Horses, Hoes, and Hankerings

In the spring, we farmers are full of hankerings. Woken up by sunshine and warm air, we are longing for a hundred things, a thousand things, a million things. Here are a few:

Greenhouse Hankerings: Everything starts in the greenhouse on our vegetable farm. We sow the seeds, and we long for good germination. We water the seeds, and we hope that our watering system holds out another year, hoses and couplings and hand-dug well alike. We compost the greenhouse beds, hankering after fertility and productivity and general vegetable abundance this season. And we hope warm temperatures really do come and stay, so we don't have to keep paying greenhouse propane bills into April, or May, or June . . .

Garden Hankerings: Some of our veggies–tomatoes, eggplant, basil, green and sweet red and hot peppers–spend their lives in the sheltered greenhouse, but most of our crops are either transplanted or direct-sown into the big world of the garden. This is when the hankerings of a farmer are strongly directed skyward: more rain, less rain; more sunshine, less sunshine; more gentle breezes, less big winds; much much much less hail. We also have some strong bug longings. We long for the beneficial insects, and we hope that the vegetable munchers stay away. In the garden we hanker for sharp hoes and tiny weeds, too.

Biodynamic Hankerings: We farm using biodynamic methods. Biodynamic agriculture is both a practical and a philosophical approach to farming, with a mission to revitalize the soil and to renew an understanding of the spiritual task of farming. Biodynamic farmers see the farm itself as a living organism, one that starts with healthy soil. Healthy soil helps provide healthy plants and healthy food, which in turn can nourish both the physical and spiritual lives of those who eat it. We like to encourage a good spirit in our food and on our farm, though sometimes that only means a frustrated farmer might curse under her breath rather than at a roar. But mostly it means a lasting belief in good, meaningful work in the world.

CSA Hankerings: We must admit that we also hanker for a solid CSA membership in the spring. As farmers, we never know quite what our income is going to be every year. It's always nice to be able to pay the bills, and the bills tend to come very early in the spring, whereas the CSA members come late in the spring, once the warm weather wakes up the garden-fresh-veggies urge. (Plus we hanker highly after members who love local food and farms and farmers, and our CSA members hanker too: Oh! Those sugar snap peas! Oh! That first ripe heirloom tomato! Oh! That first whiff of fresh basil! Sometimes our nice members hanker for hoes too, and come help us weed!)

Horse Hankerings: In all seasons, summer, fall, winter, and spring,our four fine draft horses help us accomplish many tasks around the farm, from bringing in firewood to making hay, from plowing and discing to spreading compost and cultivating, not to mention their generous deposits to soil fertility via the compost pile. But especially now, in the spring, our horses hanker for just one thing: green grass! The first day out on pasture, generally towards the end of April, or the beginning of May, is a day of great horse celebration! And then the second day is! And the third! And the fourth!

This hankering for green grass makes perfect sense to a vegetable farmer. What's better to celebrate than fresh, local, sustainably grown food?

Originally published in the Monadnock Shopper News, April 13-19, 2016
 

Gritting, Longing, Wondering, Raging, Yodeling: Life on the Farm

It's March on our vegetable farm, and there's a stir in the air. There's a warm breeze, wafting over the ice and mud, and we farmers lift our faces to the sunshine, smelling spring. Spring is surely close by, in March, and even if it isn't quite here yet, our heated greenhouse hollers Spring! Spring! Spring!

Every year we fire up the greenhouse's propane heater on March first. We turn on the heat mats, and we fill up the flats with soil mix, and we open the very first seed packets of spring – the onions, and the scallions, and then the lettuce and the salad greens, and the tomatoes and basil.

We press the tiny black or white or brown seeds into the dirt, trying to press in a little blessing for each seed too, a germinate, grow well, be healthy and happy, and bear much fruit! blessing. It is fine meditative work, there in the warmth and protection and almost-outdoorsness of the greenhouse. We feel the sun, smell the dirt, hear the birds warming up their spring songs. Such peacefulness, such quiet, such good vibes, amongst the seeds, the soil, the farmers . . .

Well, maybe there's not good vibes every minute between the farmers. Because, in the spring, there is a) the one farmer, who likes to meditate in the peace and quiet while sowing seeds, and b) the other farmer, who likes to listen to the radio while sowing seeds, and c) the fact that the radio can't be both off and on at the same time.

A small difference, perhaps, but over the past twenty years of working full-time together, the meditative farmer and the radio farmer have worked through many spring seed-sowing scenarios:

1) Gritting

Two farmers, sowing seeds: One happy farmer, listening to the radio, and one grumpy farmer, gritting her teeth, wishing she wasn't listening to the radio.

2) Longing

Two farmers, sowing seeds: one happy farmer, meditating restfully with bird-song and breeze-song and seed-song, and one slightly restless farmer, longing to turn on the radio and find out what's going on in the big wide world beyond this one little greenhouse on this one little farm in this one little village in this one little state.

3) Wondering

One farmer, sowing seeds: one happy farmer, listening to the radio while sowing, and one slightly restless farmer, working on boring bills and CSA advertising, and wondering what fun she's missing in the greenhouse.

4) Wondering, Take Two

One farmer, sowing seeds: one happy farmer, quietly meditating and sowing, and one very restless farmer, working the last of his winter substitute shifts at the local food co-op (where the radio is playing, but not his station), and wondering what fun he's missing in the greenhouse.

5) Raging

No farmers, sowing seeds: one enraged farmer, who's going out to the greenhouse to join her already sowing fellow farmer, but who discovers that the fellow has gone off to another urgent farm project, leaving the radio blaring, with no person even there to hear it! (Clearly this enraged farmer's meditative efforts aren't quite strong enough: she mutters and curses as she violently unplugs the radio, and then stomps off to find out what the other urgent farm project is.)

6) Yodeling

Two farmers sowing seeds: the meditative farmer, in a fit of tolerance and loving kindness, builds a shelf in the greenhouse for her fellow farmer's radio. The radio farmer, for his kindly part, turns the radio off when the meditative farmer is approaching.

“Here I come,” the meditative farmer yodels cheerfully, “will you turn it off?”

“Did you say 'Turn it up? Turn it up?' All right!” yodels the radio farmer back, laughing a lot at his own funny joke, and unplugging the radio.

The meditative farmer laughs too, and there we are again, another spring, two mostly contented farmers, having occasional bits of conversation, enough to satisfy the restless but not disturb the restful, and sowing the seeds of March together.


Originally published in the Monadnock Shopper News, March 16-22, 2016
 

Scratchy-Bitey Farm Cat

He's a fine cat. He's been with us a long, long time, longer than our draft horses, our farm, our teenage daughter. He's caught more than his share of mice and voles and moles and rats and squirrels and chipmunks and birds. And he has made a fine reputation for himself as a scratchy-bitey farm cat.

As a kitten, he was so vigorous and gleeful in his pouncing on the feet or any other moving body part under the blankets that we had to lock him out of the bedroom. Then, in the night, when I had to get up to visit the bathroom . . . I knew it was coming, but I didn't know when. I tiptoed across the floor, holding my breath in the dark. Then . . . Pounce! I would squawk, heart pounding, while the kitty wrapped his paws firmly around my ankle. I shuffled along, the kitty happily sliding across the wooden floor, gnawing on my leg. Our kitty loved this game. I found it a little daunting.

The kitty, for his part, found our various moves daunting: from the first pleasant house of ankle-gnawing to the second terrible place of four dreadful dogs to the third so-so place with its startling appearance of a team of draft horses and a baby. Then on to the fourth place, our vegetable farm in New Hampshire, where our scratchy-bitey cat came into his glory.

He wondered from haymow to garden to field to farmhouse, catching rodents. He slept where he chose, ate what he chose, and scratched and bit whom he chose. When we started our CSA garden, our kitty ran up to the CSA members with great enthusiasm. He rubbed his head against legs. A hand descended, ready to pet. The hand petted; a voice crooned. The kitty put his ears back, swished his tail, hissed and spit and scratched and bit, and ran off, apparently insulted by the whole proceeding.

We began to issue kitty warnings. This is a scratchy-bitey kitty, we'd say. He might seem very friendly, we'd say. Consider yourself warned, we'd say. Quickly people learned about our kitty, and their children learned too, with occasional tears.

Things went on fairly calmly until, a few years later, we got another kitty: another all black kitty, a very friendly, lovey-dovey kitty.

“Uh-oh,” CSA members would say, “Which one is that?” as an enthusiastic black kitty ran over.

“Look at the toes,” we'd advise. “The friendly one has lots of toes.”

As one member said, “By the time I figure out the toes, it's too late.”

Sadly, our second black kitty disappeared one day, after only a year with us. Then it was quite clear again just who the resident black kitty was.

Over the years, our scratchy-bitey black kitty has risen to new heights. For a while he decided that sleeping on the dark shelf where members reach in blindly for plastic bags was a fine idea. He didn't like his naps disturbed, needless to say. Then he began to believe that taking a nap on a tray of cucumbers that we had set aside in the house, ready for pickling, was appealing. We discouraged this strongly.

Next, one day in the shed, as a farmer came to greet a CSA member, the latter said, “Boy, am I glad to see you! I started to reach in the bin for my lettuce, but your black cat is sitting on the top of the cloth. I took my hand out again, fast!”

“Oh, geesh,” said the farmer apologetically. “I don't know why anyone would want to lie on a wet cloth on top of lettuce. Come on out of there, you naughty kitty!”

From then on, we made Scratchy-Bitey stay inside on harvest day. He seemed happy to come back to taking naps on our pickling cucumbers.

But as he gets older, our fine kitty is more tolerant than he used to be. Sometimes he asks us to pick him up and pet him. He even purrs, a small rusty purr.

One morning, when I am holding and petting the kitty, I say to my fellow farmer, “I feel a little more confident with him, when he's actually purring,”

My fellow makes a wry face. “Sometimes he's been purring when he scratched and bit me.”

I draw my head back from the kitty's teeth and claws.

“Is that true?” I say to Ol' Scratchy-Bitey.

The kitty purrs.

Originally published in the Monadnock Shopper News, Feb 17-23, 2016