God visits the earth - Spring

The lowering mottled gray of the sky broke at sunset last night and glory

spilled over the sullen landscape while the evening breeze, laden with the

scent of a late spring thunderstorm, swept the tree-tops with his sultry

breath.  The sky rained in purply gold and every drop was a living jewel,

every sundry puddle a limpid mirror that cast back the flame of the western

sun and every stretch of road was a paved highway of burnished gold.

Everything is green now... that deep livid green of summer.  The fields and

woods and hills are overflowing with it.  The world is all emeralds and

vermilions and deep olives and iridescent viridians and verdant glowing

yellow-green.  We dig and plant and till and weed, but there is only One who

can "make it come alive."

Psalm 65

Praise is due to you, O God, in Zion,
and to you shall vows be performed.
O you who hear prayer,
to you shall all flesh come.
When iniquities prevail against me,
you atone for our transgressions.
Blessed is the one you choose and bring near,
to dwell in your courts!
We shall be satisfied with the goodness of your house,
the holiness of your temple!

By awesome deeds you answer us with righteousness,
O God of our salvation,
the hope of all the ends of the earth
and of the farthest seas;
the one who by his strength established the mountains,
being girded with might;
who stills the roaring of the seas,
the roaring of their waves,
the tumult of the peoples,
so that those who dwell at the ends of the earth are in awe at your signs.
You make the going out of the morning and the evening to shout for joy.

You visit the earth and water it;
you greatly enrich it;
the river of God is full of water;
you provide their grain,
for so you have prepared it.
You water its furrows abundantly,
settling its ridges,
softening it with showers,
and blessing its growth.
You crown the year with your bounty;
your wagon tracks overflow with abundance.
The pastures of the wilderness overflow,
the hills gird themselves with joy,
the meadows clothe themselves with flocks,
the valleys deck themselves with grain,
they shout and sing together for joy.

Six Arrows Farm Update

The snow is consistently a bit less than a foot deep all over the farm and has settled with a kind of certainty over the ground.  Winter conquers all for the present.  I burned some of our garbage yesterday...a job I actually relish for the brisk hike to the field, the pleasure of turning trash into ashes and the warmth it makes.

I made the trip to the burn barrel with Mama loaded with boxes and paper up a kind of “cow path” up the middle of the garden path.  We like the way the snow looks from our windows when it lays in an uninterrupted carpet, so the boys have maintained this narrow track to the field.  It becomes a kind of gorge with jagged banks that grows deeper as more snow falls.  Only the cats have the gall to put paw dents on the blanketed lawn.  Up and down we trudge to the measured, sticky crunch of our boots and the regular puffing clouds of our breath.

A few of the bolder hens were pecking about gingerly on the pad of trampled snow before the hoop-house door.  The rest of the flock was content to peer inquisitively at them from inside and periodically question them in hoarse voices...probably about the condition of their feet.

Hens are particular about their feet at any time.  The cold snow only exaggerates their natural diffidence as they tip-toe about stiffly on the frozen ground with that stilted gait that throws their head forward in rocking-horse fashion.

But everything is stiff.  Frail weeds sway rigidly in a breath of the wind and even your breath and the clothes on your back, feel as if they will break before they could bend.

Tangy and bitter-sweet the scent of snow crackles in our glowing noses and bright flashes the sun on a million flakes.  I am rich to look across the frozen desert of our field, an expanse of silver under the splinter-blue sky, or peer into the secret places of the woods, adrift with cool light and cerulean shadow pierced with golden rays, crusted with diamonds of ice and dusted with the shattering glass of frost from stark limbs.

The new year finds us all richer in reading material, so, since we can’t delve in the soil, we dig into literature in earnest.

A Happy New Year to you all and keep warm!

Craig, Karen and The Six Arrows

Six Arrows Farm Update

I tasted the spice of fall last night on my way to the root cellar and it surprised me like the unexpected visit of an old friend.  The sweltering August sun fades into the hazy glow of September and Indian Summer is a glowing veil drawn over this threshold between summer and fall; a time for the dying season to yield with dignity to the chilling of the waning year and cast a glance of plenty over its shoulder before going to sleep.  Granted, summer still clings to nearly everything in livid green, but here and there a leaf or branch has dared to don the finery of autumn and flaunt it before a host soon to be clamoring in flames of color.

When I was little this farewell nod of the world to summer unsettled me, just as I could never relish the sound of a minor key in music.  I thought nothing should mar the effervescence of a major chord until I learned that the most beautiful resolutions can blossom out of the deepest melancholy.  I wished spring could come again and again to renew and burst forth perpetually until I understood that to have that, I would have to forgo fruit.  The old year will grow cold and roll around whether we wish it or no.  This is the most difficult part about a requiem...the time of its coming is not left to our choosing...yet we are given the gift of singing it...and what a glory and a joy this can be when the fruit of joyful expectation and certainty of hope rises out of the depths of pathos.  So also in the passing of a season there is the joy of expectation.  The certainty of a bright return of everything good.  Harvest is richness and plenty is promise not only in themselves, but also because they provide for the length of days between now and the fulfillment of another promise and another harvest.

Mama and I cut zinnias and snapdragons for market this Friday in the purply evening light.  So blissfully peaceful was the world nodding in the twilight.  Mama turned to me and said, "Look at the beautiful sky...how it makes everything look pretty."  I turned and faced the closing of the day.  Our pea fence and ranks of tomatoes stood out in bold relief against the magnificent panorama of the western sky; the deepest of azure blue flanked with amber clouds lined in flagrant flaming gold.  Every shade and hue was saturated and bursting with vivid glory.  Mama was right.  The glory of the sky lent a sublime and illuminating splendor to everything, drenching the garden with golden light.  The flowers will not look the way they did that night on someone's table today.  The beauty they will bring to a home is of another kind, not marred, but amended.  Tomorrow they will wither and fade away.  And it is fitting that it should be so for the present.  If they were to last forever, their beauty would be cheapened and commonplace.  In their time, they breath the freshness and joy of the garden into a home and masterfully fulfill the role for which they were created...adornment.  So does every shifting beauty in the earth become a passing testimony to an immovable reality.  Transient creation day and night praises the eternal Creator.

We are preserving and freezing in expectation...capturing this passing plenty for days of winter barrenness. Wonderful panoply of color, flavor, and texture is heaped in the caverns of our chest freezers and falls into ranks of jars along groaning shelves.  From a short hiatus with rice as our primary starch when last year’s potatoes finally gave out, we transition back to  “spuds”...for the present fresh dug from the warm earth, later to be wrested from the depths of the root cellar.  Apple pie (made with apples that ripened from blossoms on our own trees) is permeating the house with its quintessential zesty sweetness this blessed minute.

As a side note...a new member of Six Arrows Farm arrived this morning and is strutting her style on the turf of the hen pasture.  We think this shot of her deserves a good caption...any ideas?

Six Arrows Farm Update

Are you hungry?  How many times a day does your body "ask" for nourishment?  Upon whom do you depend for food?

Life on a farm brings us about as close as we can get to the root of physical provision.  When your hands make room in the dirt for a seed that grows and clears weeds from the ground around a blossoming plant and severs the ripe fruit from the stem, you can't miss the wonder of "our daily bread."  On the farm, we learn that food is not something that will perpetually line the grocery store shelves.  It is a precious gift from the Creator to His creation.  A timely, daily, miraculously enduring reminder of our dependence on what we cannot truly guarantee for ourselves.

In a small way, the power of provision comes home when we feed our animals every morning.  Here the hogs come running to greet us, barking ecstatically, tearing up the deep rich soil of the forest floor in their mad haste like a crowd of play-weary children to the abundant table...because they know we bring dinner.  A mass of pig weed from the broccoli patch or the leavings of fresh veggies from our own meal sends their whimsical little tails wagging.  Yes...pigs wag their tails in joy.  They keep time with the curly little appendages while they plow trenches through dirt with their shoveling noses or strip leaves from the stems of vegetation with their pearly teeth.

There are the chicks, still mildly adorable in their half-fluff, half-feathered state, half submerged in the verdant sea of emerald pasture, stretching tiny stout legs with a lazy "cheep" and a hazy blink of the eye in the morning light before they waddle a foot for a tasty morsel of clover.  Even after the last vestige of cute "chick-ness" has melted away into the clumsy fatness of "chicken-hood," there will be a smile of satisfaction on my face every time I see their enthusiasm for fresh grass. 

The infinite satisfaction that accompanies the sight of contentment in a living creature should not surprise us.  Food, when abundant, can become the most vapid and commonplace element in a day, but the lack of it for any amount of time is disconcerting and detrimental, while great depravation can become a source of panic and even insanity.  As surely as you will become full after eating dinner tonight, so surely will your belly beg for more tomorrow morning.  In this way we are never permitted to forget our indebtedness, in recognition of which fact generations have preserved a tradition of thanksgiving prayers before every meal.  A farmer is in some ways like a father to his beast, and how imperfectly yet lucidly does this reflect the granting of life we have from our Father.

 

I think of this often.  Does the fruitfulness of a vine ever overwhelm you?  Do the life-giving veins of a leaf beat a stained glass window hollow for you?  Can the tenacity and forgiveness of herbage to freshen in rain after drought enthrall you?  Will wind rushing down the breath of a storm to cool the day make you want to run with it to the end of the earth?  Does the hap-hazard rocking-horse-plunging of a pig in sheer jollity make your laughter overflow?

In time long past, God asked Job this question:

“Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?

Tell me, if you have understanding.

Who determined its measurements—surely you know!

Or who stretched the line upon it?
On what were its bases sunk, or who laid its cornerstone,

when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy?

“Or who shut in the sea with doors when it burst out from the womb,

when I made clouds its garment and thick darkness its swaddling band,

and prescribed limits for it and set bars and doors, and said,

‘Thus far shall you come, and no farther, and here shall your proud waves be stayed’?

Have you commanded the morning since your days began,

and caused the dawn to know its place...?”

from Job 38

How much of this can you or I bring about, or preserve until tomorrow?  The question knows its own answer, as we should.  We could ask in return:

“O Lord...what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?” from Psalm 8

The wonder is not that there is hunger and even dire want in the world, but that there should be a yield to our need at all.  I will venture to repeat the words of my forbears in this.  There is nothing you or I can do to deserve our daily bread more than another, so be like the chick who waits with certainty on us for his food and the pig who rejoices unstintingly at the coming of dinner.

Eat with thankfulness on your lips today, for no man can truly know where his next meal is coming from apart from the bountiful provision of our heavenly Father.

“Oh, taste and see that the LORD is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!”

Psalm 34:8

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.

Six Arrows Farm Update

Hands and weeds…words on my mind fairly often lately…truly ever since the garden burst into full-blown growth of summer with the rest of the countryside. Our hands are slowly gaining the stiff, leathery feel that weeding yields, while my right index finger sports this year’s callous and every crevice harbors a minuscule deposit of dirt and weed-juice. I could scrub those useful extremities raw this very minute and the stains of labor would cling tenaciously to them yet. Then there are the weeds. Cramped and ugly things that crawl all over the garden and make it look like panorama jungle to scale.
I wrote that word, “weeds”, and then realized that I honestly wasn’t sure what I mean by it. So I went and looked it up. Now pardon me while I explain the need to investigate such a common English word.
Words have always been a favorite topic of mine, so etymology was a hobby I cultivated easily. Since some have noted that I “must like to write,” it may come as a surprise to find that I went through a long season where I could not enjoy grammar and spelling, no matter how hard I tried. The rules of the English language were like cobwebs to me and I believed they got in the way of what I really wanted to do…write. (Yes…go ahead and chuckle.)
My ever-tactful mother was unrelenting in this respect, and having a very practical and mathematical mind, established a foundation of grammar under all my whimsies of composition. In the morning of my education, I misspelled so many words in my headlong rush for creativity she told me to find them in my own work rather than marking them in red herself. (A wise mother makes her child his own drill-sergeant…and saves red ink.)
Unfortunately, I rebelled at first and brought the same misspellings back day after day for inspection. Rather than slapping an F on the paper (I never got an F because Mama refused to accept badly done work) she sent me away with my (current) good friend Noah Webster to look up every word in my composition…in order. “The…long…white…house…was…” you get the idea. After a few trials of this kind, I discovered two things. The first was that it saves time to be more selective with your letters. The second I found while resting my cramped brain on a page-full of those introductory remarks at the beginning of Webster’s dictionary we never read, trying to muster the resolve to look up “the”. I realized I was staring at a paper on etymology. I was swallowing the last line before I knew I had sipped the first and the world of language spread out before me like a sublime view from a mountain top. End of rant.
So…in every-day terms, “weed” gets its origin from Old English words like “uueod” or “weod” meaning “grass” or “herb”. By the way, don’t you love the fact that the letter “W” was originally a double “U”?
Weed has only more recently (in the last few hundred years) become a generic term associated in one sense with noxious and nuisance plants. For example, the King James Bible (from 1611) translates a Hebrew word in the book of Job meaning “stinking plant or noxious weed” as “cockle”. Apparently cockles were obnoxious in seventeenth century England. I cultivated their modern counterpart as a cut flower in my garden last year. Weed, then, in its modern sense, is a relative term…since it is applied to plants that are simply more resilient and fast-growing than those we cultivate for food and fiber, etc. (Hence the phrase “growing like a weed”.) This being the case…I would like to introduce you to some plant-acquaintances of mine. Namely: those I term “weeds.”


Purslane (Portulaca oleracea) is cultivated in many regions for culinary use. It is used in salads, stir-fry and even soup. It is my personal weeding nemesis, since it is nearly impossible to pull up by the roots, leaves sticky juice all over your hands, and has malevolent tentacle branches that spread over everything. It is just beginning to come up now and will flourish through July and August.
Pigweed (Red root - Amaranthus retroflexus) is also cultivated for culinary purposes. They make a dish called “thoran” with it in India. It is my personal favorite in the weed category because it pulls easily and doesn’t make a fuss about dying. It is one of the first things up and one of the last things to die in the fall. Incidentally, Purslane, Pigweed and Lambs-quarters/Goosefoot are all “related” and are often referred to interchangeably as “pigweed” because they were at one time or another used as pig-fodder.
Lambs-quarters or Goosefoot (Chenopodium album) is also…that’s right…cultivated for food in India. Very hard to pull, will grow four feet tall, has a hard stem that hurts your fingers and contributes to pollen related allergies.
Scotch Thistle (Onopordum acanthium) is believed to have originated in North America as an ornamental plant! I suppose they tolerated the spines in their landscaping to enjoy the biannual violet flowers. It is versatile in nature…apparently used for medicinal and household purposes. Believe it or not, some used to eat the receptacle of the flower the way we eat artichokes. And of course many of you may recognize it as the national emblem of Scotland (hence the name).

Kentucky Bluegrass (Poa pratensis) is a native meadow grass that many of you know as lawn grass. It gets the name from its blue flowers which appear if you don’t mow it regularly…or pull it up. Along with Crabgrass (which has seeds that can be toasted and ground for flour) the species can populate an area very quickly. In the fall our garden ends up looking like a prairie thanks to these grasses.


Goldenrod (Solidago canadensis) – Well, I won’t burden you with the nearly endless list of common ailments this plant addresses…everything from kidneys to sore throats. It is more than one state’s state flower. More interesting yet is the fact that Thomas Edison found a way to extract rubber from the leaves and had tires of goldenrod rubber on the Model T his friend Henry Ford gave him! It pulls up very easily and looks like a little Christmas tree when it is young.

Milkweed (Asclepias amplexicaulis) while a main source of food for Monarch butterfly larva, is toxic to grazing animals. It is used medicinally and recently cultivated for filling pillows. It leaves a sticky “milk” on your hands when you pull it, and is not nearly as invasive as other weeds.

Pinkweed (Polygonum pensylvanicum) , named for its flower, is a native species and was as used for medicinal purposes as well. It is almost identical to its European counterpart, Lady’s Thumb. It is also far less invasive than most weeds.



There are more I could have mentioned...but I thought better of it. To many, weeds can get...obnoxious. I would love to hear about the weeds I am sure some of you deal with every day! In the midst of all this fuss over the garden, the pigs are growing apace and the chickens are on their last few weeks of happy chicken-ness on the pasture. The regal iris is past its prime and gives way to the flamboyant blooms of high summer.
Signing off with a (literally) green thumb!
Craig, Karen and The Six Arrows

P.S.  We are cleaning up in wake of incredible storms that came through the south east corner of Minnesota last Thursday night. After the deluge, Daddy was out until 4 am with the boys closing roads because of flooding over bridges in the Cannon Falls area. They said the sight of giant 100 foot trees hitting bridges like a battering ram and then disappearing into the raging river was spectacular and sounded like thunder! The Farm had a few casualties: strawberries have hail damage, sugar snap peas have white spots from hail, and the hen pen shifted in the wind and hurt a hen. Everything else pulled through surprisingly well. We are thankful!

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 threw the windows open this morning to let in spring and I wish you could be here.  The quiet sky is casting a soft gray blanket and filtering gentle light over a brown world misted with hazy green.  Things can't wait to come alive now.  Everything is reaching and striving and opening into the warmth.  It is all so vulnerable and hesitant, soft and new.  Composers have been writing music for spring for centuries.  Some of my old favorites...Vivaldi's Spring, Mozart's "Spring" String Quartet, Copland's Appalachian Spring are dedicated in title to the season.  But even these fall short of the real symphony that swells between last year's death and this year's life.  The story of spring is almost too delicate for any expression louder than a whisper.  While seemingly cavalier, the relentless and yet winsome power obviously on display makes carelessness and pomp equally graceless.

Poetry meets prose where pleasant weather meets reality.  Talk goes back and forth, some eager, some dubious.  What does a Minnesota grower do with a March Spring?  The orchard owners are justly concerned that an April or early May frost will kill the buds which are so enthusiastically bursting.  Last year, a similar weather pattern eliminated much of the fruit crop in this region.  On the other hand, if the frost wipes out the first of the weed bed in the garden before it goes to seed, we will of course be grateful.  And a lengthened growing season with good rain and sun can only help most crops.

Daddy announced a desire to do some brush clean-up over lunch and the prospect of grubbing around out of doors was so tantalizing that I enlisted myself almost before he finished laying out his plan.  I love to be in the middle of it, when all the world is living the first creation again; when the newborn green creeps up like an old friend and fills my senses with memories come alive; when my eyes drink the lush colors to their dregs.  I glory in the comical way the hens peck and cluck out their satisfaction across fresh turf while the rooster crows stentorianly simply because he can.  I am mesmerized by a single bud, standing there willing it to grow when I know for a surety that I can do nothing to make it mature or drink when I water, and yet it surely will because it lives avidly in obedience to it’s Creator.

To tear away at the old to make way for the new; to rake out, sweep up, and carry away what is chaff and press down and train up and feed what is good is in our nature.  Man is made neither as a foreign creature to destroy, nor a passive member to let lie the world in which he is established.  He is made a husbandman to make it better.  All around the farm are evidences of “natural” decay.  The beauty of untouched wilderness is not in its native disorder, suffocation, and barrenness, but in the potential it is blessed with: a will to grow and come alive under the hands of skilled and diligent caretakers.  That which languished in rampant chaos begins to take on the beauty of shape and form.  The accumulation of death and decay are set aside to give way to redoubled life and strength.  

The soil obeys the laws written in it and knows the hand of man as it’s appointed ruler.  It responds with fertility and abundance under a good steward and withering and desolation under a lazy or greedy man.

Proverbs 20:4 says “A sluggard does not plow in season; so at harvest time he looks but finds nothing.”
So here we go to "plow in season".

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

Dull and quiet, the sky of looming winter hovers close to earth most days now; a blanket of peace settling on a landscape that has ceased to strive in abundance and ebbs to rest in latent age.  No more will the hosts of vibrant colors vie for attention in splendid panoply.  The time of completion and maturity lends to simple monotones of grey a noble elegance and softened beauty.  Highest of births, greatness of growth and experience of fruition will yield the realization of a hoary crown needless of more testimony to labor.
The year is completing its last work in laying away the seed of a new birth yet to come.  Aubrey gave the iris their annual “hair-cut” while I completed the annual window-swabbing yesterday.  The wood pile has grown, albeit a little sluggishly due to the greater looming project of root-cellar building.  We pulled up enduring tomato plants with their cages and posted strong picket lines of the ungainly wire contraptions like sentries around apple trees and blueberry bushes against the onslaught of hungry deer.  Sam plowed the garden under the other day and all that remains of the bounty are ragged scraps of vine and drab mounds of bare earth.  The tractors already sport their winter chains and Mama mulched the blueberry bushes with pine-needles (blueberries love nice acidic soil), while I still need to mulch my hydrangea bush and cut down the last of my flower garden that sports frost-seared spikes.

The lively business of readying for winter around here would probably resemble a disturbed ant-hill from the perspective of an aerial view time-lapse.  All the activity is a tacit acknowledgment of an urgency not unlike the spirit that hastens men to hustle into ranks at the call of a commander before a battle.  No one takes firm hold of a spade unless he intends to dig, or buys seed unless he intends to plant.  Only a fool gathers wood and block to build nothing, or collects books he does not intend to better himself by.  And we never gather everything together and put it all away and tie this down and cover that up without the firm assurance that we haven’t ever done it quite soon enough to beat the invading rush of the arctic.

Especially in the woods, there is the general sense of “battening down the hatches.”  Like the lights of a house blinking out at night, everything curls up and retreats for a long sleep.  The ruddy “berries” on the right are a woodsy herald of fall just as Bloodroot is the first sign of spring.  Some of you probably recognize the brilliant seed-pod of the exotic wild orchid native to Minnesota, the Jack-in-the-Pulpit.  Most don’t know the baneful mosquito proves her worth in being the only species that can pollinate and thus propagated this remarkable plant.  Needless to say we were not short on mosquitoes this year, since forest floor around the farm is literally bespangled with these Christmas-red pods.  Plants and animals, with the blessed gift of instinct from the Creator, know better than to wait until the first snow flies to prepare for the coming lack of food.  This is the second year in a row that our raspberry bushes have bowed under the weight of late autumn berries after the first frost; and yesterday two squirrels chased each other madly across the yard, one with his face full of a nut, the other very apparently wanting one.  Extra bounty at harvest is never a mistake, and the wise observer doesn’t disregard the hint.  The cold is not great yet, but it is settling in with a kind of determined energy. 

The biggest race against time this week was the root cellar roof.  The boys poured a thick concrete slab that will be insulated with at least two feet of earth. If they can manage to put the door in soon, we will have the capability to dispel pyramids of jars and mountains of potatoes among which we are nearly buried.

Frankly, the cellar is an engineering masterpiece.  It couldn’t be anything else with Daddy on the team.  Everything he builds stands as a lasting and sturdy testimony to his painstaking work.  When they troop in to dinner, the men wear daubs of cement with dustings of gravel and sand and scratched and dented fingers permeated with the distinct odors of tractor fuel and musty earth.  I washed Ben’s jeans yesterday and found a few determined gobs of hardened concrete yet clinging tenaciously to them when I pulled them from the dryer.

It is our earnest hope to finish the project in the next few days, and in the spirit of the “lighthearted” Puddleglum the Marshwiggle, “the bright side of it is...” if cellar is finished, as long as we don’t faint from exhaustion in a Minnesota winter tramping the extra 50 yards to fetch a can of tomatoes, at least we won’t die from lack of exercise in the next six months.  “Very likely…” what with being tired of canned tomatoes and mashed potatoes, and having next to nothing to do and living in such close quarters for such a long time, “we’ll hardly notice the weather!”  J

To be quite honest, rather than having “next to nothing to do,” I find that my list of winter projects has grown so prodigiously, I am already relegating some to next year’s toll.  What winter undertakings are on your lists, I wonder?

This year is about to roll over one more time to tuck his chin in under the covers and then we too must nestle in to short cozy days and long warm nights indoors. 

 Dull November brings the blast,

Then the leaves go whirling past.
Chill December brings the sleet,
Blazing fire and Christmas treat

Craig, Karen and The Six Arrows