Celestial Dawning in our Living Room

We decided we needed more light.  It wasn't so much an existential realization, but yet another gardening one.  It had been that kind of a day.  Earlier, we had tangentially filled up the 18 deck tubes with soil in preparation for their planting in the upcoming weeks.  In the living room, the four-foot table supporting the seeding trays was busily soaking up the sun with a little reinforcement after sunset, but the grow-lights we had purchased were only marginally covering the seedlings -- and that only if we continued to move them around on the table every day or so.  Given the facts that we were in the process of planting a few more seeds that Steve had mailed us, and that in the next day or two we would need to separate several of the already-leafing sprouts currently sharing space into compartments of their own, more light was going to be a necessity.  The recent issue of Urban Farm magazine had a design for a build-it-yourself model, constructed from basic florescent shop light fixtures and 1 1/4" PVC pipe and connectors.  We decided to give it a try.

Thanks to the helpful employee at Lowe's who was willing to saw our two 10-foot lengths of pipe into the prescribed permutations, and gather up the various "T's", "angles" and "ends," all we had to do was assemble and place.  Now, with this addition of these 4 four-foot florescent bulbs to our previous 2 two-foot ones, our living room is aglow.  It remains to be seen if the new light will coax seeds out of the soil, but it almost certainly is drawing neighbors out of their houses to ponder this new celestial phenomenon:  the Aurora Borealis of Crown Colony Court.

Crop Report:
Cucumbers -- adding second generation of leaves
Brandywine Tomatoes -- strong, with true leaves
Green Zebra-striped Tomatoes -- questionable
Leeks -- wispy, but sturdy
Beets -- Hanging in there
Chard -- withered
Peppers -- encouraging
Flowers -- mixed bag

The Site in Sight

Yesterday was "Selection Sunday" -- though not for me in the same sense that it was for the rest of the country.  While basketball teams from coast to coast were biting their nails in anticipation of NCAA tournament invitations, Lori, Harold, Sandy and I were were tromping over the Ladd's property evaluating options for siting the garden.  I felt like Goldilocks tasting porridge.  One site was too wet.  One site was too near the corn field that receives regular chemical sprays.  One site was too shaded by surrounding trees...

...but eventually, one location seemed "just right."  Nearer the house, the human activity might discourage at least some of the deer, the pellet evidence of which was ubiquitous around the property.  Nearer the house also means nearer the water; and the storage building is easily accessible, as well.  Once accomplished, the selection almost seemed to have selected itself.  Yes, perhaps it is narrower than some of the alternatives, but it compensates in length.  In any case, it offers plenty of space -- 40 X 20 feet was how we stepped it off, plus or minus.  Good sun in both morning and afternoon, little shade; a slight slope for drainage; water, existing turf, and -- most importantly -- an invitation.

I deposited my new lawnmower (still in its box), and my new roll of net fencing (still in its box) in the storage building, took one last anticipatory look at the site, willing its fertility, and rejoined the others inside the house.

Later that evening I could hardly keep my mind off the seedlings busily sprouting under the lights on the table in the living room.  Earlier in the weekend Lori had commented about how protective she has come to feel about the delicate little stems creeping above the soil.  Ditto for me.  Already we have a great deal of emotional energy, affection and anticipation invested in them.  The prospect of freakish frosts, abusing winds, nibbling rabbits and deer and burrowing squirrels and moles feels a little like it did to drive out of the college dormitory parking lot the first time, leaving my children behind.  Exposed; vulnerable; subject to all the vicissitudes of real life's independence; hoping -- praying -- that the parts over which a parent has any control in their raising will prove to be strong enough; praying that the parts over which parents have no control will not prove too destructive.

To be sure, "dropping off" my little seedlings is still some time away.  It's weeks, yet, until the frost threat is safely past, and my wispy little green children still have lots of growing and strengthening to do.  There will be thinning, yet, and separating and re-potting to allow for still sturdier roots.  

But that eventual day is, nonetheless, approaching; and it's fun to move forward with a mental picture of where their roots will finally stretch.  Rooted, stretching, and hopefully producing something edible.

All the odds against it, notwithstanding.

Tracing the Seeds of the Seeding

Progress Report:
Swiss Chard sprouting wildly
Beets running a close second
Leeks whisping skyward
Green zebra stripe tomatoes progressing nicely
Brandywine tomatoes coming along
Finally some movement on the cucumbers
Marigolds, calendula, and sunflowers showing strength
Only two pepper sprouts.
Chiles holding firm at zilch.  Zero.  Come on, Anaheims, Anchos and pimientos!  Do something!

So how did this madness begin?  So far I have invested more in seeds than I care to confess.  I have purchased grow-lights, net fencing, a reel mower, organic potting mix, seeding cells, and base materials for 18 growing tubes to be positioned on our deck.
               ...And untold numbers of books.
                       ...Plus subscriptions to a couple of magazines.
 And let me just add that none of it has been cheap. 
Which is to say that I'd sure like to see some chiles.

How did all this begin?  It's hard to untangle the threads of it all to isolate that single one.  Indeed, perhaps it wasn't any single one, but rather the thickening accumulation of several.  It certainly reaches back a couple of years to our burgeoning interest in cooking.  Our culinary experience in Italy focused new light on real and fresh ingredients, which led to some heightened sensitivity to nutrition and health.  Reading about the industrial food system added a sickening feeling about the meats and vegetables we routinely used, and our involvement in two Community Supported Agriculture farms honed my appreciation and my intrigue.  More reading deepened my appreciation of agrarian values, and the grant work on terroir has put me intellectually spiritually in the thick of this passion.

But two awakenings dislodged me most violently from the relative safety and simplicity of my observational recliner.  I have no recollection which came first -- or if, more likely, they simply confronted me together like friends and family at an intervention.  One was the comprehension -- midwifed by the work of environmentalists armed with forecasts about peak oil, and readings about the simple mechanics of modern agriculture and its utter and complete dependence on cheap oil -- that food production as we have come to know it is unsustainable.  I don't expect it to happen in my lifetime -- maybe not even in my children's lifetime -- but not very far down this road we will reach an agricultural dead end.  If we can't any longer produce the fertilizers on which we have come to depend; if we couldn't transport it to or spread it on the fields it wouldn't do us any good even if we had it; if we couldn't fuel the equipment to harvest and transport it, it wouldn't do us any good to grow it; and then we would be stuck.  Empty fields.  Empty shelves.  Empty pantries.  Chances are that, shortly thereafter, we will get hungry, and hopefully somebody -- hopefully a lot of somebodies -- will still be around who remember how to grow something edible the old-fashioned way.

That is when the other hand slapped me:  I wouldn't be one of them.  I don't have a clue how this stuff happens.  I grew up in the Hamburger Helper, blue-box mac and cheese generation quite thoroughly trained to gratefully receive my meals from the ever helpful food engineers at Betty Crocker, Duncan-Hines, General Mills, Swift, Kraft, Hormel, et al.  They took care of all that "dirty work" and hassle; mine was simply the delicious job of boiling a little water, browning a little meat scraped off the styrofoam tray, microwaving a little of this or that, and enjoying.  Well, at least eating.  I have no idea how food really comes to be.  In fact, save how to put some words together, and some musical notes, I don't know how to do much of anything.

And that sobering reality started keeping me up at night.
Until I couldn't stand it anymore.
I had caught a bad case of farm envy.  Hatched in the deepest recesses of my soul was the disruptive determination to gain the holy experience -- to participate in the sacred synergy -- of putting food on the table, from literal start to finish.  Soil to supper.  Dirt to dinner.  Bat guano, worm casings, sphagnum, patience, attentiveness and all.

And so the education has begun.  Already I am unspeakably blessed.  Not every guy has a wife so loving, so supportive and indulgent as to allow a seeding operation in the living room.  And no nascent farmer with such a total absence of knowledge has any right to expect even a single germinated seed to give him such hope.  But there this table stands:  front and center in the living room, sprouting.

There is this other problem, of course.  A loving and supportive wife I have; organic nutrients I can get.  Grow-lights I can plug into a timer.  But patience?  That, shall I say, is a "growing edge."

That will have to be enough said for now.  It's time to mist my crops again.

And pray.

Watching for Old Fashioned Growth

Along the curiously winding path toward this whole "farming" endeavor was the Practical Farmers of Iowa annual conference that Lori and I attended in January.  During the course of that helpful event we became fond of two elderly but quite enthusiastic gentlemen in the exhibit area marketing a "revolutionary" snake oil reputed to accentuate photosynthesis, thereby accelerating and strengthening plant growth.  On a real farm you would apply it by the gallon.  In our application, a mister would suffice.  Of course we couldn't resist.  We bought it and have been eagerly awaiting the growing season.

Not quite sure of what it is -- and the research documents we were given notwithstanding -- and not quite sure, therefore, of it ultimate safety ("absolutely organic and safe" we were promised), we took the road more cautious and declined application on anything edible.  The flower seeds, however, were fair game.  We set up a kind of "test plot", with one row of flower seeds getting regular mists of this elixir of the gods; the companion row getting H2O alone.  All this, of course, was set in motion on Saturday when the grand seeding took place.  Since that time, my days have been happily anchored around animated misting -- 3 if not 4 times per day; anytime the soil betrayed signs of drying.  I am pursuing this project "by the book" since I have no experience, and the books say "keep the soil moist" -- a more challenging rubric than one might think.  A "day job" sort of gets in the way.

So, the misting -- both ways.  It was with some lament, then, that I jumped on a plane yesterday and left the "farming" to Lori.  She is, of course, immanently qualified and capable -- at least if my own expertise is any measure -- so it wasn't concern as much as envy:  she would get to tend and watch for precious signs of progress while I sat in day-long meetings.

Sure enough, then -- last night as I was getting ready for bed, my cell phone signaled the arrival of a message; a photograph, it turned out to be, from home, with the simple descriptor, "Growth!"  Sure enough, there, plainly visible in the grainy cellphone camera close-up, was green.  "Snake oil" green, it turns out.  Yes, the only seeding cells so far showing any movement whatsoever are those nudged along by our super mist.

Now I am having second thoughts.  Maybe we have been too cautious.  Just think of the pumpkin-size tomatoes we could have had if we had only sprayed the stuff on those seeds; just think of the beanstalk we could have grown on which we could have almost certainly climbed to the heavens.

But, then, come to think of it that whole beanstalk thing came with it own share of problems.  I reminded myself that I would be giddily content to see a tomato or a squash or an anything of any size at all sprout from one of these little seeds.  And, at the end of the day, I would just as soon watch it happen the old-fashioned way -- with water and sun, and soil and care...

...and time.

Let the Growing Begin!

Finally, they are in soil.  When it came right down to it, it took more effort than I had anticipated -- psychologically, if not physically.  For weeks, I have been accumulating seeds for my "farm."  I have relished the several experiences of browsing through the catalogs, making my selections, and anticipating the deliveries.  I have kept them bundled together in the box that contained the first shipment.  I have accumulated supplies.  I have counted the days, "anxious" in every sense of the word.  Eager.  Fearful.  Apprehensive.  Giddy.  And then for purely irrational reasons -- impatience, a full moon, whatever -- I decided that yesterday was the day.

On my way home from meetings, I stopped at the garden store and assessed my options for soil.  What a wonderland!  This gardening thing is a linguist's paradise.  I mean, where else do you get to toss around words like "sphagnum" and "peat"?  Where else do you find labels celebrating and extolling the virtues of earthworm casings and bat guano?  Even if nothing grows, I'll get to talk about all kinds of cool stuff.

Finally, it seemed like I was ready.   I laid out the seeding cartons...and then decided I wasn't ready.  I needed something under them or surely I would ruin the table.  I removed the cartons, and spread out towels.  And then I was ready...and then I wasn't.  Wouldn't it be better to have some kind of plastic over the towels?  Retrieving some rolls from the garage, I fashioned something as close to a waterproof membrane as I could manage.  And then I was ready.  I filled the cells with the casing and guano-rich soil...and then decided I wasn't ready.  I was going to need a mister.  As I was driving back from Target, it crossed my mind that something about my subconscious was imposing delay tactics.  Perhaps like the way that saying something out loud makes it somehow more real, actually inserting a seed into soil represented a kind of commitment to this large and largely unknown undertaking; as if sowing a seed was tantamount to crossing a line of no return.  As long as I was reading or shopping or studying or talking, I could pretend my way through this whole mythical farming/gardening undertaking.  But actually planting a seed, staking in the identifying marking stick, and, yes, misting the whole undertaking -- all of sudden, this was real.

But, as with a marriage, I am now committed; "in" -- for better or for worse; the dirt under my nails standing in as an enduring and virtual equivalent of the ring upon my finger.  Never mind that I hardly know what I'm doing, there is attention to pay; nurture to contribute; guidance to provide; knowledge to acquire; experience to gain; beginner's luck to appreciate and failures to learn from.  It isn't imaginary anymore.

I know that the very thought is preposterous, but I almost felt a hint of disappointment when I woke and passed by my little tabletop foreshadowing of a garden and found no green emerging from the brown.  After all, the very seeding had been so long in coming, it almost felt right that the seeds, themselves, would have somehow sensed the magnitude of the moment and hustled themselves into verdant growth.  No, not even I really expected it.  Even I know this much about the glacial pace of growing.  But that didn't stop me from wistfully looking twice.

I have a hunch that this won't be my last lesson in the great and powerful discipline of patience.  One more thing about which I have an almost infinite amount to learn.  What I can for now is that I have started -- actually.  No longer is it all about accumulation of supplies and tools and dreams.  Suddenly it is real.  The undertaking has commenced.  And I can't seem to take my eyes off of it...

...or stop smiling. 

Yes, But Can She Wrestle?

The big news around here the last couple of days has been the match in the state wrestling tournament...that didn't happen.  Joel Northrup of Linn-Mar of Marion drew Cedar Falls' Cassy Herkelman as his first-round opponent at the 112-pound weight in Class 3-A.   A boy wrestling a girl.  No word so far about Cassy's reaction -- by all assumptions, she was ready to go.  It all, however, presented certain challenges for Joel.  As a distant -- and even more dispassionate -- observer, I can sympathize with him.  Don't get me wrong; I am fully aware that High School wrestling between the sexes has been going on since the beginning of time, though typically in quieter, more covert and typically more perfumed settings; not hardly sanctioned, coached, or conducted in front of thousands of screaming fans.  Wrestling seems like an awfully slithery, grabby and feely contest that might best be confined to only the most affectionate or disinterested combatants.  That, apparently, was Joel's sentiment as well.  If you will pardon the pun, it just didn't feel right to him.


So, he forfeited the match.  


In a statement released accounting for his decision, Joel wrote:  “I have a tremendous amount of respect for Cassy and Megan (Black, the tournament’s other female entrant) and their accomplishments. However, wrestling is a combat sport and it can get violent at times. As a matter of conscience and my faith, I do not believe that it is appropriate for a boy to engage a girl in this manner."


His Dad went on to clarify, "He wants to win state, just like anybody else, but his convictions and his beliefs are stronger than his desire to win state."


Everyone, of course, is weighing in on the topic.  Some condemning the match-up as inappropriate by definition.  Some have scoffed at Joel's reticence.  I can't help but agree with Lori's Dad who mused that it was a lose-lose proposition for young Joel:  if he lost to "a girl" he would never hear the end of it; if he won, the victory would always -- implicitly -- carry an asterisk beside it -- "triumph over 'a girl'."  Whatever one thinks of the proprieties involved, it does seem sensible to just sit this one out.


I grieve for the guy.  Nobody wants to arrive at the state tournament and lose out on one's dream -- let alone in the first round.  But what saddens me more is the total absence of conversation about young Cassy's ability.  We don't know if she is talented or a pretender.  Typically match-ups are sliced and diced as the relative strengths and weaknesses are balanced.  In this case, we have learned nothing about her skill -- only her gender.  


Chances are, we knew that already.

"...Can't Buy Me Love"

Several years ago I was part of a church mission group that traveled to a tiny Nicaraguan village that was completely "off the grid."  A single hand-pumped water well in the center of the community was the only water available; there was no electricity -- in fact, there was precious little of anything except for a church, the several crude houses, and a tiny medical clinic that was the focus of our group's efforts for the week; those structures, plus the people who occupied and animated them with their living.  There were no jobs, no "industry," and virtually no possessions beyond the few changes of clothing and the rudiments of necessity for cooking and repairing and gardening.

But -- and here is the mystery of it -- they were happy:  happy within themselves, and happy together with each other.  Even as I write those words I hear them to be inadequate.  These were not happy people; they were people of joy.  Suffice it to say that we fell in love with these people -- and were slightly in awe of them and their spirit.  By Wednesday night of that week, after the work of the day was finished, after the evening meal shared and put away, we were sitting together as a group in the deep darkness pierced only by the stars above us reflecting together on our experiences thus far.  What had we seen?  What had we noticed?  What had we learned?  What had we felt?  We talked about -- what else? -- the people, and we talked about their joy.  Summing up our affection and also our compassion for them, one of us verbalized what many of us were thinking:  "I just wish we could help these people."  And then, after several moments of contemplative silence, another of us confessed, "I'm not sure that they are the ones that need the help.  They are happy."

Somehow, we had discerned, in their emptiness they were full to running over.

I thought of that experience again while completing Ben Hewitt's engaging book, The Town That Food Saved:  How One Community found Vitality in Local Food about the small Vermont town of Hardwick that, in the midst of all the usual problems faced by rural communities haunted by a once-vibrant past and few present opportunities, is finding some fresh glimmers of vitality.  In his final chapter Hewitt writes:

"I believe that Hardwick is succeeding not in spite of its relative impoverishment, but because of it.  What is happening in Hardwick does not happen in the absence of trust and collaboration, it does not happen without a shared sense of destiny.  Call it vision, if you want...  And I believe that this trust and collaboration are in no small ways social and cultural responses to economic hardship.  Money does many things very well, and one of those things is to insulate us from each other.  It becomes a safety net, and when we carry a s safety net made of cash, we allow the one made of community to  slip through our fingers.  By and large, the people of Hardwick have not had this luxury" (p. 219).

Money...successfully insulating us from each other.  If our mutual indifference to and estrangement from each other as a culture and as a world is the mortal sin and grief I belief God sees it to be, then Hewitt's insight might turn out to be the core of what the Apostle Paul meant in his observation to Timothy that "the love of money is the root of all evil" (1 Timothy 6:10).

I hardly know what to do with this wisdom -- I, who likes my toys, my creature comforts, as much as the next guy.  And I don't mean this to glamorize or romanticize poverty.  It all leads me to surmise, however, that a culture now almost totally and absolutely focused on the economy and accumulation of wealth -- when every vote that is cast and every policy decision made are predicated on a kind of slavery to the bottom line -- has gotten seriously and almost certainly mortally off track.  We have bitten a very different apple, but the results, I suspect, will be the same.

The Beatles had it right all along -- for the whole of us:  "I don't care too much for money, money can't buy me love."