For the last two months or so, the farmer has been sleeping in.  Sometimes just sleeping in a little compared to being up and out in the fields before anyone else is awake; sometimes sleeping way in, while the rest of us rouse, eat, and start our day still waiting at 9:00 for him to say good morning!  I am not quite sure if he has ever taken the winter months to practice this bit of extra restfulness before, or if this is just the first winter I noticed it.   I do think that up until now he most likely still had a pressing feeling  in the winter to keep busy because this is the first winter that he has been all the way through a full year of full-time farming, with the business now more or less solvent without needing either of us to work off of the farm.  I think this year he could fully relax while the sun slept in too and the temperatures were so cold.

I, too, have noticed that even though I wasn’t sleeping in, I was feeling more sleepy when I did wake in the mornings.  There was a subtle difference–less get up and go and a lot more snuggle under the covers than jump up and greet the day.  Since neither of us have changed our sleeping routines, I can’t help but think that this extra sleepiness has something to do with the season.

And then this morning, I woke early to the sound of the farmer leaving the bed.  I could see that there was a faint change in the color of the sky, but really, it was mostly dark and dawn was barely on its way.  After falling back asleep for a little bit before getting up, I went out to find that this morning, all of a sudden, the farmer was back to work.  He had finished his tea, organized seeds, and was heading out the door already, practically bristling with excitiment.  He said something about so much to do! and was off to the greenhouse.

At first, I was surprised at the sudden change, finding myself equally bristling with excitement at early morning work and all that it implied , but nevertheless, not fully there myself in that get back to business mode.

And then I was struck by the significance of this shift happening today, the day pagans used to celebrate as the halfway point between the darkest day of the year, winter solstice, and the first day of spring.  Imbolc, an ancient holiday, encompassed in modern times by little more than a groundhog peeking out of his whole in Pennsylvania (tomorrow), but still a nod to the fact that spring is, indeed, on its way.

The energy has shifted outside as it will continue to shift throughout the month and on into the heart of spring.   And without skipping a beat, the farmer, so very connected to this land and his work, experienced that same shift.  Just like that, he shed his winter slumbering and awoke with excitement and enthusiasm–it is the perfect energy to jump start the season.

And so, early on this Imbolc morning, some seeds were sown, the first of 2012.

Really quick, before we slip into February and the year is officially on its way, let’s pretend that all year we will be as poised and ready for flight as we are in the freshness of January.

I have had this list floating around in my head for the past month or so, taking shape, refining itself into something worth paying attention to for the rest of the year.  These January lists, for me, are always filled with lots of maybe’s and only a bit of for sure’s.  Nonetheless, they always serve as good guideposts as I make my way through the months.

That boy above seen flying down the hill and exploding in light; a few weeks ago he made a list entitled, “pashions to fufill”.  It was one part impossible (for now) dreams (go to Hawyee (Hawaii) and Japan, build a small room on the roof, find a 1,000,000 doler bill), one part wishful thinking (get a laptop, die my hair), and one part achievable goals and aspirations (beacom a break dancer, become a master yo-yo-er, go to a concert of these bands-weezer, radiohead, snow patrol, beck, and get a bunch of lizerds).  It is also one part overarching approach to life–so unassumingly, he adds to this grand list, have fun.  That’s my favorite one.

And even though he still doesn’t take much time to make sure he is spelling everything right, he is never short on ideas.  The daily output of creativity–in the forms of drawings, paintings, story ideas, intricate imaginative games, mini books, jokes, dance moves, and songs–is nothing short of amazing.  And the same goes for all of my kids, and really, all children in general.  They breathe creation.

And so, taking a cue from the small folks in my my life, I am thinking about this year not in terms of resolutions, but rather in terms of passions to fulfill as well as in terms of creating the year, day by day.  Some things on my list may be impossible dreams for the year, but why leave them off the list?  Imagination isn’t only for the young in years, but for the young at heart, right?  Some may be wishful thinking, but it is those wishes I make every year and keep in my mind most clearly that tend to come true.  And unlike last year, I have a few goals set for myself as well, just to make sure my own cup doesn’t run dry by the end of the year like it did in 2011.

2012 Passions to Fulfill

• more date nights with the farmer than I can count on one hand
• a full larder come fall (since I haven’t preserved anything for the last few years)
• a trip to California to visit Great Grandma, who totally rocks, so we all can see her at least one more time before she moves on
• eating out here and here, since we ate out maybe once last year for Valentine’s day (here)
  
• see much, much, much more live music, both mama and papa, and the whole family
• take up running (I can’t believe it has come to this, but hey! it’s free and it’s outside and those rank pretty high on my exercise list)
• begin to learn the fiddle
• practice the piano
• visit Nebraska, hug my nieces and brother and introduce them to their new cousin/nephew, bask in its landscape, so much a part of me, and the closeness of old friends, in all their familiarity
• say yes more
• go dancing with my love (I’m thinking tango or salsa lessons!)
  
• get a canoe and take the kids floating on the river
  
• remodel the kitchen, finish painting, and pull up the rest of the carpet in the house
• heal some food allergies
• re-institute the weekend, balance farming and family time
  
• explore the city
  
• find real ways to help end the wars, stop the spread of GMO crops, and improve the diet and health of the next generations 
• be silly with the kids
• let the little things slide
• soak in the hot springs
• make a rag rug
• and make time ( I believe it’s possible)

Really, lists like these are not exhaustible and often need to be tweaked as life rolls by.

Really, they are just snapshots of the moment.  But still, I like them a whole lot.

And in the end, I rely heavily on picking something like have fun or be present or love to be my guide everyday, inserting other inspiring words like relax, focas, let go, dream, move, give thanks, and on and on as needed, hoping against hope to keep that frame of mind more hours of the day than not, the never ending work of being human.

And so, with a lot of inspiration and determination, and fortune willing, a little bit of grace, we embark.

Filed under: children, cycles, family, home Tagged: family, home, mother, rhythym, seasons ]]> http://growingwildfarm.com/2012/02/01/take-off/feed/ 1 growingwildfarm flying http://growingwildfarm.com/2012/01/28/january-through-the-lens/ http://growingwildfarm.com/2012/01/28/january-through-the-lens/#comments Sat, 28 Jan 2012 23:07:54 +0000 growingwildfarm http://growingwildfarm.com/?p=1286 ]]> A small look at what our month has been full of:

yo-yo’s

keeping warm with new Christmas hats from Grandma

sunny (and wet) winter harvests and yummy winter meals

rain and rain and floods

wet explorations, loads of splashing, and oh so much puddle jumping

baby goat joy and tragedy

and many hours of learning, playing, and loving with this silly crew, the youngest of whom was not happy to be slowed down by big sister for this photo!

What else?

We are mixing potting soil to start transplants, ordering greenhouse supplies, tinkering with the tractor to make sure it is running well when we need to start using it this spring, finalizing the fruit orders for the year, and contemplating a week’s vacation before we start to get busy again.

January is such a sweet, quiet month.  It is usually sunnier than the months to come, so we try to get outside to soak it up as much as we can, all the while itching to be doing more work with the ground than we actually can.  It is a month of dreaming big and filling back up after the drain of a whole busy season.

It is one of the best, don’t you think?

(but really, I do love them all)

All around the farm, the golden brown of autumn surrounds us.  Summer plants have died and are in various states of decay, the leaves are well on their way, shouting out in bright yellow before falling quiety to the ground.  Always on this farm, we live up close and personal with this cycle–the cycle of the seasons:  growth, death, decay, re-birth.  That this cycle is matter of fact, that it applies to all that lives and breathes this fine air of life, this truth permeates, so to speak.   The more shocking truth that we have come to know as we spend time out here is that everything we are engaged in at one time on the farm is also always playing itself out on the other end of the spectrum too, at the same time.  We are in a constant state of duality.

Life and death, or death and life as it is at this time of year…ever present, side by side.  Just as the summer crops turn to mush and the leaves crinkle and dry up, there is an explosion of green in the fields.  So much green, much like in the spring, only darker and sturdier are the leaves, full of the promise to feed us through the cold.  The brown billy goat smells up the farm with his inate drive to make life now, just as so much around him dies away.  Next spring, those baby goats will liven up this place, just as the tender and bright green shoots of spring brighten the bleak landscape of winter once more.   And in spring, while all that life is exploding, we will be planting and planning for the coming winter again, sowing crops for harvest half a year away.

When my parents passed away,  I found this all so comforting.  In an abstract way, it really is.  It does allow one to feel connected, even in death, to something grand and beautiful in design.  Still, this fall I can’t help but feel a distinct separateness from this.  Human tragedy seems to superceed this design.  Is there comfort to be found in knowing life goes on with or without us, with or without our hopes and dreams?  I don’t know.  In the face of inexplicable human sorrow, where do we search for meaning?

Fall is the great time of turning inward.  The spark of thoughts germinating inside as we lived more loudly through summer are finally given air.  There is so much this month for my family to be thankful for, this farm and our lives are so truly blessed.  Yet, at the same time we are faced with loss and deep wells of compassion for our friend’s and loved ones we know who have suffered unbearable losses in this life.  This duality is so confusing, and yet, in the day to day workings around here, we work and play as ever we did.  Like the earth that forever puts forth both the blossoms of life as well as the blankets of dying leaves, we live both sides of the coin simultaneously.  The deepest joys coupled with the deepest pains; we feel them, let them shine or burn the center momentarily depending, but mostly let them lie on the periphery while we continue with the day to day. 

Such mysteries I can not understand on this beautiful fall morning!  All I know is that wherever we are on our paths today, most of us have only things to be thankful for.  Let us not give weight to the small things–the intermitent pests on the crops, the unpredictable weather, the hard day; these things matter little in the grand scheme.  My own personal harvest is so bountiful and beautiful, there has been no great suffering.  Why?  How?  I can’t say, but it is selfish to do anything else but feel those blessings and let go of the rest.  I am saving my worry for others.

I actually shudder to admit that this great slowing down time on the farm, the wonderful quieting of that raucous din that is summer around here, is proving to be neither quiet or slow after all.  September came, and suddenly I am so busy with homeschooling and activities for the kids and trying to squeeze a little bit of time out of all of that for taming the wildness that summer inevitably created inside our home while we worked and played outside for a season (which doesn’t make sense when you think about it, does it?),  that I have had little time to give to my “office” and “writing” duties for the farm.  Ideas come and go, poignant and thoughtful or just simple and funny, but I rarely have the time to sit down and put them to pen (so to speak!).

I keep thinking that with just one day to get things organized, a day to breath so to speak, I could get on top of this schedule and find the missing time; but the reality is that this  life will always be busy, or rather full, what with six of us and a farm in the cards, so the busy part all comes down mostly to a state of mind…and then just a little bit of good planning.  I am making a point to find the moments to breathe, and learning to live with certain piles until that grand day of organizing comes.   In the meantime, we take the time to stop a day of cleaning and wood chopping to carve those pumpkins with the small folks, we scoot the pile of school stuff out of the way and gather around the first fires in the woodstove with our board games and our books or various musical instruments.  I say the heck with it all and pick up the knitting basket instead of the vacuum, because life really is short, and the days, even shorter.  This fall has been glorious, with so many perfect, shiny golden days, with the bold colors of trees exploding before they go to bed reminding us to celebrate it all and the less showy but equally soothing colors of decay all over the farm our companions.  Busy isn’t going to cut it anymore.

Maybe this winter will bring with it some quiet?  Or more likely than not, it won’t, and so we will just have to continue practicing our graceful walk though this life one day at a time…with just a bit of stumbling along the way.

After a really lovely few weeks of hot weather came along to wrap up August and summer it seems, this week brought with it a definite chill to the air, the seeds of autumn flying in on the breeze, ready to fully bloom sooner than later by the feel of things.  Are we ready for this shift;  the shorter days so noticable already, the extra blanket on the bed?  I’m not sure.  Breaking 90 degrees felt good and a series of nights too hot for blankets went a long way to help, but I have to admit the feeling of an especially “short” summer is still here with me, even as we lovingly ready the house for more inside time, plan and dream about our homeschool year, and talk excitedly with friends about what we will be making for the kids for Christmas this year. 

This week, the farmer felt the beginning of the slow down too.  His window for planting most things is past, he will just be sowing more winter greens–seeds of arugula and Asian greens, transplants of mustards and some kale.  That is about it besides the big garlic planting.  As always, we were behind with some plantings and the time to plant things ended before we had it all done.  This has just been the way of things with the limitations one (very hard) worker and a (very hard worked)  homeowner’s rototiller have brought to our operation.  We feel like we have done an awesome job building the business with our bare hands so to speak, but we are really looking forward to how much more we will be able to grow next year and how much better our timing will be with the help of our beautiful Ford 8N. 

The kids are harvesting overgrown Romanesco zucchinis, carving faces in them with jackets on in the early morning this week.  They still want to fill up the mud pit/swimming hole Luca so expertly dug and splash around, but they realized on Monday it was just too cold.  It looks like it will warm to the high 80′s again this weekend, and seeing as how our first and last trip to the beach of the summer isn’t happening until the weekend after that, I have to say I am hoping for more warm weather then, too.  Otherwise, I realize it is time to settle and embrace the inevitable.  The moving of the circle around to the next notch again.

• was warm!
• brought color to our skin
• kept us out of doors all day
• brought visible growth in the plants from one day to the next (this is always exciting when one has watched plants sit in the field growing so slow in the cooler weather!)
• meant hard work–most of the whole main field was weeded and is almost entirely planted
• was filled with near constant splashing after the pool was filled for the summer just in time for what was deemed “hot enough to swim weather” by the small folks around here
• we picnicked repeatedly
• the children and the farmer pitched the tent and slept outside
• the farmer’s morning routine of slug hunting was less needed as the heat helped us kill a bunch of these nasty critters
• we watered! (which just means that we are moving along in the season…a good thing!)
• we negotiated the fine details regarding the up and coming strawberries (the farmer and the kids and I will be splitting them 80/20)  There is still debate brewing about this, because I think we could eat and preserve them all, but the farmer assures me there will be SO many, we will have to share…soon by the looks of things in the field!

We hope that wherever you are, either here with us in the Willamette Valley soaking up some much appreciated warmth and sun, or farther away with your own spring/early summer weather, that you enjoyed the feeling of excitement and business that comes as we work hard now getting ready to enjoy the coming dog days!

As I mentioned in my quick political post last week, I unintentionally took the month of January off from updating the blog.  Although farm work never really stops, it certainly slows sometimes, and January is the quietest month of the year for us.  We usually have all of our plans made by the end of the previous year, sometimes even our seeds are ordered.  Other times we place those orders in January; but that is still quiet, inside work, the telling of which is funner once those seeds become plants and we can show you the beautiful new varieties we are playing with this year instead of just telling you.  All in all, there is little to update anyone on.  Even taking pictures of the farm slows down, because winter in Oregon isn’t necessarily very picturesque.  There is rarely any brilliant white snow.  The landscape is brown, gray, and dirty looking–it seems impossible to make it pretty in January.

Except for the sunsets.  They are spectacular in the winter.  And they are especially spectacular when our lower field is full of water and the sun sets over this winter wetland.  When it isn’t too cold, we all walk down to the field as the sun sets to watch the ducks fly in for the night.  The water is flashing with their wings, the air filled with their sounds.   And just like at dawn, there is a freshness at this time when night and day linger in the sky together that is so refreshing.

Now that February has come and even spent half of itself already, this quiet, slow way is beginning to pick up the pace.  We can feel spring in the air, itching to take over for old king winter.  Seeds have been started in the greenhouse, transplants have been placed in the ground.  The interlude of dry, winter weather that always seems to precede the really wet days of spring are perfect for working up some ground.  And this year, with the farmer home and working on the farm full time, we haven’t missed this chance to do  field work before it gets really wet again.  So exciting!

Yes, the quiet of January is nice, its stillness a much needed reprieve from the pretty hectic pace of life on the farm in summer and fall.  But each year, when spring comes around and a new season begins in earnest, we are always so ready.  We love the work we do, and as we begin to plant the seeds of the coming season’s harvest, we are filled with the same sweet, simple feeling of hope.  Everything is possible at this moment.  There is no unpredictable weather to deal with (yet), no pests (yet), no problems (yet).  Every season comes with one challenge or another on the farm; but on the outset of the year, that possibility is the furthest thing from our minds.

And although it is not strictly spring yet, her beginnings are always found in February with those surprisingly warm days and the blooming of snowdrops, the sprouting of daffodils.  A season’s dawn, especially spring’s, is a beautiful thing.

Another year gone, leaving everywhere
its rich spiced residues: vines, leaves,

the uneaten fruits crumbling damply
in the shadows, unmattering back

from the particular island
of this summer, this NOW, that now is nowhere

except underfoot, moldering
in that black subterranean castle

of unobservable mysteries – - -roots and sealed seeds
and the wanderings of water. This

I try to remember when time’s measure
painfully chafes, for instance when autumn

flares out at the last, boisterous and like us longing
to stay – - – how everything lives, shifting

from one bright vision to another, forever
in these momentary pastures.

–Mary Oliver

Some weeks of the year are so busy with farm work of all sorts that we have so much to report here.  But as the season progresses, that amount of doingness tapers (much to our relief), and the work becomes more steady and sure.  This week, the farmer spent most of his time harvesting those summer crops that do best when checked daily, like the summer squash and beans, so that they don’t grow too big.  And when he wasn’t doing that, he was continuing to sow fall/winter crops and transplant fall/winter crops.  Weed pressure is now slowing down for the year, but I did manage to weed most of the strawberry patch we planted in the spring.  This spot kept getting put aside while we weeded crops we were actually harvesting now instead of a year down the road.  Experience has taught us, though, that taking care of your fruit plantings well from the beginning will be rewarded.  It felt good to liberate those beautiful strawberry plants, and will be well worth it next year!

Other than that, my mind wanders far from farmwork most days, thinking about the millions (it feels like) of home repair projects I would like to have finished before the baby comes.  It is nice to finally be into August, where I can feel pretty good about spending more time working inside than outside, with most of the busy work of farming done, and the farmer able to concentrate on the harvest.  Pulling good food from the ground in abundance will be the main work of August, September, and October.  Then we will slide into those quiet cold months again.  Time marches along so quickly, but the rhythm of its beat is at least predictable here on the farm.  Fast and furious in the spring, busy and wild into summer, when suddenly it becomes steady and predictable like our heartbeats, until it quiets into a gentle hum in winter.  It is a beautiful song, we love to live it over and over again each year.