Thoughts on the Season

I've been collecting thoughts on the season that have been accumulating around the edges of my consciousness for the past few weeks.

Here are a few of them:

"Last year, Americans spent $450 billion on Christmas. Clean water for the whole world, including every poor person on the planet, would cost about $20 billion. Let’s just call that what it is: A material blasphemy of the Christmas season."

~Jim Wallace from "The Real War on Christmas," Sojourners

"But I can’t escape this: we have cut ancient trees to give the children big houses. We poison the fields to give them bread. We manufacture toxins to give them plastic toys. We kill village children to give our children world peace. For the sake of the children, we amass wealth by ransacking the world where they will have to live. What kind of love is this?"

~Kathleen Dean Moore from a beautiful and moving reflection in Orion, "What Kind of Love is This?"

And.

In spite of all this, we still celebrate the return of the sun, the passage of the darkest days of winter and the hope that exists in dark, sad times for the return of light and life:

"Hope is not a prognostication — it's an orientation of the spirit. Each of us must find real, fundamental hope within himself. You can't delegate that to anyone else. Hope in this deep and powerful sense is not the same as joy when things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously headed for early success, but rather an ability to work for something to succeed. Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It's not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out. It is this hope, above all, that gives us strength to live and to continually try new things, even in conditions that seem as hopeless as ours do, here and now. In the face of this absurdity, life is too precious a thing to permit its devaluation by living pointlessly, emptily, without meaning, without love, and, finally, without hope."

~Vaclav Havel, from an essay I have returned to several times over the years, including on the occasion of Havel's recent death, "Never Hope Against Hope."

I've returned too to my ruminations on the solstice from two years ago ... a time to notice and know darkness, a time to honor the dark, a time to honor the dead. It is a time to sit with the painful and the difficult things, with loss, with despair. It's the dead of winter.

And: it is the birthday of the sun--the birthday of light in the midst of the darkest time of year. A turning point, the return of the light, a time of transformation, a time of hope, and a time of rebirth.

In many ancient traditions, Winter Solstice is a time to honor the way that life emerges from death, light emerges from dark in the cycles of the natural world. A time to look forward to Spring and Summer and the bright, hot months when everything will be in fruit and flower, imagining what will come to be.

And finally, my favorite recent variation on the theme of pagan origins of modern seasonal traditions, "Santa is a Wildman" by Jeffrey Vallance.

Happy Christmas, happy Solstice, sweet bright blessings for these dark days.

On the economy of plants and hard virtues

I am at home. Don't come with me.

You stay home too.

From "Stay Home" by Wendell Berry

On Wednesday night, I went next door to Warren Wilson College to see Wendell Berry with Christopher and my parents. The crowd at the college chapel where Mr. Berry spoke was so huge that we ended up watching and listening with a couple of hundred other people on a live feed from another building on campus. In his deeply humble and entirely unpretentious way, Mr. Berry read one of his short stories, At Home, and then answered a few questions from students.

At Home is a story of small details, a beautiful embodiment of Wendell Berry's ethic and way of life. His reading was slow, deliberate, and quiet. For me, listening to the story required a disciplined effort to slow my mind down and be still and patient. The pace of the story, and of Wendell Berry's whole way of being, was so radically slow compared to the pace of computers, cars, and smartphones in the world in which I usually live. Berry's words were so evocative and his pace so meditative that I almost felt like I was dreaming.

"He could not distinguish between himself and the land," Berry writes of the central character in "At Home." I emerged from "At Home" with a deep calling to my own home and land, to which I have been gradually becoming more and more inextricably connected over the past five years. Will there come a time when I can no longer distinguish myself from the land? I hope so.

After the reading was finished, Mr. Berry responded to questions from students - I first wrote "answered questions" and then realized that he was reluctant to provide "answers" in most cases, but instead gave subtle, thoughtful responses, often lightened with wry humor.

I was jotting notes as he spoke, still moving somewhat slowly after being immersed in the world of Berry's short story, but here are a few of my favorite moments:

In response to questions from students about how we can find our way out of the ecological predicament we have created: "Problem solving is not applying the maximum force as relentlessly as possible. It requires patience, resignation, and other hard virtues." And later, "No one knows the answer. Don't trust anyone who says they do. The answer will have to be lived out." And finally, "We are working from the inside, necessity is working from the outside. The world is not going to continue to yield what we have come to expect of it."

In response to a question about how "people of faith" might be involved in the environmental movement: "It's hard to think of a person who doesn't have faith in something. The human mind is by nature faithful."

He encouraged students to "Get your language right. Call things by their right names." He talked about health in communities, referencing Aldo Leopold's concept of "land community" (a concept he fleshes out in more detail in his essay "Conservation and Local Economy").

When asked about Occupy Wall Street, he reminded us that "great public movements must be accompanied by local, small, private acts." He also noted that when we are told, "inform yourself," we should remember that "to inform is to shape inwardly."

He talked about making local food economies "that will be the kindest to the home landscapes of the world."

At the end of the evening, Mr. Berry repeated twice what he called one of his "articles of faith": "Things aren't going to get so bad that someone who is willing can't make it a little better."

That is the kind of hope, small and persistent, that I can feel resonating in my heart and bones. Thank you, Wendell Berry.

More from Wendell Berry:

"We must see that it is foolish, sinful and suicidal to destroy the health of nature for the sake of an economy that is really not an economy at all but merely a financial system, one that is unnatural, undemocratic, sacrilegious, and ephemeral. We must see the error of our effort to live by fire, by burning the world in order to live in it. There is no plainer symptom of our insanity than our avowed intention to maintain by fire an unlimited economic growth. Fire destroys what nourishes it and so in fact imposes severe limits on any growth associated with it. The true source and analogue of our economic life is the economy of plants, which never exceeds natural limits, never grows beyond the power of its place to support it, produces no waste, and enriches and preserves itself by death and decay. We must learn to grow like a tree, not like a fire."

Read a longer excerpt from Berry's essay "Conservation and Local Economy," here.

Read the essay "Word and Flesh" here.

Read a profile of Wendell Berry in "Grist" here.

Homesteading Summer Camp

Extracting honey

With our three interns and various visitors coming and going all through the summer, things have been very lively at the Red Wing for the past few months. "The 'terns," as they are affectionately known, are incredibly hard workers, smart as whips, and excited about all things garden- and homestead- related.

Because we don't want to exploit the 'terns and their youthful energy, we have tried to break up the hard work with fun and educational activities such as the Farm Tour, field trips, and kitchen projects.

Also, we've been hosting long- and short- term visitors, various friends and family who come to stay for days or weeks and sometimes help out with farm work or participate in Big Projects while they're here. Andriana is here from Manhattan, experiencing composting and chicken butchering for the first time, among other things. Fer was a "day camper" for two weeks while she was visiting from Mexico City, pulling weeds, spreading mulch, and generally jumping right into the fray.

Sometimes it feels like we are running a summer camp --the kind of summer camp I'd like to attend: one where the activities are shoveling manure, chopping vegetables, squishing bugs, extracting honey, discussing heirloom tomato varieties, saving seeds, identifying insects, and fermenting things.

Along those lines, we spent a day extracting honey and making mead with the 'terns and various visitors a few weeks ago. It was one of the stickiest and most delicious ways to spend a day you can possibly imagine. Here are a few shots of the process; you can view more photographs here: honey extraction and here: meadmaking.

Yesterday the campers (aka interns) convened in the kitchen and we made a big crock of sauerkraut and jarred up some brine-pickled (fermented) garlic scapes after a brief lesson on fermentation.

We followed up the festival of fermentation with a garlic tasting, sampling the ten heirloom varieties that we grew this year, cleansing our palates between rounds of baked garlic with a variety of homemade jams, baked brie, and sliced tomatoes from the garden.

Friends and family joined us to gorge on garlic and offer comments on the varieties to help us decide what to grow next year.

I was struck by how our collective work produced this incredibly delicious, nutritious, and beautiful food. Gathered around the table were people who had helped with all of the different pieces of the work of growing food: Shannon and Sharon helped dig and prepare beds, Ali and Nicole and Dau harvested and processed hundreds of heads of garlic this summer, Christopher and I chose varieties, saved seed garlic, and planted and mulched and cared for the plants. And we all savored the fruits of our labor together. It was lovely.

Best summer camp ever.

2 Days. 7 Farms. Lots of Inspiration.

Old barn at Imladris Farm ... goats and chickens inside.

For the past two days, the annual Family Farm Tour has been afoot. The tour is sponsored by our beloved ASAP, and features farms of all sorts. So, Ali and Nicole and Christopher and I packed up our farm family and headed out down the highways and byways of Western North Carolina to explore some small farms.

It was exhausting and amazing. We visited Gladheart Farms, Imladris Farm, Flying Cloud Farm, Firefly Farm, Mountain Farm, Arthur Morgan School, and Mountain Gardens. We returned home inspired.

To top off the weekend, Christopher cooked up an incredible meal of the last of the fava beans and the first of the summer squash sauteed in butter with garlic and walnuts and served with a goat's milk white sauce over gnocchi. It was perhaps the best meal he has ever prepared in all the time we've known each other. I cracked open a bottle of sparkling Lavender-Rosemary mead I made last fall and drank it ice-cold with the aforementioned feast, and we gave thanks for the rich community that we live in, and the gifts of our own garden.

Here are some highlights of the tour:

Michael Porterfield at Gladheart Farms. Gladheart grows vegetables which they sell wholesale and through a CSA, and also has a small number of dairy goats and laying hens. All of their diesel equipment is run on biodiesel made on-site from recycled waste oil, and their hoophouse is heated using biodiesel too.

Christopher and goat friend at Gladheart.

Gardens, barn, biodiesel production facility, and chicken tractor at Gladheart.

View across fallow fields at Flying Cloud, a Fairview farm that runs a very popular CSA and always generates a long line at the farmers markets.

Tops of sweet corn visible through the packing shed window, Flying Cloud.

Fall starts in the hoophouse, Flying Cloud.

Christopher tries out a homemade planting contraption at Firefly Farm.

Border collie pup, Firefly Farm

Poultry at Arthur Morgan School, a Quaker-oriented school for grades 7-9 with a work requirement for students.

Grape arbor shading south-facing windows at Arthur Morgan School.

Shitake logs at Arthur Morgan School

View into the vegetable garden, Arthur Morgan. Jerusalem artichokes in the foreground; passive solar greenhouse in the background.

We ended the day today at Mountain Gardens, the woodland "paradise garden" of the amazing Joe Hollis. Joe and his apprentices cultivate 500 species of edible, medicinal, and otherwise useful plants on about two acres.

Wineberry trellis, Mountain Gardens.

Cob house built for under $100, Mountain Gardens.

Loveliest outhouse around, Mountain Gardens.

Cob cactus cultivation wall, Mountain Gardens.

Dried herbs, Mountain Gardens.

A small portion of the vast array of blend-your-own tinctures available at Mountain Gardens.

Kind Words and Pretty Pictures

My friend Dana put up some beautiful photos of our place this Spring (including this one at left) and some very kind words about our homestead on her absolutely delightful blog, "Dana-Dee," which I regularly read aloud to Christopher in the evening.

Ms. Dana Dee has an incredible eye for beauty, a fabulous way with words, and all kinds of useful and unusual skills (hide tanning and bird taxidermy and choreographing dance routines to be performed in unexpected public places all come to mind). She is an excellent cook, a knowledgeable herbalist, a gifted gardener, and a general all-round star. Tender-hearted and whip-smart and goofy as all get out, she is one of the funniest people I know and a very fine singer and dancer.

Here's the link to Dana's sweet-as-pie post about our place with lots of gorgeous pictures of little details. I sure am grateful to Dana and to Ashley at Small Measure for their words and for taking the time to capturing images and impressions of this place, especially since I've been neglecting my documentarian duties since in the frenzy of garden work and general Spring madness.

I so much appreciate the perspective I gain when friends and family visit -- their presence reminds me to pull my head up out of the weeds and seeds and look around at this beautiful place that I am so lucky and grateful to call home.

Fruition

Our first tailgate market of the season was yesterday afternoon, and it was fabulous.

I harvested greens all morning while Christopher washed and prepped produce, dug spring garlic, and loaded the truck.

It's nice to feel like all of the gardening madness is coming to fruition a bit already, with so much food coming out of the hoophouse and kitchen garden beds that we had a bountiful offering at the market.

We sold out of pretty much everything, and loved connecting with the other vendors, friends, dogs, babies, and customers. A cheese and scallion scone from the Herban Baker with a dollop of Wild Ramp Goat Cheese from 3 Graces Dairy topped off the day.

More photos of our spring harvests are on our farm facebook page.

Today the rush continues: after I squeeze in a little non-farm work this morning, I'll be back at it in the garden, planting potatoes, giving all of the seedlings a little fish emulsion/kelp snack, potting up perennial herbs for the herb festival, and watering, which is a monumental task at this stage with all of the thousands of thirsty plant babies in the hoophouse. But yesterday it was nice to pause and reap the rewards.

Sorrel

Spring Garlic

Heirloom lettuce by the head

Spring mix

Kale and Stinging Nettles

Spicy Mustard Greens

On Fullness

Onion seedlings

Life has been incredibly full since the beginning of 2010 - and consequently my posts here at the Milkweed Diaries have become become woefully sparse.

My Real Job (working with nonprofits and political campaigns) has been at full throttle since the first week of January, a rude awakening after a relatively sleepy 2009. I'm not complaining though: income is a wonderful thing.

Adding to the fray, I worked as a cook at a Permaculture Design Course in south Georgia for two weeks last month, sharing kitchen duties with my kitchen co-conspiriator and dear friend Puma, cooking three meals a day for 30-60 people using local and regional in-season foods. Though I didn't blog about this Great Cooking Adventure, I did chronicle the experience on facebook.

And then there's Red Wing Farm, our homestead garden that has very quickly grown to market-garden proportions. We're selling at two tailgate markets this season, hosting our first farm interns this summer, teaching classes on the farm, and ramping up our production fast and furious with an eye toward both Christopher and me being able to quit our day jobs.

Lettuces, mustards, and kales growing in the unheated hoophouse

Homemade heat table for seedlings (salvaged lumber + gravel + heat tape) with tatsoi & bok choy growing in a raised bed underneath

Christopher has been in non-stop construction mode, building the first section of our duck and goat barn, a heat table for our hoophouse, and various other structures and contraptions, and I've been prepping beds, making soil blocks, and planting seeds. Thousands and thousands of seeds. And stepping up plants. Thousands and thousands of plants.

Tomato seedlings

Cardoon!

Our Starting from Seed class planting peas in the garden

Life is good. And full.

So apologies in advance, dear readers, for the less frequent posts in the next few months. I promise to post images as often as I can of what's going on on the homestead, in the garden, and in the kitchen.

You can also follow Red Wing Farm on facebook, where I'm posting more frequent albeit briefer updates.

In the meantime, here are some images of recent goings on at the farm...Happy Spring and good gardening to all!