A Six Arrows Farm Update

"Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink.”

 – Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner

 There is a sort of battle that rankles in a young soul when they begin to see the child in themselves. Unconscious childhood is precious then, because it is unreachable. No longer can the lighthearted thoughts fly free of convention and reality. It is the blessed one who can treasure the childlike innocence and beauty of youth and carry it tenderly in their hearts into the wisdom and maturity that comes with age. In the irresistible draw of nature, I think the Creator leaves a door to childlike conviction open that we must choose to go through or shut. I didn’t particularly wish to drag myself through the mud and spent snow to poke about in the snow-melt, but I’m glad Sam prodded me away from the realities and conventions of my habitually grown life long enough to revel in the timelessness of it. By God’s grace, there will always be a sunshiny carefree girl dancing away in the heart of me that wants to go out and dabble in a puddle.

No, you can’t drink any of it (something I thankfully learned before I understood why), but there is plenty of water to go around. I put my foot through an innocent looking drift and found it running knee-deep and strong beneath me, chattering and merrily unconcerned about being exposed to the light. Of course the last gasp of a Minnesota winter happens long after it is thought probable, so I’m not declaring Spring yet; even though technically the calendar says it’s here. I sincerely believe the weather is just daring us to get comfortable with the idea before dumping on us.

Half of me is willing May to come with all my might. The other half is frozen in dread…no, not really.

But the truth is, as Aubrey mentioned driving home one day, one hardly knows what to think. With May comes the tasks of garden and farm. I have to admit, “The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.” My spirit rises up to the challenge of fallow ground, ripe and ready for gardens to till and plant, animals to grow and life to thrive. The flesh…well let’s just say “it” doesn’t relish the idea of sweat. Frankly, though, I can’t wait to sink my teeth into a warm ripe strawberry or crunch through a gushingly crisp snow-pea.

This year we have the added anticipation of Garrison’s graduation. As you may already know, our family strives to excel, and at the very least revels in the making of celebrations on the slightest (or greatest) provocation. This one will be no exception. I am unofficially planning the flower gardens with the help of our green-house expert, Aubrey, who is doing the preliminary planting for our Market garden as well. Mama is planning stupendous quantities of delectable viands, for the preparation of which every one of us lends two hands. Daddy is Master of Ceremonies and Advisor in technical difficulties. The boys are responsible to primarily direct the order of the farm for guests. And we all clean…a lot. :o)
Along with the responsibilities that this home presents, the boys are finishing off a season of orchestra and the wedding season for our quartet is looming up in the future. After all, how can we maintain the (in?)sanity more effectively than with the help of good music!? (Incidentally, don’t you think the boys are remarkably dashing in their tuxes? I just had to include a picture. :0) )

Craig, Karen and The Six Arrows

Six Arrows Farm

(507) 356-8223

sixarrowsfarm@pitel.net

http://sixarrowsfarm.blogspot.com/

http://sixarrowshome.blogspot.com/’

P.S. It may interest the readers to know that I never write an update without the influence and atmosphere of good music…most often classical. I often wish I could include the lovely sounds with the updates, since it often communicates expressly what I am thinking without the weight of American English. At the moment, I am harkening to the rich, refined splendor and delicate exuberance of early Beethoven as used in a relatively modern soundtrack. Follow these links if you want the full experience!...Here for the inspiration (really the whole septet was inspiration) and Here and Here for the way Andrew Davies used it in BBC’s 1995 Pride and Prejudice Soundtrack. :0) I never lose and opportunity to defend my position on good soundtracks: namely, they are, nearly without exception, always inspired by an original classical piece, if not an almost direct plagiarization. Try comparing the West Wing track from Disney’s Beauty and the Beast to Camille Saint Saen’s Aquarium from the Carnival of the Animals if you are intrigued!

A Six Arrows Farm Update

Much as I love poetry, I am no poet. There are times when I hear the words falling as distant lilting music on my mind's ear, but putting them down on paper with clarity is a discipline of the English language I have yet to master. I have resorted often to the garbled or "un-translated" verse in spite of the lack of rhyme since poetry often makes very nice prose. A true poet would probably accuse me of a negligent approach to communication...and they would be correct in their assessment. There are in fact enough instances when I feel the need for skill in poetry that I now believe the time is not far distant when I will buckle down and learn the theory.

This is a time when I wish poetry were at my finger tips. How do you write about the germination and emergence of seedlings with common everyday prose? The growth that results in the birth of a new plant is nothing short of miraculous. It simply gets swallowed up and overwhelmed by the crushingly profound terms...germination...emergence. Perhaps my quandary is a language issue. These words are rich in meaning, they just don’t sound that way. Take French for example. Even a conversation about a common fence post in French sounds gracious and refined...unless, perhaps, you speak French? In any case, the world of small plants has crept quickly and silently right into our living-room, so I felt I should attempt to address it.

There is something very brave and vulnerable about a new seedling. Small forests of thyme and oregano, sage and chives are thriving in a world of warmth and light not removed from the blustering cold by more than a few inches of air and glass. Twisting and cracking the humble dingy husks that were their only safety, in haste these germs of flourishing growth reach up and delve down in all sorts of fantastic shapes. No one tells them what to do or how to do it; but when moisture softens their shell, they reach blindly but un-erringly for that life-giving and yet deadly light penetrating their darkness. Without proper moisture light is death to a sprout. Yet a plant will never cease from its earliest moments to lift up its face and arms to the light. In awe-inspiring variety, each plant flourishes best in its own unique habitat of light and wet. And there is no plant which receives life and health from the sun and rain that will ever cease to bear good fruit as long as it lives because it is the joy of a healthy plant to grow and flourish and ripen. The only way a plant with light and water will not bear fruit is if the earth no longer yields nutrients…dead earth.

One of the changes a new seedling effects in the first weeks of growth is the loss of the first leaves, “cotyledons,” as it pours all its life into the “true leaves.” The “seed leaves” wither away and die, but the plant neither stunts nor wilts in growth, but drops the things of the past by the wayside to reach new heights.

I know of no more profound work in a creation filled with wonders. The wisest man in the world directed us:

“Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise: Which having no guide, overseer, or ruler, provideth her meat in the summer, and gathereth her food in the harvest.” ~Proverbs 6:6-8

Solomon, the wisest of men, understood the simple yet weighty significance of every creation. Nature shouts praise to the Creator in the quiet diligence of the ant and the silent audacity of a plant, daring heat and flood, cold and wind, death and time to stop it from doing what it was created to do.

“…And buds of rarest green began to peer,
As if impatient for a warmer sun…”

~Hartley Coleridge

“Hast thou commanded the morning since thy days; and caused the dayspring to know his place; …Have you entered the storehouses of the snow, or have you seen the storehouses of the hail, which I have reserved for the time of trouble, for the day of battle and war? What is the way to the place where the light is distributed, or where the east wind is scattered upon the earth? "Who has cleft a channel for the torrents of rain and a way for the thunderbolt, to bring rain on a land where no man is, on the desert in which there is no man, to satisfy the waste and desolate land, and to make the ground sprout with grass?"

~God in Job 38:12 & 22-27

By the way, the most mindful and tender of greenhouse-keepers, among many other things, just turned 21!

Craig, Karen and The Six Arrows

Two worlds are at work on the farm this week.

In the outdoor world, we Minnesotans were just liberally dowsed with over a foot of our winter diet, snow, topped with a icing of freezing rain…what the weather-man feebly dubs “a wintery mix” with that amiable and yet non-descript expression we have all learned to expect from someone blandly exaggerating the next “foreseeable” meteorological event. Daddy says this alias for predicted precipitation sounds like something off a restaurant menu, “And what drink would you like with that Ma’am; a dose of cold north wind?”

 

I know I’m a little hard on the weather forecasters, but you have to admit they often take things far too seriously.  I often wonder if excessive enthusiasm for their work adequately accounts for the zeal of the catastrophists at large on the weather channel. 

Indoors, a world of life is brewing.  New herbs are already unwinding their first leaves and bending towards the light.  We can stare out on a glaring frigid waste and turn back to peep at the garden flourishing under our noses.  I love the way chives grow in particular.  If you look carefully at the image on the right, you will see that each shoot is doubled, and one in the background just out of focus is unbending…they “cheat” a bit and grow ahead of the other herbs that way. Aubrey and I are itching to delve into last year’s “pot-hills” and piles of rubbish in the greenhouse and reorganize the “nursery” for the soon-coming “babies.”  But then we’re all a little fidgety.  The planting bug tingles through our finger-tips and we can’t stop ordering seeds.  Ordering seeds about now is truly a risky business not unlike grocery shopping when you are hungry.

Speaking of hungry, we attached a recipe to the bottom of this post for a favorite cake of ours that is unbelievably easy and remarkably delicious…not to mention beautiful.  The cake bears the name of the person making it, so this is what we call Lenz Cake.  Substitute your name in the title and treat your guests to a delicious dessert next time you open the doors to your corner of culture.

If you’re in the “great recipe” mood go to: http://tammymaltby.typepad.com/tammyhansonmaltby/  (That’s where we learned about the Lenz Cake)

Winter is finally beginning to wind down.  I could feel it even in the intense gusts of blistering chill that heralded the last blizzard.  Very soon the last great dying gasp will give space to spring.  Now we trudge up the lane off winter’s last toilsome road.  Here a tree, there a bush shakes off its gossomer blanket as if anxious to have done with the sad songs they have creaked all the long cold months.  And then, through the last of the falling flakes, we’ll spot it in a quivering of wonderment.  The bright warm glow of Spring shining on the edge of time.  The next step will be heavier and softer and everywhere the white shrouds will melt and flood away.  Soon there will be mud underfoot and buds overhead.  Laughing and shouting the gush of life will burst the bonds and carry us away with it until the soft glow is dancing all around in the 

warmth.  Somwhere between here and there it will come: Summer.  And we, all unconcious of the wall we have passed  and the gate that was shut behind, will rove in freedom through another world.  Last Winter, still a-shimmery and glorious will peep from this young Spring’s walls o’er which it can never pass and watch us gambole away.  We may look back at it like children all grown up and wonder with a deep yet fading sense of loss at what we had and knew and never can have or know the same way again.  A season gone, a chapter finished.  You may glance to me and read the history …last year’s joys… that will be shining like tears in your eyes refleced in my own; and wonder why we don’t turn and return to the dear old familiar.  And yet neither of us can…or does.

So my take on all the snow?…learn to enjoy it while you can!

Craig, Karen and The Six Arrows


Lenz Cake

1 box white cake mix (don’t get mix with double the pudding)

1 box vanilla instant pudding

1 box chocolate instant pudding

4 eggs

½ cup oil

1 ½ cup water

1 cup chocolate chips

Grease and flour two 9 inch round cake pans.  Mix all ingredients except choc chips according to directions on the cake mix box.  Stir in chocolate chips.  Pour cake pans and bake at 350 for 30 minutes or until done.  (When testing cake with a toothpick, the trick is that the cake continues to “bake” until it cools, so take it out when there are a few moist crumbs (not gobs of batter) on the toothpick rather than waiting until it comes out “clean.”  This will yield a more tender and moist cake.)

Remove from pans after 5-10 min.  Cool cake completely.

Topping

2-3 pints fresh strawberries

½-1 pint fresh blueberries

1 pint whipping cream

Powdered Sugar

Vanilla

1 cup chocolate chips

1 Tbsp butter

Melt chocolate chips with butter and dip half to ¾ of the strawberries.  Refrigerate until set.  Whip cream with powdered sugar to taste (3-5 Tbsp) and vanilla (usually a generous tsp.)

Layer and frost the cakes with the whipped cream. Garnish with chocolate strawberries and remaining strawberries and blueberries.  (Can also use raspberries) You can also drizzle the cake with leftover chocolate from the strawberries.

Lightly sprinkle with powdered sugar.

Enjoy!