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