Rock Bottom to the Pinnacle:

Unearthing a Purple Fortune

Snowdiculous is what my beloved called Tuesday's Tax Day snowstorm.  Just Monday, I was planting beets, turnips and carrots in the garden in Daisy Duke shorts, and praying for rain.  Got it.  Plus a little snow.  That does look ridiculous on the green grass and at the hem of the neighbor's woods just now tinged with the green hues of opening leaf buds.  Every flat of plants -- broccoli to leeks, pak choi, peppers and tomatoes -- is crowding the plant stand and spilling over onto the floor nearby, waiting out the cold temperatures and the interruption of planting season.

My fig tree reinvigorated.

Plant traffic jam

The spring snow reminds me of our first full week of dwelling on the farm.  We had come for a visit on Easter break ahead our moving date in June.  We arrived on the farm on a warming trend.  The girls, David and I spilled out onto the land, David and the girls building a tree-house in the granddaddy sugar maple tree while I pruned the grape arbor and took my first turn at gardening.  I remember the popsicles the girls sucked on that hot Tuesday afternoon, watching thunderclouds build and sail over the farm.  The mountainous clouds marked a front bringing a curtain of cold air and snow the next day, weather so like what we are experiencing today.  I laugh at the stuff I didn't know back then.

When we took possession of the farm the previous autumn, we used the new keys to open the locked rooms of the barn, finding yellowed cattle vaccination charts, ancient coffee cans heavy with sharp roofing nails, and sturdy tools hanging on nails in the wall or propped upright.  I had fingered through the pitchforks and rock rakes in the barn, finding familiar implements --a sledgehammer, a hatchet, a spade, a flat-bottomed shovel -- along with old metal tools with worn wooden handles I had never used -- a hay hook, calf castrating equipment and a pick axe.  What the heck was a  pick axe doing in this lush haven?  But wait, there was another pick axe.  Why two? 

My first day in the garden, I had a sinking realization of why the pick axes rested dusty in the old barn tool room.  Breaking up soil clods that David had turned over with a potato plow, I spaded the chunks into a finer-grained substrate to plant lettuce, spinach and purple potatoes in.  As I worked my way energetically down the first row of the bed, I hopped on my spade, putting all of my weight through my tennis-shoed foot on the curled metal top of the blade.  A few feet in, my spade smacked into a solid rock with a dull "chunk!"  Used to sinking into the soil, I lost my balance and tipped over. No problem.  I scootched my spade over a few inches and tried again.  Chunk!  Hmmm.  I scootched over a foot.  Chunk!  Another foot over.  Chunk! Oh *$#@! My heart raced as I fretted that the entire garden was nothing but bedrock with a thin soil frosting!  

Just then, David walked by, and pointed out places in the garden where the plow had sunk so deep, it made the tractor tires spin, saying what a shame it was that I had picked the one place in the garden that had a rock under it to start my work.  I was overreacting to a rock.  I continued at a mellower pace.  When I got done with my archaeological unearthing, I had revealed a 5' by 3' slab of rock that I could not move.  A first experience for me and a valuable start in my lessons in humility. 

I laughed Sunday, just thinking of those pick axes, and that mammoth rock, for I dug a 2' by 3' hole only a foot or so deep off the north porch of the house to set a water garden in.  I had planned to scoop the organic soil around the sides of the plastic mortar pan, and use the soil hummocks to plant flowers and hostas in.  Nope.  As I sunk my spade in for the first bite of soil, I found the thinnest veneer of organic soil clutched tightly by a mat of grass roots, and beneath that, chunks of gravel- to cobble- to stepping-stone-sized rocks.  I peeled back the sod, saving it to patch a dip in the yard, and hucked the little stones to the driveway.  The stepping stones serve nicely around the water garden.  Luckily, I didn't need a pick axe. 

Stones and water create an oasis.

Sunday evening, David and I sat on the porch and admired the beauty of moving water in the little water garden as the sun set on a gorgeous spring day.  A ring of stepping stones stood out amid the dark compost I hauled from the compost pile and poured around the pond to plant into.  The water burbled musically, and I could imagine the shasta daisies, blanket flowers and foxgloves I seeded in flats last week nodding on a summer breeze as David and I shared lunch in our favorite summertime lunch spot.  

I never know what lies under the soil -- smooth digging or chunky rocks-- but I find there is always something useful -- stepping stones, lessons in humility, even just driveway gravel -- if I can step back, regain faith and try again.  When we persevere, we win.  

That immovable rock remains majestically resting just where I found it, where the eons will find it when I am long gone.  Even the tractor couldn't budge it.  We unearthed another rock similar to it in a nearby bed.  And David hauled that giant rock out of the garden with the tractor and towed it to the greenhouse where it forms a solid stone stoop that catches the sun's warmth.  (That's what those big chains in the barn were for!) 

We have found other similarly massive monoliths in our digging on Hawk's Hill.  We now have a collection along the driveway that we hope to use for sidewalk stones, as pieces of rock walls, as stone bench sets.  I might just use one as a mammoth stepping stone around my new water garden.  Do you know how much money it would cost me to buy a rock that big?  A purple fortune!  Who knew my spade was biting into a purple fortune that day I was so hot under the collar with my haughty approach to a country problem.  

May the chunky part of your day turn over a purple fortune in treasure.
Betsy

Wishing all of you who celebrate it a blessed Easter.

Spring Tonic

We have survived the ocean of winter to wash up on the shore of springtime, where we find ourselves in the land of firsts.  The first robin of spring arrived before the first green grass day, as did the first Red-Winged Blackbird.  March 30th brought the first chorus of Spring Peepers down in the valley.  Later in the week, the first meadowlark call (April 6th) arrived a day before we walked down to the bus stop to witness the first daffodil blooming in the woods.  After a steady diet of gray skies and snow, each day seems to bring new unfurlings of flowers, buds, and songs.
   

Now that new grass is lushly carpeting the pasture east of the barn, our laying flock celebrated their first day on grass April 9th, bailing out of their gloomy barn home to stop and snip tender grass shoots at their feet.  Some years, it takes the girls a little while to warm up to the idea of going outdoors, and I call, "Chooook, chook, chook, chook!" and wait on the other side of the chicken door, anxious to witness their ravenous delight upon finding lush grass and bugs to peck, new ground to scratch and sunshine to bask in.  

Not this year.  The hens and rooster trundled out the little door, and stopped right in front of it, backed up in the closest thing to a George Washington Bridge traffic jam that we have on Hawk's Hill.  The rooster stood alongside his ladies, occasionally encouraging them with a soft, "chook,"  but, he could see that he needn't waste his breath calling to them, for the air was filled with the little sounds of happy chicken growls and that quiet nipping sound of beaks plucking tender grass shoots.  I could just sense the vitamins and phytochemicals coursing through the hens' feathery bodies as they enjoyed their spring tonic. 

Our first spring tonic came just a day before, when I pulled back the Agribon frost blanket to pick spinach and found chickweed thriving right alongside the spinach, so I  mixed some right in with the spinach for our lunch salads.  Later in the week, I made a salad entirely out of chickweed.  The first crunch released the invigorating sensation of childhood freedom on a Saturday morning outdoors.  A few dandelion greens tossed into the mix made it an official spring tonic.  Taraxicum officinale, which loosely translates to "the official cure for what ails you," has been a long-standing spring tonic.  Folks eating the first fresh greens in spring, must have felt like my hens gobbling up grass shoots, feeling the vitamins and antioxidants coursing through their veins in a celebration of new life.  We have found chickweed an effective decongestant for lingering spring colds. 




Yesterday, David pulled long furrows in the tilled garden soil for me to set seed potatoes in.  Cut into chunks the size of hens' eggs, the potatoes got dipped in wood ashes to prevent rotting, and dropped into the furrows about 8 inches apart.  I imagined the shrubby, healthy plants the potatoes would grow into, picturing the bounty of tubers I hoped we would till up in July as I walked down rows with a bucket of cut spuds, dropping each one in place.  I trucked a hundred pounds of seed potatoes down to the garden in my garden cart-- Yukon Golds and Red Pontiacs -- and put most of them in the ground. The rest went into storage in the root cellar David dug into the north side of the hill.  A mockingbird sang a patchwork of other birds' songs as he looked over my work, and my dog flopped in the shade of my cart like he does in the heat of summer, content to be outdoors.  

Later in the day, David and I set up beds for the broccoli and cabbage plants now filling my new plant stand.  We raked alfalfa meal (for nitrogen) into the 3 foot wide beds, pinned soaker hoses down and stretched black plastic mulch over the soil's surface and dug it in by hand with trowels.  On our hands and knees, trowels scooping earth over the edges of the plastic, we talked about politics, the new GAP farming regulations, and my struggle to fit enough plants into the garden to serve our new market in Beaver. 

The gift of the day was the sense of unity I felt with David as we worked our way down 40 foot rows, just talking.  When the sun set on Hawk's Hill, we tucked our tools in the garden shed, gathered up the jackets we had strewn on the ground, and hauled our garden cart laden with a roll of plastic mulch back up to the barn to close up for the night. 

Baby tomato plants grow next to broccoli waiting to be planted.

The plant stand David built me is now full.

Today, I awakened to another first: the morning after my first big planting day in the garden, moving like a sack of wet concrete.  I slogged through the morning, hands rough and calloused from my work yesterday, but soul singing happily at the thought of today's spring rain pattering down on the soil overtop of our Yukon Golds and Red Pontiacs out in the earthwormy garden soil.  The young broccoli and cabbage plants sit outside the house, protected from the wind, acclimating to the brightness and temperatures of the outdoor environment they will soon move to.   

May your day --whether sunny or rainy -- bring you the tonic of spring surprises and joy.
Betsy

Seal it with Gratitude

Pea Planting, Nature Journaling and a Spark of Joy

Monday morning, after walking to the barn to take care of my chickens, I paused to listen to the Song Sparrow who sings every morning from a hawthorn bush back of the barn.  His joyous bubbling song stopped me in my tracks, and I was compelled to take in the rising sun over the neighbor's pasture, the bounding sparrow's tune, and my rooster's crowing response.  It was the very day of 2014 that the grass turned green on Hawk's Hill.  A pause, a moment to take in my place in the year, and I celebrated with a sun salute, hands planted on the green grass, head down, gazing at the rolling hills and blue sky from an upside-down viewpoint, ears taking in the songs of the sparrow, robins, cardinals and towhees.  A spark of joy glowed within me as I spent that 5 minutes of the day pausing in gratitude.

Sunday afternoon, I taught a nature journaling class at the state park.  The day opened with snowfall, then miraculously transformed into a lovely spring day washed clean with gusty March winds.  The group of enthusiastic participants -- elementary aged children to retired folks -- were completely engaged in the topic at hand, participated fully, and investigated nature with their journals in sketches, prose and poetry -- in spite of the chill in the air.  I look forward to the annual class, and feel lucky to have the opportunity to share my love of art, writing and nature with kindred spirits.

On the drive home through the wooded park, I felt compelled to stop, park my old truck in a fisher's lot, and watch the sun sinking towards the hills and lake.  I needed just a moment of stillness after the bustling activity of teaching.  I pulled out my nature journal, and began to sketch the scene before me -- hillsides leading down to the lake, bare oak tree limbs reaching up to the blue sky, the lake water free to carry the motion of the wind.

A Sunday-afternoon sketch (from a rain-wrinkled page in my nature journal).

The craggy caw of a crow alerted me to a wild show going on in the trees above me.  A red-tailed hawk winged over my head, pursued by several crows, then the procession whisked over the ridge behind me, and I was left sitting in my truck, window open, sun striking me broadside and warming me gloriously, with surprising strength. I stole 15 minutes to sit, sketch, bask and watch the natural show before me. And I was left with a deep sense of gratitude -- for the camaraderie of the class, for the visit to the park, for the balm of nature and the opportunity to sketch in my nature journal.

David turns the rich earth

Making labels for rows of peas

Last night, after David turned the earth in our garden, after I planted peas and kale in the loamy, black soil, after hauling rocks around in a garden cart, after making dinner, and cleaning the dishes, as the stars twinkled and David played with his remote control helicopter, I stood outside and watched him fly, and we listened to the Spring Peepers sing down in the valley. Just for a few minutes.  The tiny tree frogs sounded loud as a flock of starlings, but with the delightful rarity of tiny, noble harbingers of spring.  A woodcock twittered and "peent"-ed down in the neighbor's empty field, and I felt that old familiar sense of spring magic, of joy and delight at the miraculous things that nature does after we pass the Vernal Equinox.  Green life is reborn.  Nature awakens, shakes off winter and sings and blooms.

Spring -- especially this late spring -- gets crazy busy with the pressure of tilling, planting, setting up beds with plastic and soaker hoses, with onion plants arriving in the mail, with quick trips to the feed and seed for 50 pound bags of seed potatoes and alfalfa meal, with transplanting tomatoes and peppers indoors, with endless projects that were put off for better weather this winter.  One trick Hawk's Hill has taught me is the magic of taking just 5 minutes to rest, to gather in the scene and to say thank you for the blessings in the present moment.  Like capturing a sunset in a journal, the gratitude encapsulates the magic of the day, sealing it in my memory, and giving me a gem to carry around in my heart to light workdays ahead.

My happy little jigger sowing Sugar Snaps and Petit Pois

May your day be rich with blessings and space to pause and take them in,

Betsy