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

It begins to be pleasant to be indoors now because of the deepening chill...but it is still even more pleasant to be out of doors because of the bracing air.  Everything alive is going to sleep, but the sun of a hundred summer days is being coaxed out of the earth by stretching frosty nights until, even on a cloudy day, the wind smells exotic and rich like a breath out of the orient.

The dark arms of the trees strike out against shades of azure so arrestingly beautiful they take my breath away. 

A growing crowd of winter wraps are hugging the hooks by the front door...masses of heavy coats capped by the light jackets and swathed in trailing scarves.  Minnesotans have a distinctive penchant for winter fashion and, small wonder, we especially love our coats.  The polar fleece vest and the heavy down snow coat, the formal trench coat and the light jacket all hold their own indispensable place.

In our house at least, winter garments far outnumber summer garments...and astronomically outweigh them.  All my favorite clothes belong in this category.  I love bundling up in them.  Scarves to settle my chin into, layers to wrap around my shoulders, socks to cozy my toes.  There is comfort and security and rest wrapped up in the look and feel and smell of winter clothes.  Yes the smell...they spend hours imbibing the scents of countless fires, settling onto the creaky family room couch with hundreds of comfortable guests in the light of aforementioned fires and saturating the rich aromas of a thousand piping winter dinners.  A thick wool sweater evokes images of some of our favorite things on the farm...steaming cups of coffee and tea, snow, early mornings, long days cutting wood, good books.

Something about all the tucking away and storing up inspires its own kind of anticipation...similar to the keen thrilling craving that comes in spring for plowing and sowing.  I find myself nearly ready to open a seed catalogue again with relish...but not until we have completely buried ourselves in the hot, spicy, steamy, gregarious, bursting-at-the-seams Thanksgiving kitchen.

Better even than eating good food is planning it...conjuring up images of everything that brings comfort to the palate and hence enthusiasm and contentment to the conversation.  Right about now I am dangerous on a shopping trip.  My eyes are bigger than our refrigerator and cupboards combined.  Mama and I couldn’t resist the dates on our grocery trip today...she said “dates in your oatmeal” and I grabbed extra boxes.  Every kind of food sounds appealing...to make.  And I’m not even dreaming about eating anything yet!  This is the special privilege of the cook...a double measure of anticipation.  Our fresh diet is still supplied almost exclusively from the farm...loads of steamy squash, smooth buttery potatoes, strong sweet onions.  Throw in a favorite herb and some frozen beans, pull a savory so-tender-it-falls-apart-in-your-hands chicken out of the crock-pot, drench the potatoes with gravy from the drippings and eat like a king.  I am beginning to plan for bacon and eggs or ham and cloves and the pigs are nearly ready for market. 

The last market just rolled into the gathered endeavors of the year.  The remaining bounty is for us to enjoy.  When we are powerless to bring food for ourselves from the ground, we are made glaringly aware of our absolute reliance on our Maker.  The time will come to break out the first jar of tomatoes, the first bag of beans...when we will be compelled day by day to give thanks.

God thunders wondrously with his voice;
he does great things that we cannot comprehend.
For to the snow he says, 
‘Fall on the earth,’
likewise to the downpour, his mighty downpour.
He seals up the hand of every man,
that all men whom he made may know it.
Then the beasts go into their lairs,
and remain in their dens.
From its chamber comes the whirlwind,
and cold from the scattering winds.
By the breath of God ice is given,
and the broad waters are frozen fast.

~Job 37:5-10

Listen to the farewell songs of the birds that fly away south, telling their tales of foreign climes and balmy glades; then pull your hat down over your ears, drag your socks up past your boot tops and whistle the merry brittle tunes of winter down their soaring wake to speed them away from the frigid blast.  They’ll not come home till the new season wends round at the appointed time; and here we’ll bide awhile without them in good cheer, with faith in our Father to bring the year round.

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

A little bit of fun from the Reformation of Food and Family Conference

Collin Gun had an assignment to find the greatest food in the world...

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!