Expanding the Upper Garden
The neighbor's calf observed our fence building with interest. He found his way over or under the fence onto Fern Creek once before--when he was smaller, so I imagine he's wondering if we're trying to keep him out. But we fence our gardens to keep the deer out, not the rare cow (or cows--once we had three) who occasionally meander up the driveway…
Mark enjoys expanding the garden space, and I enjoy contemplating feeding more people, so we maximize our enjoyments by doing both. We're expanding from 12 to 16 families this year, and taking 5 of those families deeper--meaning they will have extra produce for preservation, and continue to pick up food every other week for another 6 weeks after everyone else's season ends.
These early days of February have been sunny and warm, so Mark has been terracing the slope for a big carrots and parsnip bed, and yesterday started digging the holes for the fence posts. I tamped down the posts once the hole was dug, but couldn't keep up with Mark, who has now dug 11 of the 17 holes for this fence extension. It will be our winter garden next year--that is, the section of the garden we won't let the hens feast on come November, so that we can continue eating broccoli, kale, spinach and chard long after harvesting most of the other crops.
We were reminded today how very much we enjoy the prepping winter work we do on mild February days--made all the sweeter with the presence of our dog-like cat Pollifax, and young pullets and calves watching from their safe and curious distance.
6 Things To do With a Sunny February Afternoon (if you live at Fern Creek)
I've put in rather long hours at George Fox University this week--working too many evening hours to stay on top of things, so at 1:00 this afternoon I declared, "Enough!" and accepted an invitation to join a warmish sunny afternoon… Sarah, my daughter, has started a blog called Line Drawings and she stretches me to be more creative with my Ponderings. Her most recent blog, "9 things to do while on couch-rest" inspired my idea for this one, "6 things to do with a sunny February afternoon…"
1) Walk in the woods to see how the last storm changed the landscape. (I found our winter wood for the next 3 years. A huge maple came down. Even as it will heat our home for a long time, it is also a sadness, as it was a lovely tree).
2) Unlatch the hen house door to let the 5-week-old chicks outside (for the first time!) and sit with them as they explore a world that includes dirt, grass, bugs, wind, twigs, and all kinds of other potentially delightful (and sometimes terrifying) parts of the world.
3) Spread the chicken poop-enriched straw along the raspberry and marion berry rows to give them an early spring feeding of nitrogen-rich fertilizer.
4) Walk the perimeter of Fern Creek including the adjacent 5 acres of Christmas trees and check out the horses, sheep and alpaca just over the knoll on the other side. Greet the two dogs that belong to the red barn adjacent to the Christmas trees that bark at my intruding presence.
5) Put an ear to the sides of the bee hives and listen to the buzz of their winter cluster to get a sense of how they are fairing. June and Lucy had a lot of coming and going in and out of the hive so I didn't bother listening to their hives. Emma and Grace were less busy, so I listened until I heard the unmistakable buzz of thousands of bees inside their hives.
6) Contemplate dinner. (I'm thinking hazelnut blueberry pancakes or hazelnut French Toast. As you can see, I decided on the pancakes, and I've included the recipe in Farm Home Cooking.).
This afternoon energized and refreshed me. Just what my busy soul needed to find its grounding in contentment, joy and gratitude again.
An Early Arrival
Eden Mae Fileta graced us with her arrival on Monday afternoon, January 23rd. Sarah exuded strength and patience, grace and resolve as she worked to birth Eden. Jason provided a steady, calm and reassuring presence. I have borne witness to five births and all of them have been powerful experiences. But the three that involved my daughters birthing their daughters and my son-in-laws supporting them in the process moved me in ways I cannot easily describe. Welcome to the world sweet Eden.
Unexpected Connections
The 2012 Fern Creek pullets are 3 weeks old now. So quickly they grow compared to humans! Their world is still rather small--confined to a 3x4 foot cage with a perch, a thermometer they play with, food and water. We're keeping them as warm as we can under heat lamps in the garage until their feathers have matured enough to house them up with the hens in their separate pen. The world will still be rather small until they are big enough to go outside. And then, what wonder awaits!
I received an email from Keith Seckel, from The Orchard Community which is a house church in Salem, giving me a heads up about someone in Ireland looking for John Shea poems. He found Sharon's Christmas Prayer, which I posted in December, and sent me a link to a Shea poem he had posted. After sitting with it I decided to pass it on here. One of Shea's collections includes both these.
A PRAYER TO THE GOD WHO FELL FROM HEAVEN
~ By John Shea
If you had stayed
tightfisted in the sky
and watched us thrash
with all the patience of a pipe smoker,
I would pray like a golden bullet
aimed at your heart.
But the story says you cried
and so heavy was the tear
you fell with it to earth
where like a baritone in a bar
it is never time to go home.
So you move among us
twisting every straight line into Picasso,
stealing kisses from pinched lips,
holding our hand in the dark.
So now when I pray
I sit and turn my mind like a television knob
till you are there with your large, open hands
spreading my life before me
like a Sunday tablecloth
and pulling up a chair for yourself
for by now
the secret is out.
You are home.
Winter Slumber, a Dusting of Snow, and Reflections on Life
We've had a mild winter--dry (for Oregon), and comfortable enough to do farm chores and to take afternoon walks up the hill in a jacket and hat. The snow is falling off and on today, our first of the winter. It probably will not accumulate more than an inch, but will be enough to delight Oregonians--at least those inclined to be delighted. This is the first snow for the year-old hens in the upper garden, and when I opened their door this morning a few ventured their heads out, but ducked back inside quickly. Eventually, by the time I'd come back with their freshly cleaned watering can, brave Coila had engaged the winter snow, and a few others were sliding down the ramp after her.
Most everyday I wake up with a deep sense of gratitude for life, a thankful heart that turns toward God. Sometimes I wake up with a sense that I am spending too much time trying to accomplish things that don't much matter, and I want more time to pursue relationships with my mothers, daughers, granddaughters and friends. I want more time to walk and sit in the woods, more time to grow and prepare food for my family and friends.
I think my most significant moments occur when I simply witness the presence of God in the ordinariness of life. I feel God's presence throughout time when I Hear the rooster down the road welcome the day (it often takes him a good chunk of the morning), or the owl in the woods that speaks into the night. I am part of all of God's creation--life upon life reproducing the next generation that eats, sleeps, engages God, others, and creation in various ways--including finding some sort of work to do. I want to be careful that the work I find to do doesn't overshadow paying attention to life itself. The older I grow the more simple the meaning of life becomes--certainly not about professional accomplishment. A good life, I'm concluding, is one lived that embraces, rather than separates from, all the earthiness that makes us human.
I fear I am not expressing this well. Words are inadequate. Perhaps this concludes well enough: my most important work is threefold: to live with gratitude, bearing witness to the sustaining presence of God throughout creation; to live a life faithful to those in my past who ushered me into the possibilities I have today; and to live in ways that allow people (and animals) present and future to flourish on God's good earth.
Six Generations of Women
Sometime in February our daughter Sarah will be giving birth to a daughter. She and Jason have named her Eden. Yesterday my other two daughters, Rae and Megan Anna (both mothers of 1 1/2 year old daughters) helped me host a shower for Sarah. Since Jason's family lives far away, I sent his mother and a sister-in-law onesies I had dyed salmon, sky blue, and teal green and had them decorate them, which was an activity that anyone at the shower could do yesterday. The women who came were all related to Sarah--cousins, aunts, grandmothers, second-cousins, great-aunts, nieces, sisters, mother. We ended the shower with a ritual Rae introduced. With one ball of yarn we each wound a strand around our wrist as we spoke one thought or wish for Sarah in this final month of pregnancy, and/or as she labored, birthed and entered motherhood. When were were done a circle connected us all, and after a prayer of blessing we cut the threads between us, and some of us will keep these strands on our wrists until we hear of Eden's arrival, being especially mindful of Sarah in these final weeks of pregnancy.
I so cherish the rituals that mark the passing mantel of motherhood that moves humanity through time. Especially perhaps those that move daughter to mother, and mother to grandmother, and grandmother to great-grandmother.
My gift to Sarah was to re-bind an old quilt with such tattered edges that it had spent much of the last 40 years in a closet. The quilt is one that Eden's great-great-great grandmother made for Sarah's grandmother (Donna McIntosh) for her high school graduation. From Eden to Grandma Marr, the woman who made the quilt, are 6 generations of women (including Eden as a woman-to-be!) all connected to a quilt preserved and passed down through the generations.
May we be faithful to those who have come before us, and to those who will come after.
A 19th Century Quote for 2012
Mark and I are doing some re-organization over the break, getting the mechanical room set up with grow lights for vegetable starts which we'll begin in a month. Re-organizing included sorting through boxes and the book boxes slowed me down a fair bit. I came across a 1947 reprint of Audels Carpenters & Builders Guide, initially published in 1923. I believe the book initially belonged to Loyd Anderson, Mark's Grandfather, and that we acquired it after he died. The leather-bound well-illustrated book opens with a quote by John Ruskin, who I learned (on Wikipedia!) lived between 1819-1900. Ruskin was an English art critic and patron, writer, draughtsman, watercolourist, social thinker and philanthropist. The quote inspires me on all sorts of levels:
"When we build, let us think that we build forever. Let it not be for present delight nor for present use alone. Let it be such work as our descendants will thank us for; and let us think, as we lay stone on stone, that a time is to come when those stones will be held sacred because our hands have touched them, and that men will say, as they look upon the labor and wrought substance of them, 'See! This our father did for us.'"
May we all work and build given the economic and social challenges of our day with such intention.
25 Healthy Chicks Arrived Today!
We had good intentions of hatching out our own eggs after last year's experience with shipping day old chicks. Last year a packing error meant that only 20 chicks were shipped instead of the 25 required to maximize body heat during their trek from the hatchery. That, and sub-freezing temperatures meant that several were DOA, and several more died in the first couple of hours after I picked them up from the post office shipping yard, despite my best attempt at calling them toward life. We did not want to repeat this experience.
But hatching out eggs means we'd get about 50% males, and since we aren't raising chickens for meat, that is problematic. Besides, more Craigslist people will buy pullets (females) than roosters because, like us, most people keeping backyard chickens do it for the eggs and also perhaps because keeping hens is simply satisfying. While not like having a pet dog, hens offer an echo of life before food production left the family farm.
Chickens develop rules, a pecking order, personalities. For instance, I resist taking eggs out from under any of our hens, mostly because some of them find it distressing, but only the Production Reds will peck at me if I try. Most Americauna, Marans and Leghorns are skittish, the Gold and Black Sex-Links are less so. Skeddal is an Americauna so named because she is a skeddaler. Liza stamps her feet and then bows to be petted whenever I'm in proximity to her. And so it goes. About half our hens have names, like Ruby, Amelia, Bertha, Maud, Erma, Sule, Coila, Molly, Sister, Mourning, Chicken Little, and Penelope. They delight us. They require more care than a cat and less than a dog and give us eggs and nitrogen-rich poop besides.
Milder weather contributed to the chicks fiesty arrival at Fern Creek, chirping all the way home in the car. As I lifted each one from the box, I welcomed her to Fern Creek, dunked her beak in some sugar water and set her down by the water under a warming lamp. Still, at first they stumbled into a giant heap under the heat lamp for a collective snooze. We'll have about a dozen pullets for sale in about a month, so if you are local and interested let me know. I'm glad to provide some guidance on getting started for first-timers. We have Barred Rock, Rhode Island Red, and Black and Gold Sex-links. One of the Gold Sex-Links (a very human-friendly breed) has already imprinted on Mark, wanting him to be her Mama. Erma did that with me last year, and while she backed off after going through puberty (as many adolescent daughters do!), she will still come forward and greet me when I walk into the hen house to refill their feed and water and collect eggs.
Cabbage, Sunshine & Fern Creek Eggs: Natural Defenses in Preventing Cancer
Megan Anna (our daughter) sent us a link to a compelling lecture by Dr. David Servan-Schreiber, a cancer survivor, neuroscientist, psychiatrist and author. Mark and I watched it and felt affirmed for the food we grow and eat, and thankful for our hens' eggs, naturally rich in Omego-3 because their diet is high in grass and worms instead of limited to soy and corn. We even felt good about the amount of sunshine we're exposed to working outside so much of the year. We were challenged to cut down our sugar intake… especially high this time of year, although dark chocolate gets a thumbs up, which made me smile. This engaging 58 minute lecture is definately worth watching. It might incline you to join a CSA, start tending your own hens (or buying eggs from a neighbor), and initiate walking with a friend. If you watch it, let me know what you think. You can catch it here: Natural Defenses in Preventing Cancer.
Winter Solstice
Yesterday, December 22nd, was the winter solstice in the Northern Hemishpere--the shortest day of the year, or the Longest Night, depending on your perspective. That means, starting today each day gets a bit longer until the summer solstice in June. What a delightful fact that the lengthening of the days corresponds to the first day of winter! Several days of heavy frosts and thick fog have ushered in the changing of this season, with occasional clear nights studded with stars celebrated by the hoot owl that lives in the forest by the creek. Some mornings Mark and I walk in the dark, our way lit by the moon and eventually by the hinting of daylight to come. On one recent walk the hoot owl had not yet settled down from her night's activities, so we heard her low resonant call as we made our way up Williamson Road, past other, mostly slumbering, creatures.
Every season holds reminders of the wonder of how Life cycles through the year. This season of earth-rest reminds me of the gift of sleep, a break from school and farm work, and a celebration of a different sort. That Christmas is situated at the beginning of winter recalls every year the Christian belief that because of God's tender mercy, the light of Christ came to shine on those living in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the path of peace (Luke 1:78-79). With the economic, political and social challenges of this day, I cling to that hope, and the simple gifts of seasonal changes that remind me of the faithful presence of God throughout time and space.
