On A Deviant Path

I am somewhere new again. It feels like Spring or Summer, so different from my Upstate New York winter pause.

It is pathways of concrete and cars, on-ramps, highways, sidewalks that end without warning or lead to spaces fenced in but abandoned, ignored. Wetlands around these parts have been invaded by development and cluttered with man-made stuff. New and fancy condos float in a world separate from the one that the foot-passage to the town center follows, one that passes alongside pitched tents, bedding and temporary dwellings under the eight-lane highway that shakes with vehicles rumbling overhead.

There are dozens of people living under Highway 101, some with more sophisticated, established dwellings, some with just a blanket.

Melon For The People (And The Pigs)

Sweet globes of fruit, in any of many forms they may take, are as necessary as drinking water on the hottest days of summer. We found ourselves coordinating mid-morning melon (eating) sessions as part of the bi-weekly harvest routine, or enjoying a late afternoon graze through green grape vines, standing in the sun pulling bites from bunches again and again. Summer saw everything alive, beckoning, bellowing, as branches in the orchard cracked and fell to the ground heavy with more ripe plums than my mind could have imagined. For nearly a month this summer the constant knock of small, dense wild plums fell onto the roof of my aluminum trailer, splatting and thumping me awake from well-earned rest. Now, deep into autumn, any sounds on the trailer’s roof are of eager wood rats attempting to get inside or heavy raindrops, constant and cold. I wonder, already, about where I’ll find myself the next time fruit matures. Without fully realizing it, I’m strategizing ways to dwell in a place where the orchard is a short walk from my doorstep, where the melon and tomato vines flourish and berry bushes resemble small wild fires at their peak.

tall sprinklers helped the green vines grow, feeding the fruit throughout dry, hot days.

But all of this excitement took a good amount of time and energy to cultivate. As we lovingly planted the melons in late spring, whether plant by plant from starts in the greenhouse or by laying seeds in shallow furrows in groups of three (plant security), I was beckoned into a world of sweet diversity, patiently awaiting the promise of fruit gifts. We planted 10 kinds of melon, waited patiently for 78-90 days to pass, and only then were invited to enjoy the fruits of our labor. The promises held true this year, even exceeded my expectations, of summer and juices, fragrance colored in clean greens, delicate pinks, fruity and bold reds, orange, yellow, like small statements from a flower’s nectar, so different from the next, beautiful, a celebration.

Transplanting, my nose was covered in dirt before too long: have you ever thought to smell the soil block, a tangle of roots in the farm-made potting soil mix, from a melon plant just before the moment of transplanting it? Impossible to replicate in any artificial manner, these fragrances were so completely unique to me. The subtle fragrance differences mirrored the equally subtly unique color spectrum that the mature fruits possess: from pinks to greens, pale orange and yellow hues, colors ranging from bright to sleepy, loud to delicate, playing along in the same raised garden bed.

These young cucurbit starts seemed to hang on to their seeds as they morph in to new, thriving plants.

This summer I was designated our melon harvester – not in charge of watermelons, which have a different list of ripe-factor criteria altogether – but the proud and delighted monitor of the Earlichamp, Earligold, Arava, Earlidew, Honey Orange, Krenshaw, Rockyford, Sharlyn, San Juan, Lilly, and Ambrosia honeydews, cantaloupes and musk-type melons. There were weeks, in late August, when I’d find myself in the patch for hours, making trips back and forth between the garden and processing area with wheelbarrows piled high with dirt-covered balls of every size and color. We streamlined the harvesting process a few times: Seth stood in the lane catching what I would toss his way, setting it in his wheelbarrow quickly and with precision before running that load to the processing area while I remained hunched, peering through vines for treasure. And while there were so many perfect melons there were many, too, that were slightly damaged from rot, hungry gophers or rodents, or some that simply grew less than perfectly, misshapen or small in a way that left us less than proud to send them to our CSA members. I would try my best to eat these rejects, delicious often despite their imperfections, cutting around large areas when necessary and taking more time to carve the fruit than to actually consume it. But the volume of culled melons adds quickly. They would sit in boxes perused after lunch, at first, then ignored for a good while until rot and fermentation processes, which care nothing about time or our thoughts, took hold with vigor despite best attempts to slow them. Finally, when the fruits were soggy, oozing, squishy, moldy, or a combination of these factors, one lucky person would get to toss the melons to the pigs.

i "heart" the pig on the left.. and the one on the right, too, to be fair.

Sometimes I’d approach this slowly, heaving one melon in to the pigs at a time, watching them fight for the biggest pieces, or any piece, for that matter. Other times I’d throw many rotting fruits over the fence all at once. They would go berserk with excitement, running from one fruit to the next thrilled by their newest discovery bite after bite.

We feed the pigs any and everything we don’t eat ourselves: the rotting melons, green tomatoes ruined by frost, eggplants and peppers so plentiful this year we couldn’t give them away or use them fast enough, leftovers pulled from the back of the fridge a few too many days after its first preparation, nearly all kitchen scraps with the exception of onion skins, leek tops, and other allium-related refuse, and parsnip greens (who knew?). It’s quite beautiful to feed two systems at once: the food we take great pains in cultivating and harvesting gains an extended life as it is passed on to the pigs and the pigs, after many months of time, assistance, and companionship, become, again, food for us. Eliminating inputs from sources off of the farm and making the best use of what we have here helps close a sensible, more sustainable, life-cycle circle, a core concept for biodynamic farms.

pancakes cooked in bacon grease taste like doughnuts: delicious!

My interest in growing melons in the future, complimented by my new love for pigs (and pork, I have to admit), plus combined with a desire to start up and operate exciting, sustainable businesses, caused me to look back to experiences in Brazil I had a few summers ago. In every park, on many street corners in cities all over the huge country, and alongside highways, too, vendors sold coconuts. Not the shriveled brown variety with cream inside that we often see at grocery stores in the States, but young, green coconuts, served very cold, with a hole adeptly drilled through the top of the flesh and a drinking straw quickly tucked in to that hole. The drilling and serving of this popular fruit/drink are gracefully executed and I would recommend asking for a coco gelado just to see it performed. This is a vessel and a refreshing sports drink at the same time (coconut water contains lots of potassium, very little sugar and calories, and naturally occurring electrolytes). The empty coconut is, of course, compostable when facilities exist to collect and deal with them.

Coconut water is a hit all over Brasil (this shot was taken at a park where there are lots of joggers). Sometimes I'd spot trucks carrying the shells away but there didn't seem to be an organized way of dealing with compost vs. trash.

This coco vendor slices the top of the fruit then drills into it before serving.

The whole experience generates nearly zero waste with the exception of the thin, plastic straw used to extract the water and the fuel in the truck used to bring the fruit from point A to B. So…If I grew melons, somewhere in the Hudson Valley, for example, and could transport them by sailboat down the Hudson River to a park in New York City or, better, set up shop at an even closer park in whatever town may be closest to my Pig and Melon Farm, then I could serve simple, beautiful melon slices, as they are: no plastic, no paper, no fancy value-added gelato deal, just a slice of melon in the middle of summer. I think it would be enough! The finished rinds would, of course, be collected, packed up on the boat and taken north to the pigs on the farm again. Seasonal, sustainable, wind powered sailing work sounds good to me.

tasting the melons for ripeness is an important part of the proper harvesting process - also never a problem for me!

As the farm crew and I here at Live Power Community Farm brace ourselves for the end of the season, busy with harvesting still while balancing clean-up projects and field prep, we’ve thrown ourselves into research to see what else is out there, possibly determining where we may end up next. I’ve been drawn to the many examples of cooperative fruit orchards growing in places all over the country: in Portland, Chicago, St. Louis, Missouri, Oakland, San Fran, and a service that will tell you where to find fruit wherever you are.

I am fascinated by these projects because, I wonder, if we all had access to fresh fruit while it’s in season, and preserved seasonal fruit to eat throughout the other seasons, if we’d find ourselves a bit happier, healthier, more content with the naturally occurring rushes of nectar and less likely to drink soda, bottled and shipped-from-everywhere -juices, and other sugary, artificially or overly sweetened foods that play on the same need that fruit fills. When communities live alongside or on the same land that they are empowered to steward then we are one step closer to meeting our collective food needs.

August Is Over

August is over. At the rate that I’ve been able to post new stories and updates on this blog, September could easily fly by before I get what I’ve got up here, too. Without falling ridiculously into the land of Apology, I only want to say that the next few posts may entail some summertime backtracking. So much happens on a farm in July and August that it would be a shame for me to not share some of what I’ve learned, experienced, and seen! And I have promised my Mom that I’d use this forum to show her our method of pruning tomato plants so, if nothing else, I will do that soon. But, with a speedy end to my guilt-ridden feelings of slacking here, and to my Mom (who always understands, anyway), and any one else who reads this, I hope you’ll accept my delayed on-line presence.

With the end of August and move into September there is relief; a collective sigh leaked out cautiously that may not have been heard but that was felt, strongly, deeply. The days are markedly shorter, cooler, cloudier, less outwardly intense and demanding. We start work at 6:45 instead of 6 am, the summertime start time, allowing us minutes of extra sleep, writing or reading space, or a chance to hole up in cozy beds or the warm kitchen in the cold morning before the sun rises. Any threats of the ‘August Exodus’ are, according to the calendar, at least, officially over, although we did lose one dear crew member in late July. He left the farm for many positive and necessary reasons and on mostly good terms despite the abrupt announcement of his decision. His leaving shook some things up in me: a sadness, undeniably, as when a circle of any sort is broken even slightly, and the reconsideration of my own wanderlust (or is it freedomlust, or boyfriendlust)?

Steve, Kim, Ryann, Michele and I were taking refuge from the heat of a 107 degree day: sorting and cleaning cured garlic that we’ll continue to send to CSA members through November.

The August Exodus is a notion that Steve, co-owner of Live Power Community Farm, has termed based on his 30 + years of experience working mostly with a transient, apprentice-based work force and other seasonal workers on occasion. It is uncommon for apprentices to leave before their official commitment is over, Steve shares, and him and Gloria have seemed to perfect the art of screening applicants for reliable, committed help so that this happens very rarely. Still, if apprentices do leave mid-season they have consistently done so in, or close to, the month of August.

By August we were thick in the routine of farm life. Our stays have approached the four and five month mark and there is a confidence and skill set that develops over this kind of time spent in one place. Where we were regularly planning, prepping soil and beds, sowing seeds, planting, maintaining and weeding, we’ve moved instead into irrigating, harvesting, irrigating some more, and harvesting again. Comprehensively, this is a beautiful process to embrace. As time progresses it becomes clear that there is less and less control one has over the vegetables: there is only so much to do that will aid or care for the ever-maturing and fruiting plants. This can drive some of us, used to having more control in life, a little batty. It’s truly time to just keep up: with the harvest, with our relationships here, our health and ourselves. That is enough. Before we know it, it will be over.

the winter squash and fall brassicas, broccoli, cabbage, kale and cauliflower, are planted and thriving!

There is so much food living right outside of my door that it’s almost overwhelming to think about. It’s joyous and bountiful and beautiful but I need to admit that I, too, during the still-long days of August, found myself scheming a way to find release from this season-long commitment earlier than originally negotiated. There have been days upon days where everything feels the same, where my actions and even actual steps were repeated again and again. I couldn’t help but feel stuck in a Groundhog Day version of reality, finding myself silent and exhausted at the dinner table at the end of the night, uninspired or too tired, or both, to write, unable even to communicate well with my loved ones living outside of this experience.

Thankfully, I had a big wedding to attend in late July. My sisters and their partners were all invited and all attending the fancy, perfect long-weekend celebration in Sonoma County. My sister Michele had made plans to visit the farm for a week following this and pulled into the farm’s driveway, still a little drunk from wine tastings and country roads, after 10 pm on a night when the full moon was beaming. The moonlight bathed the farm the way rainwater can fall gently on Northeast evenings: accentuating details that get covered in dust and revealing them in shiny, new ways. Michele marveled at many of the things I’ve been taking for granted: the orchard, with trees so full of fruit that branches snapped, laying heavy on the ground, the blanket of silence that night ushers in which continues clean into our day’s work as very few fossil fuel operated machines are used here. The sounds of animals and the more subtle sounds of plants and wildlife have a place here. Michele, somehow?, even said that the outhouse was perfect!

Michele took some hilarious photos while she was here. This is one of them! She also took the photo at the start of this post, of me herding the animals from pasture into their mangers.

Showing her around and introducing my life here to her was reinvigorating. It felt good to bask in her positivity and to see the impact that what we are embodying had on her: an alternative way of living that differs dramatically from mainstream society’s, work-work-work in order to make-money-spend-money-obsess-about-money-and-work sort of scene. It’s easy to get caught up on believing that his is how we all need to live. I can get caught up with this, am caught up with this, on regular basis. Occupy lies at the root of occupation. I wonder if there’s a way to live, and a word for a way to live, that goes beyond the identification of tasks and time?

relaxing in the orchard after work - eating more plums this season than I ever thought possible - and excited to dry some prune plums for the winter, too

Deep in my thoughts about work, and my place with work in the world, I recalled a reading that Stephen shared with us one morning, during out weekly Monday meeting. The passage, one of great importance and inspiration for Steve, is from The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran. It is a long passage but I hung on to every word as Steve spoke it, as tears welled in his eyes and his voice shook, reflecting how deeply he is touched by these concepts as they relate to our daily toil.

Then a ploughman said, “Speak to us of work.”

And he answered, saying:

You work that you may keep pace with the earth and the soul of the earth. For to be idle is to become a stranger unto the seasons, and to step out of life’s procession that marches in majesty and proud submission towards the infinite.

When you work you are a flute through whose heart the whispering of the hours turns to music. Which of you would be a reed, dumb and silent, when all else sings together in unison?

Always you have been told that work is a curse and labor a misfortune. But I say to you that when you work you fulfill a part of earth’s furthest dream, assigned to you when that dream was born, and in keeping yourself with labor you are in truth loving life.

And to love life through labor is to be intimate with life’s inmost secret.

But if in your pain call birth an affliction and the support of the flesh a curse written upon your brow, then I answer that naught but the secret of your brow shall wash away that which is written.

You have been told also that life is darkness, and in your weariness you echo what was said by the weary.

And I say that life is indeed darkness save when there is urge,

And all urge is blind save when there is knowledge,

And all knowledge is vain save when there is work,

And all work is empty save when there is love;

And when you work with love you bind yourself to yourself, and to one another, and to God.

And what is it to work with love?

It is to weave cloth with threads drawn from your heart, even as if your beloved were to wear that cloth.

It is to build a house with affection, even as if your beloved were to dwell in that house.

It is to sow seeds with tenderness and reap the harvest with joy, even as if your beloved were to eat the fruit.

It is to charge all things you fashion with a breath of your own spirit,

And to know that all the blessed dead are standing about you and watching.

Work is love made visible.

And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy.

For if you bake bread with indifference, you bake a bitter bread that feeds but half man’s hunger. And if you grudge the crushing of the grapes, your grudge distills a poison in the wine. And if you sing though as angels, and love not the singing, you muffle man’s ears to the voices of the day and the voices of the night.

I don’t expect the seasonality of working with the land to materialize for me completely this growing season. I hope to join the low-wage-earning retail forces this winter in order to earn some money, making my next adventure or project possible. But I have hope that someday, as I set myself up to make a living growing and sharing food and stewarding the Earth and all she has to offer, it will make sense: a spring-summer season to embrace fully with one’s body and labor followed by a season, nearly two, to rest, use the winter’s quiet and silence to internally explore new ideas. Oh, to rest and let that magic happen…because I have seen, am seeing, the magic that happens from the daily, extreme physical, outward push! It is so beautiful that I can’t, now, at least, muster words for it.

Steve, Pete and Laura off to work: digging potatoes that we collect, clean and pack.

Cold Compost, Hot Days

At the very early start of every Saturday, Monday, and Thursday mornings we gather materials to build compost together. What was once an awkward, wayward, process has become routine, beautiful, and assembles in silence communally, ritually. I can’t express how much I enjoy being able to wake up at 5:50 a.m. and be in the field, working, 10 minutes later, without the need to exchange many words or glean instruction. As summer pulls at our bodies and souls it is comforting to have a task that one knows; what to gather, how to assemble what has been gathered, and how to do it all quickly, with relative grace and intuition.

Kim and Seth build the compost pile layer by layer.

Compost has been called the heart of Live Power Community Farm in a few varying contexts… Perhaps it’s the black-gold end product that’s so nutrient rich and important in the fields or added to the potting soil mix that almost every plant has its start embedded in. Or maybe it’s the fact that what’s sometimes considered the nasty, rancid parts of our lives, and the lives of many animals here on the farm, has an important and hopeful future role to play thanks to these piles. The finished piles offer second chances — to be part of something bigger! or just to be part again, as we all are, undeniably, of every action, every circumstance. Compost transforms: from refuse to fertility through a natural process of decay that resists aseptic conditions, laughs in the face of such an isolationist idea by instead celebrating life, funkiness, and fermentation.

It becomes something in the face of nothing.

The process itself is what makes the farm’s heart beat, so to speak. We gather like witches to build this new empire, and then dissipate – sometimes for days before seeing one another again in the field, or so it seems – each tending to our parts that make up the whole of the farm organism.

But we always meet again, every Saturday, Monday, and Thursday mornings, by the pile in the compost yard, arriving with wheelbarrows mounded with shit, to do it all over again.

The compost pile is, quite literally, a series of layers. Animal manure is key: from cows, sheep and horses, scooped carefully from the corral and milking cow stanchions. Load by load we collect it with leaf rakes and large shovels. At the compost yard we add additional nitrogenous elements (weeds that have yet to go to seed from the garden beds, cut grass, and any kitchen scraps that the animals won’t eat like orange peels, peach pits, coffee grounds, etc.), to the manure layer. This is balanced by hay, a carbon-rich material, in a ratio of 40% nitrogen to 60% carbon. At the end of the process a small amount of garden soil is added over the hay layer to bring and hold the bacterial, microbial, parasitic, and other invisible, magical life forms together. Between each layer we use a garden hose to spray a generous amount of water. The layers should feel/look like wrung out dish washing sponges. This promotes and hastens the decomposition process. We bring the layers together by shaping and tending them, fostering new life from and through them. It’s a simple and glorious process that I can’t help but feel like an alchemist in the midst of: combining elements in right proportions, with care and some amount of precision, to make, over the course of 6 months to a year, a new and beautiful substance.

the compost piles are decorated with skulls or other things once the biodynamic preparations have been added to them. More on the preps in a post coming soon, I hope!

It was 110 degrees here at one point last week. That’s not odd for Covelo at the height of summer but this past (late) winter and (exceptionally rainy) spring were odd. The weather has seemed to go berserk all over this country and world, in fact. So, as we focus with all of our energy and intention on this very little part of the earth, it is clear from all of the reports that Her larger being is quite out of balance despite it all. The solution does not seem to include running and hiding, isolating or discarding the mess we’ve all gotten ourselves in to. Slowly, with patience and trust, it seems like we can only do our best to connect ourselves to the mess. Working with compost gives me access to our part of the earth in a deep and intimate way, as something that needs to be part of the solution, I’m telling myself. With our hands willing to get dirty, eyes and ears open, muscles ready to work, we move on, integrating, brewing, mixing, stewing, listening, hoping.

At breakfast nearly every morning we listen to Democracy Now! This post was inspired in part by  an episode aired July 12^th – highly recommended giving a listen to, if you can.

New (to me) Veggies

I’ve heard many stories of farmers pouring over seed catalogues in the middle of winter, planning for the next season and its bounty. As a gardener, I’ve done a bit of this in the past but always needed to limit myself because of space constraints (our 20′x20′ Community Garden plot was just the size my sister Katie and I could handle while maintaining all sorts of other life/work responsibilities).

This spring my taste buds are gratefully rejoicing in the 30 years of vegetable growing experience the Decaters are sharing with me and my fellow apprentices at Live Power Community Farm.

The photo above is of a hakurei turnip, harvested ideally when 2″ in diameter, or so. Crisp, sweet, with the texture and form of something sublime (a radish at its height, devoid of any pithiness or stringiness, or like a very young apple, juicy, bursting). They are great eaten raw, directly from the ground (the earth’s temperature adds an amount of life to them), or thinly sliced in salad, lightly cooked with a splash of soy sauce or rice vinegar. The greens are wonderful added to salads, too. Lew, who absolutely hates turnips, ate some of these in a salad I made thinking they were radishes. He enjoyed them tremendously.

D'Avignon radishes are so lovely and delicate and delightful to unearth. When I get married I will carry a bouquet of these, and cherriettes and amethyst radishes, too, maybe mixed with dill and geranium..

Oracle is a purple, succulent leaf that's great added to salads. Salads can, and should, be colorful, especially this time of year. This leaf tastes pretty otherworldly and the texture is so nice, surprising, combined with spicy and mild salad greens.

This is not the best photo of Wrinkled Crinkled Cress but it may give you the idea: spoon-shaped leaves are fluffy additions to other salad greens and they taste refreshing, energizing, exciting, in their own little way.

This is Shungiku, an edible chrysanthemum that flowers eventually but, until then, is a somewhat succulent, lemony salad green. The shape of the leaves is a meditation in and of itself. After I tasted this I knew that I would need to grown this, add this, use this, as consistently and in as many ways as I can possibly imagine. This is a salad green to fantasize about.

A Garden Grows, Strength Builds

This post was started on a wet, cold, overcast day – odd weather for May in this part of California, the locals say. I wouldn’t know that as the season, my first in this part of the world, has seen as many days of cold and rain as it has sunny, hot ones. I had just changed out of soaked jeans, left them hanging in the apprentice kitchen, while my boots, saturated with puddles in their soles, stood hidden in a corner there, and socks tossed outside of my trailer after the drip from my makeshift, indoor clothesline began to make its way toward my computer, my key to another life, a next step or series of steps…

The quote is an old reflection, from the journal that doesn’t usually get mixed in to this one. I am learning about how to make exceptions.

With stops and starts of writing bursts, 45 minutes here, 10 minutes there, I’ve been trying desperately to stitch this together. Wireless internet connections or, rather, the waves they emit, are considered, by some folks on the farm, as detrimental as sugar or drugs or whatever else people can get fundamental and righteous about. So, seeking out a real way to post this is added to the long/growing list of daily challenges I face. I’m adapting, changing my schedule and ritualizing almost everything in attempts to share this. It is no small feat in this rural Covelo place, an isolated valley where the Green Rush (or should it be Grass Rush?) shuffles in cash crop entrepreneurs who scoop up land for high prices, guard it well with a combination of guns and dogs while tax-free cash transforms the character of this, as it would any, small town. Meaning, for me, that expensive espresso drinks in the coffee shop and fancy micro brews at the grocery store can be obtained while the library and schools are underfunded and/or not open very often.  Somehow, debatably at times, I feel protected on this 30 year old biodynamic farm, a sanctuary for birds and bugs as well as its visitors, apprentices, caretakers.  Through a fine network of support that is both internal, in the form of an amazing crew, and external, through friends and family, I feel, overall, that I’ve been well supported since arriving here nearly 6 weeks 2 months ago.

Finally, with trepidation as I type this, I can state that I feel like I am getting the routine of our 4 acres of vegetable production, additional 100 or so acres of pasture for grazing herds of animals, trees and wooded areas that support wild life, odd nooks and crannies, and more. And I am getting stronger, slowly, surely. The work is undoubtedly intense at times but I feel, less and less, the fear of falling over or blacking out in the middle of activities, my muscles adjusting to new and repetitive movements with more and more ease and those movements becoming moments of focused strength and intention that feed my ability to listen, see and smell in heightened ways, as a form of communication with the farm. As these muscles get stronger so can, and do, the mind-hand muscles that a writing process requires, the ability to share these stories from notes on paper and images on a camera with a wider audience, through this blog and other means. I hope to continue to communicate what it is like to farm, eat, and get by in America’s changing foodscape.

Because these stories seem, to me, to be worth sharing, and because I love reading my colleagues’ and friends’ contemplations and ideas, I will plug away at this. But I also need to ask for your patience as the season demands more labor or energy at some times over others. It’s important for me to announce my commitment to this farm endeavor, this learning process, as well as reporting about it. Perhaps this statement is out of line but I have to say that I feel how, maybe, a new parent feels, when I am in the garden: part of watching something ethereal grow and change as it continually moves into new form. When quiet, sunlit moments fall upon me, or breezes through the pea trellises whisper softly, or tilth breaks beneath my trowel like cookies just pulled from the oven, cooled slightly and split in half, all of the labor, sweat, soreness and the pain of growing feels worth it. It is, for me, a reason, a calling, to be here, on earth. I’m exploring and doing my best to trust this process of exploration.

Moving the chicken house, a chore I’ve been assigned to perform twice a week, on Wednesday and Saturday mornings, is a test of will. I’m convinced, secretly, that I was assigned this just to see if I could stand it or if I’d jet.

The chore, for me, epitomizes frustration. It surfaces lifelong inadequacies (a strong statement, I know, but not exaggerated!): from fears including, but not limited to, slowness and weakness, the inability to construct or stay within a straight line (in this case, with animal fencing), instruction comprehension and working with foreign tools and new concepts. These constructs surface while the rooster crows wildly and the chickens bawk and yelp from within their mobile house, where they’ve been for the night and are used to rousing at least an hour before I’m able to actually get them moved, safely, comfortably. As with any chore one commits to, I show up, ready to do it with gusto. I create stories where I’m featured as a steward of nitrogen, determined to fully acquaint myself with this element, to track and embrace it. But the chicken cries, in the thick of it, sound like alarms, pleas for help, that I can’t get to fast enough. They are the best cared for chickens I have ever met with access to new pasture ever 4 days, the ability to hop their fence and roam freely wherever they please to on the farm, to find insects and worms to supplement their diet of sprouted/cooked corn and other grains that are grown here. Like all of the animals on the farm, the chickens contribute to its overall fertility: we will plant garden beds on the fields that they now occupy in a season or so, and rotate their dwelling to maximize and diversify this. Rudolf Steiner says, about nitrogen,

“Nitrogen not only becomes alive but sensitive inside the Earth; and this is of the greatest importance for agriculture. Nitrogen is not unconscious of that which comes from the stars and works itself out in the life of plants, in the life of Earth. Nitrogen is verily the bearer of sensation. So you can penetrate into the intimate life of Nature if you can see the nitrogen everywhere, moving about like flowing, fluctuating feelings.”

Creating and circulating nitrogen on the farm keeps it alive. My gush of emotion, in sweeps between frustration and admiration, for this element and the animals that provide it, is part of getting to know its cycle, its essence, and its role, as well as my own, on the farm-organism. An article by Jeff Poppen has been a great starting point…

Landed, Outfitted

Two weeks in one spot, inland, feels new. I have recently, willingly, entered into a labor-living-education exchange of the kind, I’ve learned, the state of California deems illegal despite decades, lifetimes even, of this model flourishing in farming communities here and the world over.

A snapshot of the beautiful open meadows and winding road leading from Rte. 101 to Covelo, CA

Despite consistent farm and food adventures that I’ve sustained in one way or another for the past nine months I have hit something altogether new; a lifestyle shift of sorts, a birth. As an apprentice at Live Power Community Farm life and work intermingle with everything else I am surrounded by. As a group of apprentices we engage in a 12 hour work day 5 and ½ days a week, soon-to-be 110 degree summertime heat, lizards and snakes (just as I start to feel confident, thinking that I am developing a sense for where I am, a lizard will cross my path or, yesterday, a three-foot-long gold and maroon snake slithered from under a rotting wood pallet: reminders, or warnings, of something I can’t name?), lost cell phone service, a busted zipper on my (formerly) trusty sleeping bag, dirt bikes and three-wheelers ripping over random piles at the edge of the driveway while giant horses plow the fields (a stunning sight in early evening light, a stunning juxtaposition, too), a dirty trailer to live in, a dirtier mattress to sleep on, and other odd things I’ve needed to look beyond in order to keep pace (replacing a random human tooth, an animal skull, half burned sage sticks embedded in feather and sequin sculptures that hung from the ceiling, for example, with a place to store a bath towel, toothpaste, some clothes). My apologies for the run on sentence but it’s an eyeful, a mouthful, an earful to report — possible in no other way at this moment.

My arrival here came after hours of driving 30 mph or slower on a long and winding mountain passage, gas tank on empty and car brakes on the verge of exhausted. While exhausted can be used to describe how I feel at the end of most given work days there is much more going on and, somehow, I am surprised and relieved to see my outward self resist old norms and hang ups in exchange for finding some energy to delve into change, new manifestations of my self and habits.

my nose was in a fight with some intense blackberry bushes that we used bush scythes to take down

I was scooped viscerally into this living farm organism from that first moment of arrival. It wasn’t through a warm welcome or reassuring words. The nature of this place is what brought me in, expressed best, perhaps, by the farm’s motto, a quote by Rudolf Steiner: “Matter is never without spirit. Spirit is never without matter.”

The labor arrangement, the land we work on, the animals that occupy it, the food we grow and eat, and the fertility that runs through all of it, speaks louder and clearer than any binding contract, or instructions, could.

This is my new home for a while and I am grateful for it. It’s a place to live (and I needed one of those), and it is also a classroom designed for immersion, to engage intensely and communally with the attached laboratory that’s open day and night, night and day. There are 4 additional apprentices who have traveled from all over the country to be here, a garden manager who has apprenticed at Live Power for 4 seasons previously, and a projects/infrastructure specialist who is teaching us how to weld, sharpen scythes, and use the wood shop, to name a few of the things we’ve tackled so far. There are two farmers who have been living here and over seeing everything on the farm for over 30 years. They guide and lead us with great experience, dedication, and patient kindness, too.

Journals are kept to record planting plans and details, lessons and techniques learned, weather and planetary observations, plant growth, insect and bird sightings, and more. This, coupled with readings and discussion, aims to heighten our sensitivities and observation skills, a discipline that fosters one to see and comprehend wholeness. This practice of seeing is the first step in operating a farm and it’s so much tougher to develop properly than I could have imagined. So, my eyes are open, though sometimes sleepy, and on a rainy day with a little down time I find myself able to reflect on where I’ve been, make sense of it in some way while still focusing on being here, present, listening, looking, experiencing all of the life this place has to offer.

Google the farm on my t-shirt! Chris and Sam have a growing CSA and are wonderful, talented friends who farm in the Hudson Valley. I have the fondest memories of last year's tour and lunch that they hosted for Mary Alice and me.

A sweet gift from two of my sweetest NYC friends, Ryan and Karen. Oh, New York.

I jetted from NY to the Midwest last summer and made it to a marvelous organic farm, Food Farm CSA, in Northern Minnesota, in time to harvest with the pros. I would go back there to live just for the accent that old people have.. and for the food people are growing and art they are incorporating into all of it..

I bought this t-shirt for myself at the Farmer's Market in St. Louis, Missouri. Still happy about that!

I've yet to cut the sleeves on this t-shirt so that I look tougher than I really am when I wear it around town. There are a few stories and reports in process about Crannog Brewery and Left Fields Farm where they make Backhand of God Stout, so this is like a teaser, I guess. Really, really great place is all I've got it in me to say right now.

I took a photo of this hoodie at the White Earth Land Recovery Project...

... a great spin on the milk campaign, important to remember in every talk of land and stewardship, I'd say.