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.

Nudging Up the Ramp

We have only had them one day.  It’s too soon, I know, to worry.

But of course I do.

Yesterday we received from one of our favorite hatcheries 4 new hens.  One of the pairs— the Light Sussex — is a breed new to our flock.  The other pair —the  Ameraucanas — we have, but as these two new ones (a black and a white splash) demonstrate, the breed colorations can be so varied that often the only characteristics they manifest in common are the fluffy, tufted faces and their blue eggs.  Twelve weeks old, they arrived two to a box at the local Post Office.  Understandably they are a little anxious and unsettled.  

Once home I lifted each from her cardboard conveyance and settled her into coop.  Closing the door I noted that they had no trouble finding the feeder inside and gobbling down a bit of lunch.  Checking on them later in the afternoon I was delighted to see that they had found their way down the ramp to explore the self-contained run below.  There they had located the waterer and yet another feeder, and space enough to move around and flap their wings, but contained enough to protect them and encourage their acclimation.  

Parenthetically I’ll insert that when new girls arrive in our care they stay quarantined for at least a month for health safety reasons, but because of their youth they typically remain in their separate enclosure for a couple of months more beyond that until they grow big enough to hold their own with the older, larger girls.  Eventually, when the time seems right, they are moved over into the large chicken yard with the main flock.  These newest additions being older than some, their segregation will likely be shorter rather than longer.

All was well until bedtime.  Our nightly routine is that when dusk descends the hens make their way inside the run and up the ramp into the enclosed coop for the night.  Either Lori or I goes out soon after and closes up the hatches and latches.  That’s when I noticed that these four new arrivals had not gone up inside the coop but were still stirring nervously down below.  In fact, they seemed allergic to the ramp, doing almost anything to avoid stepping up onto it.  I let them be — for a time — but at two later intervals returned to check their progress.  It had only gotten worse.  By now the four had nestled in the crawl space underneath.  

It isn’t the end of the world I reminded myself.  The enclosure is sturdy and locked; they should be safe there, generally speaking.  There are straw bales stacked around the outside keeping most of the wind at bay, plus they have each other to help stay warm.  Ultimately, though, you want them all together inside.  After all, there are all kinds of stories of hungry raccoons reaching through the fencing and…well, I prefer not to think about all that.  But of course I did — all through the sleepless night.    I hustled out to the chicken yard at first light, eager to confirm that they had survived the night; dreading the prospect of discovering that they hadn’t.  

I’m happy to report the former.  Hearing my approach they one by one emerged from their makeshift roost in the crawl space underneath the actual one, flapped their wings and took themselves a drink, and went about their morning busyness.  

But already I’m stressing about tonight.  The temperature is dropping — down to just above zero during the night — and they will better serve themselves, and each other, by heading upstairs.  And all in all I, myself, would prefer a more satisfying night’s sleep.   So, I tried to seduce them upward with apple pieces up the ramp and into the coop.  And they enjoyed the pieces they could reach…on the ramp’s lower levels. But they did not take the upward bait.  

Chalk it down as another restless night — for me if not for them.  I still want them to learn this whole business of climbing the ramp, mounting the roosts, and being secured within.  But in the meantime they have each other.

There is something pragmatic about that, I’ll grant you.  Aborigines in the Australian Outback and Eskimos in Siberia have long mitigated the severity of winter’s brutality with “three-dog nights” – nights so cold that you needed the added warmth of three dogs brought into the bed with you to survive.  And these chickens have each other.

Which is to say that up or down, it’s more than pragmatic; there is something holy about it as well, even in the chicken yard.  To put it simply, we were created to need each other.

That resonates with me in these chilly times – with the prospect for colder still; socially, politically, internationally, economically as well as emotionally and psychologically.  There will yet be moments and seasons when I will comfortably return to the silent comfort of my own counsel, but I will do my best to take for myself the wisdom I am encouraging in these new arrivals — to not neglect the warmth of one another.  New friends, as well as old ones.  New associations alongside the more familiar.  The embrace of family yet surrounding.  

It’s tempting to simply find my way down below, but in these chilly times it is also good and right and holy to risk moving up the ramp into the keeping of each other – to offer whatever warmth we have to share, but moreso to receive the blanketing support we need though sometimes deny.  

In the meantime, in the chicken yard, there is always tomorrow.