Category: Farm

The Annual Dogwood Miracle

barnstormingblogLeave a comment
dogwood20184

After all, I don’t see why I am always asking
for private, individual, selfish miracles
when every year there are miracles like … dogwood.
~Anne Morrow Lindbergh

foldeddogwood

It began last week. The tree right next to our front porch, having looked dormant for the past six months, started to bud out in subtle pink-petalled blossoms.

Through the winter, there had been nothing remarkable whatsoever about this tree. Now it is a feast for the eyes, almost blinding in its brilliance.

Each year the dogwood startles me awake. From dead to brilliant in a mere two weeks. And not only our tree, but every other pink dogwood within a twenty mile radius has answered the same late April/early May siren call:
bloom!
bloom your heart out!
dazzle every retina in sight!

And it is done simultaneously on every tree, all the same day, without a sound, without an obvious signal, as if an invisible conductor had swooped a baton up and in the downbeat everything turned pink.

Or perhaps the baton is really a wand, shooting out pink stars to paint these otherwise plain and humble trees, so inconspicuous the rest of the year.

Ordinarily I don’t dress up in finery like these trees do.  I prefer inconspicuous earth tones for myself. But I love the celebratory joy of those trees in full blossom and enjoy looking for them in yards and parks and along roadways.

Maybe there is something pink in my closet I can wear. Maybe conspicuously miraculous every once in awhile is exactly what is needed.

Then again, it is best to leave the miracles to the trees…

dogwood42816
dogwoodweb
dogwoodsunset2
pinkdogbloom

If you stand in an orchard
In the middle of Spring
and you don’t make a sound
you can hear pink sing,
a darling, whispery song of a thing.
~Mary O’Neill from Hailstones and Halibut Bones “Pink”

dogwood517
sunsetdogwood
pinkdogbloom2

One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

$10.00
$25.00
$50.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00

Or enter a custom amount

$

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

I’ve Come A Long Way

barnstormingblog2 Comments

Ten more miles, it is South Dakota.
Somehow, the roads there turn blue,
When no one walks down them.
One more night of walking, and I could have become
A horse, a blue horse, dancing
Down a road, alone.

I have got this far. It is almost noon. But never mind time:
That is all over.
It is still Minnesota.
Among a few dead cornstalks, the starving shadow
Of a crow leaps to his death.
At least, it is green here,
Although between my body and the elder trees
A savage hornet strains at the wire screen.
He can’t get in yet.

It is so still now, I hear the horse
Clear his nostrils.
He has crept out of the green places behind me.
Patient and affectionate, he reads over my shoulder
These words I have written.
He has lived a long time, and he loves to pretend
No one can see him.
Last night I paused at the edge of darkness,
And slept with green dew, alone.
I have come a long way, to surrender my shadow
To the shadow of a horse.
~James Wright “Sitting in a small screenhouse on a summer morning”

I have a sense of someone reading over my shoulder as I write.

It keeps me honest to feel that warm breath on my hair,
its green smell reminding me where I am and who I am.
It is encouraging to know what I do matters to someone.

I do not try to be anyone else.

When my words don’t say exactly what I hope,
I feel forgiveness from the shadow beside me.

It’s all softness and warm breath.
It’s all okay even when it’s not.

AI image created for this post
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

$10.00
$25.00
$50.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00

Or enter a custom amount

$

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

Drilling Away

barnstormingblog1 Comment

The woodpecker keeps returning
to drill the house wall.
Put a pie plate over one place, he chooses another.
There is nothing good to eat there:
he has found in the house
a resonant billboard to post his intentions,
his voluble strength as provider.
But where is the female he drums for? Where?
I ask this, who am myself the ruined siding,
the handsome red-capped bird, the missing mate.
~Jane Hirshfield “The Woodpecker Keeps Returning”

A woodpecker once,
A sort of a dunce,
And who as a warbler not much of a siren,
Passed by many trees
Where he might have with ease
Bored out a nice hole to his hunger appease,
For a lofty church steeple made out of sheet iron.

He whetted his bill,
And then with good-will
And a thrumpty-thrum-thrum he started to bore,
Nor let up until
The end of his bill
Was worn off so much that it gave him a chill
And the back of his bobber began to get sore.

A black bird and wren,
A rooster and hen,
A crow and a sparrow were watching him drill,
And squinted one eye
At his birdship so high,
So far from the earth that he looked like a fly
And wondered how long he could work with good-will.

When his bobber gave out
He gave a faint shout
To the crowd that was watching him down on the ground,
And said, Come up here
Where the air is so clear
And lend me a hand, for a worm is so near
Whenever I peck I can hear his faint sound.

Then the blackbird and wren
And the sparrow and hen
And the crow that were watching him, called from below
And said, “Silly Goose,
Your work’s of no use,
You might drill in that iron until your head’s loose.
You have no more sense than some men that we know.”
~Ed Blair “The Foolish Woodpecker”

Piliated woodpecker

A bold piliated woodpecker in Rockport, Massachusetts made the news last week about his destructive rampage through that community, cracking mirrors and windows on vehicles. He is attacking his reflection as a potential competitor.

He’s been nicknamed the “piliated pillager.” His aggressive attitude and bright topknot of unruly feathers is reminiscent of another public figure who won’t be stopped from destroying things.

We have a variety of these little fellows here on the farm. One would think the loud rat-a-tats emanating from trees and buildings would be due to similar bold and fearless birds. Yet our woodpeckers tend to be visitors seldom-seen yet most-audible. They project a loud and noisy presence to the ear but prefer to be invisible to the eye.

I guess they don’t want us witnessing their repetitive self-induced head trauma…

These noisy birds are a reminder of how some people hammer away on social media, often using lots of capital letters. They desperately want to be heard and acknowledged, wanting their opinions to resonate and reverberate for all to hear.

Whenever I hear an insistent pecking echoing from on high, I try to spot the offending and ornery woodpecker who is claiming dominance over the airwaves and his intended targets. There is no question he has once again succeeded in getting my attention, even if my sole reaction is to shake my head at his utter foolishness — he has no more sense than some men I know…

Flicker
Downy woodpecker

“If only, if only, ” the woodpecker sighs
The bark on the trees was as soft as the skies…
~from the story “Holes”

AI image created for this post
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

$10.00
$25.00
$50.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00

Or enter a custom amount

$

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

Simply Lost

barnstormingblog2 Comments

Perhaps she came down for the apples,
or was flushed out by the saws powering
the far woods, or was simply lost,
or was crossing one open space for another.

She was a figure approaching, a presence
outside a kitchen window, framed
by the leafless apple trees, the stiff blueberry bushes,
the after-harvest corn, the just-before-rain sky,

a shape only narrow bones could hold,
turning its full face upward, head tilted to one side, as if to speak.

I want my life back.

Morning settles around her like a silver coat.
Rustling branches, hooves in flight.
~Philip Terman “Deer Descending”

Who among us does not feel this?

Everything changing faster than we can respond:
loss of jobs,
research halting mid-study,
inconsistency abounds,
families shattered,
uncertainty prevails.

What happened to
of the people,
by the people,
for the people
rather than dictated by just a few

We are so lost,
how to find our way back
to caring for the poor, the weak, the vulnerable
with a spirit of commitment, compassion and sacrifice.

For God alone – no one else – remains our strength and shield.
Lost and afraid, we want our lives back.

We need His Refuge where we may rest.
We seek Sanctuary from this darkness,
to once again awaken hopeful to a new morning.

AI image created for this post
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

$10.00
$25.00
$50.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00

Or enter a custom amount

$

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

Embroidered Light

barnstormingblogLeave a comment

Lined with light
the twigs are stubby arrows.
A gilded trunk writhes
Upward from the roots,
from the pit of the black tentacles.

In the book of spring
a bare-limbed torso
is the first illustration.

Light teaches the tree
to beget leaves,
to embroider itself all over
with green reality,
until summer becomes
its steady portrait
and birds bring their lifetime
to the boughs.

Then even the corpse
light copies from below
may shimmer, dreaming it feels
the cheeks of blossom.
~May Swenson “April Light”



This world is not defeated by death.

An unprecedented illumination
emerged from the tomb on a bright Sabbath morning
to guarantee that
we struggling people,
we who feel we are no more than bare twigs and stubs,
we who aren’t budging from where we are rooted,
are now begetting green,
ready to burst into blossom,
our glowing cheeks pink with life,
a picture of our future fruitfulness.

AI image created for this post
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

$10.00
$25.00
$50.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00

Or enter a custom amount

$

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

The Way I See the World

barnstormingblogLeave a comment
walnutshoot
dawn7250

Old friend now there is no one alive
who remembers when you were young
it was high summer when I first saw you
in the blaze of day most of my life ago
with the dry grass whispering in your shade
and already you had lived through wars
and echoes of wars around your silence
through days of parting and seasons of absence
with the house emptying as the years went their way
until it was home to bats and swallows
and still when spring climbed toward summer
you opened once more the curled sleeping fingers
of newborn leaves as though nothing had happened
you and the seasons spoke the same language
and all these years I have looked through your limbs
to the river below and the roofs and the night
and you were the way I saw the world
~W.S. Merwin “Elegy for a Walnut” from The Moon Before Morning

Today I stood under the kitchen
archway and stepped into
my new body. Pasta was on the stove,
a cold Tupperware of string beans
on the counter. But I knew.
I knew I would never be the same—
the way I’m certain the magnolia
down the block has lost
all its petals. I haven’t checked
in days, but I’m convinced
tomorrow when I take my son
to the bus stop, I’ll see them
splashed on the sidewalk.
What I’m trying to say is
sometimes your old skin
falls breathlessly off your body
in late April, as you slice
a cucumber into half moons
for your child,
and you just stand there
and let it.
~Wendy Wisner “Shedding” from The New Life: Poems

dawn7254

This grand old tree defines the seasons for me
while it parallels my own aging.

This past winter’s storms took its branches down in the night
with deafening cracks so loud
I feared to see what remnant
remained in the morning.

Yet it still stands, intrepid,
ready for another round of seasons–
though tired, sagging, broken at the edges,
it’s always reaching to the sky.

aprilwalnut
AI image created for this post
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

$10.00
$25.00
$50.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00

Or enter a custom amount

$

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

Changed Utterly

barnstormingblogLeave a comment

Let Him easter in us,
be a dayspring to the dimness of us,
be a crimson-cresseted east.
~ Gerard Manley Hopkins from “The Wreck of the Deutschland”

There is a fragrance in the air,
a certain passage of a song,
an old photograph falling out from the pages of a book,
the sound of somebody’s voice in the hall
that makes your heart leap and fills your eyes with tears.

Who can say when or how it will be
that something easters up out of the dimness
to remind us of a time before we were born and after we will die?

God himself does not give answers.
He gives himself.
~Frederick Buechner from Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy and Fairy Tale

All changed,
changed utterly:  
 A terrible beauty is born.
~William Butler Yeats from “Easter, 1916”

So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.

Go with your love to the fields.
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn’t go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.
~Wendell Berry from Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

It had been a slow coming of spring this year, seeming in no hurry whatsoever. Snow has remained in the foothills and the greening of the fields only begun.

Bravely, flowering plum and cherry trees burst into bloom despite a continued chill, and the pink dogwood and apple blossoms are now emerging. The perfumed air of spring permeates the dawn.

Such variability is disorienting, much like standing blinded in a sudden spotlight in a darkened room, practicing resurrection.

Yet this is exactly what eastering is like. It is awakening out of a restless sleep, opening a door to let in fresh fragrant air, and the heavy stone locking us in the dark is rolled back.

Overnight all changed, and changed utterly.

He is not only risen.  He is given indeed.

AI image created for this post
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

$10.00
$25.00
$50.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00

Or enter a custom amount

$

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

Come And Have Breakfast

barnstormingblogLeave a comment

A lily shivered
at His passing,
supposing Him to be
the Gardener.
~Margaret D. Smith “Easter morning, yesterday”
from A Widening Light -Poems of the Incarnation

It’s so easy to look and see what we pass through in this world, but we don’t. If you’re like me, you see so little. You see what you expect to see rather than what’s there.
~Frederick Buechner from The Remarkable Ordinary

Jesus said to them, “Come and have breakfast.”
None of the disciples dared ask him, “Who are you?”
They knew it was the Lord.
John 21:12

It is too easy, by the next day, to let go of Easter — to slide back into the Monday routine, managing our best to get through each day, our jaws set, our teeth gritted, as we have before.

We are blinded by our grief, shivering in misery, thinking Him only the Gardener as He passed by. We don’t pay attention to Who is right before us, Who is always tending us: the new Adam, caring for a world desperate for rescue.

God knows this about us.  So He invites us to breakfast on Monday and every day thereafter.

He feeds us, a tangible and meaningful act of nourishing us in our most basic human needs though we’ve done nothing to deserve the gift. He cooks up fish on a beach at dawn and welcomes us to join Him, as if nothing extraordinary has just happened.

Just yesterday evening he reviewed His Word and broke bread in Emmaus, opening the eyes and hearts of those like us who failed to see Who this is walking beside them.

This is no ordinary Gardener.

When He offers up a meal of His Word, the gift is nothing less than Himself.

AI image created for this post
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

$10.00
$25.00
$50.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00

Or enter a custom amount

$

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

Where You Go, I Will Go: The In-Between

barnstormingblog1 Comment

Here at the centre everything is still
Before the stir and movement of our grief
Which bears it’s pain with rhythm, ritual,
Beautiful useless gestures of relief.
So they anoint the skin that cannot feel
Soothing his ruined flesh with tender care,
Kissing the wounds they know they cannot heal,
With incense scenting only empty air.
He blesses every love that weeps and grieves
And makes our grief the pangs of a new birth.
The love that’s poured in silence at old graves
Renewing flowers, tending the bare earth,
Is never lost. In him all love is found
And sown with him, a seed in the rich ground.
~Malcolm Guite “Station XIV of the Cross”

The Holy Saturday of our life must be the preparation for Easter,
the persistent hope for the final glory of God.
The virtue of our daily life is the hope which does what is possible
and expects God to do the impossible.
To express it somewhat paradoxically, but nevertheless seriously:
the worst has actually already happened;
we exist, and even death cannot deprive us of this.
Now is the Holy Saturday of our ordinary life,
but there will also be Easter, our true and eternal life.
~Karl Rahner “Holy Saturday” in The Great Church Year

I said to my mind, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love
For love would be love of the wrong thing; yet there is faith
But the faith and the hope and the love are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be light, and the stillness the dancing.
~T. S. Eliot, from “East Coker”  The Four Quartets

The happy ending has never been easy to believe in.
After the Crucifixion the defeated little band of disciples
had no hope, no expectation of Resurrection.
Everything they believed in had died on the cross with Jesus.
The world was right, and they had been wrong.
Even when the women told the disciples
that Jesus had left the stone-sealed tomb,
the disciples found it nearly impossible to believe
that it was not all over.
The truth was, it was just beginning.
Madeleine L’Engle from “Waiting for Judas” in Plough Magazine

This in-between day
after all had gone so wrong:
the rejection, the denials,
the trumped-up charges,
the beatings, the burden,
the jeering, the thorns,
the nails, the thirst,
the despair of being forsaken.

This in-between day
before all will go so right:
the forgiveness and compassion,
the grace and sacrifice,
the debt paid in full,
the immovable stone rolled away,
our name on His lips,
our hearts burning
to hear His words.

What does it take to move the stone?
When it is an effort to till the untillable,
creating a place where simple seed
can drop, be covered and sprout and thrive,
it takes muscle and sweat and blisters and tears.

What does it take to move the stone?
When it is a day when no one will speak out of fear,
the silent will be moved to cry out
the truth, heard and known and never forgotten.

What does it take to move the stone?
When it is a day when all had given up,
gone behind locked doors in grief.

When two came to tend the dead,
there would be no dead to tend.

Only a gaping hole left
Only an empty tomb
Only a weeping weary silence
broken by Love calling our name
and we turn to greet Him
as if hearing it for the first time.

We cannot imagine what is to come
in the dawn tomorrow as
the stone lifted and rolled,
giving way so our separation is bridged,
darkness overwhelmed by light,
the crushed and broken rising to dance,
and inexplicably,
from the waiting stillness He stirs
and we, finding death emptied,
greet Him with trembling
and are forever moved,
just like the stone.

This year’s Lenten theme:

…where you go I will go…
Ruth 1:16

One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

$10.00
$25.00
$50.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00

Or enter a custom amount

$

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

Where You Go, I Will Go: The Last to Leave

barnstormingblogLeave a comment

When the bird feeders lie barren
for a few days, as I have forgotten
to buy seeds or your mom wants to rid

the yard of the cowbirds and starlings,
and they begin to sway without rhythm
in the summer winds, the mourning doves

come, bound by what they pursue,
uninterrupted, picking the lost seeds
among the shells—these gleaners

profiting on the sporadic eating
habits of the finches. Forgive me
for not acknowledging the finches

as kind benefactors, the Boaz
of backyard birds. They are not.
They are messy and wasteful,

but we love their colors. Nervously
pecking, like Tolstoy’s Vasily
Andreevich, the master in crisis,

the fat man with two coats, groping
for warmth and the horse’s reins
in the growing cold and darkness,

the doves don’t rest or notice the family
of squirrels running circles or the robin
who lands on the shepherd’s hook, surveying

the yard, or the hopeful finches, one or two,
back now, who perch for a moment
and peck at emptiness. These doves

are usually the last to leave
when the cat comes, when I open
the back door, when the leftover

seeds are gone. Is the constant searching
for food a part of their essence?
Should we pity the one who is made

to search? To be always in want?
Is this mourning? Or is it hope?
Waiting and expecting that seeds

will reappear from above by means
they cannot know, and also below
by a grace that is provisional?
~Jacob Stratman “A Poem for my sons on their first Eucharist”

When I lived in the foothills
birds flocked to the feeder:

house finches, goldfinches,
skyblue lazuli buntings,

impeccably dressed chickadees,
sparrows in work clothes, even

hummingbirds fastforwarding
through the trees. Some of them

disappeared after a week, headed
north, I thought, with the sun.

But the first cool day
they were back, then gone,

then back, more reliable
than weathermen, and I realized

they hadn’t gone north at all,
but up the mountain, as invisible

to me as if they had flown
a thousand miles, yet in reality

just out of sight, out of reach—
maybe at the end of our lives

the world lifts that slightly
away from us, and returns once

or twice to see if we’ve refilled
the feeder, if we still remember it,

or if we’ve taken leave
of our senses altogether.
~Sharon Bryan, “The Underworld” from Sharp Stars

I wasn’t paying enough attention when my bird feeders ran out of suet and seed this week. My little feathered buddies fly up to the feeders by our kitchen window and poke around the empty trays, glance disparagingly in my direction, then fly away disheartened.

Although there is no free lunch today, knowing me as they do, they trust it will replenish. They will keep an eye out from a distance, will return to feast, especially the doves who have chosen to nest nearby, so are constantly cleaning up what the other birds leave behind.

I am no birder; I don’t go out looking for birds like the serious people of the birding community who keep a careful list of all they see or hear. I don’t even track every species visiting my humble offerings here on the farm nor do I recognize the frequent visitors as individuals. I just enjoy watching so many diverse sizes, colors and types coming together in one place to feast in relative peace and cooperation.

So unlike my own kind.

I’m happy to host such grateful creatures — even the innovative, voracious and athletic squirrel thieves.

This is my visual and tangible reminder that the good Lord provides, and I, in my own little way, can help.

This year’s Lenten theme:

…where you go I will go…
Ruth 1:16

AI image created for this post

One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

$10.00
$25.00
$50.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00

Or enter a custom amount

$

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly