Always a Blessing

Hawk's Hill is a place where there is always a blessing.  The wind may have turned chilly overnight, but wind sweeps the air, brings change, and clears the sky.  And the blessing as I look up is a blue morning sky flocked with a herd of white sheep clouds sailing on that wind. 

The first light of morning touched the clouds with a buttery glow, and from the woods at the bottom of the hill, the black tree silhouettes stood in bold contrast against the blue sky, the golden-hued clouds,  and the lavender shadowed clouds yet untouched by the sun's warm rays.  A moment to pause and soak in the beauty feels like a deep blessing to this soul.


Walking back up the driveway out of the woods, I smile as I pass the garden because I know a secret.  I have buried gold under the rich black garden soil.  Saturday, during the thaw, I prized some of it loose from the earth with a pitchfork.  An inch of frozen earth gave way to my digging fork, uncovering Scarlet Nantes carrots planted last Fourth of July week along either side of 25-foot soaker hoses.  Now, the mature carrots rest in the soil, in Nature's refrigerator. 

 In spite of multiple temperature dips under zero degrees F due to the Polar Vortex, juicy, crunchy, sweet carrots are still held in stasis under that crust of hard-frozen earth.  The green tops died back long ago, even the top inch or two of most of the roots have been frozen through, but the rest of the golden-orange roots still tastes sweeter than store-bought carrots and feels like a rich blessing when I haul the fresh vegetables from the earth.  I hike them up to the outdoor faucet to rinse off, cutting off the soft tops with a Buck knife.  

I tossed the soft tops out into the field, where I imagined hungry White-Tailed Deer might nibble them overnight. 

Sunset on Hawk's Hill

 Sure enough, Sunday morning, my beloved pulled back the curtains from our bedroom window and pointed out three White Tailed Deer laying in the field, soaking up the early morning sunshine from their beds on the south side of Hawk's Hill.  In that moment, I felt a sense of community with the garden earth, the fresh carrots, the deer, and my true love, connected to all, and grateful for the connection.   A blessing.

On Hawk's Hill, I find there is always a blessing, whether in beauty, food, or connection with one another and the earth.  

May your day be filled with the awareness of blessings,
Betsy

Song of a Harbinger

"Oh Hallelujah, and thank you, God!" I exclaimed under this morning's blue sky, for the day dawned at 40 degrees F, the foot of snow that lay blanketing the ground last night has diminished by half overnight, and the first Eastern Bluebirds (Sialia sialis) of spring are singing --right now as I write this -- in the top of the granddaddy Sugar Maple.

The male Eastern Bluebird
For more bluebird information from Cornell University click here

 Some tunes enliven us, some inspire, some soothe us, but the song of the Bluebird revitalizes my soul.  Pure and clean as glacier melt spilling over round stones, the notes roll over and around like glass marbles, luminous in the morning sunlight, enchanting my thoughts from ice and snow to the ethereal realm of feathered creatures dwelling in the sky.

Yet, when you glimpse the bluebird about its daily business, you spy a shy creature.  In the warmer months, bluebirds perch on fenceposts and other low vantage points from which to scan the ground for soft-bodied insects.  Head bowed as it seeks crawling insects on the ground, the bluebird looks humble and earthy, even the male in his brilliant sky-blue plumage. This time of year, soft-bodied insects are in short supply, so wild fruits like chokecherries, sumac, blueberries and pokeweed berries fill the bluebird's winter diet, though on warm days like today, I have surprisingly seen spiders crawling over the surface of the melting snow.

Friends of the gardener, the Eastern Bluebirds will relish help from gardeners this time of year in the form of nest boxes hung from trees or fenceposts , providing a place for the birds to tuck away in a storm or on a cold night, sometimes many adult birds to a box, cuddling up like my hens do on a frosty night to keep each other warm. 

 If you have a nest box, perhaps today is the day to put it up and provide a warming shelter for an Eastern Bluebird.  For optimum bluebird happiness, face your nest box east to the rising sun, and place it as far away as you can from barns and other structures where English Sparrows thrive, for English Sparrows, aka House Sparrows (Passer domesticus), will kill Eastern Bluebirds for the right to nest in such a box.  But, the Eastern Bluebird is a wild native, a moxie creature, who needs no barn or porch shelter to cosset it through the winter.  A hollow in a tree or the box you provide is all it needs.  A denizen of open spaces, grasslands and pastures, the bluebird is one of the few wild native birds attracted to our hilltop home, making me more grateful for its return to Hawk's Hill.

May your life be graced by the magical song of the Eastern Bluebird today,
Betsy

Savoring

Every February, I think I will make the chocolates my Valentine gives me last.  This year,  I tried to nibble, but the dark-chocolate-covered pretzels were irresistibly good.  I began with one, two, three, and then closed the bag.  But, when a body is writing on a snowy day, with a bag of chocolate covered pretzels next to her, osmosis occurs.  Now those pretzels are a delicious memory.

I tend to gobble up the good things in life.  Last week, a friend invited me over for lunch at her house.  I walked in her front door and was greeted by her energetic, 7 year-old son, and a cloud of delectable scents wafting from her kitchen.  Fresh bread baked in the oven and homemade tomato soup simmered on the stove.  Outside, the snow flew from a gray sky, but inside, warmth, color and a garden of scents bloomed.

Tomato soup seems a bland name for what she served us, for the pureed tomatoes tasted sweet, and freshly plucked, and the basil hit my tongue with the taste of an August day.  How did she transport us, her diners, from a snowy February day to the warmth of an August garden?  "I just pureed the basil with a little olive oil and froze it." she replied.  Incredible.  The three soup ingredients = frozen tomato puree, basil (with a touch of olive oil) and a little soy milk.  Perhaps she added salt. 

I received my bowl with gratitude and couldn't stop my spoon from scooping up the thick, scarlet puddle.  The last dregs of soup in my bowl I sopped up with fresh bread still hot from the oven.  As I write this now, the warmth of her welcome, the generosity of her hand-made life, the joy of escaping the mundane and the inspiration and connection with the land from eating food she gathered locally (some of it bought perhaps at our farmer's market booth last summer) washes back over me, and I can savor the soup and bread, the experiences of the day.  

Yesterday, I posted my farewell to winter.  Well, the Universe must be laughing along with me at myself, as the rain earlier forecasted came down as 4 " of new snow, and the view out my window is the essence of February.  New snow sticks, plastered to the graceful trunks and boughs of the cherry trees along the fence row, and outlines every dark, weathered batten of the barn.  Surprisingly, I find myself delighted at the new snow, at the call this morning from the school's automated alert system declaring a snow day. 

More time to write.  More time to savor.  In writing about the beauty of wind-driven snow, of the charm of a curled gray cat and the tiny sighs and growls he makes as he dreams, of the coziness of soup and bread in a friend's kitchen, I get to relive the delights of my life.  Henry David Thoreau remarked in Walden that the stumps he cut for firewood, "warmed me twice -- once while I was splitting them, and again when they were on the fire, so that no fuel could give out more heat." I find this true of experiencing life and then writing about it --  warmed twice by the joy I take.

Thoreau also instructed, "Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influence of the earth.”  So, I will gather the details of the present day on Hawk's Hill Farm, the crop I harvested today -- the blue sky blasting sunshine through my neighbor's sugar maple trees, the eight brown eggs from my Buff Orpington and Dominikker hens, including two that were warm as toast and freshly laid, a pot of Jacob's Cattle beans sorted and on to soak for dinner tonight.

My thoughts drift to the chicken and dumplings we had for dinner last night, actually, rooster and dumplings, as the bird was one of the young roosters I culled from my laying flock and put in my freezer last fall.  Simmered on the stove until the meat fell from the bones, then boned and the meat returned to the broth.  I made dumplings: 2 cups of flour, 1 teaspoon salt, and 2 teaspoons baking powder sifted, then 1/3 cup of good butter rubbed in, and 1/2 cup of milk incorporated to make a soft dough.  Rolled out thin, cut into 1" by 1" squares and dropped into the boiling broth. After 12 minutes of boiling the dumplings, we had a rich stew to feed bodies tired from a day of mortaring the concrete wall in the dining room.  

Sorting beans grown last summer

Jacob's Cattle Beans soaking

How satisfying to work in Soulstice with my beloved, and be sustained by the fruit of this very hill at dinner.  I look out the window to where my man is opening foot paths to the barn in the heavy, wet snow, and reap another harvest of joy at the loving work he graces us with -- the gift of a quarter mile of open driveway and barn trails, easy walking in the snow.

May you breathe the air, taste the fruit and drink the drink of this season and be enriched by it,

Betsy

Seeing the End of Winter

Soulstice and the barn

I am walking around the farm today, saying goodbye to winter, for the weather forecast calls for rain, followed by highs in the forties and fifties this week.  Some nights aren't even expected to fall below freezing.  Like the winter’s end that I knew finished my last cold season living in the trailer, when Soulstice was so close to completion we could have moved in and lived amidst untrimmed drywall, the new life in a solid concrete house stretched its hand out to us like Michelangelo’s God.  That winter, the relief of knowing our tenure in the drafty, battle-worn, thin-walled metal can we called home was nearly done gave me an unexpected burst of creativity and joy.  I found tiny house videos on YouTube, admiring the 10’ x 10 dwellings of young singles and couples, tidy, complete, uncluttered, built on wheels, and usually parked in a bustling city.

I tidied our trailer, cleaned out the clutter and cobwebs, threw the mucky boots back into the cardboard banana box, washed and put away the dirty dishes, flounced the curtains, gathered up the abandoned socks, and snapped photos of our miniature dwelling of the last 5 winters.  I took a new pride in our home that I hadn't been able to take all those years before because I knew I was free of the fear of ridicule, free of the fear of a broken down furnace, of a blown-over mobile home in a wind storm.  I would soon live in an impenetrable house built more solidly than any other dwelling I have ever lived in.

Today, I find myself in the happy position of stomping through the thick snow, noting the way the  snowflakes meander down from the sky against the slate woods, the way that looking up the snowy hill to the weathered, charcoal gray barn shows the thin wisps of powdery snow blown over the surface of the snow blanketing the landscape.  I say goodbye to the simple beauty of the rust-red manure spreader parked in the open field, swamped in the sea of snow.  The simple palette of soft colors -- warm French gray sumac limbs and goldenrod stalks, buff grass fronds, rusty oak leaves, and charcoal gray cherry tree trunks -- seems to invite a quiet mind, a settled spirit, the beginning of patience.  

The fresh face of the new-fallen snow smooths divots and boot tracks, lending a uniform surface for the sun to paint long blue sassafras shadows on, like dancers caught and frozen in a moment.  A short-run show, nature presents the beauty of a winter’s landscape today, while the chanticleer cardinal sits atop the Sugar Maple tree and sings of the coming attraction with vigor and salesmanship.  He’s into ticket sales already, while I am catching the last of the current show.  

Soon, I will be trying to pry broody hens off of their nests.  Soon, we will peel boots off at the back door to hold back the tide of mud slopping in.  Soon, we will collect maple sap in a big black trash can and boil it down all day long.  Soon, we will watch the daffodils rising up from the earth with swelling flower buds that promise to open the tenderness of spring with the nectar-scent of their flowers.

Groundhog’s Day, the date that marks the halfway point in our journey from December 20th, the shortest day of the year and March 20th, the Vernal Equinox, is two weeks behind us now as we climb the wheel of the year.  The days are lengthening and the sunlight waxing stronger daily.  Feel it on your face and know it is so.  Gather up the most of winter you can, remember the tattered sound of dead oak leaves rattling against their twigs in the cold January wind, find the place in the snow the young deer pawed clear to eat thick English Ivy leaves in the woods, touch the barbed wire fence where the wide dog prints pass through and where remains a cluster of coarse brown and black wavy hairs.  Shiver to know that coyotes, those clever predators that meld into the landscape, were the dogs who passed here just hours ago.  You have crossed paths with the truly wild and free.  

Gather the gifts that winter has to share, and the knowledge that when spring frees your feet and strips you of your heavy winter coat, you will relish it all the more for the winter you absorbed today.

Wishing you bright mornings filled with birdsong,
Betsy

The power of the Spoken Word

"Great is our Lord and mighty in power.  His understanding has no limit.  The Lord sustains the humble!"  (Psalm 147:5-6) pours from my lips as I open the broad, weathered wooden barn door to let in the morning sun.  In the barn where the laying flock winters, hens look up expectantly, voicing that growling query that means they want me to toss them kitchen scraps.  I break into pieces and toss a failed loaf of raisin wheat bread, that I just didn't put enough oomph into kneading one tired afternoon after WalMart shopping with my daughter.  The hens surge into action, running pell-mell, flapping as they go, racing each other to get to the sweet bread this zero degree F morning.  Brilliant beams from the rising sun stream through the doorway; the hens gratefully gobble, and I gather eggs, fill the feeder, check the waterer.  The air in the barn feels warmer than the brittle cold outside like a welcoming hug.  

I never articulated aloud the Psalms and other memory verses until I moved to the country and got animals to tend.  What is the power of declaring, "I sought the Lord and he answered me.  He delivered me from all my fears.  Those who look to him are radiant.  Their faces are never covered in shame." (Psalm 34:4-5)?  I find it chases away anxieties and reminds me to keep my face radiantly turned towards the positive and hopeful. 

As I walk the farm making such declarations, I can understand the ancient practice of uttering incantations.  Sacred words spoken aloud in the fresh morning air crystallize the moment, the intent of the speaker, my sense of purpose as I simply toss chunks of raisin bread to chickens or walk the pasture with my dog for morning exercise.

 In the growing season, as I haul a heavy garden cart up Hawk's Hill at the end of the work day, I find myself reaching for the old standby, "But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run and not grow weary; and they shall walk and not faint." (Isaiah 40:31)  I would like to tell you that I haul effortlessly after announcing such intent to the world.  But, the effect on me is more subtle.  I suppose the boon I feel from speaking aloud of waiting upon the Lord lies in the reminder to consider greater truths than my heaving breath, to think outside myself and my immediate situation.  And, I feel the gentle sense of kinship with other laborers down the ages deep into humanity's history, ancient people who, like me, labored for their food, and must have felt the same fatigue and struggle to push on to finish one last task as the sun swam in ruby, peach and tangerine on the verdant horizon.

When I hoe beans or potatoes, one of those long jobs down endless rows, I particularly enjoy picturing other gardeners I have admired from the past:  artist and author Tasha Tudor, my mother-in-law Anna who grew up on a Virginia peanut farm, Laura Ingalls Wilder, and ancestors of my own whom I never knew, like my dairy-farming great grandparents.  The image of hard-working farm women toiling alongside me raises my pluck and helps me to feel the value of what I am doing for my farm and family.  

And there it is, the shadow that these incantations fight:  the sense that I am not doing enough or doing well enough to be worthy.  The word of the Lord reminds me that, "God resisteth the proud but giveth grace unto the humble." (James 4:6)   And so, my goal becomes working steadily, faithfully, in small ways on my mothering, my tending of those I love, my writing, my farm work.  

May you find power in intentional words spoken today; may they lift you above the mundane and allow you to receive wisdom, pluck, joy.
Betsy

Learning to Pray on Hawk's Hill

When we first arrived on Hawk's Hill, our solar house, Soulstice, was still being imagined.  The drawings on graph paper housed our hopes; our family dwelled in a single-wide house trailer of about 600 square feet in floor space.  Four people, a 100-pound yellow Lab, and the old kitty we brought from Ohio squeezed into that narrow ship of a home. 

One day, our old city cat lay down in the dappled shade of the woods behind the trailer and passed away.   After I buried her among the Lady Ferns, after we had cried over her loss, after we accepted living catless -- for who could in good conscience invite a kitten into the crush of that single wide trailer-- we all quietly began to pray for a new cat to come into our lives.  

No, I don't mean the child-like kneeling at the bedside or the disciplined praying down a list of names.   We prayed the deep longing of those who are hungry, who look upon friends living with cats as charmed as fairy princesses.  We prayed with the desire of those who stop into the feed & seed and kneel before the new calico mouser, captivated, transported, forgetting their place in time and the list of needed items, lost in petting a warm, purring three-pound feline.  

The hospitality of cat-owning friends who invited us to dinner felt magnified by the presence of a cat or two to stroke and scratch under the chin.  We daydreamed of stretching on our comfy sofa with a book and a cat alongside or curled in a lap.  Glancing a cat food ad, I wished I were lucky as the lady on the TV getting a nose-tip greeting from her cat.  We prayed hopeful, humble prayers of longing. A year went by, and two.  We focused on working the soil, building the house.

April brought the rush of planting peas, potatoes, carrots, turnips, beets, and onions in the garden, the fatigue of bodies stretched out of a sedentary winter in the trailer and glad to be back upon the land.  We fell into bed at night, happily weary.  One midnight, awakened by our barking dog, we let him out to chase a raccoon off the front porch.  September sometimes brought raccoons snuffling bushel baskets of apples that sat awaiting the sauce pot and mason jars, but in April we only hope for such bounty.  Groggily, David peered out the window to the walnut tree where his gaze was met not by a raccoon, but a gray and white cat.  He snapped a digital photo and in the morning, we admired the grainy image of a little kitty up our tree, chagrined that we had let our dog chase her away.

We watched hopefully, but did not see her the next day.  Later in the week, our dog chased her up another tree while I tended our laying flock.  I stood at the foot of the tree and apologized to the little cat, leaving a broken-up dog treat from my pocket as recompense for my galloping galoot of a dog and hauling him away.  I soon began to leave cat kibble and a bowl of water in the barn hopefully.

One morning before David and I had to leave the farm for a school conference, I stopped at the barn to retrieve a cardboard tube for a Sunday school game.  I never made it up to the barn loft for my prop, for between my booted feet that soft-furred cat wove herself, leaning, purring affectionately.  I petted her for as long as I had time, and could scarcely walk away, so hungry was this cat for attention.  I was afraid I'd step on her, she stuck to me like a shadow.  David and I departed the farm with the grateful knowledge that our prayers had been answered, and that our kids would come home from school to a new cat.  

Our oldest daughter, Sarah, would name that moxie cat, Boo, for the way she appeared out of nowhere.  The vet down the Lincoln Highway would tell me my skinny little friend was about 9 months old, still a kitten, though out on her own.

Boo

As I write, that hungry, grateful kitty lays stretched at my feet, snoozing away the snowstorm that curtains our farm, a living, purring answer to prayer.  Another gray and white cat, her grown kitten, lays curled on the soft carpet under my desk, and out in the hallway, a dinged up wooden bowl holds the sleek, black ninja form of her other napping son.  Yes, the night before I trellised the peas, that little moxie cat gave birth to two healthy kittens in our barn loft art studio. For, when you pray as hard as we all prayed those trailer days, you may find yourself in the lucky position of receiving a bounty beyond your wildest reckoning.  

The boys in my apron pockets.

  I tell these stories to remind myself of the way to pray.  Not checking lists, not feeding prayers like quarters into a vending machine, but with heart, persistence and humility.

May you receive bountiful answers to your deepest prayers,
Betsy

The Balm of Canned Beets

7Feb14

When the earth feels locked in snow and Arctic cold, and the garden is merely a box of seeds and sketches on graph paper, a body and a soul miss the sensations of the earth-- the rich fungus-y scent of the turned earth after a rain; the piping call of the Robin defending the muddy, earthworm-y terrain of his garden territory; the yellow-green growth washing into the woods canopy and rising up from the renewed earth.  Plotting out lettuce beds in my mind, watering the blue-green broccoli seedlings by the windowsill, poring over pithy descriptions of heirloom sweet potatoes in the Sand Hill Preservation Center catalog keep the thrill of gardening alive in my soul, but my body still asks for connection with the earth.  

A new discovery for our life on Hawk’s Hill this winter has been the earthy taste of home-canned beets.  Fat, juicy, ruby-colored slices of Red Ace beets canned the 16th of October last year have sustained our need for a taste of the earth.  Pop the canning lid off of the wide mouth mason jar, heat in the microwave for 3 minutes, inhale the loamy scent as the steam rises from the glass jar, and fork heaps of the deep magenta slices onto your plate for lunch.  Like a miniature sauna for the olfactory system, the scent of cooked beets notifies your body it’s about to receive folate, potassium, copper, manganese, iron, magnesium, and phosphorus.  

Last winter, this time, I was still enjoying fresh beets from the garden, dug out of the snow, then scrubbed, peeled and shredded with apple to make a crunchy winter salad (I used Helen Nearing’s recipe for Beet & Apple Salad II from Simple Food for the Good Life).  A little lemon juice and honey took the bite from the raw beets.  And, digging the raw beets up out of the snow felt like victory in February.

In our experience, home-canned beets taste better than the metal-canned flavor of commercially canned beets, and have a better texture than the cooked beets I froze in the deep freeze.  Fresh is best, but on a homestead, fresh foods are finite, and canning allows me to feed the family deeper into the winter with garden produce.

To top off my soul’s food of beets for lunch today, I turned my back to the sunlight streaming in the south kitchen windows, feeling the heat of the sun soak into my black shirt, and played a couple of YouTube videos of American Robins singing in the spring, like this backyard Robin recording and this one from The Cornell Library of Natural Sounds. I invite you to join me in a pre-concert psych-up for spring, and if you've got some, have a plateful of beets for me.

Wishing you the warmth of a sunny window,

Betsy

Winter Sustenance on Hawk's Hill

The snow sifts down from the leaden sky.  Again.  The land feels locked in ice and a thick swaddling of snow.  Frozen hard are the first drips in the maple sap jug so hopefully hung from the granddaddy Sugar Maple in last week's thaw.  The overnight low temperature bottomed out around 9 degrees F early this morning.  Buff Orpington chickens closed into the barn with two heat lamps cozied up to one another and sailed right through the February night, while we tucked in under heavy blankets and a couple of cats.  

Hard as it is to imagine, though, we will be eating off of the land tonight.  A frittata with homegrown potatoes, onions, eggs and side dishes of fresh carrots and frozen broccoli are on the menu, and perhaps a jar of canned beets.  The only store bought ingredient in tonight's dinner is the olive oil I'll use to grease the pan.  And salt and pepper.  I still shop at the grocery store for much of our food, but meals like tonight's tickle my fancy and remind me of the dream I've long held to live off the land.

As a 7th grader at Linkhorne Middle School, I bought a Scholastic paperback copy of Jean Craighead George's My Side of the Mountain  with my own 95 cents and fell into the world of Sam Gribley.  The boy who ran away from the big city to live off the land in the Catskill Mountains enthralled me.  I lived in that story as I read it, savoring every scene, imagining feeding myself off the land like Sam as I tramped through the woods around my childhood home gathering acorns for acorn bread.  I read and re-read that book.  Even as an adult, I returned to its charmed pages from time to time, and later read it aloud to my girls.  

Whenever I dig a basket of carrots from the garden in a January thaw, the thrill of self-sufficiency tickles me.  When I swing a basket around Hawk's Hill Farm in the autumn, plucking the last of the blueberry and raspberry leaves, the last sprigs of mint and Lemon Balm, the late Red Clover blossoms to dry for tea, or when I fill a teapot with water and homegrown herbs as Helen Nearing did every day, the old delight glows within my heart.  Stocking the pantry with mason jars and bushel boxes of homegrown produce, stuffing the deep freeze with peas and broccoli, creating Mrs. Mouse's Store House as our Sarah is fond of calling it, a body gets the reassuring sense that no matter what the weather brings, dinner is in the house.  The thrill sinks deeper into the soul, settling, affirming that the good earth has provided.

Today when she came home from school, Kate asked me "Do you ever feel connected, really in touch with, the earth?"  Did the fresh flakes of snow charm her or was it the little glimpses of sunshine that peered through the cloud deck and spread golden light like melted butter on the ocean of snow crust undulating over the hills to the horizon?  Was it the solitary song sparrow puffed up and faithfully scratching for seeds on the pathway David cleared with his tractor blade?  Was it the warmth of Soulstice, the native stone hearth around the wood stove, the quiet of a winter afternoon with nothing on the schedule?  

The wood stove in Soulstice blazes brightly.

I can only offer gratitude that the next generation has the connection with the earth that I received, passed down from those before me, from my mother who taught me how to make and can real applesauce, and who passed on her love of the song of the House Wren.  From my father who taught me it was okay to walk slowly on the Appalachian Trail on Saturday afternoons matching the wildflowers at our feet with the Peterson Guide, and who faithfully started broccoli in the south window the depth of winter.  May the love of being close to the earth, being grounded continue to pass from generation to generation .  Hail to the ancient joy of gathering our sustenance -- in calories and beauty -- from the landscape!

Peace, health and warmth to you all,
Betsy