Shifting Gears and Gasing Up

Seasons change.  I not only know that, I look forward to it.  One of Iowa's celebrative features is its seasonal diversity -- four of them, each unique and delicious in its own way.  Yes, even winter.  In addition to its own intrinsic wonder and introspective beauty, there is no more beautiful spring than one that follows a particularly bitter winter.  In future years, as this gardening project develops and becomes more familiar, I know that late autumn and the settling frost of winter will be welcomed respite from the exertions of the summer field. 

But we have just gotten here.  I have mowed a grand total of twice -- only just completed the greenhouse and cleared the space that will be my inaugural garden.  We have, after all, been unpacking and reorganizing and hanging pictures and baking for the open house -- vastly more pressing pursuits.  And only now for the most part on the "settled" side of those demands, it seems too soon -- and almost unfair -- to shift our attention to winter; never mind that our bodies are over-weary from the unusual demands and physicality of the move.  Knees and ankles and muscles seem imprisoned in perpetual ache, no doubt looking forward to the more sedentary pages of the calendar.  And it will be pure delight to nestle into the sofa in front of the newly serviced fireplace and listen to the icy wind howl and watch, through the windows, the flakes fall and drift. 

We moved here, though, to garden -- to open the soil and tend it and beckon out of it something edible and nourishing and good, and springtime seems a long time to wait. 

But we don't get to decide.  The leaves have fallen and the temperature is following in kind.  The foreshadowings of winter are insinuating themselves more and more.  And so we have officially made the switch.  With the help of kind and sympathizing friends, the mower deck has been disengaged and parked; replaced with the snowblower that sits ready and, if I can anthropomorphize a bit, eager.  Lori's prerequisite for entertaining this crazy idea was that I get her out of the driveway on snowy mornings.  Having, then, honored her side of the idea by moving here, I am ready to honor mine.  So, bring on the snow.  I'm prepared.

One Way or the Other, It's All About the Rain

"It was a dark and stormy night..." 
OK, I know that sounds like a Mickey Spillane novel, but in our case it is true.  Close and jarring lightening, punctuated by thunderous grumblings and splattering rain whipped by severe winds spooked the night.  It was a meteorological melodrama that prompted more than one query as to whether we should sleep in the lower level.  It isn't a storm cellar by a long shot, but it is lower and at least feels more grounded, with a few more corners remote from the prospect of flying glass. 

Morning, however, finds all well and mostly in its place.  The sky is blue, with scattered clouds -- like a guilty child trying to pretend its innocence.  Walking Tir through the neighborhood we were serenaded by gurgling storm sewers while dodging puddle-bloated branches blown drown from trees and damming the gutters.  My deck garden seems to have survived intact.  My single pea-sized tomato looks no worse for the disruption, and the half-dozen or so peppers curling and dangling from their stems managed to hold on as well.  The rest of the tomato plants and tomatillos are still covered with blossoms.  Tir and I offer a sigh of relief.

Hopefully we will be able to get some work done at the big garden.  The almost daily rains will have elevated the mowing alert status to "red," and the trenches will be inundated with weeks.  It would be funny if it weren't aggravating:  at the Berclair farm, nothing can be done because of the drought.  At the Baxter farm, nothing can be done because of the rain. 

Go figure.

With Hands Out of the Way, the Mind Was Free to Wander

I managed to arrive in time to get in on the last of the okra harvest for the morning.  It was my second volunteer morning at Turtle Farm, and Ben and Angela were already closing in on the end of the last row by the time I arrived at 8 a.m.  There is more to come, to be sure -- okra, it turns out, is prolific -- but the nubs we left on the woody stalks will have to wait for another day.  At the end of the morning there were more raspberries to seek out and pluck off, though the rainy summer has not been kind to the bushes.

My major assignment for the morning, however, was garlic.  "German Extra Hardy garlic" to be exact, one of the stiff neck varieties.  Dug earlier in the summer, bundled and hung in the barn to dry, it was time to snip the stalks, trim the whiskery roots, and clean away the outer papers.  And, of course, cull the rotted and unappealing.  After my private tutorial, Ben and Angela and freshly arrived John headed off to a different part of the farm to pick summer squash.  The farming neophyte, I remained behind, back of the shed with my scissors, clippers, stacked bunches and collecting bins. 

The breeze was cool, the morning was quiet, the task was pleasantly manageable for a farmer's assistant equipped with my limited skill set, and there was something pleasantly meditative about the repetitive snipping and shedding.  After awhile, the hands continue the steps by rote, leaving the mind...the spirit...to wander in any of a zillion directions -- at times analytically dissecting an issue; occasionally simply brooding enigmatically around and over an idea; sometimes simply lost in the morning's reverie.  The process of thumbing away the dirty outer papers of the garlic kinesthetically mirrored in my hands the analogical work underway in my mind.

A part of the allium family -- whose siblings include onions, shallots, leeks and scallions -- garlic, as even in the most inattentive culinarian knows, is an intensely fragrant bulb segmented into cloves, whose fingertip residue is want to persist even through repeated scrubbings.  Which, if you happen to like garlic, isn't all bad.  The scent can be an inviting reminder of recipes carefully flavored, company lovingly fed, or in my case, farm labor affectionately contributed...

...and a mind loosed to wander without rein.

Body and Soul in Different Places

All the storms had been wreaking havoc on the farm.  One nascent row after another had been washed out and replanted, blown over, or beaten up by the wind.  When I arrived Monday morning to volunteer a few hours of labor, those already at work looked forlorn, but philosophical.  "This is farming," they mused with a wry smile.

We set to work pulling onions from a field that looked more like a rice paddy.  A tug on the stem produced a "schlook" of a sucking sound; the hole left behind filling immediately with water.  More than I might have predicted were salvageable, though the compost pile swelled with a sum of rotten ones.  We laid the firm ones out in the sunniest place we could find to dry.

For a change of pace we moved to the raspberry patch, where we moved along on either side of the rows; taking hold of the leaves to avoid the thorns and lecherously pulling them back to examine underneath for ripe berries.  More than once I quietly eased a branch back into place in deference to a wasp that already laid claim to the red ones on that stem.

My final assignment was a row of tomatoes -- "garden peach" tomatoes, to be precise.  "How do you decide what to plant," I asked Angela, the owner. With tomatoes alone there must be a hundred different varieties.  And how many kinds of squashes and egg plants and onions and beans?  "Trial and error," she responded; "experience, and talking with other farmers about what has done well for them.  Every year I experiment with at least one new thing."  She called attention to a couple of expressions of cucumbers -- one sort of "tried and true"; the other one she had tried by request.  The requested variety had produced a fraction of the time-tested one.  "It has to be economically viable," she added, which this one hadn't proved to be.  That, and she hadn't been all that crazy about its taste.

Finishing my row and filling my boxes (four I was proud to say), I joined the others who were breaking for lunch.  I was on my way to the day's other pursuits.  There was a camaraderie in the shed only born from shared labor, purpose and sweat, and I regretted that I had to leave.

That night, I felt almost physically ill.  The temperature at the farm had been close to 100-degrees, and the humidity had been about as high.  By dinner time, the heat was still working on my insides, and still emanating from my skin.  Despite a cool shower and countless classes of water; no matter how long I sat beneath the fan I couldn't seem to cool off.  Which is just to acknowledge that I can't remember when my body has felt that bad.

Paradoxical, because thinking back over the onions pulled and the berries picked and the tomatoes carefully selected and placed gently in the boxes -- the soil joined and its generosity received and the tasks completed -- I can't remember when my soul has felt that good.

Praying for Rain

Fal•low / [fal-oh]
–adjective
1. (of land) plowed and left unseeded for a season or more; uncultivated.
2. not in use; inactive: My creative energies have lain fallow this year.

Source: Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1)
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006.

There is something sad about it. We drove around the circumference of the Bee County farm land yesterday – a giant bald expanse carved out of a brushy thicket; clear, except for random tree; flat, except for a runoff ravine or two. Ready, but empty. Fallow, for the moment. There has been no rain – less than two inches, Troy tells us, since September – and so it makes no sense to plant…yet. There is, of course, still hope. A growing season deadline approaches, but there is still time. It could rain today and everything would change tomorrow. And today has begun with clouds – as did yesterday and who knows how many days before. This isn’t the first time this land has demanded of us patience – and forgiveness. It could rain anyday; we’ll have to wait and see.

In the meantime, the land simply sits: ready, turned, cleared, full of capacity; opportune.
But empty. Unused. Dormant.
If the land were a child it would be parked in front of a TV with an opened bag of chips, numbed by the innocuous drone on the screen and sated by the nutritionless crunch from the bag.

It is, as I say, somehow sad all this fallow possibility. But, then, I’ve known people similarly dormant, with reasons far more inscrutable – rich, gifted soil of the spirit, uncultivated; inactive; waiting, less for rain than for some unfathomed initiative or inspiration or, perhaps, some catalyzing invitation. In truth, I suppose, I have been that person more than once in my life, and I am grateful for those personal saints who came upon me in those dusty seasons and sprinkled me into vitality. Such graces received invariably makes me wonder about graces I dispense – or don’t.

Meanwhile, I pray for rain in Berclair – on all of us, I suppose – that our vast and fertile soils might give rise to that of which we are capable.

The Heritage Tour -- Berclair, part 2

We were struck by the precarious nature of farming. Talking with Troy, the peer who farms our land and much more, he recounted the experience of recent years that included two floods and an extended draught. Miserable crops bookending no crop -- the vagaries and vulnerabilities of tending the soil. He deals the cards -- fertilizing the soil, planting the best seed he can buy, working the soil when rain surfaces the sand -- but ultimately the game is beyond his control. He may or may not have a crop to harvest, depending on the rain that may or may not come, or come too early or too late or two fast.

"It takes a special kind of person to be a farmer," we agreed as we drove back down the road; someone who can deal with the ambiguities and disappointments, the hard work and and often futile expense.

Is it optimism that keeps him going -- or a quieter kind of hope? Is it a simple passion for the effort regardless of result? Or is it what it is for all of us -- albeit on a more dramatic scale -- who enjoy no guarantees about the fruitfulness of our efforts? Exactly what, for example, is the reliable harvest of any one of my sermons into which I have invested the most fertile hours of a week?

I have no idea the emotions Troy feels when he lays his head on the pillow each night, and I wouldn't presume to romanticize them. But to us he betrayed no despair. Rather, what he put forward was a good-natured, philosophical peacefulness reflecting the conviction that he has done what is his to do, and prepared for the worst, he hopes for the best. It is, I think, something like the scriptures describe as "casting bread upon the waters..."

Finally, it is the best that any of us can do.