Winter Blessings

More food to be had
I was glad to see so many people stock up for the Winter last week. Hopefully all of your freezers and pantries are packed and you are prepared for a Winter of local produce. But if you would be interested in another delivery of veggies in the next few weeks, please let us know. The greens are still going strong, the roots will be harvestable until the ground is frozen, and sweet potatoes, onions and garlic are all plentiful in storage. If you need more, you know where it’s at.

Feedback welcomed
We do not do a formal survey, but we do want to hear your criticism. What can this CSA do better? If you will not be returning next year, why not? If you will be, why? What did you want more and what did want less of? What other things would you most like to see in your share? We want you to help us evolve.

2011 is in the history books
Twenty-five weeks later, we have come to the end of another CSA season. While to many of us another season, another year has passed like so many before, to some of us (like Clark), this first time around has revealed a whole, exciting new world. We hope newcomers and oldtimers alike have found something nourishing in this process, something to grow on and seek more of, something deliciously enriching, something dignifying and mysterious, connecting, anew or all over again. Clark is 10 days from 1-year old. From the NICU to home to the great green outside world, it has been a wild and revolutionary year, here and at large as well. Although we are sometimes too busy to think it, we are immeasurably blessed by a bounteous world of love and generosity; our bushels are full.

Despite—perhaps in part because—of its unavoidable challenges, farming is wonderful work; it is grounding and elevating at the same time, humbling and rewarding, exhausting and exhilarating. We are not quite capable of setting up camp in town, but many of us are Occupy Turners Station and Occupy Bedford, standing for what we stand on, as Wendell Berry might say. These spaces, to our dying day, we will not concede our lives, seeds, and earth to the industrial exploiters. Wall Street would have us sacrifice our farm for maximum short-term bushels of corn, to be internationally speculated upon. Small farmers survive because billions of dollars cannot buy an ounce of homegrown beauty; flavor is not a fad; stewarding a sacred space is an ancient art. The love for working the earth is DNA-deep.
Yes, times are hard. I wonder often, with some apprehension, what kind of world Clark will live to see. The climate scientists’ predictions of more common and more ferocious “natural” disasters haunts my hopes. But I am emboldened and encouraged by this community we belong to. The sum of our small, daily, unnoticed actions, it seems to me, is huge. If we are to preserve this planet for our progeny, we will owe it to rediscovering those connections that bind us, to caring where our things come from, to valuing the who and how of the work that keeps us alive. It is when our relationships become too removed and abstract that young children die crossing the desert to get to a sweatshop farm to produce disease-causing cantaloupes. I believe this CSA is good medicine. Thanks for your commitment to simplicity and directness.

Thanks all around
Sleep deprivation is a form of torture. Child-rearing is sleep deprivation. Therefore….No, it’s not that bad, but we have wearily wobbled a number of days. Farming is more than a full-time job, teaching public high school is more than a full-time job, and caring for a baby is a full-time job. So, we get by with a lot of help from our friends and family. A Place on Earth is a community effort. So many thanks to go around:
Thanks to our parents for giving Clark the best care on Tuesdays and Fridays, for feeding the famished troops and us, for calming conversation and grandparental jubilation. Thanks to John Bruggman for the best work-ethic and friend-ethic, for pure generosity and the art of pie-making. Thanks to Phyllis Fitzgerald for the full fount of wisdom, for thriftiness and conscientiousness, for unlocking the simple magic of food and flavors. Thanks to Molly and Don Brewer for loving us, for two early cheerful “good mornings” a week, for bringing the farm to the city. Thanks to Stan, Maria, Ben, Jonna, Ronnie, Carole and Susan for being a fabulous farm family, bringing laughter, determination and comraderie to the table every week. Thanks to each and every one of you, who respectfully and cherishingly share of our spread. We are each other’s angels, and we keep each other going.

Ronnie’s word
For the last word on 2011, we turn to the new word of 2012. Ronnie Hager finished his working share this year and decided he wanted more. He will live out here with his fiancé next year and will be our first intern. Ronnie is a good worker and a refreshing voice of optimism. We are very excited about the possibilities their presence produces.

Ronnie and Lori

I had grand visions before I began my first ever work share. Pulling weeds, picking veggies, digging holes in all types of weather seemed like distant, opaque reality when I thought of my future weekly trips to the farm. You see, I’m a struggling idealistic optimist of the naive sort, so thoughts of the realistic details of the “drudging” farm work were hard for me to palpate. Instead, I had visions of meeting good friends rooted in wholesome ideas, the experiential knowledge of the work behind my meals, and the feeling of the rhythm of those two things in motion.
Now it’s the end of our season. Of my weeks spent in A Place on Earth, I can undoubtedly say that I got all that I wanted from it; and then some. What surprised me was the difference in the palpation of my memories when I look back. Any memories of the “drudging” work is a distant and opaque; a shadow of the in-my-face memories of friends, knowledge, and the rhythm.
With a better first hand understanding of the big picture of organic farming I was happily able to confirm my belief that this really is the way our society should go forward with food. Organic CSA could economically support rural areas, feed cities, and do it all so that the next generation has better earth to live on. And eat from. It’s honest, intelligent, and the work actually relieved my back pain a couple times, so it’s healthy to do farm work. [Editor’s note: Farming may not solve your back problems.]
I feel grateful for Carden & Courtney to allow me to work with them and invite me into their home for lunch so many times. I’m personally proud of the experience. The food and work was refreshing and nutritious.

Cheers,
Ronnie

Y’all come back
The work of course never ends. The next big task is mulching the garlic. It’s time now to procure next Winter’s firewood. Seed orders need to go in. Soon enough the greenhouse will be back in action. Hope you are as eager as we are.
Peace,
Carden, Courtney, and Clark

Winding Down

Thanks to those of you who potlucked with us last Saturday. Once again the weather was auspicious, and we always enjoy the wonderful people of A Place on Earth being and belonging here. It was quite a treat to feast under the sun together.
Another growing season is winding down. Forecasts are calling for some frost this weekend. The basil, once so bounteous (some might say burdensome), lives on only in our freezers. Okra, likewise, will not come around fresh for many moons. While Summer’s profusion fades to past, Fall has its own majesty: hardy greens get sweeter and storage crops wait to roast our kitchens full of earth and warmth. We celebrate each cycle in its turn, and some weary ones of us look ahead longingly to frigid, shut-in days of Winter, stoking the literal fire with hard-earned wood fuel and the figurative fire of the imagination with visions of better things to come.
At least once every year I begin to despair that the future will find me with no food to harvest, or that excited, faithful shareholders will open their boxes only to find garlic and onions. So far—some 170 weeks in a row now—that has not been the case, but this year my gloomy outlook sank as low as it ever has. Three weeks of punishing upper 90-degree weather, a deepening drought, Fall crops not germinating, no way to irrigate, fruits being maliciously eaten or vandalized in the night, Clark crying again at 3 AM. It seemed this was going to be the year when every thing went wrong. But somehow or another the squeeze was eased, the retribution relented, the rains (albeit meagerly at first) resumed, and here we are, enjoying an august Autumn. One of these days I will lose this naïve nervousness, which, of course, will be when calamity strikes. Second thought, maybe I will hold on to that anxiety.
This is our fourth go-round on this farm. Soil tests reveal that we are making good progress in the fertility department. Our great old barn looks (from some angles) to be ready to last another 100 years. Our house has become a home, and our family is filling it up. These fields, trees, rocks, neighbors—this community—is becoming familiar. We will see how soon these dreams arise, but I can foresee a grove of fruit trees, animals perusing the pastures, diversity and conviviality abounding. We will take our lumps, no doubt, we will see our setbacks, but we are steadily making our way forward.
Thanks for joining in this dance with us. While our world is hampered by hurt and our hearts are riddled with holes, we find hope in the fact that life is still astoundingly beautiful and ever-renewing, that seeds want to germinate, plants want to grow, and people want to love. It is a pleasure to share this journey with you. May this food and this experience be full of healing for all the hurting.
Crop Update
Sweet potatoes look mighty nice. The rains of late have delayed digging, but we are hopeful that a dry period is now upon us. Look for these nutritious treats in your shares from here on out.
A wide variety of greens have been coming into their own with this lovely fall weather. I’ll do my best to identify for you the kale, collards, arugula, pac choi, tatsoi, and other mustards. Chard of course is still thriving too.
I’ve started thinning the parsnips this past week. These and beets, carrots, turnips, and rutabagas should keep us in the root crops.
Winter Squash performed exceptionally poorly this Summer. This year has provided a painful lesson about the dangers of working the soil when it’s wet. When the weather dries up the ground turns to brick and roots have a hard time finding what they need. You will still get some butternut, spaghetti, acorn, and delicate squash, but these fruits are pitifully small. Those of you with us last year will remember it was an incredibly robust squash harvest. That’s the way it goes, I suppose.
Garlic is still being sorted out for planting in the coming month. Can’t say enough how well it did this year. We’ve got some really nice seed to plant back out.
Onions are in abundance too. I really like these crops that store almost indefinitely.
This weekend will determine if we are still in a bounty of peppers, eggplant and tomatoes. Hate to see them go this early, but they’ve had a good ride.

Community Agriculture

What first drew me to CSA farming was the A. Specifically Autumnal Agriculture. I spent October 2000 and October 2002 in Purcellville Virginia working at Potomac Vegetable Farms. While heavy, humid July can easily dampen the romantic farming spirit, crisp, quiet Octobers are awesome. Farming, bedecked in glowing, golden Autumn colors, most feels like the idyll of Eden. The slow and deliberate sun sends once-numb fingers unbuttoning and stripping off layers. Great Summer efforts turn black from the first frosty night, retiring into the abyss to emerge in another lifetime. With the fallen annual successes also falls pride. One must stand humble and amazed before the whirring wheel of life to death. The earth is soft and sweet, settling into its seeming Winter slumber. Still tired at the end of the day—which comes so much sooner—I can see nothing so beautiful as the gift of farm and food.
The farming pursuit is full of purpose; you do not have to eat Rally’s, but you do have to eat. Fostering life that wants to live is also ennobling and enlightening; at work are great mysteries and, though the cycles spin round and round, always in abundance are surprises. Although our culture prefers to portray farmers as simpleminded and uncivilized, I have come to know many farmers as deep, creative thinkers, masters of ingenuity, deft managers of spontaneity, encyclopedias of diverse knowledge, modestly melding in with the marvels of the world.
Already allured by good work that challenges body, mind, and soul, I next discovered the equally enriching Community aspect of CSA. In Silt, Colorado, I worked at Peach Valley CSA Farm for the 2004 growing season. Whereas PVF in Virginia was 20 acres of produce and numerous full-time workers through the Summer, PVF Colorado was a single couple and a single apprentice, me. From Ken and Gail Kuhns of Peach Valley, I learned (among many other things) that small is, in fact, a superlative. Over the course of 25 years, the Kuhns’ farm had become a hub of good energy, a loving institution in the community, rippling its positive way through the Rocky Mountains. Working shares, who loved the farm, brought their children, who loved the farm and its strawberries. I could see nothing more important than generations of children growing up in and being nourished by the Kuhns’ embrace. Imagine 10 million farms blessing all our babies with wholesome food and good roots, a place to belong.
(The S in CSA is seems to be less defined. Shared/Supported/Smiling/Sustained/Shaped. What is your preferred S-word?)
I could see then no higher calling than CSA farmer, and so, seven years into A Place on Earth CSA, I still aspire to be one. Perhaps I will go to the grave still feeling like something of an imposter as a farmer. But I do see small signs sometimes that I am headed in the right direction. This past Tuesday, I was packing CSA boxes with one of our working shares, Ben, and his 3-year old daughter, Bailey. Over the last 7 years, we have had very few visits from young children, aside from potlucks. But twice in the last week we have had a brilliant toddler mind in our midst. Ben and Bailey were bagging tomatoes—a simple, mundane task that happens twice a week. But this time it was different. Each tomato was special and deliberately counted. Certain tomatoes looked like hotdogs and each one needed a gentle reminder, “Gentle.”
But what I heard several times that really caught my ear, that made my day, that made me feel that something even more important that food producing was going on, was. “This is fun.” Hardly any adult would ever utter such a thing. But come to think of it, I thought and think, this is fun. This is what I want to sustain. When we share good work and good food, feel purposeful and invigorated, problem-solve and smile-make, we are living up to the spirit of CSA. Whatever the dire straits in the manic world around, we have found some common ground and are sowing a few good seeds for the future.
New chicks
Six of the last seven Februarys we have received a box of beeping, day-old chicks. They brave the bitter cold under a heat lamp. This past Winter they arrived just in time for the coldest night of the year, and we lost three that first night. Every year a few hens feel the call and, rather than dropping an egg and being on their way, decide to sit on those eggs and turn them into chicks. Always before we have taken a few pecks to the hand and gathered the eggs out from underneath them.
This year, however, we let one go the distance. Although most of the eggs she sat on were apparently unfertilized, two of them were most certainly fertilized, and are now about two weeks old and as attached to their mama as Clark is to his. It has been a wonder to watch their lives unfold in the natural order. Mom keeps them warm and scratches through the ground until she finds the perfect food for them. She flies off the handle if the chicks appear endangered and goes berserk if she is momentarily separated.
This may do nothing to replace the chickens we lost earlier this Summer. The chicks may both be roosters and never lay an egg. But they have taught us a lot already, and, who knows, maybe they will fertilize the next batch.
Crop Update
I am determined to refrain from reciting my numerous failures in this newsletter. An updated casualty report will appear next time.
Potluck Reminder
We’re a couple of weeks away from the Autumn Potluck (Saturday, September 24, 3 pm til ??). We hope you’ll mark your calendars and plan on joining us to celebrate the gifts of this season. See you soon!

little things

A newsletter is forthcoming, but there are little things to share.
Two little chicks were hatched by a momma hen about two weeks ago. Momma started setting right about the time we lost the 7 hens and a rooster to the heat of early July. The magical three week window came and went with no chicks, and a week later, some sweet cheeps on their part and a joyous shout on ours announced another birth on the farm. It is a delight to watch them growing up with their very own momma.
And remember the sleep troubles of young Clark, which coincidentally happened around the same time as the avian heatstroke? Well, in spite of our doubt (every time he’d been fussy and drooly for the last several months, we’d think he was teething…and he wasn’t), he sprouted two little teeth shortly after he started sleeping well again. Buddy, they are sharp! But they’re pretty cute, too, and come in handy with all the solid food we’ve been procuring from the garden for him.
So hope and new perspective is born from suffering and grief. Thanks for sharing the journey with us.

Trips and tumbles…and thanks

Dear friends,
Over the years, I have written a number of newsletters that I chose not to send; they needed to be written but not read. Last week produced another of those self-pitying pieces. It was a hard week. Briefly: it was some 150 degrees outside; we lost eight chickens to the heat; groundhogs (or some such destructive creatures) have eaten most all of the first, biggest, most glorious heirloom tomatoes and a good number of watermelons too; corn, already pitiful, laid waste by raccoons; Clark was having a terrible time getting to and staying asleep, and thus we were all exhausted. I could go on, but those were the lowlights.
Thankfully, at the same time as the manure was hitting the fan, we had a wonderful visit from two young, prospective farmers. Starting from their home in Birmingham, Alabama, Charles and Stella had ridden their bicycles from one farm to another across the Southeast. We were the eighth and last farm on their tour. They brought with them good company, good music and good work, and helped remind me what was good about this CSA and this life, despite the frequent failures and challenges. They stayed for a week and then were pedaling off on their way home. Thanks to many of you for being hospitable to them and demonstrating what a wonderful community this is. To see more about their interesting travels, visit their website: http://farmbybike.tumblr.com/
While life at times may seem defeating, would it not be incredibly boring if one felt as if he had nothing left to learn, as if he knew every thing? We too easily write things off as simple and known. Only—at some arbitrary, unforeseen moment—the known acquires new dimensions we were not capable of seeing before. An epiphany reveals that the truth is much more complex, even beyond comprehension. Through repeated and new failures, we learn and grow and embrace our humble station.
For instance, because I have grown many plantings of squash in the past, I might come to think that I know how to grow squash. But just as soon as I say, “I know This,” This does something unprecedented. I find myself bewildered beholding squash plants that look as if I had been trying to kill them. I don’t know what is wrong. I grasp at answers as if I could reach and handle wisps of clouds high in the sky. Eventually, hopefully, a lesson is learned. And the greatest lesson that keeps being taught over and over again is that there is always more to learn.
So, as usual, we have problems aplenty on the farm. Some things will certainly be lean, if they come through at all. It seems the wildly wet Spring has had far-reaching implications. But one certain strength of this kind of farming is the wealth of diversity. While some things suffer, some inevitably do surprisingly well.
In the next couple weeks, we will finish the year’s planting. And, Mother Nature willing and the rains don’t stop, before long we will be back to chilly nights and cool weather crops. Until then, we appreciate you thinking of us during these hot and dangerous days.
A Film Worth Watching
One of our working share members, Ben Evans, is also a talented film maker. He, his wife, and a friend have produced “YERT: Your Environmental Road Trip” about their cross-country trip documenting the hope and peril of our planet. The Louisville Premiere is on July 28 at the Louisville Science Center. Tickets are selling out, but, as of this writing, some remain for the 9:15 PM showing. Watch the trailer and learn more about their adventure at www.yert.com.
Special Thanks
The rafters of our barn are filled with a marvelous garlic crop. Over the course of eight days, a field of some 10,000 plants migrated to the barn, bulb by bulb. Many helping hands made the work go quickly, but one particular set of hands was extraordinary. John Bruggman put in four full days of pulling, hauling and handling. We are blessed beyond words with his tireless work, positive attitude and caring friendship. If you pick up on Wednesday, he is the one there that you see most every week. Be sure to give him a big thanks for all that he means to this farm and how instrumental he is in supplying your garlic fix.
Peace,
Carden, Courtney and Clark

…and we’re off!

Dear Friends,
How quickly things change! Seemingly overnight, cool, wet Spring turned to blazing Summer. The repeated rains pushed a lot of work back, and, as expected, it all needs to be done at once. Every year it is difficult to keep up with the juggling act that farming is: picking, packing, planting, weeding, watering, propagating, trellising, mowing, chicken tending, building, rubbing the bleary eyes looking over the long list. Add Clark to the mix and you’ve got one spread-thin farmer. Were it not for our steadfast working shares and Clark’s grandparents, I’d have lost my mind already. Thankfully, the school year is now completed, and that means Courtney will be home. Congratulations, Courtney, on making it through a wild year with grace and beauty.
Although the growing season is young, we have casualties already coming in. The clouds had hung so thick it seemed they would never part. And so when I skipped the watering and ventilating of the greenhouse in the morning so as to rush to the fields, I was hardly worried. When the sun came out, I thought several times, “I need to do that.” But I was deep in the dirt, and soon my mind was only with the work before me until the task was completed. Meanwhile, the 12 trays of celery and celeriac I had spent the weekend transplanting were cooking as if in the oven. When I returned from the back of the farm, I hurried to the greenhouse. Mature plants were passing out right and left, but only the baby celeries had succumbed to the oppressive heat. In a matter of a few hours, I had managed to kill the entire crop. If any one out there has a child who needs humbling, suggest to him a life of farming.
Because many of our crops are planted on raised beds, the prolonged wet weather was not as disastrous here as it could have been. Still, few crops are content with constant mud. Mostly they sat and refused to grow for about a month, but some were stunted and some were even killed. We are now acting fast to remove the straw mulch from the garlic field, as rot has started appearing. Of course, this means we are not able to devote ourselves to the burgeoning, rain-happy weed population blanketing the beds.
The key to farming is prioritizing: do what most desperately needs doing first. Some things we’ll get to late, some things we won’t get to at all. Sleep, after all, has to be somewhere amongst our priorities.
I realize I tend to focus on the negative in these newsletters, but I trust you discover many of the success stories every week in your share. As they say, the squeaky wheel gets the grease, and I often have a hard time seeing beyond what is doing poorly to appreciate what is doing well. There’s a singular insanity and purposefulness to farming, and my genetic composition only exacerbates this issue. In the zone, work is all there is, and no where on the list is “stand and behold the flowers.”
But Clark’s presence is helping to shift these old tectonic plates a bit. Yes, I may not get the cabbages weeded, but is there anyone out there who would rather those weeds get whacked than I spend some quality minutes with my 6-month old son? Life is more dear now, full, and I intend to embrace these moments rather than fret and fume through them. In time these soils and this community gets richer as our family finds its place and wends a path of wellness together. We deeply appreciate your support in these days of new growth.
Walk-in cooler
Because everything else is not enough, we’ve been building a walk-in cooler this Spring. Good friends John Torstrick and Michael Laney have helped erect this 8×8 structure in the barn. Next step is running electricity to the barn. After three years here, it is past time for us to have a cool place to store our produce. Warm Summer nights can make vegetables that were beautiful at harvest look sad and old. Pretty soon, however, we’ll be done with that disappointing reality.
Potluck
Join us at the farm June 25th at 4 PM for our Summer Solstice Potluck. It’s always a highlight of our year to welcome so many good people here and share this place as well as this food.
Chick status
Eggs will be scarce for another 6 weeks or so when our February-hatched chicks should start laying. Now if we can just keep our neighbors’ dogs away….

Thanks for making this CSA what it is. Hope you enjoy the journey.
Peace,
Carden, Courtney, and Clark Willis

May news

If we are lucky, we have already dealt with this year’s extreme weather event. April’s record-breaking rainfall follows last Summer’s record heat, the ice storm, the hurricane, etc. We are at least humblingly grateful to have escaped the recent wrath of tornadoes. None of us knows when our number will be called.
We are also lucky to have a lot of crops in the ground. Although the weather is threatening to get us behind schedule, we are not yet. But because the fields have been nearly inaccessible the last couple weeks, when the weather breaks it is going to get awfully busy. All at once a tsunami of tasks will beg for attention: the earth will need tilling, a greenhouse full of plants will need to be released, seeds will need sowing, and a giddy blanket of well-watered weeds will need to be knocked back. If we are lucky, much of this can be gotten done before harvest begins in earnest.
Still it is Spring, and hope stretches to and holds the horizon, buzzing like a bee back from hibernation. Plants are perfect green shoots of potential, no bug or beast or disease has trodden a single leaf black. With a hint of imagination one can already taste the succulent future fruit from the mere sight of beds of strawberry blossoms. For a time in Spring, working quietly in the greenhouse, listening to the excited music of birds, still warming up from Winter, preparing the way for a season of produce, I cannot imagine failed plantings or harsh droughts, marauding deer or disappointing harvests.
Challenges of all kinds, old and new, will come. But for now, before the rising tide, let us only be agents of the beauty that is to become and behold the unadulterated beauty that is all around, all over again. Hail Spring!

A brand new year, a brand new boy

Spring has returned from a Winter’s rest, full with the sounds of birds and peepers, the first flush of flowers, the smell and feel of turned and warming soil.  So, too, do we return from our busy silence full of news to share with you.  Hopefully we won’t be away for so long next time.  As many of you already know, Clark arrived in dramatic fashion (fashionably late) early on Thanksgiving morning. We sent out e-mails from the Ronald McDonald house, where we lived during his stay in the Kosair Children’s Hospital NICU. We’ve spent the four months since we’ve been home reveling in his smiles, laughter, cuddles, and games; introducing him to family and friends; settling into routines of napping, eating, and working; and even getting familiar with his cries from time to time. It has been delightful and challenging, world-changing, humbling, and uplifting and so much more all at once. We’ve been so blessed that Clark has been healthy and thriving since he was discharged from the hospital, and continued to eat and sleep like a champ even through a monster cold last week.

On his birthday

That’s more like it—home, healthy, and happy!

Also in the interim between our last post and this one, we have received our orders of seeds and chicks, and here, too, are happy to report steady growth. Fifty chicks arrived on February 9 and have braved the cold nights with their heat lamp. Now two months old, the Auracanas and Golden Wyandottes are still chirping like chicks, though they are looking more and more like their clucking sistren. They and the veterans from last fall’s flock enjoy frolicking in the lush green grass that has been absent for so many months. The young birds faithfully wait until dusk to venture out, so this pleasure is fleeting for them. Soon they will mingle with the other hens, a new rooster or two (hopefully) will manifest himself, and the idiosyncracies of chick-hood, like the ambush, will become a memory. 
In addition to caring for Clark through the school week, Carden is managing to fill up the greenhouse—with help from John Bruggman, Stan Hankins, and Maria Leist—with trays of onions, leeks, flowers, parsley, chard, lettuce, cabbage, broccoli, kale, boc choi, and collard greens. Sweet onion starts have already found a home in the garden, alongside of last season’s salsify and parsnips. Spinach and radishes, planted in the last two weeks, are poking their heads out from their beds; we’re still waiting to see the peas and carrots (and turnips, beets, onions, lettuce, dill, and cilantro). The brassicas, chard, and lettuce will be moving out to the garden this week, their spots in the greenhouse to be filled by the peppers and tomatoes now germinating in the “germination chamber” (an old fridge with a light bulb for heat). Also, Carden and company have planted several blueberry plants, and the raspberry plants are leafing out.
I returned to school shortly before Clark turned two months old. These past two months seem to have gone by much more quickly than the four before he arrived. This is comforting because surely the next two will fly by as well and summer will be here; but it also cuts me to think how much he has grown and changed in this flying time, and how many more changes will come in these next flying months that I will be working with someone else’s babies (their babies aren’t near as sweet, although I’m sure they once were). I know this is true for all parents, whether or not they work away from home—babies grow up, fast. But the combination of this sad and glorious truth with my missteps as a first year teacher has made for many a tearful dinner conversation about how I don’t want to go back the next day. And yet I have gone back and probably will (for a while longer, anyway), and have learned a good deal about myself in the process. However, these next eight weeks will test us all, as Carden enters his primary planting season with Clark in tow and me at school everyday. With help in the fields and in the nursery, and fairly lucky weather, we’ve managed to stay on target so far for the growing season; we must hope that this help will continue as the work increases in urgency towards the season’s first harvests. We continue to give thanks for the gift and the responsibility that come with deepening our roots in this place on earth, planting crops with their (and our) long-term growth in mind, and bringing a child to live and learn with us.

The Ambush

Yesterday was the first rainy day in many moons.  No field work, no chainsawing.  I knew I could not leave for long.  Not with Courtney, over 40 weeks pregnant, at school, potentially calling at any moment saying, “Come and get me!”

I beelined to the answering machine when I got home.  No dramatic blinking lights, though.  No good news of great tidings.  I recalled that the dog was a little weird in her welcoming me home.  I called her to come inside.  She did not come.  Strange again.

Stranger yet was the sight out the window in our bedroom: the chickens, spread across the chicken yard as usual, were not moving.  No, those could not be chickens.  They were…lumps of…something—something else.  But, though some 50 yards away, the truth was starting to sink in, like blood into straw.

As I followed Tierra, as if in a dream, to the scene, several alternative realities suggested themselves to me, and each successively was dismissed, crushed by reality.  The chicken-size shapes on the ground were not giant leaves.  They were not all taking deep dust baths in the rain.

Drifting closer and closer, dazed, I wanted to wake up, to open my eyes, turn over in bed, and try a different dream.  The silence and stillness was stark and surreal, the quietest space I had ever been.  Not a cluck, not a twitching feather interrupted the absence of sound.  No alarm clock clicked on to save the day.  The dog and I, stopped and stunned together, were in a sort of netherworld, a timeless lacuna, stuck between suffering and acting.

My feet somehow carried my swirling mind through the litter of carnage.  Facts of the massacre piled up like dirt filling in a grave: the fence pulled down, chunks of chickens missing, scalps of feathers strewn about.

Wishing for a miracle—for a fantasy—I rolled the stones away from the door of the coop.  The floor of straw litter was grey and black and wrong.  The home was quiet as a casket.  More broken, stiff bodies.  The bustling metropolis of a few hours before had turned to ghost town, echoing with only the silent screams of mangled spirits.  I had let my flock down.  I believe Tierra felt this too.

One of our two roosters, Bono, was our constant companion of almost five years, years of crowing his heart out every day like a rock star.  I could feel his last pangs of rage and honor.  I could feel also the mass panic and terror—desperation—that swept through the crowd of 60 hens, four-year olds, two-year olds and nine-month olds.  But mostly I felt the unsettling calm after the storm and my broken promise to protect my family.

How do I tell Courtney?  What if she sees this?  What do I do?  Where am I?

As I headed out of the coop, I heard a movement.  A shocked and awed Astralorp nervously fumbled in place atop a feed can in the corner.  I knew what she had seen and my heart broke for her.  I wanted to explain.  A big mistake.  I am so sorry.  My compassion and apologies stretched all round the war-torn world.  Whose eyes could ever recover from watching their family mercilessly murdered, one by one?  What would “I’m sorry” be worth?

My mind revolved around to the impending birth of the fully-formed life in Courtney’s belly, the overpowering polarity of life and death, the single heartbeat that divides the two, the eggshell fragility.  And the untold billions of bodies swallowed by time. 

 *                     *                     *                   *               

On April 16, 1998, spring break of junior year in high school, I was visiting my grandparents in Nashville.  My grandfather was out grocery shopping while my grandmother and I watched an old movie.  By the time we figured out that something sinister was happening and made it to the bathroom, the event was over.  The tornado, with winds up to 200 mph, had come and gone.  I witnessed a new world as I emerged from the house.  All was eerily still and uncannily changed.  The world, at that moment too, was unworldly.

Trees bowled over and strung about as if discarded children’s toys, including one atop my dad’s Camry I had driven and numerous ones crisscrossing the driveway and Rosebank Avenue.  With all the old, tall trees taken down, the quality and quantity of light in the sky was different.  The carport was gone, to later be found several back yards down the street.  It is a rare blink of the eye in which reality is profoundly altered, but, when it occurs, there is no rubbing one’s eyes and recovering the vanished vision.

I do not much trust my memory.  I am curious how long the stillness lasted.  However long, it existed enough to buoy my faith in black holes.  At some point, though, after an infinity, consciousness comes back on.  From the great void resumed the familiar sound of chainsaws, men and women talking, crying, strategizing.  The pieces were picked up, but could not entirely be put back in place.  It was some time before the roads were cleared, and eventually we heard from my grandfather.  And, luckily, he was all right and that much reality was restored.

*                *                  *                   *                    

Luckily, too, Bonnie was home yesterday afternoon.  The task before me—alone—seemed so huge.  When she opened her front door, I only had to utter, “I need your help,” and Bonnie sprang to action.  Together we gathered up all the birds, dead, dying, and alive but shocked.  In the end, we recovered 57 bodies, 13 of which were alive at last count, though they are still dropping.

John Grant helped me bag up my old friends.  Then the three of us went on a search party through the wet weeds and blowing rain.  I found a couple feathers leading to our neighbor’s place, and John and Bonnie saw their dog with a chicken in its mouth.  Tierra’s nose discovered a body in the tall grass behind their house.  By dark, the case was closed and we were drenched.

Later in the evening, Bonnie came back and we doctored the casualties.  She packed an antibiotic cream into the missing, maimed flesh and puncture holes, while I held the poor creatures in place.  In times of deepest distress, we survive by the power of courageous human kin who pick up the chainsaws, or don the rubber gloves and fighting spirit, and pack the wounds and care for the living.  What would we do without angels?

 *                 *               *                  *                 

I believe in the opening of eyes.  I believe in instantaneous transformations.  I believe that the very walls around us can collapse, and, so long as we have community, the beautiful human spirit will rise up from the rubble, bridge the broken bones and troubled waters, and rebuild, one precious life at a time.

Yesterday, when all the surviving chickens had turned up, save one, I was heading to the house from the coop again when I espied a mirage-like shape in the distance by the house.  Soaked and a few feathers missing, there stood Little Richard, our other rooster, bewildered-looking, making his way back to his ravaged home.  My heart leapt up when I beheld him.  A humble triumph.  Thanks be for survivors.

News, 11-13-10

The past two months have been incredibly busy: baby showers, weddings, rehearsal dinners, birth classes, doctor and midwife appointments, parties, potlucks and concerts.  Newsletter has been on the list for some time, but with all the work besides, I am just now getting around to it.

We hope you enjoyed this CSA season.  Replete with weather and other challenges and changes, it has been one that I will never forget.  Another year that proves the resilience of a diversified vegetable operation.  Some things always fail, but, at least so far, many things inevitably prosper as well.  We are inexpressibly grateful for your unwavering support and love.  Next year will of course present all new opportunities to learn and grow, and we look forward to sharing it all with you.

Yesterday was the much ballyhooed, anticlimactic “due date.”  (Hopefully there will not be a late fee!)  Courtney has felt good all along and has handled the dueling stresses of first-time-teacher/first-time-pregnancy with a beautiful sangfroid.  We are excited to soon welcome those thrashing little arms and legs in her womb into the world.

Lest you worry that I have been too free and bored this past week, rest assured I have still been hard at it.  As of today, our half-acre of garlic is all mulched with some 130 bales of straw.  On Tuesday, Stan came out and helped split, haul and stack firewood on a strangely warm November day.  I feel thankful to have been able to get the farm closed down for the Winter before a new, as-of-now mysterious job arrives.  

We do still have ample amounts of sweet potatoes, parsnips and garlic available.  If you are interested in purchasing any of these items in bulk, let me know.  It is a little difficult to plan at the moment, but we will figure out a way to get the veggies to you sometime soon.

Thanks again for being a part of our CSA, for making this community such a good and giving place, for nurturing our budding family and for making it clear that life is a rich, sweet smelling soil that only gets better.

We will send out an email in the near future announcing the arrival of….