Six Arrows Farm Update

Our meals for the past week were composed primarily of leftovers from the bounty table.  Thanksgiving with all its fullness of bread and overflowing of joy has come (in a flurry of preparation and gathering) and gone (to the last crumb of roll, drop of gravy and sliver of pie).  With the customs of generations we mixed the freshness of new traditions, like peanut soup, and took our dose of merrymaking and feasting with relish.

While Thanksgiving rounded the bend, so did the last of fall.  Even we Minnesotans were surprised at the suddenness of the weather shift.  Thursday morning the sun rose and warmed the air to a balmy 60° that spent the rest of the day plummeting to a chilly 31°!  The year wasted no time going to his bed.  Like a child wearied from a long day of play, he tumbled in and pulled the counterpane up to his ears without bothering to roll over.

Later than usual this year, the pigs are nevertheless off to Odenthal Meats.  Some of you may recall that loading the pigs to take them to the butcher has come to be an annual comedic adventure.  The occasion has allowed some among us to lay claim to the feat of pig-riding.  All of us have a healthy respect for three-hundred pound animals with a center of gravity somewhere around your knees and a perverse inclination to run in the direction which is least desirable to we would-be herders.  Pig-herding yarns are legendary among farmers because of the porcine propensity to bust the herd and scatter with high-pitched squeals of protest.

Since our pigs spend their lives in the lap of luxury and get the run of large paddocks all summer, they are generally more frisky and spirited than most hogs.  The short drive to the trailer every fall has become a sort of trial and frolic all at the same time.  A trial because it takes a great deal of time and effort and sweat to move animals that are determined not to move; and a frolic because they never fail to provide at least a few good laughs with their maniacal antics and escape tactics.

The reader will consequently understand the mixture of relief and disappointment that we experienced when this year's pigs gave very little trouble.  The secret, we discovered, was the nearly daily habit we had the last few months of bringing them a small "treat"...a bucket of leftover tomatoes, a bowl of lettuce leavings,  a pile of pigweed.  They came to expect a daily offering and the last month or so, you couldn't walk by their fence without the whole passel of them galloping over with a chorus of insistent snorts and barks looking for something to nibble.  Mr. Berg’s dried corn was the winning “carrot” to the successful roundup.

With the last of the summer stock gone, the only animals remaining on the farm are the dogs (Cappy, Eddy and Pete), the cats (Dip and Chip) and the laying hens.  Sorties into the cold to replenish their comforts and food are followed by long hours before the fire or around the table.  Here we learn to treasure the hours together with beautiful music, the blessed scent of balsam fir from our Christmas tree, bright conversation, delicious food and good books.  The books...ah yes.  Their smells, the a foretelling of a wealth between the pages, rich and ripe, smooth and tangy, spicy and sweet, dark and musky.

Scents are remarkably powerful, I believe, because they are invisible associations with the familiar; attaching themselves like identification tags to the aesthetic forms and even thoughts of our lives so often we usually forget to note them.  The elements of a moment, the facial expressions, the light, the textures, the sounds, the emotions, can all be bound to the imagination with a single aroma.  In that sense, every scent is a small evocative grace granted by God to remind and store up new memories, mostly unconscious, and yet irresistibly cogent.  This time of year the smells are especially compelling. Perhaps because they are older than my earliest recollections, shadows of things I can't remember.  In any case, they are continually thrusting me over the cliff of nostalgia.  I know that sounds violent, but how else can you describe the instant tumble into memory that a fragrance like fresh pine can invoke? 

What musings do your senses call upon right now? 

Six Arrows Farm Update

The first snow has come and gone...the transient herald of nearing abundance!  Wood splitting, trimming iris, bringing in potted plants, storing away the last of produce fill the fleeting time.  Charlie and Sam moved the hens up the hill and into the big bright hoop house.   All summer this place has been a desolate storage space; too hot to stay in and dreary with the dust of last winter.  Now, permeated with the spicy fragrance of a new deep cedar bedding and filled with subdued clucking, it takes on the cheery aspect of the sunshiny winter hen-house.  

Five of the hens were still in denial...evading grasping hands to wander aimlessly across the empty pasture and deposit eggs in forlorn tufts of dying grass.  Mama caught them and the boys locked them in with their more resigned companions that night.  Whether they became sensible and heeded the call of food and shelter remains to be seen.

Inexorably the splitter lays open the pale splintered hearts of cured logs and we heap them up, raw and lifeless.  Yet these dead shards of life yield to us warmth and cheer in the sultry breath of fire.  Again the Creator at once reminds us of ever present mortality and the promise of redemption.  Everything is redeemed on the land.  What falls asleep will awaken.  That which dies gives birth to abundance.  The privilege of the husbandman is to reach with reverent mortal fingers into this heart of creation and feel it beating with a vitality from the divine hand that we are powerless to recreate.  It it is granted us to nourish, prune and care for it and in turn receive from it divine gifts of life and nourishment.

Here comes a time to heap up in your heart the abundance of these blessings, along with the severe mercies.  Blessings...what a great many there are and how gracious is our Father.   And yes...the severe mercies...these wounds from the knife of sorrow.  These too are a gift, because when they make our well run dry, pain cuts deep and strikes into the true life flow of the heart...the love of God.  So He makes pain a servant that masters us to drive us back to the greatest gift...His redemption and the springing of joy from ashes.  Thanksgiving does not deny pain.  It is the antidote to it.  So when you are counting up the mercies of God, mark together the blessed and severe, the joy and sorrow.  They both mark the road to eternity, and both glorify Him through us...joy when we praise Him and sorrow even more when we praise Him.

Last night Daddy observed that these last days of fading warmth are another gift to add to the account.  The time is ripe and short...every hour, every minute, becomes a period of grace for the last work of the season to be completed.  Times like these remind us of the days when we first essayed to name our farm enterprise.  Among the titles eventually abandoned was the epithet "NeveRDone Farm".  This is life...the pleasure of living for man is found in his work...that which is incomplete until his appointed time.

"There is nothing better for a man, than that he should eat and drink, and that he should make his soul enjoy good in his labor. This also I saw, that it was from the hand of God."

~Ecclesiastes 2:24~

These are just a few of the things on my Thanksgiving list this year.

What are some things one yours and would you care to share them?

A blessed and merry Thanksgiving to everyone!

Six Arrows Farm Update

The subdued hills and woods and fields are waiting with bated breath to be washed and clothed in snow-light like a bride.  When the last saturated splash of living color fades, I long for that flood of dazzling frosty flashing white.  There was a hint of it this morning before the sun kissed the grass...every blade and twig was encrusted with a thousand diamonds.  The annual foraging for a harvest of venison begins tomorrow.  At least three Lenz men will rise in the wee hours and seek out their quarry from the plentiful summer-fattened herd.

I stoked the fire before tumbling into bed last night.  A blessed old habit born again after months of cold hearth and empty wood box.  Broad smooth tiles before the sooty black stove that cooled my dusty summer feet glowed in the dim light and dancing heat...a silent invitation to bask.  Stepping into the house to be greeted by these permeating mingled scents of life and ashes is a continual joy now.  Back it comes to paint its familiar ever-changing scenery on the family room wall, throwing fantastical shadows and lights over familiar framed faces and new colors on beloved old bindings marching rank and file along the shelves.  Even as the death of the outer world sweeps away every vestige of color and life, firelight inside echoes autumn's song and carries a flashing refrain into the depths of sleeping winter.  

Here in our home a new kind of summer grows strong, careless alike of numbing cold and rushing blast.  This refuge where God grants to us quiet and rest is of all places in the world most sacred and cherished.  Anyone who knows us will believe me when I say that this quiet and rest in our house has almost nothing to do with dullness or inactivity.  A subversive kind of energy radiates from the house in every kind of enterprise...and by mid-afternoon, begins to culminate in the kitchen.  If your day of work leaves you exhausted,  all you have 

to do is follow your nose.  Imagine pumpkin and squash baking slowly until the juices caramelize on the pan, followed by pumpkin seeds roasted crackling and snapping until they blush golden.  Potatoes and onions and venison all simmering in a pot all day until the meat lends its full flavor to the potatoes and soaks in the savory zest of the onions casts up the most delicious and tantalizing aroma.  

Then around the dinner table, a reviving aroma of another kind rises, regardless of seasonal swelter or chill.  Here the throne of family holds sway and teaches us time and again through sundry simplicity and familiarity how trivial the many aggrandized issues of men really are.  
So says the Maker of hearth and home:

"Thus says the Lord

'Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, let not the mighty man glory n his might, nor let the rich man glory in his riches;  But let him who glories glory in this, that he understands and knows Me, that I am the Lord, exercising lovingkindness, judgment and righteousness in the earth.  For in these I delight,'

says the Lord."
Jeremiah 9:23-24

Here is a greatness in the beaming glow emanating from every face that puts the pomp and swagger of potentates to shame...a sovereignty of a different kind than that granted rulers and powers of the earth.  Here we learn that in all things, the small as well as the mighty, God will have dominion over men and in this we take comfort, since no device of men can bring of such servitude and mutual dependence more joy and contentment, nor lift the sons and daughters of mankind to more pure and lasting freedom.

“Let all the earth fear the Lord; let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of Him.  For He spoke, and it was done; He commanded, and it stood fast.  The Lord brings the counsel of the nations to nothing; He makes the plans of the peoples of no effect.  The counsel of the Lord stands forever, the plans of His heart to all generations.

Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord, the people He has chosen as His own inheritance.  The Lord looks from heaven; He sees all the sons of men.  From the place of His dwelling He looks on all the inhabitants of the earth; He fashions their hearts individually; He considers all their works.  No kin is saved by the multitude of an army; a mighty man is not delivered by great strength.  A horse is a vain hope for safety; neither shall it deliver any by its strength.

Behold they eye of the Lord is on those who fear Him, on those who hope in His mercy, to deliver their soul from death, and to keep them alive in famine.  Our soul waits for the Lord; He is our help and our shield.  For our heart shall rejoice in Him, because we have trusted in His holy name.  Let Your mercy, O Lord, be upon us, just as we hope in You.
Psalm 33:8-22

The affairs of the world are in turmoil and set before us a constant battle to be fought. The imaginations of men grow dark, but around the family table, before the family hearth, we are reminded of this:

All the ends of the world shall remember and turn to the Lord, and all the families of the nations shall worship before You.  For the kingdom is the Lord's, and He rules over the nations."
Psalm 22:27-28

Six Arrows Farm Update

The dog days of summer...the powder of the road on my windshield like flour on a kneading board; glittering dewy mornings that give way to glaring sultry high noon’s that languish into indolent shimmering afternoons that fade into deep purpled evenings; thirsty baking earth and warm rain falling in tempestuous summer cataracts; raspberries hanging like black jewels in the cloisters of their drooping vines; patches of vibrant lilac thistle blooms humming and swaying to the songs of a hundred bees; gradient tan lines creeping up our arms, sun-highlights in our hair; brown noses and freckles.

I have found the secret to enjoying work on these days is to move slowly...with the languid sway of the corn leaves and the heavy drooping of the tree limbs.  Stand in a little dell of the forest and you can hear a zephyr whispering through the boughs as the shade cools it until it reaches you like a fresh draft that has crept through the chinks of heat. Sleepy are the livid greens in the woods and sleepy are the shimmering waves of heat hovering over the dusty road.  Lilting are the bird's songs, more brilliant than the greatest diva’s aria, trilling and swaying with lowering branch, whistling high enough to wake anything but a recumbent summer day.  Wonder of wonders that this drowsy world should yield such abundance of life as we reap from its folds.  Midsummer, casting forth the splendor of first fruits, is a queen at her coronation.  A little over a week ago, the crops were ravaged in a storm full of hail and yet they flourish and blossom voraciously in answer to sun and rain.

It took a while, but we finally cleaned and aired all the clothing and bedding from the last reenactment.  Things come in smelling fresh and sunny and dewy when they hang in the open air...nothing like the sterilized tang of detergent and drier sheets.  Some raspberries became concentrated “gem-juice” in the form of jam under Aubrey’s skilled hands last week.  Our quota of bread for market has reached its summer apex of over a hundred loaves and graces the market stand in plentiful heaps of savory and sweet.  The pigs delve away into nooks and crannies in the sheltering caves of the woods and make the echoes ring with grunts of satisfaction and squeals of rivalry.   Cabbages bulge from their frosty green cradles while we make plans for coleslaw and cabbage soup and sour kraut.

Last night we were sauntering at an easy mid-summer pace up the evening road that glows in waning golden light when Daddy called a halt and told us to listen...and smell.  The wind tasted of that ripe sweetness that thrills the heart of a farmer with satisfaction and exaltation...and our ears caught the grumble of a tractor navigating those billows of loam on the other side of our valley..."Someone is cutting hay," ...his knowing smile echoed on our own faces.

“Some neighboring farmer, compliant with ageless necessity, cut off his rich emerald crop and laid it in windrows on the shorn earth for the sun to turn to gold.  Wherever I am when I taste that ripe sweetness of mown alfalfa in the wind, I come home in my heart. Here to the daily sameness and constant change, the relentless energy, the lasting rest, the old familiar and new every sunrise little taste of heaven.” 

I wrote that last year during the last hay-cutting of summer.  This cutting is one of the first.  I knew and loved the thought and aroma of hay cutting then just as I do now...and yet not quite.  The shifting of time pours familiarity and longing into all loves that are at once ever-fresh and ever-ripening.   So has our heavenly Father ordained the ebbing and flowing tide of His creation.

A Six Arrows Farm Update

We have a new list...well...The List this time of year really takes on a life of its own, so I'm not sure whether we have it or it has us. In any case, this list comes a size large, so you have to make the time grow into it and "fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds' worth of distance run" as Rudyard Kipling advises. With categories for the farm, a fast approaching open house and various individual projects, it looks something like this:

Freeze cornbread for the Cornbread Salad

Wash the floors

Cut the dead tree down

Make dinner

Clean the kitchen

Quartet rehearsal for a wedding

Plant tomatoes

Weed and mulch gate flower bed

Make dinner

Clean the kitchen

Plant foxgloves and wisteria vine

Throw in a load of laundry

Put in the pig fence

Make dinner

Clean the kitchen

Burn brush

Order bread making supplies for market

Teach music lessons

Make dinner

Clean the kitchen

Clean out the neighbors goat barn

Weed the strawberries

Fix the chicken waterer

Make dinner

Clean the kitchen

Cook chickens for Chicken Cherry Walnut Salad

Write the farm update

Call about a stock trailer

Make dinner

Clean the kitchen

Get field stone for the root cellar

Clean the garage

Hill the potatoes

Make dinner

Clean the kitchen

...

Notice the consistent and regular nature of dinner and clean up? In the near-frenzy of work on the farm, one of the few things that maintains sanity and regularity is mealtime. The fact that suppertime during this season is rarely at the same hour shouldn't come as a surprise. The kind of regularity our meals lend is of a different type. Whether it happens at five or eight, it gathers us together, comforts our stomachs, clears our minds, reminds us of the Provider of our daily bread, inspires aspiring cooks...and common table courtesy usually enforces a blessed silence for a short time (in most of us at least).

And then there is the kitchen, that place most of us know every inch of. Dishcloths are often a reliable barometer of the advancing state of one's kitchen. Ours are mostly threadbare and tend to be either mortifyingly grubby or bleached clean, with very little time transpiring between the two states. In a proper sense, perhaps our kitchen could be called threadbare. At the very least, it is well used. We know we are busy when the plates and cups go from the drainer to the table without touching the cupboard shelves. With at least three and more often eight people using the space regularly (mostly at the same time), it would be a stretch to say that there is a place for everything...or that everything is in its place. From a practical perspective, the geographical layout is deplorable and more than one of the outlets is finicky enough that you have to "nurse" it to get electricity (perhaps related to the frequent blown fuses; usually the result of trying to run three waffle irons or two crock pots at the same time). In spite of these minor glitches, this is where we are perfecting the art of efficiently feeding a large family on a healthy, economical, sturdy and even palatable diet. :)

Our kitchen is no bigger than it ever was, yet as we grow and change, it remains the hub of activity in our household. The attraction it commands it is as palpable as it is enigmatical. No one has ever really been in our home until they have come into the kitchen; preferably at the high tide of production when most of the doors and drawers are open and something is splashing over the top of a pot while half a dozen knives are clattering and at least three conversations are in progress. It is one of the less "beautiful" places in the house, but I can't tell you how many deep conversations are held over that battered counter, how many tears have been shed into the old stained sink, how many merry laughs have rung from the jumbled cupboards. Who could count the cups of coffee, loaves of bread, cans of tomatoes, burnt pies, broken mugs, favorite cookies, caramelized onions, mountains of dishes, saucepans of gravy, cut fingers, soggy hands, watering eyes, tingling noses and savoring tongues that are laid to its account. Never for a moment believe that kitchen work must be drudgery. Only drudges can make it so. Families can tear down the walls that divide them and establish the cornerstones of society while building the structure of a cake or reducing a mountain of dishes.

Around the old traditions and familiar habits of the home grow the changeful days, full now of new life, new plants, new gardens, new chicks, new pigs, new projects, new businesses. We even added a new bread variety for the Farmer’s Market along with the standbys and favorites...the common man’s Whole Grain Pumpernickel! My favorites are still the Rosemary Garlic with cheese in it and Aubrey’s famous Cardamom Braid. As you can probably imagine, by late morning every Friday, just walking in the house will make you hungry.

While your back was turned the woods tangled themselves together in a summer jungle and the grass grew rank and file all over the heated soil. The iris unfurled his shimmering walls and donned his feathery waistcoat and gold lined lavender suit. Leaves on the tree heights cast back the sun's golden eye from their smooth faces and shimmer on the breath of May breezes. The cool regal halls of the forest echo with a myriad chorus of birds and shelter the secrets of their nests. Every bit of the world, the vast sky, the fine dust of the blossoms of fruit, the jeweled feathers of the rooster, just shout "Glory!" day and night. This is the time when the farm is at its best, greenest, cleanest, when the shadows dance through hours of golden sunlight, while the bee hums his own tune at every flower. Here you can learn from the growing things what it is to be busy while at rest. The peaceful and idyllic surroundings disguise a ceaseless hum of energetic industry in the folds of their splendor. In fact, whether most know it or not, no one could truly enjoy the apparent glory if it were not for the apparent presence of effort.

Signing off to clean up for dinner!

Craig, Karen and The Six Arrows

A Six Arrows Farm Update

I love fires.  Ultimately, I would not be a true daughter of my father if I didn't.  Family tradition here includes spring cleaning in the woods.  The first day of brush-burning is more a celebration than anything else...the reveling in good hard work. I realize the nature of the "warm fuzzies" that most people get when they think of big heaps of flaming brush probably has very little to do with sentiment and a great deal to do with the physical heat.  Nevertheless, most of us around here get a little thrill at the thought of burning something…within reasonable and “legal” boundaries of course.  That is the somewhat nostalgic and practically maudlin side of the question for me.  Feelings aside, fire does hold some charm for me unrelated to family tradition.  In fact, this sentimental view of fire grew in part out of a love for the very essential and economical side of burning things.  But I digress…

When Daddy announces spring cleaning in the woods, nobody has to think or plan much.  The dispersal of forces is almost wordless.  Out come work clothes with their familiar stains and tears, last year’s smoky, earthy scents still hanging about them and a bit of last year’s dead leaf or bent twig clinging to a sleeve.  Heavy boots swallow your legs up to the knee and an old hat or scarf settles with its own angle like a habit on your head.  Ever heard “That fits you like a glove?”  Well, somewhere in a motley heap of leather gloves are the two that, with long use, really do fit the shape of your hand almost like your own skin and testify to our common aphorism.  And just in case you were wondering…there really is no hand in my glove pictured on the left; complete with grass and bark and mud stains.

It doesn’t take long for us to settle into a job vigorously once we decide what it’s to be.  The voracious roar of a saw tends to be the cue and almost at once someone is dragging out dead kindling while another hacks at thorns.  Dust and chips fly about and a silent curtain of smoke rises up from the crackle and blaze of a strategically built inferno.  We were all raised to be unabashed “pyro’s”, but watching us for just ten minutes will reveal a broad range of styles.  Nourishing it like a famished creature, we douse it with great armloads of sticks, add a steady train of skillfully tossed logs, and patiently feed in gangly branches.

There is always another limb to drag, another tree to saw, another pile to rake, but if all else fails, each of us has cultivated the skill of “poking.”  I don’t know of another family that relishes sitting beside a fire and poking at it more than ours.  That bough needs to be shoved further in, this branch is sticking out, that flame is dying down.  A skillful prod here and jab there will make an unsightly mountain melt away to feather-light deserts of ash. Red and hungry, grasping and swallowing, glowing and shimmering, this thing of terror and glory lives for a flashing moment of transformation and then dies away to nothing along with all that is left of its food.  

Most people don’t fully appreciate a good fire.  But then most haven’t heard of “killer vines”, “buckthorn”,  or “stinging nettles”…unless of course you have lived out here for a while.  The terrifying rush of heat and devastating path of destruction that are so often associated with fire can almost eclipse the cleansing and rejuvenating influence it has on creation.  Death again and again gives birth to life.  On this theme every day the whole of creation is whispering and shouting over and over until the one who listens can’t help but take notice.

So I am officially taking note…and signing off for now.

Six Arrows Farm Update

A strange time of year this is, this place between winter and spring.  When a traipsing up the garden path through crusty snow and over hard earth this morning, my shoes were suddenly bogged in soft mud.  After that I left funny wet brown marks in my boot tracks over the frozen white path to the sun-drenched field where mud reined (temporarily) supreme.  Tomorrow is “promising” another rush of the Minnesota winter diet, so I won’t let the mud go to my head; but it is encouraging to realize that Spring grows close.

Warm mornings like this are a hay-day for the hens.  The hoop house will get positively hot by 10:00 unless it is opened, and unlatching the door is releasing a tide of vociferous clucking inmates, heads cocked askew to fix beady eyes dubiously on anything that moves.  To them, everything is something to be examined and pecked at.  Of course the predominant passion among chickens is food.  However, they are not the sort to do anything in particular except fight for it.  Tricks are above their dignity, not below it.  They are superficially proud of laying eggs, since it is something they tend to do every day; and yet they insist on crowing about it. Water is of little import, however much they may need it to survive, since they are nearly as likely to drown themselves in it as drink it.  The one thing they have in their favor is that every one of them can sincerely claim to have been an adorable little ball of fluff at one time.  Say what you like, I must venture to think of chickens much as I ever have: they are remarkably deficient in intellect…quite stupid in fact; and therefore especially needful of protection and care.  Raising chickens lends new understanding of responsibility.  Chickens, in large numbers, are profligate ingrates.  They won’t be herded, protected, loved, petted or named.  They disregard attention, mistrust friendly advances and deliberately run in the wrong direction for absolutely no reason whatsoever.  The somewhat “unaccountable” part about the farmer-chicken relationship is the fact that the sheer stupidity of chickens makes them all the more worthy of special care and protection.

This is the paradox of creation that men so often misunderstand.  Those nature shows on TV that emphasize the “survival of the fittest” and “natural selection” often miss the endless occurrences in creation of the sacrifice and tenacious guardianship on the part of the strong and able for those which are most likely to die.  More often than not, the pouring out of life on the part of the “fit” is carried to what some might consider “excess”, that the “less fit” may have a chance to survive.  And, yet, after all, this reflects the true spirit of the Creator for His creation.

Another aspect of life that comes out of life on the farm is an understanding of work ethic.  I was considering this while helping to prepare dinner the other night.  Aubrey initiated the trial of a new recipe, and most of us lent a hand in carrying out the effort to one degree or another.  Cooking like this happens in record time and I imagined with trepidation how much harder it would be to do the things we do so often together alone.

I know…I have touched upon that “dirty word,” WORK, which no one wants to discuss.  Frequently visitors to the farm are intrigued by the nature of the operation and overwhelmed by the recognition of how much work it must require from us.  We try to remind people that the work divided among eight able-bodied team-members is not nearly as daunting.  However, there is much to be said for an understanding of how work “works.”

When someone expresses a wish to help on the farm in some way, we often wonder if they know what they are asking for.  This is not out of pride, since we don’t believe that farming is an elitist life-style that requires excessive amounts of schooling or intellect, any more than most other occupations.  What is true of every other kind of work is true of ours: One must be able to recognize what truly needs doing, and be willing to do it with a will...without being asked.  Great quantities of time, energy and expense are wasted every day trying to hammer recognition of what needs to be done into people and then convincing them to do and finish it well.  Work is not the activity which happens between eight and four every day and consists of doing only as much as is required with the least expenditure of personal commodities like time, intellect, or energy.  Work is the thorough investment in the life that is given us through doing what needs to be done, early or late, tired or not, with a good attitude. It is a gift given to man by His Creator, not a curse to be avoided.  The antidote in many cases is investment.  For example if someone truly realizes that eating a good dinner sooner than later tonight requires some pitching in on their part, they are very likely to do it, unless their dependency on the diligence of others is fostered.  This is of course a somewhat superficial level of investment, since work must often be done when there is no prospective personal gain.  The one who then recognizes the virtue in doing something simply because it must be done has gained a whole new understanding of true work-ethic.

The reader would be mistaken to assume that the Six Arrows team has accomplished a perfect balance of work ethic.  Every day the division of our labor is challenged and augmented with some new project, especially as spring approaches.  And just in case anyone wonders whether our diet consists solely of whole foods, the picture on the left demonstrates that the Six Arrows benefit from a treat, such as made-from-scratch buttermilk waffles often enough to keep our spirits bright on the last of these cloudy winter days!

Cheerio!

Craig, Karen and The Six Arrows

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

Six Arrows Farm Update

Remember farm dinners?  Some of you may…the kind where good real food is abundant, jell-o with fruit and whipped cream is a prerequisite and coffee and bread pudding follow in abundance.  The ponderous farm table where you can talk for hours companionably on every topic, profound or mundane.  Aubrey added strawberry jell-o with bananas and whipped cream to our hospitality menu last night.  Dressed up in a pretty bowl and garnished with citrus zest, it reigned like a sovereign over 

every other viand on the table and completed a tradition that has grown through generations of family meals.  Farm dinners are wonderful not because they are remarkably extraordinary, but comfortable.  Like afghans and hot buttered toast and frost in the corner of the window and sun warming the floor in the morning and gloves drying by the stove.  Like that splash of summer on our toast when plumb jam glows like gems on golden bread, or the way my heart leaps with Cappy every morning that she hurtles bright-eyed out of her kennel and eats up snow with her pattering paws.  These are little “gratefulness-es” that grow out of great joy in small blessings.

People often notice the aroma of the fire when they step through our door.  We added another smell last night and Daddy knew it when he came home, farmer-man that he is.  Soil.  Not to be confused with dirt, its spent and lifeless counterpart, soil is pungent with life.  The scent is full and rich and tangy with a vitality that grows into the air and makes you sit up straight for a better sniff.  Aubrey and I buried our hands in it and shook it into flats last night.  Pressed down and running over we filled the cells and hollowed beds for those plain brown time capsules of rosemary and thyme, sage and chives.  

The skills that arise from planting seeds are like any other seemingly simple proficiencies.  They grow from simple lists of factual knowledge into real understanding.  When you know how much to tamp the soil in a flat so that roots will go deep and strong without suffocating; when the arrangement of seeds in each cell is precise; when you can’t bear to wear gloves because you prefer to test the consistency of the earth with your finger tips; when you 

can measure how many black grains of thyme are between your thumb and finger; this is when you begin to understand and really love sowing seed.

Huge flakes whirled all afternoon yesterday and flashed in the sun from the ground this morning in a velvety blanket.  My favorite part of winter mornings are those snow-shadows of baby-est blue that scatter over every dip and rise, cling to the rims of drifts, sink into the caverns of boot-tracks and strike out from the foot of every tree.  Having firmly established my love of winter, I now feel free to admit that I am guilty of putting very green and glowing summer pictures on my desktop.  The bubbling water-falls and rolling pastures smile at me a bit mockingly, I’m afraid.  Not to worry, though.  If I can put up shots of icicles and white-capped mountains this summer, I may be able to redeem myself.  In the meantime, Aubrey and I have schemes of all kinds to cultivated that living green color we are pining for indoors.  By eating up every inch of space with terrariums and over-abundant flats of flowers and herbs, we will manage to drive Garrison (of the very tidy sort and a veritable cleaning machine) batty...until the greenhouse opens.

Craig, Karen and The Six Arrows