Farming's Wifty Realms

I've been reading a lot of poems this winter.

Lest you think that this farming and sustainability column is going to veer irretrievably off into poetry and other such wifty realms, let me reassure you that, in fact, I read poetry all the time, and still function as a farmer. But this winter I discovered a poem, by Thomas Merton, that pretty much sums up how I feel as a New Hampshire vegetable farmer in the winter.

There are some lovely lines in the poem, such as “O covered stones/ Hide the house of growth!” and “Fire, turn inward,” but my favorite is both the title and the last line of the poem: “Love winter when the plant says nothing.”

Oh, I do love winter, when the plant says nothing. I also love summer, spring, and fall, when the plant says a lot. But winter allows me a period of quiet contemplation that is not worried by the quantity and quality of the harvest, or the quantity and the quality of the weeds, or the quantity and the quality of the farmwork I am accomplishing.

No, winter lets me be. Winter lets me root around in a box so long neglected that I find all kinds of things I'd thoroughly forgotten. You might wonder, in this context, if I am writing of a metaphorical box, but this is an actual box, and I actually found in it, just yesterday: a book of poetry! by Jane Hirshfield!

Hirshfield is another poet I love, and apparently this book had been in a bunch of stuff my sister was trying to rid her house of (oh, get that poetry away from me!), and somehow I missed it. But here is this lovely new book, right in my lap, and now I can think about both Thomas Merton, the Trappist monk/writer, and Jane Hirshfield, the Buddhist poet, at the same time.

Also, if you're still with me in this sort-of-farming column thus far, now I can say as well:

I've been reading a lot of theology, or religion or spiritual kind of stuff, this winter. (I repeat: lest you think that this farming and sustainability column is going to veer irretrievably off into those wifty realms, let me reassure you that, in fact, I read theology/religion/spirituality books all the time, and still function as a farmer.)

And if you're still reading this column, I will also admit to recently reading a 555 page book titled The Life You Save May Be Your Own: An American Pilgrimage, by Paul Elie, which is about the four Catholic writers Thomas Merton, Flannery O'Connor, Walker Percy, and Dorothy Day, and their explorations of religious faith through writing.

It was a long book, even for someone interested in writing and spiritual matters, and it's possible I might not have read it at all if the library hadn't been closed because of the pandemic, but there it was in my house and I picked it up. It took me a number of months to finish, especially since I started it in the high season of farming.

But finish it I did, and I particularly liked reading about Merton and his monk-life. Merton inspired many people to turn towards a more contemplative life though his writings, and, in his later years, he also found himself with a lively interest in Buddhism, and in the resonances between Christian and Buddhist contemplation.

In his fifties, Merton visited Asia and many of the spiritual luminaries of his day, including Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh and the Dalai Lama of Tibetan Buddhism. As Merton wrote, while in Asia, “There is no puzzle, no problem, and really no 'mystery.' All is clear. The rock, all matter, all life, is charged with dharmakaya – everything is emptiness and everything is compassion” (Elie 420).

Yes! Wow! and now I get to go from that beautiful understanding of the world to Jane Hirshfield, and one of her early books called Of Gravity and Angels, which is the book I just discovered in my box, and then maybe I'll go on to Hirshfield's translations of poems written by women of the ancient court of Japan, or her essays on poetry, or her thoughts on Zen Buddhism, or her ideas on science, nature, and environmental issues, all of which are directly related to sustainable farming in my mind, and probably in yours now too.

And what better place to end a farmingish column in winter then with another bit from Merton's poem: “Oh peace, bless this mad place. / Silence, love this growth.”

Originally published in the Monadnock Shopper News, Jan 13 - Jan 19, 2021

From Frantic to Pleasant: December on the Farm

It's fun to be a vegetable farmer in December, when the work goes from frantic to pleasant. Moving from a high of 14 to 16 hours of outside work a day in July to the lovely four or five hours a day in December is a very welcome change.

This is when, if it's not raining or snowing, we roll up irrigation and pull the dead stalks out of the garden beds and fix machinery: that broken foot board on the spreader, for example, which has given me fits all summer, when I saw my fellow farmer teetering his way up to the seat, using the tire and the thin metal edge of the support that should be holding an intact foot board in place.

“We have to fix this before we need the spreader again,” I would say, with great determination, but once the loads of compost were spread, we were sucked into the next whirlpool of transplanting or watering or weeding, and there we would be, the very next time with the spreader: my fellow teetering, and me worrying.

Of course, when the horses decided to go ahead just a little sooner than they should, this only compounded the problem, as the spreader lurched forward and my fellow pretty much fell on to the seat. This is much better than falling off the seat, and then falling under the spreader, which, I am very glad to report, has not happened. But it could, and I am very pleased when December comes, and we have enough time to take on this repair project.

We are also busy (well, sort of busy, four or five hours a day busy) this time of year repairing our greenhouses, replacing the hipboards and baseboards. This is in hopes that we won't have the experience of a few years ago when a big windstorm nearly took away my greenhouse and my fellow farmer, who was trying to hold the greenhouse down in the big wind. The combination of rotting hip and baseboards, a rip in the plastic, and a big wind was not a good one. Then, as hard as it is to believe, this all happened again, the next year, with the next greenhouse in the line. Perhaps we finally learned something, because this year, in spacious December, we are replacing the boards in the third and fourth greenhouses before an emergency, instead of in the middle of an emergency.

This time of year is also when, if it is raining or snowing (oh December joy! we don't have to work outside in the rain or cold whether we feel like it or not, as we must in July), we also work on the insides of the greenhouses. We unhook all those millions of little clips that held the tomatoes upright on their strings. We cut down the strings. We pull out the rows of dead plants, and pile them up to compost. We dig the beds, pull any weeds, and then add finished compost to the soil. It's a good amount of work, but it is all delightfully non-urgent this time of year, and there is the wonderful feeling that anything we do now will only help us next spring.

Anything we do now will only help us in the spring! I like that. A lot. Especially when “anything” includes paying our bills on time, and catching up on farm paperwork, and planning for next year. It includes setting our farm kitchen back to rights, and making leisurely meals, and eating those leisurely meals. It includes getting enough sleep, and taking a moonlit walk in the fields, which happens as early as 5:30 or 6 p.m. in this season, giving us plenty of time for the meal and the sleep, and the meal and the sleep are even more restful because of the walk and the moonlight in the fields.

Of course, we love that sun, that strong sun that shone on us and our vegetables and our hayfields in July, for so many hours, that in combination with rain and soil and air make our farming and all our lives possible. We love that sun all year long, warming us up in December too.

But we also love that that moon, rising over the trees, that subtler, softer light, a radiance that reminds us that night and darkness and quietness and stillness and rest and repairs are essential too, a part of the rhythm that sustains us all.

Originally published in the Monadnock Shopper News, Dec 16 – Dec 22, 2020

On Mud, Horses, Flowers, and Food, Or, the Cheshire County Conservation District Marks its 75th Year

It was early spring. All the snow had melted in the winter paddock, and the workhorses and the farmers were ankle-and-fetlock deep in mud. We all groaned.

Here came a month of feeding hay three times a day in the muck, ramming wheelbarrows of manure through the muck, pulling our boots out of the muck, pulling our horses out of the muck. Or, at least, pulling the muck out of our horses, as we groomed their itchy shedding coats, and hair and dirt came off in a cloud.

But then came the muck miracle: thanks to the Cheshire County Conservation District, which marks its 75th anniversary this year, my farmer-spouse and I were introduced to the Natural Resources Conservation Service, a federal program. The CCCD works cooperatively with the Conservation Service, weighing in on local conservation priorities, as well as serving as a conduit for interested farmers, ranchers, or foresters who would like to be part of the NRCS programs (which include funding for the historically underserved, such as socially disadvantaged, beginning, limited resource, and veteran farmers).

Thus our vegetable farm received a grant for a Heavy Use Area Protection Plan for our winter paddock, which would stabilize the ground surface, provide for water run-off, and assist in keeping the nutrients in the compost pile next to the paddock. We were pro all of those things: protecting the soil, clean water, and healthy compost.

But what we didn't expect was the pleasure of that renovated paddock: now we could all lounge about, chewing our hay, enjoying the brisk early spring air, skipping along with the wheelbarrow of manure. We could keep our boots on our feet, and our hooves dry. No more mud, no more muck, no more stuck.

In the same vein, when we two farmers were considering how to make our vegetable growing more efficient, we looked long at the ends of our garden beds, which were very close to a mature hedgerow. The big trees in the hedgerow had considerably more pulling power on the water and the nutrients than our little beds of vegetables. For years we had dutifully tilled, composted, planted, and irrigated the last 20 feet of the beds nearest the hedgerow, and for years, our vegetable harvest there was puny. But we didn't want to cut down the trees, lovely in their own right, and also home to various insect, bird, and animal lives, not to mention lichens and the like.

Then we had a brilliant idea: our vegetables don't want to grow here, but something else might. When we began working with the Cheshire County Conservation District on increasing pollinator areas, we were most pleased to sprinkle a seed mix on the ends of all those garden beds by the hedgerow. Here we were, cutting down our work load, as well as sensibly avoiding a paltry harvest. Plus, of course, we need pollinators in our gardens, to help the vegetables along, and we need pollinators (and trees) in the world, to help everything else along.

But what we didn't expect was a glory of blooming bachelor buttons in the pollinator mix. We've grown a few bachelor buttons as cutting flowers for our CSA members, but we had never sown so many, and not even realizing they were in the mix. The seeds germinated, and soon the bachelor buttons bloomed blue blue blue against brilliant green. It was like a painting, like Vincent van Gogh's irises, except it was bachelor buttons and they were right there, in our garden, blue and ablaze.

We had a beautiful paddock, a beautiful pollinator patch, and then, of course, we had all our vegetables. We were selling CSA shares and produce at the Farmers' Market in Keene, but we always want the good food to be available to a broader range of people. The CCCD stepped up again, with several programs: produce vouchers for veterans at the Farmers' Market during September, as well as the Granite State Market Match program, which doubles SNAP benefits for purchasing fresh produce, though CSA or farmers' markets. The conservation district office also worked with our group of local CSA farmers, called Farmers Helping Farmers, to create a farm share program that offered CSA shares to lower-income members of the community. Of course, we loved all this: increasing food access, food sovereignty, supporting healthy diets, and keeping local farms in business.

But what we didn't expect was the feeling that we didn't have to accomplish all of these things by ourselves. The Cheshire County Conservation District, in partnership both with federal programs such as the NRCS, and with local communities, is right there with us, working for healthy soil, clean water, abundant wildlife, and sustainable forests, farms, and gardens. Check out the CCCD at cheshireconservation.org.

Originally published in the Monadnock Shopper News, Nov 18 – Nov 22, 2020

The Three-Quarters Blues

Maybe you know that feeling: the three-quarters done feeling, the three-quarters blues. The wow, I've been doing this thing for a long time, and I'm kind of tired of it, and I'm getting grumpier and grumpier just thinking how I have to keep on.

Such as when you're washing a mountain of dishes, and you're almost to the top but not quite, and you really hate all these cruddy dishes, and your hands are all soggy, and you know if you leave the last quarter instead of finishing, the dishes will seemingly overnight become a mountain again. You keep on washing.

Or maybe you've been picking millions of cherry tomatoes for months and you really want to be done picking them, but you were a responsible farmer, and covered the row when the early frost came, and now you've still got cherry tomatoes to pick. And you think, huh, how come the flowers and beans and squash all died, but you didn't, you cherry tomatoes? But you keep on picking.

Or maybe you spent so many hours weeding this season that you think there can't possibly be any more weeds, and even though you mostly love weeding, now you can't stand it, it's been too much, too long, but your outside carrots didn't germinate well, so you tried planting some in the greenhouse, and of course, in the nice warm greenhouse, the weeds are still growing. Geez, why did you ever think you loved weeding? But you keep on weeding.

Or maybe it is like when your kitchen is full of seconds: eggplant, tomatoes, potatoes, carrots, zucchini yellow squash cucumbers broccoli tomatillos kale chard spinach, the list is endless, and it all needs to be put by for the winter. You know that in a month or six weeks your kitchen will no longer have trays full of slowly getting limper and limper vegetables, and you will be very glad for all that preserved food, but it is hard to keep that in mind when you are ¾ of the way through it all. But you keep on slicing and canning and freezing.

Or maybe it is like when you had a friend's small boy visit. Now the friend loves the farm, and she loves the boy, who is the son of her own dear friend, and the small boy immediately loves the farm. He is maybe eight years old, and this farm is the best thing he's ever seen. Then we do a little project, because this is a working visit. You decide on a fun kind of working visit job, clearing little rocks out of the greenhouse bed. The small boy thinks this is great. For quite a while.

Then, ¾ of the way through the job, he says “This is the worst day of my life! I'm going to call my mother! I'm going back home!” Back home happens to be on the West Coast, which is not too near NH. Your friend is gasping in shock at the boy hating the farm, and worried the farmer will be insulted. But you, the farmer, just laugh. You know those ¾ blues. And hey, if this is the worst day of this small boy's life, things are going pretty well. (And hey, likewise for the farmer.) With a little encouragement, we all keep on picking up those little rocks.

Of course, you'd much rather spend all afternoon in the warm sun on a blanket reading a book, especially the wonderful Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer. Kimmerer weaves together traditional indigenous teaching and Western science, and tells of making maple syrup, both the gift of the sap, and the work of the syrup. She writes: “[the] teachings remind us that one half of the truth is that the earth endows us with great gifts, the other half is that the gift is not enough. The responsibility does not lie with the maples alone. The other half belongs to us; we participate in its transformation. It is our work, and our gratitude, that distills the sweetness” (69).

Oh all right, maybe I can be a little grateful in my grump. Because I sure do love this book, and highly recommend it, whether you are reading half the day in your backyard, or for two minutes before you fall asleep. Maybe it will even turn a ¾ grump into a full-on gratitude.

Originally published in the Monadnock Shopper News, Oct 21 – Oct 27, 2020