Six Arrows Farm Update

Morning fires start quickly in this dry weather.  A winter drought is not always felt and bemoaned as a summer one is.  Most people I speak with are rather glad to escape the treacherously harsh Minnesota winter.  While we can find relief in the mild climate, there is a general uneasiness for those of us who rely on precipitation for the success of crops.  Some farmers are saying that it is better to have our drought now than in summer.  All the same we hope the dry winter will give way before spring planting.

Just now, bare fingers of trees are sifting a frail dusting from the sky in a thin haze that drifts over the bare ground and settles into drab dead grass like a film of milk in the bottom of the jug.  There stands a tower of some winter books, here a steaming mug of tea.  The jumble of violin and viola notes “wood-shedding” at the top of the house mumbles over the lowering hum and tap of the stove fan diffusing heat over the lower regions.

In faith we are laying out plans for the garden.  Most of the seeds are here.  Now  we have the next matter to attend to…shuffling flats of germinating seedlings into bright patches of sunlight or under grow lights in the living room. 

Discussions concerning the garden are often so crossed and re-crossed with rabbit trails that it is a wonder we come to have any coherent plots or live plants when we are through.  Somehow it comes out that so and so thinks we should move the tomatoes “there” this year and someone else chimes in that “that other plot” should be tilled under, which doesn’t seem to relate at all to the first subject until someone else remembers that “something else” was where the tomatoes are proposed to be; which being the case “something else” must necessarily be moved to “that other plot.”  A third, silently envisioning the new order of things under above proposed plan observes that the hoop-houses should be moved; is nearly extinguished under a sea of shocked exclamations at this extreme proposition, and only reemerges through his qualifying reminder to his generally aghast audience of the growing number of miscellaneous plots in the general vicinity of fore-mentioned hoop-houses and the lack of order which the first-proposed shift will produce.

By this time, everyone has lost sight of whether or not said shift should happen at all behind a looming prospect of moving the hoop-houses, and various plans are brought forward for accomplishing such a venture, while the fate of the tomatoes hangs in the balance.  Out of this dialogue emerges a firm conviction that all of us are more or less confused as to the original topic and each takes a sip of his coffee in an attempt to appear earnestly reflective.  Daddy steps in to right the conversational ship while Aubrey makes notes to address the issue at a later date.

Simple observations of such exchanges lead one to recognize that the human mind is gifted with incredible capacity to imagine and formulate ideas and yet very rarely begins to utilize a fraction of the divine inheritance with anything like consistence or facility.  Nevertheless our intellect serves us every day to good or bad ends.  With infinite variety is the organizational and artistic capacity of the imagination mixed by the finger of God in each individual.  It is often best to laugh at ourselves when we realize how much pride we find in our intellectual endeavors and how much offence we can take in the criticism of these plans by others, while finding no fault in ourselves for considering our ideas superior.  This concept of teamwork: the mixing and molding of ideas for the purpose of establishing sound plans, is a constant exercise of self-government and self-examination.  Daily we find Solomon’s proverb, “In a multitude of counselors there is safety,” to be true.  Around here, personal preference and general feasibility, careful forethought and last-minute improvisation, heaped up, beaten down, and woven together eventually form the modus operandi that drives our venture forward…always, of course, at the break-neck speed of time.

While I type, here is the snow powdering the ground like sugar on a cake and painting thick white webs across the shadows in the woods.  So much for my prelude of concern for drought.

“So do not worry about tomorrow…”

Craig, Karen and The Six Arrows