To Begin Again

Happy Solstice!  Heard my husband say that to someone on the phone today and it made me smile.  We pictured this person's face on the other end of the phone trying to place that one in the context of the "Happy Holidays" we all hear this time of year.  Technically speaking, celebrating the solstice is something that goes back to when humans first started paying attention to the fact that, instead of getting shorter, the days started getting longer again.  Imagine what that must have been like for the first people who realized that the days were growing ever shorter and colder....slowly approaching the end when there will be nothing but cold and darkness.  But then, to have the pendulum slowly swing the other way? Salvation!

How frightening, to have been those first people to make the connection that the days were getting progressively shorter and darker.  I can imagine that there was probably the same sections of society that we have today: a) the doubters - "It's all a myth! This darkness thing doesn't really happen!" b) the extremists "It's dark! We are all going to die!"  c) the deists - "Pray to avoid the vengeance of god!", d) the apathetic - "Who cares that it is dark" and e) the scientist - "Wow!  I wonder why and how can I figure this out?"   All I can say is that I am very happy for the scientists who persevered and figured this mystery out. Can you imagine the news headlines with today's media if we didn't have this understanding of the axial tilt of the planet?

 In the same token, how cool to have been that first person to figure out that, because of how the earth is angled, it changes our seasons and how much light we get each day. Talk about an incredible eureka moment, but chances are very good that the first people who brought the topic up were stoned to death for being heretics to whatever god was most prevalent in the culture at the time. Of course this is all speculation because there is no record of this being written down.  There are however, standing stones and other temples that were presumed to be built in response to this natural phenomenon.  I did a quick search on Google - how is it that we ever survived without this tool? Back when we actually  had to know things or look things up....anyway, did a quick search with the phrase, 'map of the origins of religion' and stumbled upon this cool website. I had a hunch (and it appears to be relatively accurate) that most modern religions developed in areas along the equator.  This makes relative sense, if you think about it.  The equators are the least affected by the solstices and equinox  so the magic of nature is lost on them, hence encouraging them to come up with their own mystical understanding for the universe (which mainly involve humans - i.e. Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism)  The northern countries (and the southern too, for that matter) were heavy into nature worship - why?....because it is incredible!  You see first hand everyday how the changes in the axial tilt of the earth in this infinite cosmos can affect very small things - the migration of birds and animals, the growth of plants, insect cycles, weather patterns.....  The sense of wonder contained within our own planet, much less this universe, is staggering.  While there are many friends and family members of mine that practice a formal religion, and I appreciate their beliefs and hope they all celebrate happy holidays, I can honestly say that I myself am caught up in the mystery of all that exists around me - from the smallest atom to the enormity of the universe.  Einstein of course, says it best, " The scientists' religious feeling takes the form of a rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law, which reveal an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection."

Welcome light, come back in, let us start this year again.

A Grandma's Comfort

These are weird, scary days.  I know that the holiday seasons are upon us, but it seems more likely that the Mayans were perhaps right after all.  I was shopping yesterday and the holiday atmosphere was muted with the tragedy that has overwhelmed us all.  It seems wrong to be anticipating joy and happiness at this time of year when so many others are devastated.  I find myself at times with an overflowing heart and tears spilling over. The endless cycles of "why?" and "what now?" play themselves out again and again in my brain with no ready answers or even suggestions for a way forward in this messed up world.

I am at a loss.  What is a person to do against such reckless hate? The problems are complex and the answers will likely be even more so. But thanks to my husband and some mite-infested straw, I at least found some comfort, a quiet anchor in a violent sea.....my grandmother's afghan.

I have a few afghans that were knitted and crocheted by my grandmothers.  Both of them crocheted one during the second World War using bits and pieces of yarn that they had around so they are hodge-podge collections of different colored yarns.  They did it to keep themselves busy while they worried about loved ones overseas and in harm's way.  My maternal grandma once told me that as long as she kept working on that blanket, then she felt like everyone was going to be okay.  This blanket chanced to come out of the closet the other night because Keith had happened to sit in the straw with our little pigs and only later realized that he was extremely itchy. With a little deductive reasoning, he determined that it must have been from the straw that was with the pigs.  Unfortunately, he had happened to sit on our bed while wearing those pants and the itching issue spread, thus necessitating the entire removal of all sheets and blankets to the wash.

Old farmhouses in winter can get pretty chilly at night when the fire goes out, so I needed a warm blanket or two and Grandma's was on top.  It is a little long and rather narrow, but it would work to keep our feet warm, I thought.  However, as I threw that afghan out onto the bed and felt the weight and heft of it, I was instantly reminded of Grandma.  She put all her love and released all her anxieties into that blanket and it still continues to provide comfort and warmth. I crawled under it and pulled it up over me and for the first time in days, felt safe.

So what does one do in the face of such reckless hate and constant worry?...small things, apparently...small kindnesses, small steps - and one stitch at a time we attempt to create, either metaphorically or literally, a warm, comforting blanket that one day perhaps, our own descendants can climb under and feel safe - if only until they too can find their own small steps forward.

My steps forward? I contemplated them at length while curled under Grandma's blanket - I will write and speak, as often and as much as necessary to help move the dialogue in this country forward to a more civil one, if possible.  The alternative is to simply do nothing, and clearly that has not worked out well for any of us ...especially those families in Connecticut.  I think it is time to make changes, find common ground, and work toward mending the moral fabric of our age.  I know that I look back on the time that my grandparents had to struggle through and I respect them for what they had to do....for what they had to survive.  I can only hope that, some day, my own grandchildren will be able to sit awhile with their thoughts of me and feel comforted that I had the determination to make a difference and the belief that, if I only keep working on it, we will all be alright.

Keepers of the Bees

I attended the seasonal meeting of the Iowa Beekeepers meeting last night.  Once every three months, this group of like-minded people join together to discuss the issues relevant to the life of a bee.  This group is an agriculturally minded group - dedicated to crops that their tiny flying armies live off of and help to grow with their pollination. They are as much, or more, a fundamental part of the agriculture industry than even the corn and soybean growers associations, but much less widely known or recognized.  What is different about this group of  farmers is that you will never see an industrial agriculture company among its ranks - no Monsanto, no Cargill, no Roundup.  In fact, to even bring up those words leads to a certain amount of snarling, leers, and mumbled expletives from the members of this group because they know all too well the havoc that industrial agriculture wreaks upon the life of their hives.

These keepers are the touchstone of the agriculture industry. They see what is happening to the natural world around us because they deal with it directly in the lives of the bees that they safeguard and keep. They are the miners that hold onto the canary and warn the other miners when the canary dies and the mine is no longer safe. They are not razzle-dazzled by the agribusinesses with their fancy commercials and shiny, glossy magazine ads for chemicals and GMO seeds, because they see all too clearly the consequences of such things first hand.   It is one thing to be a farmer and grow a crop - relying blindly on the pollinators that you may see but often don't acknowledge as being the direct cause for the fruit and vegetables that grow on the vine, but when those pollinators disappear so do the apples, cherries, blackberries, blueberries, watermelons, pears, peaches, almonds, and countless other crops.  When I see people in general acting so blasé about the effects of corporate agriculture on the tiny keystone insects that make that agriculture even possible in the first place, it has me deeply worried.

But here is what worries me the most....the bee keepers are disappearing as well.

I enjoy going to these meetings, but they distress me.  The average age of these keepers is easily somewhere in the mid 70's.  I am, quite easily, the youngest person there. At last night's meeting there was a sympathy card being passed around for one of the members that had just passed away at the age of 84.  Another one of the keepers, Charlie, received the honor of being recognized for keeping bees for the last 50 years! He has been keeping them longer than I have been alive, and appeared to be willing an able to do it for at least another few years which is a good thing because I really don't know what is going to happen when these quiet, thoughtful, nature-loving people depart this world for the clover field in the sky.  That is not to say that bees can't survive on their own, because they can, but we are loosing the people that monitor them closely and are able to tell the rest of us when the pesticides and chemicals that we love to pour on our fields of monoculture crops have finally broken the back of the tiny winged atlas that holds up the agriculture world.  But, then again, they already have told us....and we fail to listen or to learn.

 Darwin's theories hold true for all biological systems....even man.  Those species that are not smart enough to adapt and learn, get wiped off the face of the earth.  It may take hundreds, if not thousands of years, but it happens none-the-less.  We humans think we have the corner market on survival, but I feel quite certain that the seeds of our own doom have already been sown and continue to prosper under the falsity of capitalism - making a dollar at the expense of everything else and spending less money on cheaply produced goods that we will simply discard and replace with more cheaply made goods. It is an unsustainable practice and yet one from which it is hard to wean.

I looked around the room last night and watched as this group of people shared and discussed things in such a civil manner - even the disagreements were cordial.  There were discussions of wood peckers eating into hives and squirrels damaging the boxes that contain the frames.  They analyzed the best ways to get rid of mites without chemicals - apple cider vinegar and powdered sugar were the clear favorites.  Quiet, soft spoken, accepting of the ebbs and flows that nature throws at a person, schooled in the process of trying something and then adapting it as necessary to fit your needs and knowing full well that next year it may need to be adapted again.  So much knowledge, patience and time was tucked into that one meeting room last night, and the thought of that wealth of information slowly dispersing one sympathy card at a time made my heart clench.

 I realize that I am something of  a throwback to an earlier age - I look around at my peers and I marvel at their concern for things like flat screen televisions and fancy cups of coffee.  I try to reconcile this generation of "wants and desires" with the generations before us of "hard work and survival" and think that, somewhere, there must be a sustainable mix of the two.  Is it that people just no longer care or is it just that they don't know?  And if they did know, would they care?  I understand the concern that our elders have for my own generation and then I look at the kids today....or rather I look at the tops of their heads as they are busy with their i-phones and texting their friends... and my concern only grows deeper.

Meeting over and coffee poured, this group began the social part of the night which is really more of an extension of the meeting itself, but this time with a cup of coffee in hand.  I made a few rounds asking pointed questions of the keepers that have seemed to have the most success and then headed out to the local store to buy some supplies for my two small, struggling hives of bees under the recommendation of my main mentor, Floyd.  It will be three months before the group convenes again and I left with a hope in my heart that at the next meeting there will be a few more people in their 30's and 40's and not a sympathy card in sight.

Giving Thanks

This was supposed to come out on Thanksgiving while we were out of town, but apparently I have not got the scheduling thing down yet.  Oh well, better late than never.

It seems unusual for a blog dedicated to the farm and raising food to never have a Thanksgiving post.  There is a reason for this....it is because I am giving thanks.  Thanks for time off in the Black Hills of South Dakota where technology takes a vacation.  I am currently so deep in the mountains that there is no cell phone reception, no television, no cable, no computers, no game stations, no Internet....nada.....and it is amazing!  I am engulfed by pine trees, water straight from a spring, skies so blue that they hurt to look at, and silence (well, at least when I am outside our cabin) And inside our tiny cramped cabin there are nieces, nephews, brothers, sisters, and grandparents enough to fuel some wicked card games and invigorating discussions.


And so, Happy Thanksgiving! May this holiday season bring you some peace and quiet away from all the technology and hectic schedules that dominate our lives. May you all be giving thanks and enjoying your family as much as I am enjoying mine.

The Art of Cleaning a Barn

Cleaning a barn has to be the single most disgusting job and, simultaneously, the single most rewarding one on the farm.  There is an art form to cleaning the various pens out in an efficient way, a method to getting it all clean with the fewest number of wheelbarrow trips. It isn't really anyone's favorite job to have to do on the farm, but it is definitely one of the most necessary.  With four pigs and thirty three chickens living under one small roof, it needs to be cleaned routinely.

Chickens are just plain messy.  There really isn't any way around that fact other than to frequently employ the use of a shovel and broom to their best effects.  Feathers and "litter" ( I love the cute words that people have come up with in place of 'shit'....clearly those people never had to deal with much of it to any extent)...., their litter is everywhere, and I do mean everywhere.  The worst part about this mess is that if it is left too long, it turns into a very dusty mess thus necessitating the use of dust masks.

Pigs, however, are incredibly clean animals.  That may come as a surprise to many people because when you think of pigs, many people generally think of them in mud.  They do love mud, but they like a clean nest to lie in when they are not wallowing in mud.  With enough room to move, a pig will keep their enclosure very clean.  An area to eat, an area to sleep and an area to um, ...well, you know.  Too little space to live in and, against their will, they are forced to make a mess.

Imagine this.....picture yourself locked in a small room in your house.  For convenience, let's say it is the bathroom.  Fine,... now picture several other people locked in there with you....enough people so that moving from one side of the room to the other requires certain tetris-like skills.  Now imagine that all day you have all had to use the same toilet and nobody can flush.  I don't know about you, but a day spent in that sort of environment would likely bring out some homicidal tendencies.  And yet, this is what we expect animals to endure for their entire life.

 The currently accepted CAFO (confined animal feeding operation) system has hogs housed on top of  a vat that holds their own excrement.  The flooring is a slated cement that allows all the waste to fall through into a vat so they don't have to sit in it, but they do have to smell it for their entire life.  This liquid slurry (again with the cutesy words that somehow makes it slightly less disgusting through connotation) is pumped to holding tanks or lagoons to be stored until it can be pumped out onto fields as fertilizer where it will make the environment for miles around stink and potentially run off into creeks and streams....that is if it doesn't spill out first and contaminate ground water.  Chickens, turkeys and beef cows have it even worse....typically their lives are so short that they just have to live on top of their litter the entire time.

Back in the day, when farming actually required husbandry and animals were known as "animals" and not "units", they slept and were housed in barns. They were kept warm and clean with straw.  Let me attempt to explain how the concept of straw works....it provides a carbon source that absorbs the liquids in waste.  Most animal waste contains nitrogen which is what gives it the strong smell.  That nitrogen, when combined with carbon makes a fantastic mix for compost.  Allow it to sit in a pile for a few weeks, get some water rained down on it and it will start to heat up, thus killing harmful bacteria and weed seeds that are present in it.  I haven't actually stuck a thermometer in the middle of my pile, but I do put in a metal rod in it to objectively test the temperature - that rod gets too hot to touch, or roughly about 150 degrees.  When the pile cools down after about 3 weeks, it gets turned and allowed to reheat.  After three or so turns, it is finished enough to go on the garden.  The problem with the current commercial method of dealing with waste - it has eliminated the straw...the carbon is gone.  What that leaves is a large amount of high nitrogen containing waste, and nitrogen on its own without the combination of carbon, smells and, when applied directly to fields, disrupts the natural balance of carbon and nitrogen in the soil.

So, just to reiterate and simplify:

Confinements - litter and slurry in large quantities in a small space, stressed animals, bad smells, contamination of water and unbalancing of nutrients in the ground, but fewer farmers needed.

Traditional farming - straw and manure into compost, happy animals, no bad smell, high quality and complete fertilizer for fields, many hardworking farmers needed.

Yes, traditional farming requires more person power, but for a country that needs to figure out how to come up with 23 million more jobs, and a way to improve the health of its people....this doesn't seem like rocket science.

It is that "hardworking" aspect that is daunting to many people who would like to go back to more traditional farming.   Farming isn't an easy job....never has been, but lately farming has jumped on the corporate and technology bandwagons. Ever larger farms requiring ever larger equipment. There are more computers, GPS units, and entertainment units in most new farm equipment than I have ever had (or will ever have) in my entire house. Farming is not the same physically demanding profession that it used to be, which I guess is good because the average age of most farmers is going up significantly.  In the last 80 years farms have increased significantly in size, but the number of farmers owning the land has decreased and they are aging rapidly. How and why did this happen? One of the main reasons behind some of these changes are that farmers need to grow more and more just to make ends meet.  In a country that demands cheap, highly processed food, the farmer is the lowest link in a chain and doesn't get paid what he or she should be for their efforts, thus they plant more and more corn and soybeans to pay for their new, state of the art, farm equipment. The government has to provide subsidies just to keep these farmers afloat, while at the same time America is facing an obesity crisis because we have to find stuff to do with all this corn and soybeans so we process it into everything. 

 It is a crazy cycle that is completely out of control. 

• huge, subsidized, monoculture crops of corn and soybeans 
• cheap, processed food 
• obese people with metabolic disease 
• increased medical costs 
• generally sicker population that is unable to work effectively.

 And then people wonder why we are in a financial crisis? It's because of the food that we eat! 

Starting at the top of that cycle, and getting away from huge farms with huge crops is the place that we need to start. If you look back at pictures of farmers in the 1940's, there wasn't an overweight one in the lot because they were all physically working hard.  I, personally, have never seen the need for a gym membership when working outside all day burns almost more calories than I can grow.  I think of it as the "farming diet".  If you can't grow it, don't eat it...I should trademark that and take it on the road.  I could make millions....but I digress.

Cleaning a barn is not really all that hard; it is the juggling of the animals that live there while you try to clean it that is often the hardest part. Convincing a 550 pound hog that she really should go investigate outside while her home is stripped of all its soft, well worn, and dusty straw requires a little bribery with some fresh green plants pulled from the garden.  Mr Pig was easier to bribe with a little cracked corn and the chickens come and go as they please while I clean out their coop. The rooster, however, was determined to watch my every move in case I should harass one of his hens.  Fourteen wheelbarrow loads of manure and bedding later, the muscles of my arms twitched with exertion and I was ready for a break.  The highlight, however, is hauling in the new straw.  Watching as the pigs tear into it and spread it around just the way they like it, is immensely entertaining. When Mrs Pig was finally settled into her new clean nest, the chickens meandered over to check it out and Tigger the cat quietly curled up next to her.  It was such a bucolic moment that I just had to smile. If anyone were to tell me that caring for farm animals is a thankless job, I would just point to the look of contentment on my animals' faces and say, "No, they say thank-you all the time."

So, today, as I type this with sore arms, I am reminded that not only did I clean something up, I enlarged my compost pile and made several beings very happy in the process....including myself.

Going Green

The Greenhouse is almost finished. I should qualify that statement just a bit. What this actually means is that it is as finished as it is likely going to get.  We have a long list of projects that are "almost finished" but will not be "completely finished" until such time as a "for sale" sign goes up in the front yard. (This actually happened in the third house we owned....brand new completely finished bathroom, used once on the final day that we moved out of the house).  As such, in its almost finished state, the green house is one of my new favorite places to hang out - I sneak down there when the kids are driving me crazy and hang out in bright sun and warm temperatures.  It is like a small trip to the Bahamas when the weather turns chilly. 

Currently, I don't have much growing, because I am slowly experimenting to see what crops might like living in this semi-controlled, tundra-to-tropics climate the best.  I say semi-controlled because the temperature fluctuates wildly from 34 degrees to 120 degrees sometimes on a daily basis....this is not to every plant's liking.  So far, however, the tomato plants seen to have taken to it well as they have sprouted and started adding leaves....just what I need....more tomatoes.

There is a fan to be installed soon to help reduce the extreme heat and currently there is a kerosene heater that keeps it from freezing, but it may be a challenge to fully heat that big building when the weather really gets serious about being cold.  If I can get the lettuce that has recently sprouted to grow until Christmas and then start spring plantings in there in February, it will have been a great success for the first year.

 

The Pagan In Our Midst

Halloween is, quite simply, my favorite holiday.  Relatively unstructured, does not often require much in the way of family get-togethers or lengthy meals, very imaginative, and it involves large amounts of candy.  But the thing that intrigues me the most about Halloween is the fact that it is the most universally celebrated Quarter Day of the year.  What's a Quarter Day, you ask?  If you picture the earth revolving around the sun (as it does once each year) it becomes clear that the Solstices and the Equinox days divide the year into four equal parts...the Quarter Days further divide each of those blocks of time between each solstice and each equinox.  Of those days, Imbolc, Beltane, Lughnasadh are almost completely unknown (at least in the US)....but the last day, know it or not for its name, you probably celebrate it....Samhain....also known as Halloween.

In Celtic tradition, Samhain marked the end of the year.  The harvest was done, and the Northern world turns into its time of darkness and hibernation until the winter solstice, at which time the light will begin to return again. This time of the year was considered to be the time when the bridge between the living world and the dead was easily crossed and spirits of the departed could find their way to the afterlife, or return to cause disease and havoc among the living.

Samhain (pronounced 'Sah - win') originated amidst a pastoral society, they followed the ebb and flow of nature's cycles and celebrated each change of seasons.  Samhain was the time of year when the animals that had been ranging on pastures were brought in and housed for the winter or slaughtered for food.  The harvest was completed and stored.  Bonfires were lit and celebrations where to be had - nothing evil or sinister... no devil worship - just a celebration of death and all those who we love that have departed this world for the next.  But in the year 601 A.D.,  Pope Gregory III decided that they should try to wipe out the pagan holidays and instill, instead, the Catholic days of worship.  Rather than abolishing it completely, they co-opted Samhain into All Saints Day in an attempt to transfer the worship focus over to November 1st.  October 31st became "All Hallows Eve" ..."Hallow'een"....Halloween.

Superstitions, however, run deep.  People would leave bowls of food and wine out on Samhain for the wondering spirits of the dead and would wear masks outside after dark to confuse those spirits that might seek to haunt them.  At some point in history, the practice of passing out "soul cakes" to people that came to call on Samhaim was actually endorsed by the church since the cakes were given in exchange for the visitors saying prayers for any family members that had passed away during the course of the year - hence 'trick or treating' was born.

So, tonight, when the masked trick-or-treaters make their rounds and candles and bonfires burn, know that this day marks another quarter turn on our annual trip around the sun.  The harvest is over for the year....the darkness has begun.

Happy Samhain

Falling Apart

 

Autumn is the year's glorious epilogue. 

Regardless of how the Spring and Summer behaved,

 

Autumn gilds it all with a crisp, golden rain.

You Say Tomato.....

Tomatoes have to be one of the most versatile vegetables that can be grown in a garden.  Pulled off the vine while green, you can have yourself a green tomato salad or fried green tomatoes.  Once ripe, they can be eaten raw, sliced and used to transform a bacon and lettuce salad into something amazing, they can be tossed into stews, cooked down into sauces, made into ketchup, dried, canned, or juiced....and that juice can even be added to a little vodka to make the perfect Bloody Mary. There really is no end to the uses of a tomato.

Late August and all of September brings a bounty of tomatoes.  The small seeds that I dropped into the dirt sometime in late February are now well over 7 feet tall and produce, on average, between 60 and  80 pounds of red vine-ripened tomatoes every week.  Imagine for a minute just how many tomatoes that really is....that is 2 big bushel baskets filled to heaping and then another half of one spread out in a kitchen or on the front porch awaiting processing.  This particular week, it was well over 120 pounds to process.

I remember a point in time, when I was living in LaCrosse, oblivious to farm life and all that goes with it, and I heard an episode of Prairie Home Companion where Garrison Keillor was talking about all the tomatoes in the house in August and every horizontal surface being completely covered with them.  I remember thinking, why would anyone have that many tomatoes?  What can you possibly do with that many tomatoes?  I can honestly say....it happens.  Everywhere you look in my house on the days after picking, there are tomatoes - sorted by level of "doneness" so that the ones that are softest and least likely to survive the next few days intact are used up first.

 My Friday nights lately, instead of being reserved for a date with my husband, are all about picking tomatoes.  I walk out to the tomato patch with a bushel basket in one hand and every time I think, 'oh, there will only be a few more tonight.'  I start with the plant that is off on its own because the tomatoes on that one are the easier to see and get to, and when I suddenly realize that just this one plant has already given me 10 pounds of tomatoes and I still have 22 more plants to go, the sense of panic sets in.  I usually spend the next hour bushwhacking my way through tomato plants that reach well above my head and are the home to many helpful (although frightening) creatures. It is a little like gardening with Audrey II from the Little Shop of Horrors.  Tomato plants don't always carry their wonderful fruits on the outside of the plant, so in many cases I am reaching blindly into an overgrown tomato cage in search of the glimmer of red that I can see from the outside - often I am rewarded with a beautiful round, smooth tomato and at other times, I find my fingers sinking into the rotten mush of a tomato that has succumbed to the worst of all tomato deaths in which their insides liquefy and are held deceptively to the vine by the skin alone.  There are those tomatoes that are on the edge of being too far gone to deal with - these are set aside in a separate pile for the pigs (and if you ever need to make a pig really happy....rotten tomatoes is the way to do it.)

As one bushel basket fills to over flowing, I start setting out small piles of tomatoes at the edges of the tomato jungle to be picked up with the second and third baskets that I usually send a kid to fetch.  I consider my weight lifting workout for the night to be carrying all the heavy baskets, one at a time, back to the house where I heave a sigh, take a shower to wash off all the iridescent green "tomato dust" and go to bed, because dealing with all those tomatoes suddenly becomes an extremely daunting task that can only be tackled after a full night's sleep.

The next day, the tomato take down starts.  30 pounds are washed, cored and pureed for marinara.  Combined with onions, basil, oregano, thyme, honey, garlic powder, and various other spices, they are boiled down from roughly ten quarts to six over the course of roughly 5 hours and then placed in glass jars that have been sterilized in boiling water for 10 minutes. When the jars are filled and lids are in place, the marinara is canned in boiling water for 35 minutes.  There is a lot of boiling going on every Saturday night at my house in the fall.  The temperatures have come down a little from mid summer, but in my kitchen, the heat and humidity are incredible.

So, that is 30 pounds  down....50 or so pounds to go.....

I grow the Amish paste tomatoes.  So named because they tend to have more "meat" to them and less juice so they are good for turning into sauces and paste.  I have tried a few recipes for making paste, but finally this year struck upon one that is not only easy, but actually doesn't take three days to cook down.  12 pounds of tomatoes with bad spots cut out - boiled slightly, run through a food mill to remove skins and seeds and then boiled down with a little olive oil added.  After it has been reduced by about 1/2 (from roughly 8 quarts to 4) it is poured it onto a shallow jelly roll pan (or two) and baked in the oven at 350 for about two or three hours.  Then we reduce the heat to 250 degrees and stir it until we can form it into a mountain in the center of the pan and it more or less holds its shape.  This tomato paste will fill 2 and 1/2 jelly jars (2.5 cups). Twelve pounds of tomatoes down to roughly 20 ounces.  This is 20 ounces of the most concentrated tomato taste you can imagine.  I happened to take a little finger full for a taste and the taste buds on my tongue could only register "tomato" for the next two hours.  I would can it for future use, but its use is so immediate that it isn't worth canning it - it lives in the refrigerator overnight and then it gets used for pizza sauce.

50 pounds minus 12 pounds.....now I am down to 38 pounds left to deal with....

Pizza, like spaghetti, is made and eaten once a week at this house so you can imagine how much tomato sauce we can crank through in a year.  This year's pizza sauce is also a new recipe.  Last year, I made some sauce and froze it to be used throughout the winter, but since freezer space is at such a premium, I had to come up with some way to put this in a jar and keep it.  The one problem I have with new recipes is the, "what if it is really terrible" problem.  It can happen - you make a huge batch of something and it turns out tasting terrible, but it is really hard to just throw all that good produce out and start again. It requires some amount of taking a risk.  I also worry about the, "is this stuff really safe to can?" problems that are inherent with canning tomatoes - the pH of them has to be low enough to prevent unsafe bacteria from flourishing.  To most of my tomatoes that are canned, I add citric acid to help ensure that the pH is low enough and then, the best test that I have found to determine if it is good or not, is to smell it.  If the seal is good and if it smells like fresh tomatoes when you open the lid, then it is likely just fine, if it doesn't smell right, then toss it out.  The pizza sauce, besides using up another 12 pounds of tomatoes, has numerous other herbs and spices than the spaghetti sauce (which is good, because it takes me a week to pick and dry enough basil to use in the marinara recipe), but it too has to sit on the stove for hours on end to reduce down to a sauce consistency, and then be placed in boiled jars and then boiled again to seal.

38 pounds minus 12 pounds ....26 more pounds to go...

These remaining tomatoes, if I have any energy left in me, are blanched, skinned, cut up and frozen for making chili in the winter months.  When the freezer is full and we have enough marinara and pizza sauce to last all year, the tomato processing goes into phase two....

Phase two is salsa and ketchup - these are largely up to my husband, because by this time of the season, I have seen so many tomatoes that the mere thought of blanching or skinning one more tomato can almost make me cry.

I am very torn, sometimes, about how much fuel it takes for all this cooking to take place.  How much energy am I using to process this bounty into a form that can be used all year round?  But, when I take into consideration that all the tomatoes come from my garden....organic/vine-ripened tomatoes that, on average, cost about $1.25/pound (that's roughly $100/week)...not to mention the cost of the herbs and onions that I grow myself, and each time I make a batch, I am getting roughly 12 meals for my family without having to drive a car to a store to purchase and they will not require refrigeration to store - the math usually works out in my favor.  The one thing that doesn't get taken into consideration is my time spent blanching, peeling, cutting, chopping, mixing, cooking, and canning.  This gets to be quite a considerable chunk of time in which nothing else gets done around the house or gardens.  I have been so distracted with tomatoes at various times that I have completely missed the harvest of other vegetables in the garden - even as I am writing this I am reminded of the carrots that have been left in the ground so long that they have now reached the mammoth proportions of being as long as my forearm and as thick around as well.  The last carrot that I pulled from the ground was used for carrot sticks in my girls' lunches for a week, made an entire carrot cake (that takes 3 cups of grated carrot) and was used in tomato soup - there are about 45 such carrots still out there in the garden, and I don't dare even stop to think about the beans.  Thank goodness those are two crops that can wait a bit to be harvested. Tomatoes are no where near so patient.  When a tomato is ripe, it needs to be eaten or processed within a few days.

There is definitely something to be said about a vine ripened tomato.  Most of the tomatoes that are found in the grocery stores were picked when they were green.  They were held in controlled environmental conditions until they were shipped, then they were exposed to ethylene so they will ripen and, due to consumer pressure to have only perfectly red tomatoes, the genes of the commercial tomato have been selected so that they will be a lovely, uniform, red color, but lack in taste.  The thing that makes a tomato taste so good are the sugars that develop as it ripens naturally.  It is a trade off - good looking/no taste or unevenly red and blotchy/great taste.   Those green-shouldered tomatoes that they sell at the farmer's markets - those are the good ones.  Give them two days in a sunny window to fully ripen and then you will have an amazing tomato.  The other thing to consider, if you are looking for organic tomatoes, is that they don't always look perfect.  They have cracks in the skin, they have scabs on the tops by the stem, they will have areas where a grass hopper took a meal out of one side....in other words, they aren't always pretty, but this is only skin deep.  As the tomato adage goes,  beauty is only skin deep, but tastelessness goes all the way to the bone.

So, the next time you see someone by the side of the road selling bushels of tomatoes, consider stopping and buying 20 or 30 pounds from them, then break out the recipe books, or look online for ideas to transform them into whatever favorite red sauce you can imagine, but be forewarned....you may become one of those crazy people that finds themselves with tomatoes on every horizontal surface of your kitchen ....it's been known to happen.

The Honey Flow

I think it is safe to say that the drought has gotten the better of me this year.  Although it has been pointed out to me that my attitude toward this whole drought thing has been less than stellar, my only comment is that my optimism has wilted right along with most of my flowers.  But there was a ripple made in the stagnant pool of drought frustration recently when I pulled in our first honey from the bees.

I have checked them several times throughout the summer and would often find them crowded on the sill of the hive in a small swarm attempting to fan themselves and the hive to keep it cool.  Initially, I had regretted putting one of the hives in the shade of a tree, but then as this abnormally hot summer has progressed, I have rethought that position and have noted that, of my two hives, the shaded bees are clearly the more comfortable.

It fascinates me to visit the hives.  My entire childhood, I was afraid of bees, worried about stepping on them while they were busy patrolling the dandelions and the white clover, instructed never to go too near a hive.  Now I find myself sitting on the palates upon which my hives stand, a mere inches from thousands of bees that are busily going about their business.  They dodge and swoop around me as I peer at them and I have occasionally been accidentally run into by one or more of them on their way to or from the hive.  Like any Midwesterner would, I apologize for being in their way and kindly move aside. They don't sting, they don't get angry, they just keep on working.

I have bemoaned the loss of the flowers and watched as the clover has sadly dried up and wondered what the bees would find to eat, but they are clearly more resourceful and optimistic than I am these days.  I set out yesterday to crack open the hives and see how they are managing things on the inside after hearing stories from some of the other beekeepers in the area that noted that they had had the entire comb within their hives melt down in the heat.  Not that bees can't handle that sort of devastation, but it takes them a while to clean up and rebuild.

I happened to have the foresight enough to take along a few empty frames and a deep super just in case.  The first hive that I opened, the one that I typically think of as the weaker of the two hives, had finally filled both levels of supers up with comb and were putting down a substantial amount of honey in all of the upper frames.  I had to break into the bottom super to find the brood of bees and be sure that they were doing well.  The size of the hive had clearly expanded and there were any number of bees that were very unhappy with the general ruckus that I was causing them.  It takes some amount of control when being mobbed by several thousand bees at once, not to swat at them or get anxious.  Bees are a very intuitive lot - they respond almost instantly and as a single organism to slight changes in mood and surroundings. I have watched them milling about on the outside of the hive and a bee will twitch differently and the whole group changes its dynamic simultaneously.  When I am busy trying to move bees aside so that I can get a grip on a frame, I will notice subtle differences in the tone of their buzzing and can tell when I have angered the lot of them. I don't work with a smoker because, for the most part, the bees are fairly tolerant of me and don't attempt to sting....that doesn't, however, mean that they aren't unhappy with me.  I find myself humming the Winnie the Pooh "I'm just a little black rain cloud" song and that seems to quiet both myself and the bees down a bit.   I did have one bee yesterday, however, that was especially upset with me and she kept throwing herself at my mask repeatedly long after I had put her hive back together and moved on to the second hive.  No amount of explaining would dissuade her from her attempts at driving me away.

Having assured myself that the shaded hive was doing well, I moved on to what has typically been my larger hive.  This group has completely filled the two initial supers and is now starting on the third.  I removed the top super (the one that they are only getting a start on) and launched into the second (or middle) super.  I found healthy capped brood in the middle of the super and then chanced to check some of the other outer frames in the box.  Honey! Capped, finished honey!  I pulled the first full frame up out of the hive - weighing roughly 20 pounds and full of unhappy bees, this is not something that you want to drop - I was completely amazed.  Capped honey is beautiful, but brand new clean white honey comb that is full for the first time is really beautiful!  I set the frame down and peered into the hive on the other side and was rewarded with a second full frame of capped honey on the other side as well.  I pulled this one out as well and set it next to the first frame full of honey and then went to get the empty frames that I had brought along. There were several more frames of mostly capped honey, but the bees use honey as their main food supply for feeding the young bees and always need to be left with enough in reserve to maintain the hive.  I put the empty frames in the hive in the places of the full frames and then quickly and apologetically brushed the bees off the honey filled frames back into the hive before I spirited them away to my green house which doubles as the "honey house". 

Walking with a loaded wheel barrow while still wearing most of my bee costume to the green house, I attracted the attention of my 7 year old and she came skipping over to see what I was up to.  She is a honey lover herself and was willing to run to the house to get a few of the necessary items I would need to clean and prep the centrifuge that I had not even bothered to examine yet, thinking that it would be at least the end of the season, if not a full year from now, before I would need it.  With a crescent wrench, some clean rags, a hose and a little dilute bleach, we had the thing up and running in no time.  A large knife was obtained from the kitchen and the top beeswax seal on the honey was removed and saved in a pan.  In general, it takes 10 pounds of honey to make 1 pound of beeswax and it is worth its weight in gold, so I wasn't going to loose a bit if I could help it.  A little balancing of the centrifuge and ten minutes of spinning and a beautiful stream of golden honey came pouring out of the spout at the bottom of the centrifuge.

 Honey is one of the easiest food stuffs to work with.  It is ready to eat in its natural form, does not spoil, and can be used in just about everything.  The only thing that I had to do in order to put this honey in jars was to strain it a few times through several layers of cheese cloth.  Seven pounds of honey later, the now empty frames of beeswax were returned to the bees and the empty placeholder frames removed.  They will take one look at the devastation that I caused to their comb and start again to clean it, repair it, fill it with more honey and cap it once again. In trade off for my providing housing, food through the winter, protection from the cold and a little water for the hot summer months, these tiny little beings supply me with potentially endless supplies of the most natural sweetener known to man and they will pollinate many of my flowers and crops. I am pretty sure that I am coming out way ahead on this deal, but it really is a fairly symbiotic relationship although, technically, they would survive just fine without me.  I do, however, speak on their behalf when the crops are being sprayed with potentially toxic chemicals that threaten to completely wipe out honey bees all together, and in that small way attempt to pull my weight in the relationship.

 More and more I see these types of relationships in nature and for many of them, man is thought to not be an important link in the symbiotic chain, but we are perhaps one of the most important players in symbiotic relationships - we have to protect them.  "A chain is only a strong as its weakest link." as my brother used to remind me (typically while he was pointing out that I was, apparently, the weakest link) - but it is very much true.  Our job as humans, and as links in the chain, is to protect the other links in the chain, the bees being sprayed, the shrimp being covered in oil, the cattle, chickens and pigs being restricted to tiny lots or confinement units.  Sadly, we humans are often the weakest links and fall far short on our jobs. 

So, the next time you pull out the honey jar and take a teaspoon full of honey, think of the little beings that worked themselves literally to death to bring that to you.  Each worker bee, in her short lifetime will produce only the equivalent of 1/10 of a teaspoon of honey, and to produce a pound of honey, bees will fly the equivalent of twice around the world and visit roughly two million flowers.  And that is just the honey.  The value they represent in their ability to pollinate crops and further provide us with food, eclipses the value of the honey alone.  The next time you eat a fruit, vegetable, or even have a cup of coffee....thank the bees.

When it rains.....

I have reached a point in the summer.  That point where it is too hot, too dry, too busy, too much sun, too many crops to keep up with - in short, I have hit the summer wall.  It is a point that I personally think of as the "freeze point,"  or that frame of mind that I find myself in when I think, 'if it were to all just freeze now, I would be okay with that!'  This year is especially bad, however and my best efforts to ride out this pessimism are not working out so well.

I need a good thunderstorm to break up the tension a little and water my gardens, ...but it doesn't and then I get upset with the weather (generally an exercise in futility if there ever was one), and then I get mad at people because we are at (or past - depending upon my level of fatalism on a particular day) the tipping point of climate change and it will all only be a slow, hot, depressing decline from this point on with all the media outlets and government officials talking about it, but people in general essentially doing nothing about it.

I tend to become especially cynical when hot and frustrated.

I thought of making a quick list of all the problems at the top of my mind regarding the climate and farming, but quickly realized that the list was entirely too long and really didn't help improve my outlook much, but then I thought of my grandparents.  Farmers, the lot of them.  They lived through the dust bowl, the depression, WWII, and all of the fear mongering that followed with the Cold War.  If ever there was a case of "when it rains, it pours" problems piling up, this era would have been it.  I find myself wondering sometimes if they ever thought the end of the world was coming, and if so, how did they continue to get up every morning and affect some change?  Maybe the world was just different back then.  Maybe not knowing all the world news and hearing of all the horrors that are happening in far off regions made it easier to ride out your own problems.  Maybe not having access to as many people (many both more educated and significantly less educated than you yourself are) was beneficial to focusing on the present local problems.  I find that I have almost completely given up listening to the news and I have to stop myself from reading the asinine comments on the news articles that I do read - as filled with hate and fear as they are.

 I fully understand that this sense of dread about the environment and the food we produce and eat doesn't permeate very deeply into the populace at large, but there is a sense amongst many of us on this "survivalist bandwagon" that the doors of opportunities that my grandparents and parents had opening in front of them are slowly closing for us.  It is very sad to see some of the predictions of environmental disaster that were pooh-poohed by so many slowly coming true. It is like being told the Titanic was too big to sink....and yet she sits on the bottom of the Atlantic floor.

But what, exactly is one person to do? This is the most troubling question.  How is one person to make a difference that turns the world around from this horribly destructive course?  How does a person look her kids in the face and say, "Sorry guys, good luck!" How, then, do I wake up every morning and hope to affect any change?

I have to believe that small steps, repeated millions of times by people all over the world, together can change the way our governments work, our food is produced, our people are fed and our children educated.  The alternative, which has mainly been big business monopolies running the corporate food network (and the government), is simply not working - it is bankrupting our land and the people who live on it.  The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again hoping to get a different result.  It isn't working.  It is time to change.  Horton hears the Who, but until every last shirker, every last JoJo, is yowling and yapping, chances are we will not be heard.

Yap!

Living Without Air

Summer is here,.... definitely here. The time of the year when the humidity is so high that the haze just hangs in the air and you feel more like you are swimming than walking when you are outside.  I wake up in the morning and hustle outside in the pre-dawn to do chores before it heats up, sometimes dressed in only whatever pajamas I slept in the night before, and on these hot summer nights... it is a good thing that I live in the country without too many neighbors driving by.  We dress to fit the weather around here because living in a turn of the century farm house means...you guessed it, no air conditioning.   I know, I know....at this point you are all thinking, "Oh my God, how does anyone live without air conditioning?!"   Well, up until about 30 years ago, everyone lived without air conditioning.  It was a luxury - saved for large hotels and businesses - and now it is considered the "norm".  Unfortunately, the way we spend our cash on fossil fuels and energy, it will likely, once again, be considered a luxury before too long. 

As hot and sticky as it can sometimes get, I have never really longed for an air conditioner.  It was nice when I was pregnant in July with my third child and we were living in town, but I did just fine without it on the subsequent two pregnancies.  I, personally, can't stand the sound of motors and compressors running all night - even the fan is a bit too much noise at times - birds, coyotes, dogs barking, thunder, wind,....fine, just nothing mechanical.

And so, we live in the heat and this, in a nut shell, is how we survive.  We open the windows and catch the breeze. 


Dark, shady and cool - the perfect siesta

Timing is everything, however.  You have to open the windows at night - all the windows - on every side of the house, and if there isn't a breeze, you create one with fans until the cool night air seeps in and displaces the warm air of the day.  Then, (and this is key), in the morning first thing, you close the windows and the drapes.  It sounds a little counter intuitive, but after many summers of living quite nicely through days of high heat and humidity, I can tell you this works. 
We have also done what we can to be sure that we have plenty of shade trees surrounding our house.  Deciduous trees planted on the south side so that their leaves shade in the summer and allow sun in during the winter, and when the heat just gets too stifling, then it is time to pull out the hose and have a little water fight action to cool things down.

And as it so happens, just about the time that you are convinced you will not be able to take the heat and humidity for one more day, the horizon darkens and the haze takes on a new appearance of omminous clouds in the west.  You can feel the storm clouds building and rolling in until, finally, from the completely still, fetid air comes a blast of cool wind that brings with it a thunderstorm, the smell of ozone and a cool breeze.  That cool breeze I appreciate more than any air conditioner I have ever known.

The June Delusion

Deep in the gloomy hollow of winter, I picture June.  I imagine running outside with only flip flops on my feet rather than snow boots, I picture my kids chasing each other around the yard, riding bikes and playing in the sand box...I picture time on my hands to relax, to drink beer on the porch, to nap in the hammock.  And every year, I am completely delusional. 

I think how wonderfully unencumbered I will be to not have to run kids around to school functions, how much extra time I will have since the days are so much longer, I imagine the fantastic mini-vacations we can plan.  Again, I am delusional.

I find myself mystified by how May seemed to evaporate before I even registered its existence, and then I find myself standing in front of the calendar in the kitchen with jaw dropped open wondering how it could be the middle of June already?!  And what is even more worrisome is that there isn't an "unscheduled" day on the calendar until sometime the end of July. 

This happens every year, you would think that I would learn by now.  The kids get out of school and rather than being one organized, unified family of children, they spin off like so many pin balls in every different direction.  There are friends to see, camps to go to, parties to attend, 4-H to prepare for, jobs to do....multiplied by five.  I feel like a pinball flipper that just tries to keep them all in play, while simultaneously gardening and working full time.  

My days generally start before the sun is up and, with kids insisting that they stay up later since it is summer, the days end much, much later than they should.  My hands have achieved their "permadirt" status with dirt ground into the calluses and blisters from living in the garden.  There will be no end in site to the amount of produce to be picked, blanched, frozen, processed, canned, pickled.  And while each crop harvested is wonderful, it carries with it a boat load of work involved.  Throw into that a few vacations, a few parties, a few 4-H events and the summer is essentially over before my brain has wrapped around the fact that it is June.

That's not to say that I would change any of it. 

Despite the fact that most days start out with coffee and ibuprofen just to get sore joints and aching muscles up and functioning, despite the fact that I have been seeing roughly 20 out of 24 hours of each day for the last few weeks and seeing precious little of my bed and pillow.....I wouldn't change any of it.  There usually comes a moment in each crazy, hectic day when something small happens - a cold beer gets pulled from the fridge to be enjoyed for a few minutes on the porch, a kid learns to ride a bicycle,  a rainbow shows up after a storm, a fledgling bird suddenly takes wing, one of the cats comes to rub up against you and purrs while you're weeding....little things that implant themselves in my brain and are the fodder for my mid-winter delusionment.

I initially started this post as justification as to why I haven't written since the middle of May, but then again....there just hasn't been time....and I have been having too much fun.

The Dinner Table

There is a time in every day that I look forward to, and not just because I am a highly food motivated individual.  It is a time when everyone that is home gathers and eats dinner.  Breakfast and lunch are largely free-for-alls, but dinner is on a schedule.  It isn't particularly fancy or civil, - I am quite sure that Miss Manners would have a lot to say about my son's occasional lack of a shirt, my husband's ball cap and my daughter's elbows, but it is all of us gathering around to discuss the happenings of the day and issues that happen to come up.

Growing up in a home with a mom that majored in home economics and a 1950s era mindset in the 1970s, we ate all our dinners around the table as many nights as possible with the classic 'pork chops and apple sauce' for dinner.  Those were some of the best memories of growing up.  Not that any of the meals were especially memorable, but the feeling that sitting around breaking bread with people that you love and that love you - it was a comfort that fills the soul. The feeling of being part of a group, part of a family.  Knowing that if you weren't there, you would be missed.  Discussing issues, ideas, problems, and funny stories of the day.  No matter where people had been, how good or awful their day had been... we came together, if only for a short while, and shared our happenings.

My husband and I bought a second hand table almost 16 years ago shortly after we bought our first house.  We liked it because it was a very wide table and we could each lay our section of the newspaper on it and not get in each other's way.  Slowly, kid by kid, we have included more leaves and expanded our table. It is now covered with any number of scratches, crayon marks, and paint splotches because it is the main hub of creativity for the kids, but every night it undergoes a transformation and achieves its highest potential as a gathering place for the family to eat.

A favorite thing is when my kids have friends over and we all sit down to dinner together.  It doesn't really matter how many people cram into my house, we always find enough leaves to extend the table as far as we need to.  Sadly enough however, sitting down to a family dinner is an oddity to many of my kids' friends, but they all take to it very quickly.  There are no cell phones allowed, no books, no toys.  You are expected to say "please" and "thank-you" and to ask for things to be passed to you.  Seconds are always allowed as long as everyone has been able to have firsts.  After the ground rules have been established, these kids take to family dinners and we have a blast.  You never know where the discussions may lead you - sometimes I ask the friends for some good blackmail material about my kid and that generally leads to very interesting stories and much discussion.  Sometimes we angle toward politics or religion.  There was one crazy night where the entire meal was devoted to coming up with silly jokes involving names such as, "What are the names of those two guys by the window?"....."Curt 'n Rod".  As I said, it isn't always sophisticated, but I learn more about my kids from the time spent eating dinner together than any other time time of the day.

I made a point the other night of keeping track of the flow of conversation...it went something like this:
Babies - new one in the family
Elizabethan collars for dogs
Fixing Washing machines
Vegetarianism
Medical field and what a complete mess it is
The definitions for the words 'meme', 'truffle' and 'sudoko'
The difference between a "truffle" treat and a "truffle" mushroom
Google's search engine verses all the others and what makes them so popular
High School computer classes and free college credit
College
Peccadillos
Cards and Gifts
Writing Cards
Interspersed with crazy giggling
The thought that we remember the past as being better than it actually was
South Dakota honey

What the segue was from one topic to the other is, at this point, completely unknown and often times there really wasn't one - someone would simply throw out a question or thought that popped up.  There are many times when my sister and brother-in-law come over for dinner and the conversations will extend well beyond dinner and involve a bottle of wine (or two) and the oldest kids sitting around trying to understand the complex threads of discussion that we sometimes end up having about government, religion, wars, economies, history, education, literature, societies.  We joke that we can solve the world's problems over a meal, but in all honesty, that is how many problems do get solved. 

It makes me wonder how problems will get solved when, for many, there are no longer meals that are eaten together, but in front of the television instead.  I know too many families where this is the norm - dinner hastily prepared and eaten in front of a television screen- often alone, based on the stories of many of the kids that visit our house. I know that most of them are generally good kids and happy, but I can't help feeling sorry for them never having this experience of togetherness with their family.  We have lost much in our society that is good, but I sometimes think that this is the worst.  I know that not every family is lucky enough to have jobs that allow them to be home at mealtime every night, but I also know that we find time for the things that are most important to us....what does that say to our kids when we can't find the time to sit down and share part of their day with them?

The Zen of Moss Roses

"If we could see the miracle of a single flower clearly, our whole life would change."   ~Buddha

I have a flower garden plot right outside the door that I consider to be my Zen garden.  It is fairly small, in relation to the rest of the flower and vegetable gardens at least, and it contains one of my favorite flowers - the Moss Rose.  Every year for the last four or five years I have had Moss Roses here and, despite being listed as annuals, they reseed themselves vigorously with their tiny grain-of-sand sized seeds.  What this means, however, is that I have to be exceptionally aware of what these tiny little flowers look like when they sprout.  So this area outside my door starts out each year as a bare patch of dirt and slowly weeds start to sprout up and then, with all the same faith as the proverbial mustard seed, so do the Moss Roses. 

While the rest of the flower garden is growing to knee high and blossoming with flowers, this plot of dirt takes its time and looks mostly like an abandoned lot of patchwork weeds.  If I were to take on trying to make this section completely weed free and beautiful all in one day, it would be overwhelming in every sense of the word.....this is how it became my Zen garden.

It happens often that I am completely overwhelmed by life.  Too much to do, too big of a mess to clean up, too many problems in the world, ....., not enough time, energy or enthusiasm to take them all on.  I will despondently stand on the top step of my porch contemplating the indirect proportion of stuff to be done to my level of energy and slowly sink down on the steps in apathy....which puts me in very close proximity to my bare, weedy plot of moss roses. 

These tiny seeds have been washed out, grown over, walked upon by several errant children....and yet they are here.  Slowly growing, changing, and blossoming despite their challenges.  And so, while stewing in my wretched mind set, my fingers slowly start to pull at each little weed that surrounds them and I carve out a small square of weed free area that then extends into the next weed free area and, one listless moment after another, I slowly clear an area that allows the moss roses to become the gorgeous flowers they are.

What often happens while weeding these minuscule little seedlings is that I stop thinking of all that is overwhelming and wrong in the world and suddenly my mind starts to focus on nothing at all - no worries, no plans, no things to be done, no problems, only the slow, methodical, careful weeding from between the tiny seedlings.  I start to see my life in relation to this weedy patch of ground and realize that it takes slow, methodical, careful work to eventually come to a place in one's life that is free of weeds and open to the air and sunshine.  It can't happen in a day.   And then slowly it refocuses in on the other things that I actually can do that need doing and, eventually, I pull myself up off my knees and, feeling better, meander to the next garden area most in need of attention. 

Pulled from my despondency by a tiny plant that will evolve into a beautiful flower. My bare, weed patch of a life takes on a little of the energy of these hardy little plants that survive the brutal winter, take root amidst a washout of sand and dry dirt and challenge the weeds around them to gain light and air enough to grow, but it never happens all in one day and the enlightenment that they provide doesn't last indefinitely....it all takes time, and year after year it is the same.  A quiet circle of growing, weeding, flowering, seeding out, dying off, surviving the winter, and growing again....and I am part of that circle for these little seeds, and they are part of mine.  Would I survive without them? Yes.  Would they survive without me? Yes.  But together we are better - I pull up the weeds that surround them and they pull me up when my darkest thoughts surround me - and together we grow.