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

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

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!

Six Arrows Farm Presents at the Athlete Lab

Last Friday, two thirds of The Six Arrows gave a presentation about Six Arrows Farm at The Athlete Lab, Kate Klaers’ gym in the Twin Cities. We would like to extend an especial thank you to Kate Klaers for inviting us to her gym! Kate has invested in her clients, we can see they are truly her friends and she has a passion for healthy and responsible living.

The message at the gym that evening was healthy food. Our part was to present our farm story. We really enjoyed revisiting the path God has taken us and reviewing our methods in providing food to our customers and our family. By His grace, we are thankful for the wisdom we have received from others who are good stewards of the land and animals.

A few slides from our presentation...

1998...

The Lenz Men at Joel Salatin's Polyface Farm in Virginia in 2003... 

The Hens and their Eggmobile...

Pigaerator Pork...

 After our farm presentation, Kate showed the film, FRESH. We couldn’t have planned it better, the movie featured Joel Salatin, the farmer the Lenz “boys” visited in 2003, to learn about raising poultry, hogs, and cattle. Joel Salatin is a farmer practicing sustainable agriculture, who understands his responsibility as steward of the earth including “respecting the ‘pigness’ of the pig, the ‘chickeness’ of the chicken, the ‘cowness’ of the cow and the ‘tomatoness’ of the tomato”! :o) We have personally learned and benefitted so much from Mr. Salatin; he has developed so many wise and practical methods that are very helpful for farmers trying to practice alternate and sustainable farming. On the flip side, the film also interviewed farmers who know first-hand the regrettable state of the current poultry, cattle, hog and crop industries. Industrialized agriculture has had consequences we’re sure farmer’s didn’t imagine. The film discussed farmers who are producing antibiotic-resistant bacteria through over-medicating their animals. When animals are placed in huge factory farms, they must use chemicals and antibiotics to keep the animals alive! When farmers use antibiotics as a means of disease prevention rather than treatment, the danger of promoting mutant, antibiotic-resistant bacteria is almost inevitable. Also, when land produces one crop, repeated over many years, this can be a proponent to problems, like the development of the soybean aphids infestation. There seemed to be an especial focus on raising pigs that we particularly enjoyed. :o) Much of what was communicated we know to be very true. However, as with most films, we have a little disclaimer…not every view portrayed by the film can be endorsed by Six Arrows Farm.

Once again, a big thank you to Kate Klaers for hosting us and all our gracious listeners! Now we are really excited for Spring!

Hogs and Corncobs

If you stand at the edge of the pasture south of the plum trees and call into the woods, pigs come running like bandits from an ambush.

This morning, Garrison, Sam and I picked two buckets of sweet corn to freeze. It was one of those foggy, soaking, drippy mornings. We were taking an advantage of a break in the rain, but it started dripping again as we finished grabbing the last few ears. Sam suggested that we go to the tree fort to husk the corn. Our tree fort is in the pigs current paddock, so we ran down, hauled the buckets over the fence, and dragged them up into the fort. The pigs knew why we were there. They were snuffing around the base of the fort by the time we had the buckets up, and grunted in approval when the first husks fell. The advantage of the fort is that once you are in it, there is no fear of the pigs getting at the peeled ears, and the roof keeps off the rain! It is rare to hear a mixture of sounds as ludicrous, curious or peaceful as a gentle rain on leaves and the grunting of pigs. I know it sounds funny. You had to be there.

The Pigs

Those comical, roly-poly India Rubber barrels of mischief.

With their inquisitive beady little eyes, odd, almost pugnacious, round noses, and droll legs on "high heels," they are enough to make anyone chuckle. I love the chorus of grunts I am greeted with every time I walk to their fence.

"Pigaerator Pork!"

Ever seen pigs in a more beautiful environment?While taking this picture I was marveling at the number of human labor hours it would have taken to get the woods to look this way!

New Babies on the Farm!!

Fifteen feeder pigs are tearing around their pen like a football team...well they tear around unless they are eating and sleeping. The eating is prodigious and sleeping abundant. Pigs are such good sleepers...they relax completely...hooves in the air or whatever other position they happened to be in the moment they flopped down. I love the way their noses make them look curious and a little silly.

I have determined that sheep can be rather austere, though very lovable...at least these two feeder lambs are. We are still trying to decide on some good names.