If the cultivation goes as planned, the broadcasted seeds will germinate in the next few weeks, get established through the fall, go dormant through the winter while serving as a beneficial cover crop, revive and flourish through the spring until ready to harvest in early June.  And then find its way into a few loaves of homemade bread. 

We hope. 

As I say, that's the working premise. 

So, we ordered the organic regional seeds, waited around until the season moved past the garlic, then the corn and finally the potatoes, making available those planting areas for next use, then turned the trenches around.   Focusing the wheat in sections 1 and 4 will leave 2 and 3 free for vegetable planting in mid-May.  Once the wheat is out in early summer we can follow up in those areas with more vegetables.  You know, “staging.” 

We hope.

At the risk of sounding repetitive, that's the idea.

There still remains some tidying up and final sowing in this grand and grainy experiment.  Section 1 continues to cradle two partial rows of sweet potatoes, and section 4 has unfinished business with two rows of okra and one divided between peppers and sorghum; all of which should have finished their runs by the middle of October – barely inside the closing window of wheat planting opportunity, but hopefully time enough to recycle those emptied rows into grain.  And then we cross our fingers and wait.

Meanwhile, a half-inch of rain fell this morning which should jump-start the seeds into germination, and the greenhouse surprised me this morning with sprouting in the containers from the cold-weather lettuce seeds planted earlier this week with winter salads in mind.  

And so it is that we find ourselves looking ahead -- to fresh greens in early winter and fresh bread in early summer, with seed catalogs, soil blocking, and transplanting in between.  

I confess to some awkwardness regarding this business of living so much in the future.  Every religious tradition, after all, places an encouraging premium on mindfulness -- paying full attention to life in the present moment.  And I understand that one can expend so much consciousness on yesterday and tomorrow that today simply implodes for lack of air.  There are, to be sure, tomatoes still on the vine that I refuse to squander; peppers to pick before they turn to squish and okra to pull before they turn to wood.  The present, indeed, makes demands of its own.

But the schoolhouse of this gardening business has taught me that if I have any hope of picking something today I better have thought about it long enough some weeks or months ago to have sown the seeds and pulled the weeds.  Which is to say that the garden seems to be that mystical place where the past and the present and the future join hands in wondrous celebration.  

And we are ones who get to sing along as we pull up a chair to the table, lift a fork and, with a satisfied, anticipatory smile...

...eat.

Shredding Our Way Into the Deeper Recesses of Preservation

Yesterday was sauerkraut day -- our very first attempt.  Last year we had bought a crock at the local farm store, but the cabbage harvest was...well, let's just say "inadequate."  The one small head we actually redeemed from the garden was more than adequately utilized via other culinary techniques.  But this year!  Wow!  Who knows, maybe global warming finally nudged our latitude/longitude into the good cabbage zone.  Or perhaps this year's harvest represents nature's pity before global warming ratchets us completely out of cabbage cultivation.  Or maybe it was simply dumb luck.  Regardless, this year we have the heads.  Dozens of them -- light green, dark green, and purple.

And so we dusted off the crock.

It's too early to comment about our particular efforts.  One has to wait a month or so before the microbial machinations have worked their magic.  But the process seems ridiculously easy.  Cut up the cabbage, massage it with salt, stuff it into a container, cover and wait.  Given the more common precursors to preservation we have been undertaking related to freezing and canning, this seems like a snap.

I will say that the history of the stuff fascinates me.  It turns out that the name doesn't refer to a mad German like I always supposed.  The literal translation is simply "sour cabbage."  Nothing original there.   And Germans don't own the copyright.  The same stuff is found in various cultures -- like in the Netherlands, where it is known as zuurkool, a much hipper sounding word even if it does probably translate the same.  But who was the first to try it -- and why? 

Beginnings like this have always fascinated me.  Who, for example, was the first guy who thought it would be a good idea to crush up a bunch of leaves, wrap them in paper, set it on fire and suck on it - as in a cigarette?  Or what possessed someone to break some eggs into flour, add a bunch of other things, pour it in a pan and stick in the fire, thereby baking the first cake?  I just can't fathom the initiating impulses.  With sauerkraut I can only think it an accident.  In the depths of some long ago frozen northern European winter someone found a bucket in the back of the root cellar that contained the last of the cabbages now gone terribly bad.  Desperate with hunger, starvation knocking at the door, they decided they had nothing left to lose and ate the smelly stuff and, "Voila", a condiment was born.

Now, mind you, I find no such account recorded in any history of the stuff -- although Ghengis Khan seems to play a leading role in the introduction of the stuff which certainly lends credibility to the idea of torturous hardship.  That, and as Chef Dan Barber notes, every true cuisine is born out of the hardship of necessity -- as in "what are we going to do with this stuff?" or "I wonder how we might make this stuff last longer?"  Regardless, the bubbling, gurgling transformation proved a success; the process of fermentation seems to elevate the lowly cabbage into the realm of the especially healthy and nutritious -- chocked full of vitamins B, C and K, rich in enzymes and teeming with good bacteria and probiotics, all with a poverty of calories.  Certain folk cultures have prized sauerkraut as a remedy for canker sores, but I'd rather not explore that application intellectually or pragmatically.  Most of us just put it on sausages, pork chops or Reuben sandwiches -- which pretty well aligns with my plan of consumption.

But not for awhile.  For the next several weeks we will be relegated to waiting, wondering what's going on with all that hidden bubbling, and occasionally skimming off the frothy scum.  And then, on that magical day in early October, looking at each other to see who dares to try it first.

Ghengis Khan, here we come.